The Power of Context

 

Context is defined as "the set of circumstances, or facts, that surround a particular event, situation, etc."

 

You can gain context by actively seeking it out to frame a situation or you can bolster your situational context through an osmosis like process of consuming seemingly unrelated bits of information and/or experiences. Planning is preparation before you are forced to prepare. Many people see the value in planning for known events and situations but relatively few people see the value in developing your situational context to prepare for unknown events and situations. I view situational context in a similar vain to planning and as I become older, and arguable wiser, I have taken a much more proactive approach in broadening my world view.

 

I remember my days at the Air Force Academy where I would skip presentations given by a wide variety of people on a wide variety of topics because I felt that their presentations had nothing to do with my reality at the time. My reality and their message weren't linearly related and given the demands of academics, athletics, military, and trying to maintain a personal life I chose to use my time in a different manner. In hindsight I should have taken in as many of the presentations as possible.

 

Ironically it was during my military career, and more specifically during my time in Iraq, that I learned context is everything. Problem solving in a deployed environment was challenging to say the least. It was that challenging environment that broadened my world view and caused me to place a premium on a maintaining a broad context. I believe that my deployed experience and complex, ambiguous problems in general have that effect on people because it is those situations that clearly demonstrate that most things are interrelated even if they are not linearly related.

 

The "butterfly effect" is a term that was derived from the concept that a butterfly across the world could flap it's wings and cause a hurricane on the other side of the world weeks later. The butterfly effect is really just an interesting way to describe chaos theory principals. It is used to illustrate that in a nonlinear system (aka life) the trajectory of any future action is dependent on the initial conditions. In other words, small differences at the beginning of a series of events can have large impacts and lead to big differences in the future state.

 

This is where I make the parallel to the power of context. Having a broader scope of knowledge and situational context will undoubtedly impact the way you make decisions. Those decisions could greatly change the outcome of a given situation. Operating in a stagnant contextual "vacuum" is not only impacting your ability to react to the unknown it is in essence denying the interrelatedness of life.

 

In my new position I attended a new session started called Insights for a Better World. It is essentially a presentation/discussion set to a normal cadence that is designed to shape and inspire our work. Going back to my AFA days I likely would have skipped it. There is plenty of work to be done on my current projects and in the short run it may even be a more valuable decision to use the hour elsewhere. The session was presentation on 'Citizen Influencers' and how systemic change in the new world is achieved not through traditional organizations but through groups of interconnected and influential individuals. Thinking linearly it could appear that the session doesn't really relate to my focus.  However, it was during that session that I was overcome by the power of context and how important it is in decision making, leadership, creativity, etc. The session helped to broaden my awareness of the world I am operating in and it just may influence me enough to significantly impact the success I have moving forward.  

 

Bottom Line: Context transcends a particular discipline and those who seek and soak in a broad situational context will undoubtedly have a competitive advantage across a range of endeavors moving forward as compared to those who don't.

To Know Thyself

"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self. " - Benjamin Franklin

"This above all; to thine own self be true." - William Shakespeare

"Friendship with one’s self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self." - Napoleon Hill

"Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change." - Stephen Covey

What do all these great quotes have in common? They all acknowledge the importance of knowing yourself. I have recognized the importance of knowing myself for a long time, and I am sure that throughout my childhood it was imparted upon me in one way or another. In fact a big reason I started blogging was to truly challenge my beliefs and to reflect upon where I am and more importantly who I am.

The other day I took a Myers-Briggs Test Workshop for Choosing and Changing Careers. The premise of the workshop was to learn more about your personality preferences and to leverage that enhanced knowledge of yourself to find a career you truly love. Although the workshop had a career slant I think going through such a workshop is just as applicable to many other facets of life as well.

Here are a few things I took away from the workshop:

1. I went into the workshop with a fairly good self awareness. That was reassuring. I think the combination of my team sports background, military background, and conscious attempts (blogging, reading, starting a non-profit company etc.) to get to know myself better have paid off. That being said we all are constantly growing and changing so the journey to understand yourself is just that; a journey, not a destination.

2. Your personality is a profile of preferences in the way you respond to outside events. If you are extrovert you can still be introverted in various situations. Being an extrovert simply means that your preference is to respond to different life events as an extrovert does. There is a sliding scale of how strongly you identify with a certain preference.

3. Your personality profile can and does change in different situations. Although my "personal" and "work" self were largely aligned there are some scenarios where my preferences change. For instance, I am more laid back and have a go with the flow attitude in my personal life whereas I appreciate a more solid schedule and organized work environment.

