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Legendary documentarian Ken Burns is set to release his long-awaited series after a decade in development. In the lead-up to the premiere of The American Revolution, Burns shares key lessons he gleaned from the founding of the United Statesand the parallels between the revolutionary era and today. He also reflects on his admiration for Lin-Manuel Mirandas Hamilton, and the obstacles he faces in his ongoing quest for truth. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You have a new, six-part series about the American Revolution premiering on November 16. Why were you drawn to this? And why now? I’ve been working on this for almost 10 years. . . . I said yes to this project in December of 2015. Barack Obama still had 13 months to go in his presidency. What drew me to the Civil War was organic and interior to my choices. I was looking at a map, a kind of 3D map, where I suddenly saw an arrow of British moving west through Long Island towards Brooklyn. This little, tiny town of Brooklyn, which is the largest battle in the entire revolution. While there are no photographs in newsreels, I felt being a lover of maps and a willingness, I think, to reexamine my usual disdain for reenactments, they’re not going to reenact that battle. They’re just being there to make you feel the weather, make you feel the heat, make you feel the cold, make you feel the location, the interiors of all of these actions, and at that point, I realized maybe we can do this. Of course, I went about three years into this project and said, “Wow. If we hit our marks, we’ll be in 2025, which is the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord.” Then, all of a sudden people would arrive and say, “Oh. You planned this so well.” Yes, yes. We didn’t. I’m glad that a very deep dive into the revolution is going to happen way in advance of the 4th of July of next year, which is, for many people, the 250th. Of course, it’s been going on for some time, and will go on if you want to follow it through to the end, until 2039, which is 250 years after our government officially got started and George Washington became the first President of the United States of America. There’s lots of things going on, but a lot of it will be focused next July, and there is that risk that it could become super-ficialized. The war itself is already encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia. It is not bloodless or gallant. You do not want to die when a cannon takes off your head, a bayonet guts you, or a musket ball rips through you. There’s just a remarkable set of characters and remarkable interiors to the war, the details of the battles, a really long, six and a half year war from Lexington to Yorktown. We need to know about our origin story, particularly in a time when people are sort of ringing their hands. We’re so divided. Well, you just look back there, and we’re really divided back then, and that maybe reinvesting with our origin story helps us find out what’s real and what’s artificial in all of the stuff that’s going on right now. The current cultural story about the American Revolution that maybe is most prominent or most well known is Hamilton, is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s retelling in that. Did that impact the way you told the story at all? Look, let me give my props to Lin Manuel. Hamilton is the greatest cultural event of this new millennium, this new century. It is a phenomenal thing. I mean, I’ve got a teenage daughter who’s 15, a 20-year daughter and an almost 15-year-old granddaughter, and they can recite, sing the whole thing, two-and-a-half hours. And so, they know tensions between big and small states. They understand between a strong federal Hamiltonian system and a state’s rights Jefferson model. They know who Hercules Mulligan is. They know all this sort of stuff about the revolution, and they have a kind of great glee about it that must mean that history teachers of this period are just lying down and thanking God for Lin-Manuel Miranda. I mean, truth and fact are increasingly contested today, and we mentioned Hamilton. I mean, Lin-Manuel, the big picture is certainly there, but there’s a lot of artistic license in what he pulled together. When you look at this as a storyteller, and for our listeners who are business leaders and other leaders, the responsibility to promote strict accuracy, or like as long as we get the big picture right, it’s okay the details don’t matter as much. The people that are listening to this have to do the former, right? Strict accuracy, and so do I. There’s not a filmmaker in a world when a scene is working, you don’t want to touch it, but we’re always finding new and destabilizing information that are true and you need to incorporate them. Lin-Manuel can actually take the poetic license necessary to do a big, Broadway musical, and God bless him. I mean, there’s a guy that we know in our past who would take the histories and conflate characters, change countries, move these characters around. His name is William Shakespeare, and we don’t believe that there are any truths higher in fiction, which are sometimes more true than what’s real, but I can’t do that. I will sacrifice the art for the correct story. That makes it super complicated, but what’s interesting is when you do that, when you try to fit the round peg of the truth into the square hole of art, if you will, and you successfully negotiate it, it’s as good as anything. You’re right, we’re in an age where we’re supposed to be post-truth. No, we’re not. Are you post-truth? I’m not. I’m not. Right. Nor are the business leaders of the country. You’re going to fudge your figures? I don’t think so. We do know that large sections of where we supposedly get information are, themselves, unaccountable. They do not care, one way or the other. Whatever political persuasion, whatever it is, people are manipulating the truth all the time. Always has been. The problem is just the sheer size of the internet and its ability for a lie to get started before the truth can come back, but one and one is always going to be two. You can’t build an airplane, you can’t run a business, you can’t work the budget of a documentary film without one and one equaling two. You can’t just make it up, right? You cannot make it up. George Washington rides out on the battlefield at least three times, that I know of, risking his life at Kipp’s Bay in Manhattan, at Princeton, and at the Battle of Monmouth, and these are significant things. If he’s killed, it’s all over, because he is the only person that held us together as a historian, Annette Gordon Reed says, that there’s one person who was able to figure it out. I’m interested in him. He’s deeply flawed. He’s rash. Those movements potentialy sacrifice the whole thing, and he makes terrible battlefield mistakes. He leaves his left flank exposed in the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolution, and loses it and New York for seven years. It’s the British headquarters and the loyalist stronghold for the rest of the war. He does the same mistake at Brandywine in Pennsylvania, another huge, huge battle, where this time he leaves his right flank, but there’s nobody who knew how to inspire men in the dark of night, in the dead of cold, who could pick subordinate talent, that he wasn’t afraid of their skills or talent, who could defer to Congress and understand how they work, who could speak to a Georgian and a New Hampshireite and say, “You’re not that. You’re an American, this new thing.” Nobody. Nobody could do that. Does he have undertow? Yes. Does that make him any less heroic? No. Heroism is not perfection. Heroism is a negotiation within yourself between your strengths and your weaknesses. Has truth always been sort of fungible and selective in U.S. history, a kind of a matter of debate and perspective, or is this time we’re in now different? Human beings have always lied. People have been lying as long as there have been human beings.
