The Big Shift

What my Israeli cousin’s business tells us about future marketplace winners and losers

I first met my Israeli cousin Eyal when I was 18 and he was four years old during my year-long study abroad program in Israel. I noticed he was always playing around on the computer. When he turned five, I showed him how to program a computer in BASIC language. He didn’t know any English but, amazingly, picked it up immediately. At 17, Eyal started Israel’s first unlimited internet access company. Fifteen years later, he continues to innovate.

Eyal

Eyal’s business experience gives us a glimpse into the types of people who will likely thrive and those who may languish in the emerging economic order.  Hint: those who fly highest will not necessarily have the highest grades or SAT scores.

In 2007, Eyal founded Media Force, a performance-based marketing company specializing in online media buying and ad distribution. Media Force builds, operates and promotes its own in-house lead generation websites. Although Eyal lives in and runs the company from Israel, employing, among others, two of his siblings, the vast majority of his business is conducted with US clients. In fact, most of Eyal’s clients have never laid eyes on him.

Eyal recently told me about an Indian computer programmer who emailed him out of the blue, offering to write code for Media Force for a fraction of what Eyal would have paid an Israeli or American programmer. Eyal agreed, reluctantly, to try him out. He later hired others. “We found that working with programmers in India can be tricky…once you know and even more importantly trust a few guys, they can provide you with quality work for much less than we would have paid if we had to assign it to a US based company,” he said.

We should be in awe of what the technological changes of the past two decades have wrought: An Israeli businessman runs a company out of Israel with nothing more than a few computers, selling his services almost exclusively to US companies, using Indian programmers, none of whom have ever met each other. The Indian programmer can easily connect with a company in Israel and acquire work that would have otherwise gone to Joe or Yossi (Joe in Hebrew) software technician. In the recent past, the factory worker was vulnerable to being supplanted by a low wage worker in Asia. Now the technician is at risk as well.

I can understand why some are gloomy about the prospects of further dislocation in our new economy. But there is good news here as well. The same forces that allow an Indian to connect with an Israeli to sell his services also allow an Israeli to connect with an American to sell his services. The connection economy takes away something tangible—a job—but creates an opportunity for others to connect to new markets.

The winners in this story are the entrepreneurial young Israeli and moderately educated Indian technician. The loser is Joe or Yossi the technician who offers nothing more than the technician from India.

Moral of the story: (1) We’ve got to retool our education system to emphasize innovation. With the pressing need for innovation, it makes little difference how our kids do on standardized tests. Nor is being skilled good enough anymore. Anything that can be done more cheaply in India or China will be done more cheaply in India or China (or be done by a robot).  (2) There are more opportunities to find new markets, turn a profit, and do something we love than ever before in human history. We’ve just got to create more innovators to take advantage of them.

Three Things I Never Learned in La La Land

When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t pay attention in class for the life of me. A teacher lecturing sounded to me like the garbled voice of the unseen figure in Charlie Brown films: wah wah, wah wah wah wah. I was completely out of it. People who know me well now would say I still am but, if pressed, might admit that I’m good at a few things.

 

My younger son’s teachers from last year thought that his difficulty paying attention to the lesson was a really big deal. “It’s causing him to fall behind in all his subjects,” we were told, as if not being enrapt by first grade science constitutes a severe deprivation of the mind. I’m sure that if I grew up in this day and age in the Washington, DC area, they’d have said the same about me.

What did I miss during those countless hours of inattentiveness?

I never learned to think inside the system

While other kids are solving problems in the system, the ADD kid may be operating at ten thousand feet, detached from the immediate classroom agenda, pondering abstractions. When the mind can’t focus on what’s happening within the system, it’s not frozen in suspended animation, it’s doing something entirely different.  That, of course, may not be all bad. By not being attuned to the finer points of the curriculum, the contemplative ADD kid may be developing higher order thinking skills well in advance of his classmates.

