It is often overlooked.

It is never in a KPI.

But it is impossible to overstate value of the heart with which you work.

I had a meeting last year with some bigwigs who put me on the spot pretty bad. I didn’t do so well. I stammered, I fumbled, I tried to be honest. In the end, I eked out a survival. As we left, my colleague said to me, “That was a tough meeting. But your heart came through, and that’s what saved it.”

Right now, I’m working on a big community project, one that will not be a success if the community itself fails to embrace it. We’ve been working the phones, going to every local meeting, and visiting every church and school in the area, and I can tell you this with certainty: if we did not approach this project with the right heart; if we did not genuinely believe in the initiative and care for the wellbeing of the people with whom we speak; if we did not bring a healthy dose of humility and servitude to our encounters, we would be halted in our tracks.

You cannot overstate the value of the heart with which you work.

So often, we think what we really need is more policies or better procedures. We think that we need to define deliverables more clearly and measure metrics more accurately, when what we really need is to ask ourselves if we are bringing the right heart to the job.

Because, as much as it’s intangible and immeasurable, your heart always comes through.

Have you ever dealt with someone who did everything by the book, and yet managed to be completely obstructive? Or have you dealt with someone who doesn’t break the rules, but makes the experience a pleasure? The difference between those two people is heart.

My friend Asaf used to do everything with heart. When he built a trade show display, he would tape down the wires on the backs of the boards so that the staff didn’t cut their fingers. Adi Sideman at Online Media Daily just included, ‘Execute with love,’ as one of his ten steps to creating viral campaigns.

Here’s the real beauty about bringing heart and love to your work: as cliched as it sounds, it is a win-win situation. It is the only thing that can give meaning to your work, regardless of how transcendental or mundane the actual tasks may be. It is uplifting, not only to your clients, but to your colleagues, your bosses, your subordinates, and, most importantly, yourself. It is the single best way to know if you are in the right career.

And ‘heart’ and ‘love’ don’t mean ‘hippie’ and ‘pushover’. Working with heart gives rise to the question, “What is the value for everyone involved?” It leads you to ask, “Is this something I can be proud of?” It allows you to wonder, “Would I want my daughter or my mother or my spouse to behave this way?”

It calls you to your higher self.

With what heart do you work?

Photo: Chris Cummings

Woohoo!

Our paper on Mapping the Genome of Human Intention has been accepted to the 2008 International Conference on Semantic Web and Web Services! It’s part of WORLDCOMP’08: The 2008 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing, being put on in Las Vegas, July 14-17, by the World Academy of Science.

I think this classifies as a coup for us—specifically, for Martin Burley and Branton Kenton-Dau, who wrote the paper. For one thing, the acceptance rate as of April 15 was only 27%. For another, the sponsors include heavy hitters like Harvard, UCLA, the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and Google, among about a million others.

On another note, a paper that recently came out in Nature provides (in my opinion) further validation of the statement that the mathematics of human intention have predictive characteristics. Aaron Clauset, Christopher Moore, and Mark Newman from the Santa Fe Institute posited that hierarchy is a fundamental organizing principle of complex networks—the picture is ‘a hierarchical network with structure on many scales and the corresponding hierarchical random graph.’ From the press release:

To demonstrate the practical utility of their model, they analyze networks from three disparate fields: the metabolic network of the spirochete Treponema pallidum (the bacteria that causes syphilis), a network of associations between terrorists, and a food web of grassland species. Even when only half of the connections in these networks were shown to their algorithm, the researchers found that hierarchical structure can predict missing connections with an accuracy of up to 80 percent.

The emphasis was mine. Why did I add it? Because one of these things is not like the others. One of these things is behavior-based, and yet it behaves mathematically.

We human beings are behavior-based, and yet we behave mathematically.

That is why these algorithms work, because our purpose, values and intention mathematically predict our behavior.

You can find the full Clauset, Moore, and Newman paper here.

Will we see you in Vegas?

I spend a lot of time studying how people communicate, and one of the most interesting things I notice is how much the effectiveness of communication depends on the recipient.

Some people like you to get straight to the point, and you’d better shut up quick when you get there or they’ll lose interest. Others need a more roundabout approach, with fifteen or twenty minutes spent inquiring about relatives, health, and extracurricular activities before you even think about broaching the topic in question.