Category:
E-Commerce
Every fall, I anticipate the winter holidays with almost childlike joy. I look forward to familiar traditions with friends and family, eggnog in my coffee, and the sense that everyone is feeling a little lighter and more connected. At the same time, I feel anxious and annoyed by the manufactured sense of urgency around gift giving: the endless searching and second-guessing shaped by advertisers, retailers, and cultural expectations. Dont get me wrong, I mostly love givingand, yes, receivinggifts during the holidays. But as a researcher who studies consumer psychology, I see how those same forces, amplified by constant buying opportunities and frictionless online payments, make us especially vulnerable and often unwise this time of year. Buying behavior, including gift giving, doesnt just reflect needs and wants but also our values. Frequently, the values we talk about are more akin to aspirational ideals. Our actual values are revealed in the seemingly inconsequential choices we make day after dayincluding shopping. The cumulative effects of our spending behaviors carry enormous implications for society, the environment, and everyones well-beingfrom the purchaser and recipient to people working throughout the supply chain. This makes consumer behavior an especially important place to apply the emerging social science research on wisdom. While wisdom is defined in different ways, it can be understood as seeing decisions through a broader, values-informed perspective and acting in ways that promote well-being. Over the past decade, consumer psychology researcher David Mick and I have studied what that means when it comes to consumption. Consumer wisdom? you may wonder. Isnt that an oxymoron? But there are vast differences in how we consumeand as our research shows, this can lead to very different effects on individual well-being. Defining consumer wisdom Building on some of Davids earlier work, I began my own research on consumer wisdom in the summer of 2015, interviewing dozens of people across the U.S. whom others in their communities had identified as models of wisdom. Previous research guided me to settings where I could easily find people who represented different aspects of wisdom: practicality on farms in upstate New York; environmental stewardship in Portland, Oregon; and community values in Tidewater, Virginia. I didnt use the term wisdom, though. It can be intimidating, and people often define it narrowly. Instead, I spoke with people whose peers described them as exemplary decision-makerspeople leading lives that considered both the present and the future, and who balanced their needs with others needs. From those conversations, David and I developed a theory of consumer wisdom. With the help of a third coauthor, Kelly Haws, we validated this framework through national surveys with thousands of participants, creating the consumer wisdom scale. The scale shows how consumer wisdom is not some lofty ideal but a set of practical habits. Some are about managing money. Some are about goals and personal philosophy, and others are about broader impact. We have found that six dimensions capture the vast majority of what we would call consumer wisdom: Responsibility: managing resources to support a rewarding yet realistic lifestyle. Purpose: prioritizing spending that supports personal growth, health, and relationships. Perspective: drawing on past experiences and anticipating future consequences. Reasoning: seeking and applying reliable, relevant information; filtering out the noise of advertising and pop culture. Flexibility: being open to alternatives such as borrowing, renting, or buying used. Sustainability: spending in ways that support the buyers social or environmental goals and values. These are not abstract traits. They are everyday ways of aligning your spending with your goals, resources, and values. Importantly, people with higher scores on the scale report greater life satisfaction, as well as better health, financial security, and sense of meaning in life. These results hold even after accounting for known determinants of well-being, such as job satisfaction and supportive relationships. In other words, consumer wisdom makes a distinctive and underappreciated contribution to well-being. Putting it into practice These six dimensions offer a different lens on holiday normsone that can reframe how to think about gifts. Interestingly, the English word gift traces back to the Old Norse rune gyfu, which means generosity. Its a reminder that true giving is not about checking boxes on referral, revenue-generating gift guides or yielding to slick promotions or fads. Generosity is about focusing on another persons well-being and our relationship with them. From the perspective of consumer wisdom, that means asking what will genuinely contribute to the recipients life. One of the most important dimensions of consumer wisdom is purpose: the idea that thoughtful spending can nurture personal growth, health, enjoyment, and a sense of connection. Out with trendy gadgets, fast fashion, and clutter-creating décor or knickknacksthings that feel exciting in the moment but are quickly forgotten. In with quality headphones, a shared cooking class, a board game, and a workshop or tools to support a hobbygifts that can spark growth, joy and deeper connection. In my ongoing research, people have described wise gifts as those that define value from the recipients perspectivegifts that stay meaningful and useful over time. The wisest gifts, respondents say, also affirm the recipients identity, showing that the giver truly understands and values them. Wiser consumption is learnable, measurable, and consequential. By choosing gifts that reflect purpose and the original spirit of gyfutrue generositywe can make the holidays less stressful. More importantly, we can make them more meaningful: strengthening relationships in ways that bring joy long after. Michael Luchs is a JS Mack professor of business at William & Mary. