Interviews with Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank

September 9, 2009

Precis: The world is a complex place subject to various influences. For instance, China is cutting back on credit, which will have a dampening effect. Developing nations could provide help in the recovery, which although has begun, is still fragile and likely to be slow.

Lastly, the World Bank remains dedicated to hiring diversity.

July 10, 2010

Precis: Recovery is still fragile fraught with risk. Developing nations continue to be impacted. His job is to identify risks and make them public. Stimulus amounts in the USA were reasonable, but we must remember that it always takes much longer to execute these plans than people might imagine.

The dollar will remain the reserve currency. Despite countries like Russia and China lamenting their hostage situation, it is partly their choice which currencies they hold. Likewise, as the reserve currency, it is incumbent upon USA to follow prudent fiscal policy.

Commentary

It is always immensely interesting to listen to the heads of large states.  Besides the required diplomacy, it is an almost universal truism that his words are defined by the size of the institution.  Complexity inherently questions the ability of such a bureaucracy to solve grave issues.  They are by their nature anything but creative or adaptable.  They are inherently the product of immense political and special interest, bound by their mandates.

Bill Gates, with access to his own fortune, and much less bound by self-interested constituents, is much better situated to try and fail and try something new.

Lastly, complexity predicts that like ant colonies, the World Bank’s trillions of dollars would be put to much more effective use by self-organizing smaller groups trying and failing and learning from each other.  The monolithic bureaucracy is by its nature anything but adaptive or evolutionary, and any effective development solutions are bound to be the result of successive iterations built on thousands of errant attempts.  Besides, economies and markets are local.  You know, that is where the autonomous ant resides.

There will be more to say about that for readers confused about its implications to the economic crisis and banking reform.

I didn’t fail.  I just found 10,000 ways it wouldn’t work.  Thomas Edison.

While the famous Edison quote above is heavily edited from the original interview, the essential spirit of his words remains the same.  We talked about how success is born of action and iteration and failure.  We also talked about the relationships between competition, cooperation and losing and learning.

I just stumbled on a video which synthesizes those themes very well.  It was made by Honda.

In keeping with the idea that creativity and problem solving, like life, must remain heavily prejudiced in favor of action over theory, and reaching out over self-absorption, let us remember that the ‘think, plan, build’ model is only a broad one.  Better yet, let us plan to iteratively use that model any number of times on any project worth tackling.  And that forever after, those in care of the resulting product shall require the autonomy to tinker with it.

Feedback, including failure, is necessary to succeed.

Unstated Components

If you watch the video closely, there are at least two components of discovery and creativity and success that the video does not explicitly address, but very much implies. The first one is blatant; the team realizes that their members will try things that fail. They stand with each other, they work with each other, fully realizing that. The video itself is a testament by Honda that its team members will fail, and the rest of the team will stand by them as they do so.

Imagine for a moment looking into the eyes of your team mates, knowing they will fail. Imagine the respect and empathy you shall require. In the article on Characteristics of a Competitor, the emphasis is on the emotional stance of such a team member. Both the individual and the team is described in Maslow’s terms of actualization.

The second implication is more subtle but no less necessary. Honda’s ultimate success depends on all their team members continually striving and failing, reaching out and exploring their boundaries in their own areas of expertise in an effort to improve. Danica Patrick, the Indycar driver, gets closest to voicing it most directly when she says, “We bump up against that feeling [of being out of control] as much as we can, to try and push that limit further, and get comfortable there, and then push it again, and so you’re constantly on the brink of crashing, because that is the fastest.”

We are conditioned to consider Ms. Patrick’s remarks only in her context as the driver, the focal competitor in the race. But it is foundationally necessary for every member of the team to adopt this stance. The engineers, the pit crew, the back up drivers, every member of the team, approaches their contribution in this manner. They are all in their roles exploring the edges of their landscapes within the larger goal of the team.

This is the concept of complexity at work, of self-autonomous agents pushing their boundaries until they succeed. Think of the thousands of foraging ants, exploring and failing and exploring again, the whole colony a cascading effort of exploration, immediately adapting and reorienting around success via communication of its members.

References

Inventor of the Light bulb

Thomas Edison’s Concrete Houses

Scorecards

Perhaps competition has been misapplied in education more than anywhere else. Most competitions in education become denigrations of competition, when they are actually misapplications of it. The issue begins with the scoreboard (grades) which has not appreciably changed over the years despite our advancement in understanding learning and talent.

Grades are often cited as unhelpful, placing too much pressure on the student (amongst other issues). This can not be true unless misapplied, and critiques of grades are at least partly because they are often the only scoreboard and therefore over emphasized.  Grades are an effective method of providing periodic measurements of progress and a fair base line of knowledge, and therefore give needed feedback.  Grades also tend to predict further educational success.

But grades should be supplemented by other scoreboards. Grades, like IQ, are not a good predictor of career success or happiness or riches. A simple 10 minute test of emotional maturity is statistically a much better predictor of SAT scores and professional success than IQ or grades.  As such it deserves much more formal attention.  Likewise, emotional instabilities are much more often the cause of student failure than lack of mental ability.

Educational systems may do more service by adding emotional scoreboards, exercises, and indices, in an effort to maximize individual potential.  It is arguable that without addressing significant emotional issues, it is pointless to send the failing student through school.

A talent scorecard could also add value.  Marrying direction with talent certainly improves effectiveness.  It may also increase happiness.

Misapplications of competition

Competitions in immeasurable disciplines such as art often only measure the performers’ propensity to produce to the norm. They do not necessarily measure creativity or talent or future success. Competition in these instances would be more productive if they were more narrowly defined; a competition to identify those artists who can replicate modern art is exponentially more useful than an open ended art competition judged by only a subjective few.  Then it is possible to know and understand what the competition is about, and give the performer accurate feedback.

Organizations often fall into a variation of this mistake as well.  They make only very broad goals, or they measure creativity in a manner which impedes or misdiagnoses it.  Hierarchies benefit from very specific, focused relatively simple goals.  Smaller teams can deal with ambiguity better than large ones.

Sometimes losers are relieved from competing altogether, rather than helping them to perform, regardless of the talent or the endeavor. The thinking is often that comparisons to others places too much pressure on the performance, which is harmful.  This is short sighted thinking.  After all, the competition is not primarily a comparison with others, but about expressing oneself and feeling  good about that action.  Withdrawing from the competition impedes that development.

Too often children who have difficulty performing to their potential in a basketball game or a test are revealing something of their emotional maturity which will need to be addressed if they wish to meet their potential in life.  This is true not because the world is full of competition.  It is true because realizing one’s potential demands confidence in self regardless of time constraints, audiences and other public and private pressures.  The challenges of life require emotional maturity.

Actualization

Well coached and nurtured competitors learn to consciously build their spiritual and emotional strength.  Whether the stage is acting, painting, playing basketball or guitar, the challenge is identical.

In this way even eastern mysticism shares common traits with competitive development; both are efforts in self-actualization.  We have a desperate need to help each other authentically be in the world and develop in the world.  That is an individual journey that addresses all portions of our being.  And it demands nurturing, coaching and formal feedback in all of them.

Robinson makes the point that education must evolve to appreciate the diversity of aptitude. That evolution is greatly aided by coaching and multi-dimensional feedback.