Blink - The power of thinking without thinking

We make decisions in every single moment we live. Some decisions are trivial and others are serious enough that we need to spend considerable time and effort for information accumulation and reasoning. However, Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book “Blink”, suggests that despite the complexity and the consequences of decisions they can be made rapidly and automatically from little information and reasoning.

Blink is about making decisions in blink of an eye. First Malcolm convinces the reader that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. Then he advices on when should we trust our instincts and when should we be wary of them. Then he suggests that our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.

The main technique brain uses in making very quick judgments is as Malcolm defined is “thin slicing”. It refers to the ability of our unconsciousness to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. The part of the brain that leaps to quick conclusions is called the adaptive unconscious.

What are rapid judgments?

Rapid judgments are taking only two seconds to be made. They are different from intuition which are based on emotions and do not seem entirely rational. Rapid or snap judgments are entirely rational but they can be made in very short time. As we are not aware that we are reasoning when we make such judgments Malcolm calls this “thinking without thinking”. Thus the Blink is a book which teaches us the power of thinking without thinking.

While reading Blink I always remember a snap judgment I made few years back. I was driving faster on a rainy day and the road was little slippery. I almost forgot the gap which I need to maintain with the vehicle in front. The passenger bus running in front was stopped suddenly and I immediately push the break paddle. However, within a second I realized that there is a high chance that my car is not going to stop before collapsing into the bus. Clearly there were two choices, pushing the break paddle furthest and hope that the car will manage to stop without clashing or turn the car away from the bus. If I turn left the car will clash into the pavement and can manage the situation with minor damages to the car. It was a two lane road and if I turn right car will go into the opposite lane and if any vehicle comes in the opposite direction the outcome can be very serious. However, I turned right and there were no vehicles on the other lane. I was not clear whether I have look at the other lane and checked whether there are no vehicles. It is quite clear that certain level of reasoning happened but rapid nature of the decision do not qualify for a post analysis of the situation. Malcolm says “If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.”. This mysterious nature of snap judgments can be understood by considering several examples of snap judgments.

Malcolm describes several good examples for snap judgments. The story of Getty Kouros is about a statue brought to a museum in California. The museum brought the statue after analyzing it for months and very confident that the statue is an original. However, several experts in Greek sculpture later examined the status and most of them within few seconds were able to conclude that the statue is a fake. However, they couldn’t able to provide any good reasoning for their judgments.

In another example, a group of firefighters entered into a building with fire. They suspected that the fire is in the kitchen and open their hoses. In a moment one person realized that there is something unusual and call the team to get out of the house. Few moments after them came out the floor was collapsed. The fire was in the basement. The person who realized that something unusual is there did not have any explanation to why he ordered others to exit the place.

Thin slicing

Thin slicing is a technique where the brain divides an event or experience into very small pieces and identifies patterns in those small pieces of experience. A good example is selecting a book to read from a library. When selecting a book, most of us do not need to read more than couple of sentences to judge what sort of book it is. Just by considering the size of the book, the cover, the length of the sentences, and the language use we can decide whether it is a type of book that we read. This sort of a short series of quick reasoning is what thing slicing is about.

Malcolm shares a very interesting story about university lecturers. In a study carried out by a university a group of students were selected for evaluate their teachers before they started a semester. Even before they see the teachers they were shown a five second video clip of each teacher and asked to evaluate their teaching ability. Then they were asked to do the same evaluation at the end of the semester where they had enough exposure to the teachers. The study found that the accuracy of the initial evaluation is very high. Thus Malcolm suggests that thin slicing is what we do in making snap judgments and argue that there is nothing wrong in utilizing snap judgment as a main tool in our decision making.

In real life situations we can use thin slicing to a greater extend. Malcolm suggests “Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.”.

A similar technique has been used by a researcher in predicting divorces. He has developed the skills in thin slicing where he can predict the probability of a couple to be still married after 15 years just by listening to an ordinary conversation between the partners. The accuracy of his judgments was as high as 95%. Another example which is very similar to this is tracking German Morse code operators in World War II. By identifying the patterns of communication the Allies intelligence officers were able to track the position of the armies by tracking the Morse code operators. Even though they couldn’t recognize the messages been transmitted, they were able to detect which operator is sending the messages. Thus the can track the operators and by that they track the army units. Blink says “If you can measure contempt, then all of a sudden you don't need to know every detail of the couple’s relationship… Predicting divorce, like tracking Morse code operators, is pattern recognition.”).