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Underperformance usually shows up in the guise of missed deadlines, low-quality work, or a bad attitude. This gets spotted sometimes, but not always, by a leader who then has to make a choice: when and how to tackle the underperformance. However, the problem can be exacerbated by acting too quickly: there is often a fierce desire within leaders to jump to action. They want to stop the badness, stop the ripples, and solve the situation as quickly as possible. But often, this means that they make assumptions about what is causing the underperformance and how to solve it without taking a little time to explore the real reasons behind the poor performance. The problem can also be exacerbated by acting too slowly: underperformance has a nasty habit of rippling out. Whether it creates a sense among colleagues that this low standard is acceptable, or whether it means that team members get annoyed that this individual is getting away with it (and therefore reduce their own efforts to create a sense of parity), it all ends in the same place: more underperformance and a potential impact on the workplace culture. I developed SOLVE, a leadership problem-solving model, to deal with exactly these sorts of problems: ones that need solving but arent as easy as jumping straight to action. Causes need establishing, options need considering, context needs to be taken into account. In the case of underperformance, the five stages of the SOLVE model would work like this: S State the ProblemTry to express, in 12 sentences, what the problem appears to be and the impact its having. Try to be precise about the behaviour causing concern: “Theyre regularly late with deliverables and hesitant to give their opinion in meetings, which reduces their impact and makes our team look unprepared.” O Open the BoxHere, leaders dig into the problem more deeply, trying to work out why this situation is occurring. I encourage them to do a bit of research, and in this case, research should absolutely include talking to the team member in question to find out whats going on. In the case of underperformance, I would investigate the following areas: Has their workload increased recently, either because youve given them more tasks, or someone else has without your awareness? Are they being asked to do work at a higher level than before? You might not perceive this in the same way they do, so its worth asking them the question. Has anything changed in their personal life? In some country and company cultures, its not appropriate to ask this outright, but there is no harm in a catch-up asking them how things are going in general and seeing if they bring anything up. Are they still finding their work interesting? Has anything changed that may have put their values out of line with the companys or vice versa? Has the level of clarity over whats expected of them changed? If the companys strategy has changed, youre a new manager, or they are working across two projects, they may simply be confused as to what to prioritize and why. L Lay Out Your SolutionBased on what youve discovered, you can now create a workable response. It might be offering clearer priorities, adjusting scope, or helping them to see the value of their work again. Leaders should think hard about what fits the context and the individual. With these very messy leadership problems, there is no such thing as a universal solutionthink about how your organizations size, industry, and status affect which solutions would work. If its a team issue, what impact does your function, size, and sub-culture have? And with regard to the individual involved, how does their background, personality, and experience affect your approach? V Venture ForthHere, leaders start to put their actions into practice while looking out for problems along the way, ready to pivot. It may be that, as the underperformer starts to roll out actions to improve their performance, more factors reveal themselves as being important to take into account. For example, a leader I worked with recently thought that the solution to team disengagement was to increase rewards. However, the very mention of rewards led one team member to start to gripe about how this company thinks you can pay off anyone. It emerged that, even though the team member hadnt previously said it, their disengagement was as a result of feeling bored with the work, rather than feeling unrewarded. The leader focused instead on providing work that team member perceived as more interesting, and their engagement rapidly improved. E Elevate Your LearningThis is about using the new skills and knowledge youve gleaned to generate further positive impacts. For example, if youve learned more about how to help team members manage their workload, can you share this with other leaders who have overstretched teams? I believe, and have seen through my work, that the SOLVE model can make a meaningful difference in handling underperformance (as well as plenty of other types of leadership problems). Leaders I work with on staff underperformance benefit from the encouragement that they should slow down, lay the situation out clearly, and then pick a solution that properly fits their context. They also appreciate being shown, through the Elevate stage, how to make sure that the time theyve taken solving this problem hasnt gone to waste. They have developed skills and approaches that will continue to help them and others in the future. The SOLVE framework allowed one leader I recently worked with to break down precisely why their sub-teams were underperforming, looking at the issue on an individual basis, and come up with targeted solutions. Importantly, they were also able to use their skills to help other leadership teams across the firm, multiplying the impact that their careful handling of underperformance had for their firm. I recommend, if you are keen to deal with an underperformance issue, to work through the five stages and see the positive impact that they can have on your team and, therefore, your leadership.
Category:
E-Commerce
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