4. Improving your own self awareness allows you to better recognize other peoples personality types and allows you to more effectively interact with different types of people.I couldn't help but analyze where my wife would shake out on the Myers Briggs test. It was pretty enlightening to see that the source of some of our minor disagreements may not be a lack of desire to resolve those disagreements but two differing preferences on how to respond to outside events. A simple example is cleaning the kitchen. My wife notices every crumb where I take more of a holistic view of how the kitchen ties in with the rest of the home's appearance. These are not coincidences. They are living examples of our differing personality profiles. My awareness of this subtle distinction in our preferences will surely make me more sensitive to how she lives her life....and may even improve my counter-wiping ability. Although this is an oversimplified example, it can be applied to relationship management in any scenario.

5. There are a few different facets that would make up my “dream job” that are consistent with my personality profile. I must be in a creative, team environment that is very collaborative in nature. Not surprisingly this ties in very nicely with things I have been passionate about in my life. Whether it was growing up playing hockey, starting Checking For Charity Corporation, or leading a team of contracting professionals in Iraq I have always thrived and enjoyed these types of environments. My future career should be no different.

9 Things I Learned in ’09 Part II

In the spirit of the first holidays for BadskiBlog I thought I would keep with one of the major themes of the blog and write about some things I learned during my first year of blogging.

5. People Are Inherently Good – My experience with the formation of Checking For Charity, shared experiences with fellow Air Force people going through adversity, and playing/being around hockey people have reaffirmed my belief that mankind is inherently good. There are always some bad apples that take up a disproportionate amount of the headlines out there but in general there are people everywhere lining up to contribute positively to this earth. I think as long as I surround myself with good people, do in my heart what I know is right, and try to improve I will be alright no matter where life leads me.

6. Too Many Opportunities Can Be Paralyzing – Many of my biggest worries and struggles in the past year have been the paralyzing effects of too many opportunities. I am healthy, educated, pretty motivated and excited for what the future brings but there is a problem….I don’t know what I want to do! There are plenty of things I could see myself doing but I just don’t know where to start. I discussed this in my blog post entitled desire spiral earlier in the year. My antidote for such feelings is focusing on achieving happiness NOW! It is important to look forward to making your next day better than the last but who knows whether we will even see tomorrow. Keep that future state in your minds eye but ensure that you are happy today. Content but never satisfied.

7. The Road To Wealth For Many Should Be Boring – People who strike it rich overnight are the exception. For the majority of people wealth should start with the Badskiblog definition of rich and continue down a long, boring, steady road to wealth. Keep more than you spend, develop good habits, think long term, and maintain life balance! In our world of short attention spans it is important to remember there are no shortcuts or it would simply be the way. Take the long term boring approach. It is much more reliable and much less stressful than the alternatives.

8. Happiness Is The Ultimate Goal – I have talked about the quest for happiness in almost every one of these nine musings and it is a constant theme amongst all BadskiBlog posts. Ayn Rand said in her masterpiece Atlas Shrugged "Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." Rand believed, as I do, that the pursuit of happiness is the highest virtue man. If you are always looking ahead to attain happiness you are wrong. Happiness starts now and should be a constant stream of your memories past, a focus of your present, and a goal of your future. If it is not then you know it is time for some form of change in your life.

9. Family Friends and Familiarization – Going with the theme of happiness as the ultimate goal, I have reaffirmed what I believed well before 2009. The best ways for me to achieve happiness are family, friends and familiarization. The first two are fairly straightforward and have been a mainstay in my happiness fix for quite some time. The last reference refers to self awareness and development. Through experiences, learning, growing we gradually come to know the person we spend the most time with….ourselves.

Hopefully my posts weren't too cheese ball and cliched in the reflection of the last year. Although it is difficult to try and encapsulate all you have learned in the past year within a few bullets, I think it is a valuable form of reflection that I will likely carry on in future years of BadskiBlog. What did you learn this year?

9 Things I Learned in ’09 Part I

In the spirit of the holidays I thought I would keep with one of the major themes of BadskiBlog and write about some things I learned in 2009, my first year of blogging.

1. The Importance Of Balance - As I get older I find I struggle more and more with balance and that balance has a greater impact on my overall happiness. I think as a kid you go with the flow and you obviously have much fewer responsibilities competing for your time and effort. You mostly just do what you enjoy doing and let your parents take care of the rest. In an effort to continue to do what I enjoy doing along with all the other things that come with growing up I often find myself either trying to cram too many things into my life or focusing too intently on some things while neglecting others. Not only do these strategies not work, they can be extremely stressful and unproductive. I have and will continue to focus on maintaining balance in my life while ensuring that no one thing overshadows the big picture which is to love the life I lead.