How can we go wrong

Although the snap judgment is a very versatile technique in decision making, they are not always correct. Because of various reasons the rapid judgments can go wrong. However, in most of such cases rapid judgments are taken because the decisions are to be taken rapidly. Thus deliberate thinking exercise is not an alternative for snap judgment.

Stereotyping is one of the main hurdles for making snap judgments. Once of the good examples from the book is about car sellers. The initial offerings made by them for the customers are very different from the race and the gender of the customer. White women told a slightly high price than white men and black men told very high prices compared to white men. A success of a particular salesman was solely due to the fact that he never bias to race and gender. He was able to sell very high number of vehicles than an average salesman. The book further emphasizes “Treat every customer exactly the same because he's aware of just how dangerous snap judgments are when it comes to race and sex and appearance.”.

Another barrier for successful snap judgment is information overload. This has explained using a story about diagnosing heat attacks in a hospital in Chicago. Doctors believe it is better to collect as much as information possible in decision making. However, a researcher named Goldman developed an algorithm for triage chest pain patients. Doctors were advised to gather less information on their patients and ignore the details. This allowed the hospital to become a well-recognized place in diagnosing chest pain. Blink says “And if you are given too many choices, if you are forced to consider much more than your unconscious is comfortable with, you get paralyzed. Snap judgments can be made in a snap because they are frugal, and we want to protect our snap judgments, we have to take steps to protect that frugality.”).

Another distortion for snap judgment is priming. Priming effect is the effect of a stimulus to a subsequent stimulus. A person who treated with politeness will be behaving in a different way than a person who treated in a strange way. Blink advices “Once you become conscious of being primed, of course, the priming doesn’t work.”

How to make use of Blink

Malcom says “When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad”. Thus identifying when to make rapid judgments and when not to make them is the key factor for success in Blink type rapid decision making. We can be trained in rapid decision making by making ourselves conscious about such decisions made by us in day to day life.

The Influence of Culture on Leadership Development

Introduction

With the expansion of the global economy, companies are forced to go global in order to become success. All the functions of organizations are increasingly demanding a global touch. Companies need to sell globally, hire globally, and they need to compete globally. In order to be successful in the global competition, tomorrow’s global enterprise need to understand and operate in different cultures. They need to understand how different cultures affect the core management functions. The purpose of this report is to critically analyze how the national culture influences the leadership development.

This discussion is based on several well accepted models in management. First one is the five dimensional model of culture by Geert Hofstede (2001). Hofstede identified five cultural dimensions that can be used to visualize the differences in culture between different countries and regions. We will discuss how the differences in each cultural dimension can lead to the development of different leadership traits in people. Next, we will use the traits to identify the leadership style associated with them. We will use three major leadership styles introduced by Kurt Lewin et al (1939), Authoritarian Leadership, Participative Leadership, and Laissez-Faire Leadership. Finally, we will see how this argument can be justified using a case study where several countries namely, Sri Lanka, Norway, Brazil, United States, Japan, and Germany compared for their culture and leadership style.

Fig 1: Cultures Influences on Leadership Style

Hofstede’s five dimensional Model

Hofstede defined 5 dimensions of culture and with them we can describe a particular culture and also can compare and contrast different cultures. They can be summarized as below.

1. Power Distance – The extent to which the less privileged people and communities accept and except unequal distribution of power.

2. Individualism – The extent to which the people are less likely to be responsible for in-groups such as families, clans, organizations, and for the entire society.

3. Masculinity – The extent to which people are driven by achievement, success, and power as opposed to caring, harmony, and quality of life.

4. Uncertainty Avoidance – The extent to which societies are intolerant to changes and more likely to be threatened by the uncertainty of the environment.

5. Long-term Orientation – The extent to which the societies show a future-oriented perspective rather than a short-term view.