ADD is, to be sure, both a strength and a weakness. No doubt I missed out on more than a nugget or two of useful information. Absent from the discussion of ADD, however, is that the more controlled mind often misses out on higher level observation. People with ADD tend to be big picture thinkers because they’re not capable of being small picture thinkers. People with a more controlled mind, ever rewarded for being on task, can have a hard time breaking out and seeing the big picture. I’ll bet that a disproportionate number of social change agents are ADD, both because they’re angry at how they were treated growing up, and because their minds are well-suited for and trained to examine whole systems.

Tragically, ADD kids often sense a depth in themselves that many lack at their age but can’t figure out why others, especially parents and teachers, don’t recognize it in them. I felt that way well into adulthood.

I never learned not to be creative or curious

Research shows that children are untaught creativity early in their educational careers. Hal Gregersen, who conducted a six year study on creative executives, stated that “If you look at 4-year-olds, they are constantly asking questions and wondering how things work.” By the time they are in first grade, however, they cease asking questions because they learn that teachers value the right answers more than pointed questions. Of his school experience, Steve Jobs said “They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.”

ADD kids are notoriously curious and creative. That may be in part because the ADD mind is most active in the regions of the brain that generate creative thought. Another reason may be when you’re not paying attention and don’t know the “right answer,” you don’t learn that there is only one right answer or that it’s a bad idea to push the issue further. Your curiosity level stays locked into toddlerhood.  Moreover, all the structured time in the classroom dedicated to teaching to the test tends to crowd out time for more creative pursuits. When you can’t pay attention in class for 35 hours a week, all you got is time.

I never learned to provide unqualified respect for authority

Psychiatrist and cognitive theorist William Glasser stated that many educators "teach thoughtless conformity to school rules and call the conforming child ‘responsible.” Such “learning” can create a followers mentality that inhibits personal growth and leadership development. Questioning authority (appropriately), on the other hand, is a hallmark of critical thinking and innovation.

When the teacher doesn’t seem to like you because you can’t pay attention in class, you may not learn how to curry favor to authority figures. This can be a blessing or a curse or both, depending on the direction it takes. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that “The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person…People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.”

Many kids, very often boys with alternative learning styles, never overcome this deep inferiority complex and anger at authority. We all know them—they’re often very bright, with a quick, sarcastic, even angry wit. Discouraged by the system, some of them enter a vicious cycle of self-destructive behavior; others eventually make it, sometimes in a big way. If schools were to stop treating the ADD mind as a blight and make room for diverse learning styles, they could help so many more of these kids find their place in the world and make a contribution.

Given the chance, these kids can set a useful counterexample for the more conventional students and bring a unique set of cognitive abilities to the table. Schools should focus less on making the ADD kid a little more like everyone else, and focus more on making everybody else a little more like the ADD kid. La La Land has its advantages.

Google learns that having a strong sense of mission is more important than SAT scores

Awesome news for The Big Shift: The New York Times reports that major companies, such as Google, have determined that the traditional metrics, such as SAT tests, are not reliable indicators of  job performance:

"Google, not surprisingly, is committed to applying data-driven decision-making to human resource management. For years, candidates were screened according to SAT scores and college grade-point averages, metrics favored by its founders. But numbers and grades alone did not prove to spell success at Google and are no longer used as important hiring criteria, says Prasad Setty, vice president for people analytics.

Since 2007, the company has conducted extensive surveys of its work force. Google has found that the most innovative workers — also the “happiest,” by its definition — are those who have a strong sense of mission about their work and who also feel that they have much personal autonomy. “Our people decisions are no less important than our product decisions,” Mr. Setty says. “And we’re trying to apply the same rigor to the people side as to the engineering side.”

Here's to hoping that high schools and colleges will eventually figure out the same!

 

Five Big Shift Thinkers Who Explain How the World is Changing

The Big Shift is a worldview that holds that the economy is changing rapidly, and that society must adjust in order to take full advantage of its potential rewards. It stresses that we must recognize and cultivate the diverse array of human talent, and allow each person to contribute in a way consistent with her passion and purpose.