2. Consistency Is Hard – Desire to succeed is not enough. I have learned that it takes consistent behaviors to achieve one's goals. As I become more self aware I have noticed that it is typically not large decisions that negatively impact my life but a series of small instances where I have strayed from the pursuit of excellence and next thing you know I am in a rut. When I was in school at the Air Force Academy we went through survival training out in the woods. We had to do night navigations with only a compass. Our group got extremely lost in the woods. It wasn't that we took a wrong heading or were walking in circles for hours. We we just walking in the direction of our heading and not picking short points of reference to walk to before reconfiguring ourselves on the proper heading. Those slight errors over time led us way off course. I think of that hopeless feeling I had stuck in the middle of the woods wondering how I got so lost and relate it to how we as individuals often get off track in our lives. Beware of the slow erosion of what you are all about and strive for consistent excellence.

3. Adversity Often Provides Clarity – I have gone through a lot of change in the last year. New jobs, new places to live, new ventures, etc all that have brought new challenges. No one particularly enjoys going through tough times and I am no exception. However, as the saying goes you wouldn’t be able to tell the good days without the bad. Perhaps the greatest adversity I am going to face will take place in 2010 in the form of a six month deployment. It is a very scary and challenging thing to think that you will be disconnected from the familiar and comfortable life you have built for six months. I have struggled with the realization that my turn is coming for much of this year. However even though I am dreading being away from family and friends for that long I am confident and maybe even looking forward to the life clarity that my deployment will surely bring.

4. The More I Learn The Less I Really Know – One of the main reasons I took up blogging was the forcing mechanism it provides to justify and think through what you truly believe. You can’t just throw out the first thing you think of because when you do it is staring right back at you and anyone else who wishes to read it. There is something very enlightening about looking at your own words. There are many times where I will read something I wrote and begin to think of exceptions or scenarios to the point I was trying to make. As I have progressed through this my first year blogging I have tackled a lot of different topics and have learned a lot. I have read a lot of books in the past year and have made a conscious effort to be more aware of world happenings. My increased effort to learn has taught me one of the oldest clichés in the book, "the more you learn the less you know." It’s a cliché for a reason! Because it is so true. Its like climbing a flight of stairs. At the bottom you can only see the few stairs ahead of you. However, with each step another step is revealed to you, things you wouldn't have known had you not taking that previous step. I feel the same with my own quest for knowledge and growth. There is just so much out there. When I try to make huge strides in knowledge and growth I get frustrated. As long as I keep in perspective that I am better than I was before, I can handle the reality that no matter how much I learn there is so much more out there that I don't know.

To be continued…..

Social Norms, High School and Death Metal T-Shirts

Anyone who reads this blog knows it is no secret that I am a huge metal fan. I have been a metal head since I was in 5th grade and my love for the music has never wavered. When most people find out that I listen to metal they say something like, “I can’t believe you listen to metal” or “you don’t look like the typical person who likes that kind of music.” I understand that people like to group people with like interests into generalizations or categories. In a sense this is how our minds work. But back in the glory days, the high school days, I went through some interesting experiences brought upon me by my love of metal and I learned some valuable life lessons from those experiences.

I have always dressed kind of preppy I guess you would call it. It always just felt the most comfortable for me and my personality, and the fact that I played competitive hockey where dressing up for games was expected probably didn’t hurt either. Maybe it was for the girls, I don’t really know why we dress the way we do. However when I was in high school once every couple of weeks I would rock a death metal shirt to school. I wore an Obituary long sleeve shirt with evil body mutating trees on it. I wore a Cannibal Corpse shirt with rotting corpses performing lude acts on it. I wore many other band shirts that thankfully weren’t as bad as the Corpse shirt. Part of it was my love for the music, part of it was probably so satisfy some random teenage rebellion craving, and part of it was probably to wave my flag proudly that I didn’t think mainstream music at the time was any good.

What was interesting was what happened when I did this. Different girls or buddies would come up and ask what the shirt was all about. I would tell them it was a band I listened to and they would make some stupid joke or comment about it. I wasn’t too worried about it because all my real friends knew I was into it and even if they gave me a hard time about it they were just messing around. However, things got interesting when I would run into the kids that did fit the “typical person who likes that kind of music” mold. I would be walking by and I would get the classic poseur comment or something to that effect. What I found ironic was the fact there was some kid wearing a Marilyn Manson or Deftones shirt calling me a poseur while sporting a shirt from some of the most brutally heavy bands of all time.

What I find interesting when I look back is how even amongst various groups of people they are all trying to maintain the status quo. Everyone has situations in which they don’t feel like they fit in, especially during the teenage years. Instead of focusing on trying to always fit in, which I acknowledge is essential to human happiness, we should realize that there are times where it pays to stand out. When you don’t stand out you are average, and people aren’t rewarded internally or externally for being average. I am currently listening to an audio book by Seth Godin called Tribes. His book is all about becoming a leader and challenging the status quo. He argues that the new world needs and rewards “heretics” who go against the status quo, form tribes, and lead. It is a very good book that I will post a full review on shortly.