Of course, it’s up to the communicator to adapt to the other person’s style. As they say in sales, if your customer doesn’t understand you, it’s your fault.

I was musing about this today to a colleague, and she responded that it’s often a cultural thing. “You tend to get straight to the point, so people label you as a ‘brash American.’”

Of course, we all know that different cultures have different customs. Nonetheless, there are certainly Americans who are brash (not me, though!) and Americans who ramble, laid-back Islanders and Islanders who cut to the chase. So what drives the difference? Is it in the DNA?

It’s clear that people who share similar communications styles fare better with each other. Someone who is in a rush can get mightily frustrated with someone who goes off on tangents. Is it always better to be the same, though, or is there merit to the ‘opposites attract’ idea?

On Fox News the other day there was a blurb about a dating service that matches people based on immune system DNA. They claim that ‘Nature’ wants us to mate with people who have different immune system DNA to ours, in the hopes that our immunity will broaden with the increased exposure. It may sound like a dubious proposition, but there’s a certain amount of logic.

So being the same can work, and it can not work. Ditto being different. What’s a girl to do?

What works is being aware. Paying attention to the people you’re speaking to and reading their reactions. Knowing yourself well enough to understand what characteristics your mate has to have. Realizing that the myriad manifestations of humanity are neither good nor bad, positive nor negative; they simply exist, and are all capable of being accommodated.

I would love to hear your cross-cultural communications stories.

Summary: This post explores how ‘who we are’ determines ‘what we experience’.

“If you don’t like someone, the way he holds his spoon will make you furious; if you do like him, he can turn his plate over into your lap and you won’t mind.” - Irving Becker.

I am not a fair person.

I notice this regularly in my interactions with people. When I’m frustrated with someone—say, for not responding quickly enough to my every whim—I filter all of my encounters with that person through the lens of that frustration. On the other hand, if someone has a reputation in my books of being really on the ball, I give them large amounts of latitude.

So if Person A, who responds slowly, takes an hour to answer a phone message, I become enraged. “She’s never around! It’s impossible to get a hold of her!” Whereas when Person B, who responds quickly, takes the same hour, I’m impressed with the prompt reaction.

In other words, my reaction is not about the event; it’s about my own feelings towards the other person.

I’ve been noticing this tendency with particular frequency in the presidential campaign. Every action taken by a candidate I don’t like is judged, by me, with swift harshness: “What a stupid thing to say! Unbelievable.” Every blunder by a candidate I like is forgiven immediately: “Well, we all say silly things sometimes.”

What are the practical implications of this phenomenon? The most important one is awareness. I might be massively biased, but knowing that I’m biased gives me the leeway to question my own responses.

Another important byproduct is in how we engage with others, and why our reputations are so vitally, critically important. If you have a good reputation, you can be forgiven a whole lot, but if you have a bad reputation, the easiest sell will be an uphill battle.

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes a tool people can use to measure how strongly they associate two things; the example in the book is about racism (how strongly you associate black people with negative words). A friend of mine forwarded a watered-down version that measures feelings towards the presidential candidates. Take a few minutes and play—it’s well worth the time—and then let me know how you go in the comments.

“We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” - Anais Nin

This concept is also the foundation behind the VortexDNA philosophy. Who we are is what determines our experience. Who we are is what decides how our lives unfold. Who we are is not only the most important variable in what we become, but also the variable over which we exert the greatest degree of control.

Who are you?

Summary: This is a reprint of my Search Insider column from last Friday.

Chris Morrison at VentureBeat has been one of the privileged few to get a sneak preview of Powerset; he recently reported that the semantic start-up’s unofficial tagline is, “We’re not a search engine.”

According to Morrison, this is standard for any company looking to dodge the hype of the ‘Google-killer’ moniker — fair enough; although, based on Powerset’s behavior to date, they don’t seem inclined to dodge hype of any variety.

There’s another reason for Powerset and its ilk to shun the search engine label, though: search isn’t broken.
Remember Gord’s Breaking the Google Habit series? Over five of his Search Insider columns, he discussed how people form habits and what it takes to change. We got a more scientific understanding of what we knew instinctively already: habits are darn hard to break, even if you want to break them.

Take overeating. Despite pills and patches and pop psychology, millions are locked in a seemingly unbreakable cycle — and that’s something that people want to give up. That’s something that goes to the heart of people’s senses of self-esteem and wellbeing, something that can extend or diminish life expectancy.