Here are a five of my favorite Big Shift thinkers:

Seth Godin

A digital-age marketing guru, Godin sheds light on the myriad opportunities of the connection economy. He inspires us to channel our authentic, artistic voice to potential markets. When I grumbled to him in an email about the trials and tribulations of organizational change, he responded “keep raising a ruckus,” believing that putting ourselves and our art on the line will make us better artists and give us the best chance of business success. He sees differences among people as the bedrock of our modern economy and society.

Favorite Quote: “We’ve built a world where it’s possible to fly higher than ever, and the tragedy is that we’ve been seduced into believing that we ought to fly ever lower instead.”

--The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

Sir Ken Robinson

Robinson did more in 18 minutes in his now famous TED talk to usher in Big Shift thinking than the rest of us can hope to do in a lifetime. Viewing it changed me forever. Robinson believes that people are born creative, but that schools suppress creativity. In his book The Element, Robinson argues that each of us have a sense of purpose. “The Element is the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.” It’s society’s job to help people find their element.

Favorite Quote: “I’m convinced that taking the definition of intelligence for granted is one of the main reasons why so many people underestimate their true intellectual abilities and fail to find their Element.”

--The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

 

Dan Pink

Pink describes the critical role that right brain thinkers can play in the emerging economy. Pink also delves into human motivation, arguing that most motivation is intrinsic.

Favorite Quote: “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind— creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people— artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers— will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

--A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead is a professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and writes for The American Interest magazine. Mead argues that the institutions, ideas and expectations that defined American life since World War II no longer work. He worries that American intellectuals, themselves  prisoners of the status quo, have failed to grasp the emerging reality and shine a light on the road ahead.

Favorite Quote: “Too many of the very people who should be leading the country into a process of renewal that would allow us to harness the full power of the technological revolution and make the average person incomparably better off and more in control of his or her own destiny than ever before are devoting their considerable talent and energy to fighting the future.”

Yong Zhoa

Zhoa is a professor of education at the University of Oregon. He has written prolifically about transforming the education system to stress innovation, independent thought and entrepreneurship. He asserts that America should stop trying to catch up in standardized test scores with countries such as China, which produce high scores but low innovation, and lead the way with a 21^st education system.

Favorite quote: “Schools in general reduce instead of enhance creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit because they have been designed to prepare good employees.”

--World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students

Some Disabilities Are Actually Quite Good For Society

This piece appears in GOOD

When my younger son was diagnosed with ADHD, the school psychologist ticked off a list of symptoms (hyperactivity, impulsivity, distractibility, etc.) and recommended medication. "Why," I asked, "Do you consider his learning issues a disability?" With an air of medical certainty, he responded that "these qualities are inappropriate for his age and will make it hard for him to function in a school setting."

But what if the disability in question actually has value to society? What if our economic well-being demands more people with that disability? It's time that we rethink our concept of disability.

In researching disability, I came across numerous technical and legal definitions, all devoid of social context. These definitions speak of being "impaired," but impaired compared to what and at what cost? What we really mean by disability is being significantly less proficient than most at a task society deems important. A person who is under par at, say, bending his left pinky wouldn't have a disability because pinky bending is not viewed as important. A person who is hard of hearing would have a disability because she is well below average at a task we consider important. If most people were hard of hearing, then it wouldn't be a disability. It would be normal hearing. A disability is not something most people have, or it would be considered normal.

The definition of disability matters because once we label a person disabled, we place an onus on society to accommodate that person and on the individual to accept every available remedy for the condition. So if a child has attention control problems, we consider that child as having a disability because she has difficulty at a task society thinks is important—sitting still and paying attention to the teacher. We expect the school to offer accommodations—extra time to take a test—and expect the child to accept the remedy, taking medication or learning new coping skills.

Some disabilities, it turns out, come packaged with high value strengths. That child with attention control issues may be inherently more creative than most of his classmates. According to one recent study, the prefrontal brain systems that govern cognitive control may suppress creative thinking. Highly controlled people are often less creative, and highly creative people are often less controlled. As education scholar Yong Zhou put it, "certain human qualities may be antithetical to each other."