Leadership Traits

Traits are patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior which define certain personal characteristics. Psychologists have done lot of studies in this area and identified various traits which can be positively and negatively contribute to leadership development. There are some traits which are found universally in every person; more or less to the same degree. Another set of traits are differ from person to person. Some traits, known as common traits, are shared within societies with the same culture and are observed similarly in persons who belong to that society. Culture is a important factor which causes traits to become strong or weak. We will take each cultural dimensions discussed above and analyze what are the leadership traits that can be influenced by them.

Leadership Styles

In 1939, Kurt Lewin identified three broad categories of leadership styles and named them as Autocratic, Democratic, and Laissez-Faire. Autocratic leaders plan, control, and make decisions by their own and they expect the subordinates to work towards the goals they set and obey the rules they placed. Democratic leaders collaborate with the followers, guide them and use a collective approach in planning, control, and decision making. Laissez-Faire leaders offer very little guidance to subordinates and expect them to plan and control their work themselves and let others to take their own decisions.

Culture Reinforces Leadership Traits

In this section we will discuss how each cultural dimension reinforces leadership traits.

Power Distance Traits

High power distance makes the leaders more dependable on their positional power and less on their personal power. With the authorities they possess, they simply make quick and independent decisions without getting the other people involved. As their authorities are less questionable in the society they feel confidence on themselves even thought the decisions are not guaranteed to be the best. People in high power distance cultures expect leaders to be more decisive and straightforward.

Individualism Traits

Individualistic societies show “I” consciousness rather than “we” consciousness. People are expected to be more independent and manage themselves. They are less dependent on the support of the collective entities such as team, organization, family etc. So the leadership allows people to be more independent while leaders becoming more flexible, facilitating and participative. Self respect and mutual respect are essential to maintain such a society. Tasks are getting high prioritized over the relationships, thus people are focused more on productivity.

Masculinity Traits

Masculine cultures live in order to work as opposed to work in order to live. For them big and fast are more beautiful than small and slow. People including leaders are highly motivated, decisive, and performance driven.

Uncertainty Avoidance Traits

People in cultures with strong uncertainty avoidance expect agreements, rules, and laws for maintain a rigid cultural framework. Leadership is characterized by judgment, less fairness, and less flexibility.

Long term Orientation Traits

Short-term oriented cultures greatly respect traditions, and expect quick results. On the other hand, long-term oriented cultures adapt their traditions to changed conditions and focus on saving and invest. Driven by short term visions and eager for quick results leaders shape themselves as straightforward, productive, and decisive persons. In contrast, with the long-term orientation they possess qualities such as quality, guiding, and inspiring.

Mapping Dimensions to Styles

The previous section discussed what the dominant leadership traits are when particular cultural dimension is high or low. Now, let us look at what are the leadership traits which can be observed in different leadership styles. Figure 2, figure 3, and figure 4 shows the dominant leadership traits found in each leadership style; autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. The size of the font indicates to what extent each trait can be observed in the corresponding style. We can see a clear alignment in traits in each style with traits in each dimension and can observe which style is prominent in cultures where a particular dimension is high or low.

Autocratic traits are more aligned with high power distance, high masculinity, and high uncertainty avoidance. Also the traits which are less observable in autocratic leaders are aligned with low individualism and low long-term orientation.

Fig 2: Leadership Traits of Autocratic Leader

Democratic leaders can be found in high individualistic and low masculinity cultures. Power distance is showing an average value. High individualistic and high long-term orientated societies seem to be encouraging the democratic style.

Fig 3: Leadership Traits of Democratic Leader

Laissez-fair leaders cannot exist where the power distance is high so that when a society exhibit low power distance laissez-fair leadership can emerge.

Figure 4: Leadership Traits of Laissez-Faire Leader

Case Study

By mapping the cultural dimensions to leadership styles we can understand how each cultural dimension can influence leadership development. However more insight can be gained by analyzing how the combination of all dimensions maps with different leadership styles. Figure 5 shows how each cultural dimension is varying within six different cultures. We can see some interesting figures there. It clearly shows that each dimension is independent from others to a greater extent. While having closer values in some dimensions, some countries have highly shifted values for the others. For example, Sri Lanka and Norway are having very low values for the masculinity than the other countries.