I think these experiences taught me to be more confident in myself, and to shrug it off when you are at the butt end of the joke. People are always trying to please other people especially at that age, but at the end of the day it is yourself that you must know and enjoy. A sense of self confidence is essential to living a life of learning and enjoyment. If you are always doubting and questioning what you are about and what you represent, how are you ever going to go about improving upon it?

I know this post is a random illustration of a simple concept, however like any great movie of the 80’s (see Lucas the 80's movie picture above!) what better way is there to analyze social norms and life lessons than reflecting on the stupid, unimportant scars you are left with from high school. If a whole decade of Hollywood producers can do it why can’t I?

100-0 Story is 100% WRONG

OK, so I know going into writing this post that I am going to take some heat if anyone actually reads it. Just know in advance that I am going to try and lay out my assumptions and my viewpoint as simply and as logically as possible. I am writing about all the buzz surrounding the girls high school basketball blowout in Texas that ended with a 100-0 score. See this link if you haven't heard about it http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482825,00.html. The more I hear about this story the more I want to puke. The latest news is that the coach has been fired for respectfully disagreeing with the school district's assessment that he/the team should be ashamed. If they are saying that he is being fired for not going with the program and backing the public apology that is one thing...albeit not a very stand up and honorable thing. However I would argue that at least some of his firing comes as a result of there needing to be a scapegoat. I also feel that this is a joke.
The thing that makes me sick the most is the message we are sending to our youth and the ungrounded and bogus way that message is being sent. When I first read the headlines I immediately thought wow what kind of asshole ran up the score to 100-0. However as I read the article, and other articles, and saw discussions on TV like Pardon the Interruption I quickly changed my initial judgement. I view this as a message to the kids who won the game saying "Be good......but not too good." What ever happened to being the best you can be? Now I am not some Nazi who thinks everything is kill or be killed and that they should have tried to make it 200-0.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a true sportsman and tend to act with class in most things that I do. My point is that I am a former competitive athlete. I have played hockey at some of the highest levels that you can play (Div I, a cup of coffee in a bad Semi-Pro league). Being a former athlete that has played at an extremely high level of competition I feel as though I can connect with this situation.
First off, let's assume that the coach was a completely classless character who told his girls to run up the score no matter what. Think Karate Kid and the Cobra Kai Dojo. Even if that was the case I can guarantee that as the score escalated and the girls settled into the game and saw the lack of talent on the opposing side they let up. Even if one or two girls were rabid dogs and refused to let up, I can guarantee that some of them did and that the overall play of the team let up. Now in the coaches statement he said that he did not run up the score. Do we believe him? Maybe, and judging by the way he publicly went against the school district's policy I think we should. I know that if I felt I did the right thing and was hung out to dry that I would act in a similar manner; by standing up for what I felt was right regardless of the consequences.
I just can't get over the fact that these girls along with their newly unemployed coach are taking the brunt of the pain from this. If you read this article you will see that the team they beat has learning disabilities and hasn't won a game in year's. My question is why are these team's playing against each other? This question really resonates with me now that I am a men's league guy who is still trying to live the dream. Some nights you come out and the team you are playing against is pure garbage. You get up by 10 goals and the other team starts cheap shotting you and yet all of a sudden you are the bad guy. Well wait a minute here, I didn't sign you up for this league. In fact I paid the exact amount you did to experience the joy and healthy competition of the league. Who's fault is it that you aren't as good as me or my team? Is it my fault? Should I feel ashamed? I don't think so. I busted my ass for years to get to where I am and the truth of the matter is that I never scored enough goals or won enough games in my life to go out and be "good.....but not too good" against the other teams I play against. Like I said earlier you do let up out there when you start to win by a large margin. Its just human nature. The funny part is that almost without fail, your next game you come out feeling pretty good and you get shelled 7-2 by the next team in the league. If you want to see this in action in the real world look at business. Our government already wants to put windfall profits taxes on companies. You can make money but we decide how much is fair or appropriate. This also came to light during this year's election with regard to taxes. It's only fair to take what you made and give it to those who need it.
Getting back to basketball, I think it is an interesting paradox that the very people who are most likely responsible for these two teams playing each other (the school district) are the ones who are appalled with the outcome. So is it all the school district's fault? Well I don't want to go down that slippery slope either because then we get into this debate of whether or not its the government's or administrations role to regulate what is fair and who plays who etc. See taxes argument above. I am merely saying that my conclusion is this. I think its garbage that these girls and their coach are being lambasted in the media for being excellent. I think the media in an effort to sell papers frames the story to read like they deliberately ran the score up on a weaker opponent when it was clear that the game was a blowout before it started and they likely let up (my arguments above and the team only scored 14 points in the fourth quarter and they were up by 25 midway through the first). I think the lesson learned here is to be as good as you possibly can be at whatever you do, do in your heart what you know is right, and let anyone who doesn't like it bitch about it as you pass them by working to become a better person achieving more and more than you ever thought you could.