Do my eyes deceive me? Can my eyes deceive me? Of course not, it’s right there in the picture!

The observation that we often put too much faith in pictures is fascinating. We assume seeing more and more clearly is always better.

We trust our eyes. We trust our eyes more than our other senses. We trust our eyes to the extent that we are willing to suspend our brain’s ability to discriminate and discern.

In this week’s chapter, “The Picture Problem,” Gladwell raises this interesting conundrum with his looks at mammography and satellite imagery.

This issue has to do with context. Interpreting a picture out of context, no matter how clear the image, is a risky and uncertain effort. Is the human shadow falling across your picture there because the sun in behind the photographer’s back or because a predator is sneaking up on you? The picture of the shadow can’t answer the question.

What’s interesting about this chapter is that our tendency is actually the opposite. If we have a clear picture, our confidence in our interpretation increases when it might need to decrease. Instead of asking more questions we ask less, shutting down vital inquiry when the conclusion seems so obvious because we saw a single thing clearly.

Pictures have value. Great value. But beware if they result in a willingness to think less instead of more, to jump to conclusions earlier than later, or to make the complex seem simple.

Where do you find yourself prematurely jumping to conclusions merely because you saw something? What was your main take-away from this chapter?

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

What if the choice were between solving a costly problem and staying true to one’s principles?

In other words, what if staying true to one’s principles actually perpetuated a situation where complex and intractable social problems were merely soothed without being solved.

Such is the fascinating observation Malcolm Gladwell makes in this week’s chapter about Murray.

Yes, it is interesting that most of the costs related to homelessness are concentrated in a relatively small number of chronic cases.

But absolutely spell-binding is the insight that those on both the political right and left cannot hear this fact because it violates their principles at too core a level.

If the bulk of the costs of homelessness could be eliminated by focusing the aid resources on the few complex and intractable cases, those on the right would object because those people don’t deserve so much help, and those on the left would object because the distribution of aid would not be fair.

As a result, almost no group of policy-makers or activists will ever choose the route that might actually solve homelessness. Being true to their respective principles will result in aid efforts that actually perpetuate homelessness.

Ironic, wouldn’t you say? Maybe even tragic. In any case, extremely expensive.

What was your main take-away from this chapter? Where do you stand on the solution-first versus principles-first spectrum?

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

Craziness. Think about it. Enron was not keeping secrets. The executives explained their actions to the early inquirers. It was all out in the open.

But it was complex. Complicated in detail and extent. Possibly too complicated for any one person, team or company to wrap their minds around completely. Certainly too complicated for the average investment manager to comprehend… even though all the information was available all of the time.

I think I learned more from this chapter than any other so far. Most powerful to me is Gladwell’s distinction between puzzle and mystery.

The significance lies in the different approaches to solving, understanding, and perceiving that take place depending on whether an issue is dealt with as a puzzle or a mystery.

Perception is reality. And therein lies the rub. If you’ve already decided that something bad has happened and the perpetrator must be identified and held to account, then you look for a perpetrator. Your eyes are closed to other avenues of inquiry.

On the other hand if you see that something bad has happened and intend to explore what the contributing factors were, how they came together and resulted in the current bad situation, then you look for multiple causes, issues and dynamics. Your eyes are open to all avenues of inquiry.

How many of the analyses, verdicts, and positions of attacking leaders, biased pundits and suspicious spouses arise from mistaking complicated mysteries for solvable puzzles?

How might you catch yourself treating a mystery as a puzzle? What was you main take-away from this chapter?

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

What do marriage counseling and dog training have in common? Everyone has a psychology.

No. It’s not that human and canine psychology have anything in common. No. It’s not that there are ways to train a spouse just as there are ways to train a dog.

It’s that if you want to be understood by either a dog or a person, you have to understand what makes the other party tick.

In this week’s chapter of What the Dog Saw, Gladwell explores the world of The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. While the stories of Millan’s various encounters with dogs and their owners were entertaining, it was the story of Millan and his wife’s marriage counseling where the insights began emerging for me.