Figure 5: Comparison

Figure 6 is a graphical illustration of the comparison. The magnitude of each dimension has plotted using a line graph and background cells have been colorized according to the leadership style. The boundaries between each style have been placed according to the arguments made in the previous sections.

By analyzing the data we can see each country is showing a dominant leadership style over the other. For example Brazil’s curve is aligned with the autocratic leadership style in most of the dimensions. So according to the results we can say that leaders in Brazil are tend to be more autocratic. Norwegian leadership is aligning with the democratic style. We can derive similar patterns for the other countries as well.

Conclusion

The result of this study showed that the culture has a very clear influence on the leadership development. For any organization which is operating in the global environment or has plans to do so, it is very important to understand the leadership style each culture is expecting. Also organizations can use this knowledge to tailor the leadership development strategy for different cultures and build the desired leadership style in their leaders 

Figure 6: Comparison

References
1. Hofstede, Geert (2001). Culture's Consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations. Chapter 1.
2. Lewin, K., LIippit, R. and White, R.K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271-301 ( as cited in http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/lewin_style.htm)
3. http://www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/schein.html
4. http://www.culturegps.com/About.html

The "One minute manager's secrets"

It has been long time since I read a book to completions. But I couldn't able to put "The one minute Manager" aside until I read the whole thing. Here a a summary of the text.

"Once there was a bright young man who was looking for an effective manger. He wanted to work for one. He wanted to become one. His search had taken him over many years to the far corners of the world." Finally he met the "One minute Manager" who shared the secrets of "one minute management". He was neither autocratic nor democratic; neither tough nor nurturing. He taught three secrets of the one minute management to the young person. We also going to learn them.

"People who feel good about themselves produce good results"

Secret #1 : One minute Goal Setting

The first secret of the three is "One minute Goal Setting". It is about making sure that we know what good performance is. One minute manager sets each goal and its performance standards with his subordinates in a paper with less than 250 words, something can be read in less than one minute. Once a while people can spend a minute and read the goal and see whether the behavior matches the goal.

Goal setting is so important so that the people can feel that they are achieving. When you go for bowling and if there are no pins standing, would you ever roll the ball? When there are pins but if they are covered with a paper screen, you would try rolling and might hear some sounds which makes you happy. But you would not enjoy the game much. So the manager responsibility is to make the pins visible and then there is no doubt that the people will enjoy the work.

Secret #2 : One Minute Praising

"Help People to Reach Their Full Potential. Catch Them Doing Something Right"

Most often manages catch people when they do something wrong. They are watching behind the paper screen so that they can see the pins well. They would say that you missed eight pins instead of telling that you hit two. The second secret of one minute management is "One Minute Praising". People should told right from the start that you are going to let them know how they are doing. Once a good work done people should be praised immediately and it should be specifically about the particular work and not a general praise. Just spend only one minute for this. Tell them how good you feel and let them feel it and encourage them to do more of the same.

Secret #3 : One minute Reprimand

"We are not just our behavior. We are the person managing our behavior"

The third secret of the one minute manager is "One minute Reprimand". Sometimes really bad things happen and then, you need to go for one minute reprimand. As in the previous secret your should do this immediately. Divide your minute into two. In the first 30 second, tell what went wrong and tell how you feel about it and let them also feel it. During the second half you should remind them how valuable they are to you and to the organization. Reaffirm that you condemn the behavior but you value the person because the person is not just the behavior. Finally agree not to repeat the same.

"The best minute you spend is the one you invest in people"

"Everyone is a potential winner. Some People are disguised as losers, Don't let their appearances fool you"

Finally our young guy became an effective manager by learning and practicing the above secrets and came up with a new principal.

"Share it with others"

Techiness cannot be used as a warp thread

Software development is one of the industries where the teamwork plays a very critical role. Most of the teams and companies are aware about the difficulties they are facing due to the ill shaped distribution of the 'effectiveness of skills' among the people.


This is not happening automatically. Due to many reasons, the distribution of 'effectiveness of skills' is gradually transforming into this shape.

One can argue that you need to go far in your area of speciality and it is enough to have a certain level of skills in the other areas. Very true, and the above diagrams are not showing the amount of knowledge you have in each area or amount of time you spend on each area but the effectiveness of applying each skill set at your work.

