Motivations

Note: this blog entry was a long time developing. I wrote it almost a year ago, publishing it at IBM, but it really belongs here on my personal blog. Some of my Facebook connections, particularly my high school connections, will find this interesting if nothing else.

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While doing some landscaping I had an interesting and powerful thought. What is motivation? More particularly, where does motivation come from? How does it work? My thought process started with my posting a picture from my high school yearbook on Facebook. Friends from high school commented on it and we had some fun over it.

From that, hours later, I wondered how people who knew me in high school but not now would think of my current state of affairs. I was very immature in high school, a big-time screw-off, and so poorly understood by others I couldn't get a date for our senior prom even after asking more than a dozen classmates, two of my neighbors, and friends of my family's. Partially because of not getting a date for the prom I hated high school and until recently considered it the four worst years of my life.

Before anyone takes offense, I do not now, nor have I ever, blamed anyone other than myself for that. I was immature, perhaps even emotionally messed up, but I wasn't stupid. It took many years of very hard work to overcome some of my limitations and partially overcome others. I made some very good friends in high school, and now look at my past behavior not as a cause of events but merely to assist my understanding of those bad memories.

There were many times earlier in my life where I felt a need to "show them" I wasn't a complete failure. There are two things wrong with that statement. First, I'm not a failure. I may not have succeeded in things some people thought were important; that's their opinion, it should not be mine. Second, I've come to realize "I'll show them!" is not a very good motive. Oh sure, it can be effective, but its costs are very high and the results aren't necessarily worth the cost.

After thinking about that for a while, the idea of successful motivation came to me. I dislike pigeon-holing ideas, and yet I see two forms of motivation: external (do something because someone else thinks it's good) and internal (do something because you think it's good). I invite you to consider that and welcome you to reach your own conclusions. Mine, I think, are instructive.

External motivations usually imply someone other than you is telling you how to manage your life. The cause and/or source of external motivations can change without notice. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is no way of understanding the "why" of external motivations even if they are fully explained to you. Think about all of that for a moment, and then continue reading.

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Done? OK. Think about my prom story. At first I did not want to go. I was happy with that decision. My mother (with all good intentions) tried to talk me into it ("It's the last time you'll hang out with your high school friends. You'll build some good memories."). My friends also (again with good intentions) tried to get me to go ("Come one, we've got three couples. Ask someone and we can take a whole table.") Over time this wore me down and I started asking for dates.

Did I really want to go and convinced myself I didn't want to because of insecurity? Almost certainly; I still have weird feelings about it, although after 30 years of blocking them out memories of emotions are fuzzy. The person I really wanted to take was someone whose parents had come to believe I was "trouble." I asked her anyway and, predictably, her mother grabbed the phone and told me never to call again; I never got an answer to my question. So I asked others. Perhaps I asked the wrong people, not the right ones, or a bit of both. Perhaps it was too late, although only a few told me they were already going. Perhaps if I paid more attention to people around me I may have noticed those who liked me despite my immaturity. Whatever the reasons, I went from being reasonably happy to miserable in the space of a week, and stayed miserable until well after graduation. Why? Because my motivation came from outside myself. I tried to do something I didn't want to do to please others.

Fast forward 28 years. I'm laying in a hospital bed, after my first angioplasty to clear a 100% blockage in my heart. The doctor tells me I need another four stents to open up two more 90% blockages the next day. I ask the obvious question: why me? I kept a (reasonably) healthy diet, stayed active, watched all of my risk factors, and still had a heart attack before age 50, becoming the youngest ever in my family history to have a heart attack.

What would you ask after a heart attack at age 46? I asked, "OK, doc, what do I need to do not to have another heart attack?" He told me, and I've followed that prescription since, happily, with no doubts (although I do skip a workout or eat a Sausage McMuffin with Egg® on occasion). Why? What's different about this motivation than the other one? This time, my motivation comes from inside. While fear is some of it, I believe I have value to add to my family and society at large, and living longer gives me more time to do that.

This motivation works because I want this for me and my own goals, not for anyone else's goals. While those goals include being there for my family and friends, among other things, they are not my family's goals or my friends' goals. I chose them; they are what I consider important.

Despite what some may think I am not advocating being selfish; I'm only advocating making your own decisions within your own personal space and belief system.

To summarize, then, my insight was this: the most effective motivator for you, by far, is you. I encourage you to sit down and really think about what you want. Take those goals and make motivators out of them. Succeeding at external motivators is a hollow victory; you "won" for someone else. Win for yourself and others will share your joy.

The Specializing Non-Specialist

Last year my wife Betty came home from a shopping trip complaining of stomach and back pain, nausea, and vomiting. She had no fever, just a general feeling of malaise, and asked me to check out the source of the pain. While doing so I noticed the pain was pretty much everywhere, but worse in her lower right abdomen. I said, “It's probably appendicitis, let's get you in to get checked out.”

Sidebar: appendicitis symptoms usually include somewhat localized pain (she had pain everywhere, just a little worse over the appendix) and fever, but vomiting and back pain are unusual.