How easy it is to function solely out of our own frame of reference. We strive to communicate our desires, requests and demands of those with whom we live and work as clearly, plainly and directly as we can.

What about the frame of reference out of which we’re being heard, though? What about the needs, desires and stories of those listening? An assignment that on an ordinary day at work might be received with a respectful nod of assent, on a stressful day—where the employee in question is already juggling more projects than they can handle and just got off the phone with a belligerent and unreasonable client—might be met with the furious and self-protective rebuff/attack of a wounded animal backed into a corner.

If we want to make things happen that involve other people, we do not have absolute control over the process. To the extent that we understand from where the others involved are coming and what their needs and desires are, we can adjust our communication strategy accordingly and exert far more influence over the outcome than otherwise expected.

How do you learn and gauge how you are being understood by others? What was your main take-away from this chapter?

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

Science, while purportedly the objective study of what is natural, is by its very structure anything but.

Yosemite Falls plummets 2,420 feet in a series of seven parts. What you observe about Yosemite Falls depends entirely on whether you are standing at the bottom, the top, near the middle cascades or on the other side of the valley.

That these various observations are different from each other, (for example, from the bottom you would not know that any middle cascades existed), would not make any one of them inaccurate. But if you based your climbing plans on that one perspective—however accurate it might be—you would draw incorrect conclusions about how best to reach the top.

That science takes its observations from particular and possibly limited perspectives, means that its findings don’t form the necessarily adequate basis for the conclusions we draw and/or the subsequent courses of action we choose.

Hence the fascinating story that looking back with 20/20 hindsight at the conclusions about whether the birth control pill was a natural or unnatural contribution makes.

Viewed from the “bottom of the falls,” as a means to prevent ovulation (the natural process being observed from this perspective), the birth control pill has been opposed by the Catholic church, in Gladstone’s example, as unnatural.

But if upon its introduction the pill was viewed from the “top of the falls,” so to speak, as a means to help women’s bodies menstruate on a more “natural” cycle, i.e. less frequently, there may have been no opposition. Instead of opposing something unnatural, quite possible the Church might have been quite willing to support something that supported the health and well-being of women everywhere.

Same pill. All science. But limited information seen from different perspectives led to different conclusions. So much for the objectivity of science. All we can do is wonder what might have been if the information was presented the other way around.

What was your main take-away from this chapter? Where might you be basing decisions on a limited perspective?

Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

What seems obvious to some is not obvious to everyone. What is a common perception in one generation can seem anachronistic to the next or revolutionary to the prior.

In those moments in between, when something new is emerging, those with a stake in the status quo can find themselves inadvertently blinded by that stake.

They need the world to stay the same in order to continue functioning as they have, succeeding where they have, and/or exerting power to the extent they have.

In Chapter #4, Gladwell tells stories of two women who were able to articulate the emerging public perception before either most women or the predominately male leadership of their companies did. The respective ad campaigns were hugely successful for both the many women who may otherwise never have considered coloring their hair, and for their firms who made a fortune.

Just as interesting, though, is that these campaigns were very different from each other. They were different because the perceptions of one generation are not necessarily shared by the next. The language which communicated beauty and value in one time does not necessarily translate to all times.

Hence, the need for awareness of people’s perceptions. Awareness to our own perceptions. Blindness to the values, perspectives, mores, ethics, feelings, needs and anything else that contributes to how people perceive reality is the ultimate Achilles heal in these fast-paced times of ours.

How can you increase your awareness of both your own perceptions and the perceptions of others as they relate to what you are trying to accomplish?

What was your main take-away from Chapter 4?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

Chapter 3, entitled “Blowing Up,” was worth the price of the book. After lukewarmly enjoying the first two chapters, (and who really enjoys anything lukewarm?), I find myself in self-reflection heaven.

What if a common cultural assumption were wrong?

What if you’d been evaluating your own ideas, actions, successes and/or failures against this fallacious standard?