Other disabilities are also linked to unusual cognitive powers. Dr. Laurent Mottron argues in the journal Nature that we must stop considering the different brain structure of autistic people to be an impairment. "Recent data and my own personal experience suggest it's time to start thinking of autism as an advantage in some spheres, not a cross to bear," Mottron said.

By focusing on fixing the disability rather than building up the accompanying strength—by trying to make the individual more "normal"—we may be holding him back. We force him to devote most of his time and energy at improving at what he's not good at rather than getting better at what he naturally excels in. Such an emphasis will likely damage his self-esteem because he will always be worse than average at certain tasks. And with all the time spent on improving on his weak points, he will have little left to fully develop his strengths.

We are much less disaffirming of the weaknesses of the majority. We don't, for example, consider an uncreative child as having a disability because most people are not particularly creative. According to one study, 98 percent of 3-5 year olds scored at the genius level on a creativity test, 32 percent scored at that level 5 years later and only 2 percent of adults. We consider being creative as possessing a special ability, but don't consider lacking creativity as possessing a disability. The uncreative child never visits a tutor.

During the industrial era, the economy required far less variety of abilities than it does today. There were few opportunities to specialize. Whole cities were built around a single industry and a narrow skill set. But increasingly the minority quality—the less controlled but more innovative mind—is an indispensable ingredient of productivity. In today's economy, a young person who would have made a lousy pipefitter or plant manager might make a brilliant app designer.

To be sure, the concept of disability has its place. Some disabilities don't come paired with obvious strengths, make a person genuinely miserable, or render her incapable of functioning independently. A schizophrenic, beset with hallucinations, disorganized thought, and bizarre delusions, may only be capable of functioning in society, if at all, under strict psychiatric care. Society is right to demand that she take her meds. Likewise, some children with ADHD are so hyperactive that they can't function in social situations. The condition drowns out their strengths. In such extreme cases, we should not hesitate to call ADHD a disability and treat it accordingly.   

If we had a magic wand, we would undoubtedly do away with schizophrenia. But would we extinguish ADHD, and its attendant positive traits? Our economic and social condition demands people with unconventional combinations of strengths and weaknesses, and ridding ourselves of them would cut off a source of innovation and renewal. With a 25 percent rise in the use of ADHD drugs in the past decade, that's precisely what we are trying to do.

It's time to shift our thinking about what constitutes a disability and what doesn't. Rather than change the definition of disability, we should revisit our idea of what’s important. Is it really critical that a child sit still and follow directions all day? Can we allow children and adults to be bad at things most are good at and be good at things most are bad at? We should. Our new economy needs more of them.

The Soft Bigotry of Monolithic Expectations

Today is the official dedication of the George W Bush Presidential Library and Museum. I was watching television coverage of it this morning and was reminded of one of his most notable phrases: “The soft bigotry of low expectations.”  The phrase became the animating value of “No Child Left behind” and the educational testing and accountability movement.

I’m going to say flat out that I agree with the statement “The soft bigotry of low expectations,” but am inalterably opposed to the way it was translated into education policy. Let me explain.

In the wacky world of high stakes standardized tests, policy-makers only mean one thing when they say “expectations.” They mean a single standard for everyone. Everyone should be good at X. Everyone should be good at Y. These expectations are derived from the current homogenized model of the mind exalted by our educational system and industrial era thinking. These expectations do not include crucial strengths exhibited by a minority of the population, such as creativity or teamwork.  

By holding every child accountable to a monolithic standard of excellence, we devalue the strengths of very talented people and give too much credence to one set of attributes. That, too, constitutes a form of “soft bigotry.”

Instead, we should help every child live up to his own potential, to become great at what he was meant to be and do. And we should hold every child  to very high expectations.  

Is Fear of Kidnapping Good for Our Kids?

This morning, my wife Judith sent me a link to the Channel 9 news report of an attempted abduction in Washingtonian Woods, the neighborhood next to ours. “Please watch it,” she said. “We need to keep an eye on our kids and play dates. I know these are rare occurrences but don't want to take any chances.”