There’s no equivalent downside for using Google, which means that merely offering a slightly better version doesn’t represent a convincing argument. Nobody is going to change search engines because the top 10 results are slightly more relevant.

So those companies looking to compete have to take a different approach: the we’re-not-a-search-engine approach. This is the approach demanded of disruptive technologies since the beginning of time. Don’t offer a faster horse, build a car.

The road to success requires would-be Google-killers to solve a problem that Google doesn’t solve, to create a new habit under a new circumstance, where it can flourish free from the inexorable pull of ingrained attitudes.

This is why David Berkowitz reported last September that MySpace was the fourth largest search engine: because they’re competing in a different arena.

Twine is another great example; it represents a totally new way of interacting with data. You can create a habit of using Twine without threatening your Google use, transitioning slowly and imperceptibly until you wake up one day and say, “Remember when we all thought Google couldn’t be beaten?”

This is also why it’s so important for Google to snap up a token presence in every emerging Web 2.0-3.0-4.0 space. They know that they’re unlikely to be threatened on their own turf, and they want to make sure they’re at least in the ring wherever the fight’s going to be.

The great philosopher Osho said, “If you want to do something with darkness, you have to do something with light, not with darkness at all. You have to light a candle, and suddenly there is no darkness.” I’m not suggesting that Google represents the Forces of Evil here, but the concept is transferable: light the candle of a new habit, and the old habit disappears.

Will Powerset be the candle of a new habit? That remains to be seen. Ultimately, though, someone will be the candle; as Osho also said, “Habits die hard. But they die certainly — if one persists, they die.”

As you might imagine, I was an avid reader as a kid—still am, of course. One of my favorite books was about an eleven-year-old boy, Will, who learns that he’s one of the Old Ones and has to fight the Dark to save the Earth. I’ve thought about this book many times over the years, but its title and author had completely escaped my memory until recently, when I mentioned the story to my friend Steve.

“Oh, that’s The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper,” he said immediately. Delight! Rapture!

Then he went me one better. A few weeks later, we met for lunch, and he brought me a copy of the entire Dark Is Rising series! Oh, frabjous day!

So I’ve been journeying back to my childhood via Will Stanton and the eternal battle between Light and Dark. If that weren’t bliss enough, it turns out that there are five books in the series—and I had only read the first two. A trip down Memory Lane and a new adventure! Life doesn’t get much better than this. Incidentally, Will’s story was turned into a perhaps not-so-good movie just last year.

The Dark is Rising is classic good vs. evil, in which Will must fulfill his destiny as the last of the Old Ones. His destiny is a good one, but not all destinies are. Consider this quote from Dr. Robert Green, professor of neurology, genetics and epidemiology at Boston University School of Medicine (hat tip: Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei):

Genetic information has a special power. It has a feel of fate about it, a sense of inevitability, that sense that, “Oh, you are marked.”

Of course you could be marked for something good or for something bad, but what we seek in genetic information is usually the bad: Do I have a propensity for obesity? Cancer? Heart disease? The lack of these markers isn’t cause for celebration, but their presence is cause for despair.

I don’t know whether destiny exists. I have two astrologer friends who tend to be pretty accurate with their insights and predictions, so maybe it does. Nonetheless, I urge you:

Strive to excel regardless of whether or not you believe it is your destiny.

Wouldn’t you always want to do your best, even if your life was predetermined? Let’s say you’re genetically programmed to never win a gold medal at the Olympics. Wouldn’t you still benefit from training to your peak? Let’s say it’s your destiny to get heart disease. Shouldn’t you still eat well and exercise?

Looking to destiny is one thing; relying on it, in the absence of your own positive action, is another thing altogether.

My brilliant friend Shana once described how she met a fella she’d been dating: “I put a clarion call out to the universe that I was ready to be with a really great guy, and then I took the action steps to make it happen.”

I loved that. There are lots of people who understand the first half of that equation, but it’s the totality of the statement that makes the difference. That’s why I love the epigenetics story: that your environment, including your beliefs, determine whether your genes get switched on or off. In Dr. Green’s parlance, your environment and beliefs drive the inevitable outcome of your life.

Don’t worry about whether or not something is your destiny. Just take the action steps. Even if you don’t achieve your original goal, I promise you that you will be more satisfied than if you had done nothing.

What are your thoughts on destiny?