INITIATIVE 101
Image Credit: Jessie English
If I wasn't so open about who I was I never would've been able to do this.
Emma González, (1999—) is a survivor of the mass shooting at a Florida high school, killing 17 students and staff and injuring 17 others. She now works as an activist and advocate for gun control.
Gonzalez gave a speech at the March for Our Lives gun control rally in Washington D.C. In the middle of her speech, she stopped speaking for six minutes. With tears streaming down her face, she resumed, telling the audience that she was demonstrating the length of time it took for the gunman to kill 17 people. In just one day, the speech ran up nearly half a million views on YouTube, was excerpted on all the news broadcasts, and made the front pages of all the major publications, all of them lauding her dramatic silence. In The Washington Post, chief theater critic Peter Marks even saw a parallel with Hamlet’s final words, “The rest is silence.”
Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzalez, who has become one of the faces of the Parkland movement, lead an extended and emotional moment of silence during her speech at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington.
INITIATIVE 101
Cultivate the ability to think by yourself, make a decision, and then, take appropriate action.
It doesn't have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one. In fact, make several. Make more decisions could be your three-word mantra.
No decision is a decision. It is the decision not to decide. Not deciding is usually the wrong decision. If you are the go-to person, the one who can decide, you'll make more of a difference. It doesn't matter so much that you're right, it matters that you decided.
Of course, it's risky and painful. That's why it's a rare and valuable skill.
Here is a hierarchy of knowledge we generally rely on:
Gut Instincts: Most of our decision-making is from our subconscious. Our experiential and emotional filters may often have no foundation in data. In the absence of other decision-making filters, instincts might be all we have to go on. Even when more information is available, our instincts can often provide a valuable gut check against others’ inputs or bias. The big takeaway here is that intuitive decision-making can be refined and improved—the opportunity, practicing discernment.
Data: Raw data is comprised of disparate facts, statistics, or random inputs that by themselves hold little value. Drawing conclusions based on data in its raw form will lead to flawed decisions based on incomplete data sets.
Information: Information is simply an evolved or more complete data set. Information is derived from a collection of processed data where context and meaning have been added to disparate facts, allowing for a more thorough analysis.
Knowledge: Knowledge is information that has been refined by analysis. It has been assimilated, tested, and validated. Most importantly, knowledge is actionable with a high degree of accuracy because proof of concept exists. In the end, regardless of the data, information, and knowledge we have—those things the help increase our emotional confidence—it’s still just a feeling of confidence.
How do we learn to make better decisions so we can become effective catalysts for change?
PRACTICE:
Think about the last time you attempted something new and it didn’t work out. How did the failure impact you?
Describe an event in your life when fear was present, but you did what you needed to do anyway. What actions did you take?
The complexity we contend with today, combined with ever-increasing performance expectations and decision-making, is a potential recipe for disaster. We must define a methodology for making better decisions. If we incorporate the following metrics into our decision-making framework, we will minimize the chances of making a wrong decision. Using your reflection above, put your scenario through its paces:
Understand the Context: What is motivating the need for a decision? What would happen if we make no decision? Who will the decision impact (both directly and indirectly)? What data, analytics, research, or supporting information do we have to validate the inclinations driving our decision?
Engage Public Scrutiny: There are no private decisions. Sooner or later, the details surrounding any decision will likely come out. If our decisions made the front page of the newspaper, how would we feel? What would our family think of our decision? What would our stakeholders and employees think about our decision? Have we sought counsel or feedback before making our decision?
Conduct a Cost/Benefit Analysis: Do the potential benefits derived from the decision justify the expected costs? What if the costs exceed projections, and the benefits fall short of projections?
Assess the Risk/Reward Ratio: What are all the possible rewards, and when contrasted with all the potential risks, are the odds in our favor, or are they stacked against us?
Is it the Right Thing To Do: Standing behind decisions that everyone supports doesn't require a lot of nerve. On the other hand, standing behind what one believes is the right decision in the face of tremendous controversy makes great leaders. There are many areas where compromise yields significant benefits, but our value system, character, or integrity should never be compromised.