When we got to the ER the resident covering for the afternoon came in, read her charts from the nurse's interview, checked her blood work, and examined her. He then asked if she had back pain. When she said she had but not any more, the doctor said, “Hmm, that's unusual, I'd expect some back pain with kidney stones.” He examined her further, more-or-less ignoring her abdomen and hitting her in her lower back (trying to determine if her kidneys hurt). I asked, “I don't know, the pain is over her lower right abdomen, not in the back; why do you think it's kidney stones?” He said, “Your wife doesn't have any signs of appendicitis; nothing at McBurney's point, no fever, white count is normal, and there's no rebound pain. I'm sure it's kidney stones; we'll send you up for a CT scan of your lower half.”

McBurney's point is the specific area where appendicitis pain centers; it's about half-way along an imaginary line between the right hip and the navel.

Rebound pain is the term used when a pain gets worse as pressure to the pain area is released. In other words, the doctor will press on the area and then release; if the pain gets worse upon release, that's rebound pain.

When the results came back the resident came in and said, apologetically, “Well, it was appendicitis. We've scheduled your surgery and you'll be going up in about an hour.”

Why am I telling you this? I'm not making a point about the hospital, doctor, or my wife; I'm making a point about specialists. The ER doctor was a urologist. He thought “kidney stones” because he's trained to see problems with the urinary tract. Specialists often do that; while they catch a lot of things most people would miss, they have an observational bias. People who have a highly specialized knowledge very often cannot break out of that role to see the general picture. They're highly intelligent, but their very specialization causes them to miss the obvious.

I bring this up to make a point. Most departments in most companies place a high value on specialization. They offer certification in various disciplines and pay specialists very well... and who can blame them? Specialists often solve problems the average person in that field cannot. Any DB2 DBA can design a half-decent database; it takes a specialist to make that database behave in the most efficient manner possible. Specialists are valuable in other ways; consider who writes white papers. Everyone working with IMS knows who Rich Lewis and Bill Keene are, and anyone working with DB2 knows the names E. F. Codd and Craig Mullins.

Now I know you're all thinking, “Yeah, yeah, we know this. What's your point?” Remember the doctor in the ER? His expertise caused him to miss a diagnosis I, a non-medical professional, made easily. Nobody in the ER believed me because I wasn't in the medical profession. And no, I didn't get lucky... I know anatomy because I've studied it. I know human morphology; my paleontology background prepares me for that. I also know every person's body is unique; not everyone shows the same symptoms, the same patterns of disease.

My point is simple: the generalist, AKA the “specializing non-specialist,” gets no respect... and yet you need them. They see things specialists miss because the generalist has no biases specific to a given situation. Not everyone's cut out to be a generalist; it takes a very open mind and a wide range of knowledge across many fields of study.

A primary tool of the generalist is systems thinking, also called the Fifth Discipline (as described in the book of the same name by Peter Senge). In effect the systems thinker sees a given thing or event as influencing other things and/or events within an overall system. In short the systems thinker sees each event as an interaction between parts of a whole, and problems as breakdowns within the system.

I'll offer another analogy, this one from baseball. Even people who aren't baseball fans know who David Ortiz or Albert Pujols are; on the other hand, many baseball fans can't tell you what teams Alex Cora or Bill Hall play for. Naturally stars have a big influence on whether a baseball team wins a lot of games or not, yet the “little players,” the utility men, have an important role. Stars cannot play every day without increasing their injury risk or reducing their efficiency (you can't play your best when you're tired). That's where the utility players come in. They can play effectively while the star takes a break, and if one of the regulars goes down with an injury these utility players can replace them for weeks at a time without costing the team. Beyond that, because they can play anywhere the manager can rotate days off for their stars, so at most one star is sitting at any given time. Maybe a team cannot win a pennant with a team of Alex Coras, but a team needs at least one Cora to be a champion. Consider how many World Series MVPs are not regular players; of the non-pitcher World Series MVPs since the award started in 1955, 8 of 30 (about 27%) of them were not regular players for their teams and, if I named them, most of you would not recognize most of the names. Expand that to include non-World Series playoff games and the percentage of "unknowns" winning MVPS is higher.

And for those who think I'm only looking at fringe backup players, consider Craig Biggio (a certain Hall of Fame-level player) played catcher, second base, and outfield during his career, and made the All-Star team at catcher and 2b. Now there is an All-Star "supersub" for you.

Baseball recognizes the jack-of-all-trades; why not the corporate world? I understand why big-name specialists get recognized regularly, and I don't begrudge them at all; they deserve it. On the other hand, we the “specializing non-specialists” are just as important to the overall well-being of the company, yet we get nothing. To the contrary, we're often chided for not paying attention to our assigned job roles, and companies will not hire us because we don't specialize enough.

I welcome any and all comments about these observations. I have made an effort to network with people about this issue, learned a lot from a few people, and hope to learn more from my readers.