“We associate the willingness to risk great failure—and the ability to climb back from catastrophe—with courage.” (p. 75)

What if, in fact, though…

“There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable.” (p. 75)

Ouch. And then, after recovering from the unexpected punch below the belt, the relief of being released from a very restrictive prison system. (more…)

“Three of these shapes are the same and one is different.”

Sounds like a scene from Sesame Street, doesn’t it?

Most of us learn early on to distinguish between what is the same and what is different. What is common and what is distinct. What is universal and what is diverse.

While we have this capacity to distinguish same and different, our assumptions about where and when it would behoove us to make the observation can let us down.

Hence this week’s Gladwell chapter about the universal nature of ketchup catches us off guard.

When the mustard people and spaghetti sauce folk let go of their respective assumptions that they needed to create the universal best version for all people, they hit the jackpot. People preferred their distinct preference, whether it was brown mustard or chunky sauce.

Sometimes we want the same thing as each other. Sometimes we want something quite different.

The key is having our eyes open for either possibility—or even another, completely unexpected possibility altogether.

It was a paradigm buster to realize that people wanted diversity in their mustards and spaghetti sauces. This new frame of reference was itself broken to make room for the possibility that people didn’t actually need or want diversity in their ketchups at all.

Are you open to the possibility that the next alternative might not emerge from the current options? Think about it.

What was your main take-away from this chapter?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

We’re making a mistake. I’m making a mistake. A big fat ol’ gnarly mistake.

Our mistake is to think our professional story is about us. My mistake is to think that my professional story is about me.

My skills, my resume, my experience, my competence, my insights, my ideas, my appearance, my efforts. If only I were more aggressive. If only I were better connected. If only I were more organized. If only I were less like me and more like so-and-so (insert name of who you are measuring yourself against here), I’d be more successful.

Success, though, is not about me. Success is about you. “You” being the others in the equation, in your market, your circles, your family.

Or so we glean in Gladwell’s first chapter of What the Dog Saw. What the other person is trying to accomplish. Where they are trying to go. What they need. What they feel. What they want.

Success, so to speak, is in understanding the other person’s story and being able to articulate how you, your product or your services enhance and belong within that story.

The power of Ron Popeil’s story lies in his making his products understandable to people. The products were the star of his sales efforts not him. When people saw Popeil’s kitchen gadgets, they saw themselves.

At first read, I must admit I wasn’t inspired by this first story of Gladwell’s book. “This is sure a lot of verbiage dedicated to the eccentric hawking techniques of a niche salesperson.”

But the more I reflect, I am taken by Popeil’s freedom to get out of the way as he introduced people to his products. As with any successful matchmaking, the matchmaker cannot remain in the middle of the relationship if the relationship is to succeed.

What sort of matchmaker are you? Matching your services to customers needs. Matching your parenting to your children’s development needs. Is the subject what you do or what your customers are trying to do? Your authority being respected or your child’s well-being being enhanced?

What do you think? What was your main take-away from this chapter?

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. Join the discussion now, and contribute your thoughts, reactions and insights here! Catch up on the entire series here.

I just picked up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures. I grabbed it the minute I saw it. The very second, in fact. Those around me wisely waited while I examined every copy for flaws. Cradling my perfect baby, I made a beeline to the cashier.

It wasn’t until I got it home that I realized it’s not a new work at all. It’s a collection of his New Yorker articles. The best in his view.

After I recovered from this brief moment of disappointment (not a big fan of the recompiling for a second round at the till marketing strategy)(I’d probably be singing a different tune if I ever experienced a first round at the till), I realized that the only part of the New Yorker I’ve ever read are the cartoons. So I’m sitting here with all “new” material.

I love this guy’s work. The preface alone has me fully engaged. Understanding what’s going on in someone else’s head.

There are three main themes/sections:

1. Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius
2. Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses
3. Personality, Character, and Intelligence

Of course I can’t read something so fun by myself. This is the stuff of incredulity and hilarity, insights and further reflection.

So read with me. We’ll take it a chapter at a time. We’ll meet here and share impressions, reactions and our own takes.

I’ve got Amazon links scattered throughout this post. Grab your copy now. We’re going to begin right away.

Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.