Take A Stand: Perhaps most importantly, we must have a bias toward action and be willing to decide. Moreover, we must learn to make the best decision possible even if we possess an incomplete data set. We can't fall prey to analysis paralysis. We must make the best decision possible with the information at hand using some of the methods mentioned above. Opportunities are not static. The law of diminishing returns applies to most options. The longer we wait to seize the opportunity, the smaller the return typically is. The opportunity will probably evaporate if we wait too long to take it.
Always have a back-up plan: The real test of a leader is what happens in the moments following the realization they've made the wrong decision. Great leaders understand all plans are made up of both constants and variables. Either can work against us. Smart leaders always have a contingency plan knowing circumstances can sometimes fall beyond reason or control – no "Plan B" equals a flawed plan.
COMMIT
[ ] I commit myself to appreciate the complexity of information and developing a decision-making framework that will support me taking greater initiative.
FURTHER READING/ WATCHING
Emma Gonzalez Reflects on Her Year Since Surviving the Parkland Shooting: Emma Gonzalez reflected on the trying year she’s had since losing classmates and teachers in the Parkland shooting.
Organizing the Next Generation: Youth Engagement with Activism Inside and Outside of Organizations: Interesting journal article where Social Movement scholars consider organizations (social movement organizations [SMOs]) vital to the success of a movement. SMOs organize events, mobilize participants, and recruit new activists into the movement. In the case of youth activism, SMOs can also play a vital role in the political socialization of youth. Using a unique dataset, this book explores the extent to which SMOs are encouraging youth participation in social movement activity online. Their findings suggest that engaging with and recruiting youth into SMOs is vital for the future health of these organizations as well as the political socialization of youth, and that SMOs are not doing enough to recruit youth online, mirroring their failure offline.
Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement: This is the official, definitive book from The March for Our Lives founders. In keeping up with their ongoing fight to end gun-violence in all communities, the student leaders of March for Our Lives have decided not to be paid as authors of the book. 100% of net proceeds from this book will be paid to March For Our Lives Action Fund. Glimmer of Hope provides a blueprint for launching social change.
In Her Words…
“We certainly do not understand why it should be harder to make plans with friends on weekends than to buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon.”— Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'
“If you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it's time to start doing something.”— Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'
“Everybody needs to understand how we feel and what we went through, because if they don’t, they’re not going to be able to understand why we’re fighting for what we’re fighting for.”— Emma González Leads a Student Outcry on Guns: ‘This Is the Way I Have to Grieve’
“After all of this pain and all of this death caused by gun violence, it seems as if the kids are the only ones who still have the energy to make change.”— Dear Lawmakers, You’re Killing Us
“We’re going against the largest gun lobby. We could very well die trying to do this. But we could very well die not trying to do this, too. So why not die for something rather than nothing?”— 6 Minutes and 20 Seconds That Could Change the World
“The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS.”— Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'
“We have grown up in this country and watched violence unfold to no resolution. We have watched people with the power and authority to make changes fail to do so.”— Dear Lawmakers, You’re Killing Us
“Adults like us when we have strong test scores, but they hate us when we have strong opinions.”
“We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting.”
“If all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see”
"Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds," she said. "The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job."
What we don’t see on the resumes we review or the job descriptions we want is the litany of emotional entanglements we bring to our roles, uninvited, to the team and organizations we work in. Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves in the presence of setbacks. In short, those who learn lead.
Observing subjective qualities in others past and present gives us a mental picture for the behaviors we want to practice. Each figure illustrates a quality researched from The Look to Craftsmen Project. When practiced as part of our day-to-day, these qualities will help us develop our mastery in our lives and work.
References:
Soon, Chun & Brass, Marcel & Heinze, Hans-Jochen & Haynes, John-Dylan. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature neuroscience. 11. 543-5. 10.1038/nn.2112.
Insabato, Andrea & Pannunzi, Mario & Rolls, Edmund & Deco, Gustavo. (2010). Confidence-Related Decision Making. Journal of neurophysiology. 104. 539-47. 10.1152/jn.01068.2009.
Insabato, Andrea & Pannunzi, Mario & Rolls, Edmund & Deco, Gustavo. (2010). Confidence-Related Decision Making. Journal of neurophysiology. 104. 539-47. 10.1152/jn.01068.2009.
Dumb does not mean irrational, Kahneman and Tversky
Articles: Always Wear the Same Suit: Obama’s Presidential Productivity Secrets (article) and Michael Lewis covers Barak Obama (article)