 

Such sentiment is natural in the face of a brazen but rare act of violence. I certainly felt a twinge of danger knowing that it took place so close to home. It’s like becoming nervous about flying after hearing about a plane crash, even if we know at a rational level that it’s more dangerous to drive to the grocery store. 

Should the Washingtonian Woods incident and others like it change the way we parent? Should we become more watchful and protective?

One of the people interviewed in the Channel 9 report stated that such incidents are “indicative of where we are as a society today.” With the all the bad news we see on TV, many feel conditions have become more dangerous for our children, and that parents need to become more vigilant and restrictive.

But the truth is that kidnapping has been going down in this country for decades. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, only 115 children a year fall victim to what we commonly think of kidnapping involving a stranger, down from around 300 per year in the 1980s. What has gone up are 24 hour news stories and social media accounts, which have made us much more aware of these infrequent incidents than we used to be. My wife passed around the news report of the attempted abduction on Facebook; I’m sure hundreds of other parents did the same. While conditions today are less dangerous than they were when I was a kid, they feel more dangerous.

When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, most kids were allowed to roam the neighborhood by foot, skateboard and bike. We were given much more freedom than the average suburban kid has today. While our generation may have improved on the parenting enterprise in a number of respects, imposing excessive safety limitations is not one of them. In his book Counterfeit Kids: Why they Can’t think and How to Save Them, Rob Baird contrasts his own freedoms as a child to the caution regime kids live under today.  Although his mother was probably not conscious of it, he said, “her ancient role was to teach us by allowing us to learn for ourselves, the hard way, if necessary…it might be time to ask what our exaggerated caution is costing our kids.”

You may recall the case of Lenore Skenazy, who allowed her nine year old son to ride the New York subway by himself.  She was teaching him independence, but was fiercely chastised by the overprotective parenting crowd. In response, Lenore started a group called Free Range Kids.  “We believe in safe kids,” she writes on the site. “We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school-age children go outside, they need a security detail.”

Lenore said “The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself. A child who thinks he can't do anything on his own eventually can't.”

Yes, seeing reports of attempted abductions makes us nervous; no, we don't need to be more cautious about allowing our children to play outside.

What is the Big Shift?

The Big Shift is my new blog. Thanks so much for joining me on this journey to think through, over time, the big shift taking place in our economy and society and how we can adapt to it.

The blog will focus on change in three primary societal institutions: parenting, education, and work. While a number of people speak of the change needed in parenting,  education, or work, few seem to be addressing the necessary shift across all three domains. By looking at all three, I hope we can gain a larger understanding of the underlying factors driving the change and how these key institutions can adjust. 

The Big Shift begins with an observation: We are moving from an industrial economy to an entirely new economic reality. We still don't know precisely what this emerging socio-economic order will look like, but we do know, based on what we already can observe, that there will be fewer traditional jobs and more opportunity to connect to markets all over the world.

What steps can we take now to best take advantage of the emerging economy and enhance our individual and collective prosperity and happiness?

One thing we have learned in the past decade is that the new economy is hungry for more innovation and variety. Being different is now an advantage, not a disadvantage. Never before in human history has an ascending socio-economic order held such promise for massive numbers of individuals to give expression to their deepest aspirations, dreams, and passions. Of course, all transitions are difficult, and this one will be no less excruciating than the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy a century ago. Some people will do better than others, and there may be more pain than pleasure in the early stages. But it also holds great potential to elevate the human condition. Whether we welcome or dread the new era, we could not escape its forces if we tried.

In order to make this adjustment, we need to change how we raise our children, educate them and run our workplaces. We need to create the conditions in society and in our institutions that best allow for different people with different skills and different dreams to make their mark. Make their mark on us. Make their mark at work. Make their mark at school. Make their mark on the world. 

We need a new value system that stresses and treasures individuality over conformity, creativity over compliance, pursuing happiness over following the dreams of others.

This blog will explore ways we can make it happen. I hope you will join me in The Big Shift.