In order to build teams, specially distributed teams which is getting common in practice, people need to be effective in many areas.


If teams need to produce better results the technical skills of the team members need to be weft using their soft skills.

Our techiness cannot be used as a warp thread.

Water for Fuel

There were some news items published on papers and electronic media saying that a Sri Lankan inventor has developed a technology which can be used to run internal combustion engines with water as the fuel. There are some photos in the papers where he is explaining his invention to the prime minister Rathnasiri Wikramanayake. This is not the first of the same kind of incidents. Couple of years ago a person who was claiming that he has discovered a new way of generating energy from sea waves says he will not reveal the secrets to anyone but the President.

Producing Hydrogen or Oxyhydrogen from water by electrolyzing and use them as a fuel for automobile engines is not an original idea. There are thousands of people who did various experiments on this subject and there are hundreds of patents on various methods of doing this. The most famous story of all is the Stanly Meyer's water fuel cell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer%27s_water_fuel_cell). He obtained several patents on his technology (http://www.google.com/patents?id=lLcjAAAAEBAJ&dq=stan+meyer+water+cell) and invited investors to start business based on his findings. After the investors realized that they have been cheated they went to court against Mayer. Mayer was ordered to repay the money he has taken from the investors. Finally, Mayer was poisoned in a restaurant and people say the oil companies were behind the murder. In this video, Mayer is talking about his invention (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6yRn4IAsrU&feature=related) and the Sri Lankan guy is telling more or less the same story.

If you search in the web you will find dozens of web sites dedicated to this technology, some sites even providing all the detailed instructions for convert your car to water (ex:- http://water4gas.com). You tube is also contains lot of videos about the subjects and if you try the Google patent search you can find hundreds of patents related to this area.

So what is the truth behind this technology. Water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. By electrolyzing water we can produce different combustible gases like hydrogen and oxyhydrogen. In order to do this, electrical energy should supply to the system. The output of burning these gases with oxygen is again the water. So the fuel is water and the output is also water and we need to provide electric energy to achieve this. If the amount of energy generated by this method is greater than the amount of energy we supply to the system, this is a perpetual motion machine and in theory, it will violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. So it is obvious that we cannot generate enough energy to recharge the battery without charging it from a outside electrical energy source. So the question is whether the electric al energy required for a mile is cheaper than the fuel required for a mile. If we use gasoline to generate the electricity the answer is 'NO'. But as there are much cheaper means of generating electricity there is a possibility to implement this solution effectively.

The Sri Lankan guy has not stated anything about the amount of electrical energy that needs to be supplied to the system and the cost of it over using the gasoline. Instead he is talking about how many liters of water required to travel from Colombo to Anurashapura and the amperage of the electrolyzer. Personally I do not believe that this solution will have an overall economic value to the country. Also this person should learn a lesson from Mayer because lot of companies are seeking avenues for making money out of the oil reserves in the Sri Lankan sea and the politicians also dreaming about the commissions and bribes they can get when the deals are materializing.

Two Day Workshop on UNIX Shell Scripting

Last February I said goodbye to "Primecluster high availability wizards" project. So I have to pause C programming and Shell Scripting and move to Java again. However, it was lucky that I could able to share some knowledge in the two day shell scripting workshop organized by LKLUG; before my memories are gone. I did two sessions, "Advanced Shell Usage" and "Designing advanced Shell Programs". Some materials can be found here and here are some details of the workshop.

Free Host <=> Paid Host. Can You Believe It? Read Now!!!

Usually I do not getting spams in my GMail Inbox because GMail spam filter takes care about them. But last week I got a mail with the subject "Free Host <=> Paid Host. Can You Believe It? Read Now!!!". That was a unusual mail for me because I am not getting this sort of mails regularly. I was wondering why Google put it into my Inbox rather than tag it as a spam. Anyhow I wanted to host several sites so that I visited the site, created an account and hosted two websites. One week after I am feeling that this free service is much better than paid services which I am using for long time. Order your free account HERE. You will get 250MB plus 100GB bandwidth with PHP, MySQL, Perl, and a very good control panel.