Pick a Target

My youngest son Colton turned one year old a few weeks ago.  As with most one year olds, he's learning to walk.  It's an amazing process to behold as a parent.  It's also a truly magnificent example of how learning and achievement works.

As probably most parents do, the "training" we've been doing to teach Colton to walk involves my wife and I sitting on the floor about 6-8 feet apart and having him walk back and forth between  us.  He has no problem walking that distance when we are on the floor with him.  When he starts his trek back and forth, I noticed that he sets his eyes on whoever he's walking to and he takes off without abandon to make it to his target.    We then reward him with hugs and kisses.  And we repeat the process.

What I noticed a few days ago, is that while he seems to have no problem making it 6-8 feet back and forth between mommy and daddy, he doesn't seem to walk more than a couple steps any other time of the day.  He's hesitant when he tries to walk on his own and he usually ends up dropping to his knees and crawling to his next destination.  As I watched this, it occurred to me that the difference between the two situations was that when he's walking between the two of us, he's setting a target and walking to his target.  The rest of the time, he may be just trying to walk without too much thought about where he's going.  And his results are quite different.

It struck me that this was a stark and powerful example of the importance of having purpose and goals in our lives.  It remains true for me to this day that when I have a target, my progress towards that target is intentional and steady.  When I lack a target, I flounder.  Having a purpose or goal or target or objective can make all the difference.

Illusion of Reality

I'm a fan of reality TV.  Think of me what you will, but I find many reality shows entertaining and fascinating for a variety of reasons.  So, I tend to sample a lot of different shows to see what they are about.  Recently I stumbled upon "The Bachelor Pad" on ABC.  The show is the sort of sordid stuff that makes reality TV interesting to peek in on.

This particular show is a spin off of the popular show "The Bachelor" and, as you would expect, an element of this show is matchmaking and romance.  In the particular episode I watched, one of the female contestants had won a dream date on which she could bring one of the male contestants of her choice.  After selecting her partner, they are whisked off to experience a zip line course and helicoptor ride over some  beautiful countryside.  This was followed by a private candlelit gourmet dinner at an exotic resort.  As this date is unfolding, each of the two people on the date are commenting on camera about how amazing it was to be with this other person and how it just feels great to be with them.  They both become convinced that they have an "real connection" to one another.  

I'm always struck on these shows by how easily people become influenced by their conditions.  A tenant of designing a great reality TV show is to isolate a group of people in a controlled situation or environment so that they will behave in dramatic or unpredictable ways.  They begin to accept their surroundings as "normal" versus recognizing them as part of a game, which leads them to make interesting decisions.  As in the example above, do these two people really have a connection or are they just overcome by the romantic situation they've been place in?  Might they just be caught up in a manufactured for TV moment?  It's for this reason, that I think that most romances that start on these shows break up so quickly after the show ends. Turns out real-life romance requires work and isn't only about yachts and helicopter rides.  Regardless of how fast these relationships break up, these couples are always convinced that their relationship is real and that it will sustain when they return to real life.

Thinking about this made me wonder how much of an effect our workplaces have on the judgement and decisions of the employees who work in them.  Several questions came to mind for me:

• As in reality shows, to what extent are we creating conditions that cause people to make decisions in ways they wouldn't outside of work?
• Do our work environment lead to artificial relationships that won't sustain beyond the job? 
• How can we design our workplaces so that the actions and interactions are more authentic to who each person truly is and not who they become when stepping into the work environment?
• Do I watch too much reality TV?

Not sure I know the answer to these questions, but I think that they are interesting to think about if we are interested in pursuing high performance, innovative workplaces.