Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D., writes in the Huffington Post. Yes I know it’s a liberal snotrag of a soapbox and she’s using it to indulge in a bunch of classic-feminist “Wah, wah, The Man is keeping us down”…but give the lady credit: She doesn’t have a hyphenated last name. And a few paragraphs in, she manages to re-secure her tetherings back on planet earth.
…[S]mart and talented women rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they’ll have to overcome to be successful lies within. Compared with our male colleagues, we judge our own abilities not only more harshly but fundamentally differently. Understanding why we do it is the first step to righting a terrible wrong. And to do that, we need to take a step back in time.
Chances are good that if you are a successful professional today, you were a pretty bright fifth grade girl. My graduate advisor, psychologist Carol Dweck (author of “Mindset”) conducted a series of studies in the 1980s, looking at how Bright Girls and boys in the fifth grade handled new, difficult and confusing material.
She found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls’ IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up.
Why does this happen? What makes smart girls more vulnerable and less confident when they should be the most confident kids in the room? At the 5th grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science. So there were no differences between these boys and girls in ability, nor in past history of success. The only difference was how bright boys and girls interpreted difficulty — what it meant to them when material seemed hard to learn. Bright Girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence and to become less effective learners as a result.
Researchers have uncovered the reason for this difference in how difficulty is interpreted, and it is simply this: More often than not, Bright Girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice.
That’s a fine piece of research, Dr. Halvorson and Dr. Dweck. You’ve done the female race proud; now get your asses into the kitchen and make me a pie!
Seriously though? I think it’s a mistake figuring gender too prominently into this. I know lots of ladies who rise to the occasion when a new challenge presents itself, and lots of gentlemen who do not.
But, I should qualify that carefully. I work in a highly technical field, so when I say “lots of ladies” I’m not really talking lots. Just enough to define a profile, really. Maybe four or five I guess, evenly distributed throughout a career that now spans a quarter century and counting. They each carved out their own role, and the role they carved out was eerily similar from woman to woman. And…the politically incorrect truth of it is, although each woman took command of a technically involved role, these were not roles that would have been filled by men. It isn’t that the men wouldn’t have been able; they would not have been willing.
Chicks are motivated by different things.
But let’s leave that thought alone. I wish to concentrate on this other differential, the one that less clearly marked along gender lines; the Architect versus Medicator divide, the opportunity-versus-security divide.
I would argue — although some might reasonably disagree — that this is what Kimberly Weisul was writing about in BNET a little while ago: “This is Why Innovation is Rare in US Companies.”
In a survey of 1,500 CEOs by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, creativity was viewed as the single most important attribute needed to lead a large corporation. So companies are aware that, at least hypothetically, they need leaders who are creative. But how do people react when faced with someone who actually expresses creative ideas?
Not well, it turns out. Jennifer Mueller, a professor at Wharton, Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell, and Dishan Kamdar of the Indian School of Business conducted a series of experiments to find out how creative people were viewed by their colleagues. Individuals who expressed creative ideas were viewed as having less leadership potential than individuals whose ideas were less creative. “It is not easy to select creative leaders,” says Mueller. “It takes more time and effort…than we might previously have thought.”
Yes, this takes some special intellectual effort…discipline…which large groups of people are not capable of putting out. And the large groups of people ultimately are the deciders, usually, when we decide what we want to see in our leaders. With no thinking discipline being practiced effectively, the tendency is to say “this is what I expect to see, therefore it is leadership and it is innovative.” You see the twist — innovation is something you expect to see?
This, also, reminds me of a conversation I’ve had a few times over my career, usually with the most experienced colleagues. Everything, of course, cannot be innovated. In fact, the most successful projects to which I’ve contributed have generally consisted of just a small sliver of innovation, plated upon a structure of something non-innovative. A structure with a legacy to it would provide the confidence, and then the confidence would be built-upon, and the contribution would be made. Think of, pudding-that-is-not-skin, and skin on top. Or, house-that-is-not-paint, and then paint. We want to deliver something new, but before we get to the thing that is new we want to re-use what was built before. It cuts down on the integration testing when you use what was used already.
But I’ve often run into the brilliant engineer who is tempted to toss out the pudding-skin. The standards mentality should completely dominate the project and no part of it should be new. And you get into this James Taggart mentality of “Rearden Metal cannot be good because nobody’s ever used it before.” And I have to point out, waitaminnit what are we doing? We’re not drywall installers or wallpaper hangers; we’re software engineers. If it’s worth coding in software at all, is the damn thing going to do something nothing else is doing? If it won’t then why are we here? We are we investing our time? There’s lots of other professions whose goals can be described as “make this thing over here look exactly like that thing over there” — ours is not one of them.
It comes back to the Morgan maxim: Technology is the opposite of doing what lots of other people are already doing. It seems so simple, but how easy it is to forget. It would be much easier to remember if good software engineering had something to do with building every little thing in a different way than every other little thing. But, of course, that would be a nightmare. Good engineering, in any discipline, is a mix. On a leading-edge new aircraft prototype, there will be tens of thousands of rivets — that all look the same, and are the same. The rivet design will be generations old. It’s what they come together, to form in the final product, that is new. Pudding and skin. House and paint.
But the Architects and Medicators paradigm says Medicators will always want to take everything over, and they like to…well, you know, medicate. Just bathe & stew in something they’ve found to be familiar, never separating themselves from whatever substance it is lest they suffer from withdrawal symptoms. And here is irony for you: Didn’t someone recently campaign for the highest office in our government on a platform of “change can be scary but you have to learn to embrace it if you want to move forward” or some such? Who did that? Who said it?
That would be Master Medicator Numero Uno, Barack Hussein “Barry Soetoro” Obama, our current President. Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm!
John Hinderaker at Powerline hits on something I’ve been saying for quite some time about the man in the White House:
Last night Col. Ralph Peters was on Bill O’Reilly’s show, talking about Libya. Peters thinks we should act on behalf of the rebels there, but he expressed skepticism that President Obama will ever do anything. “Obama loves the idea of being President,” Peters said, “but he can’t make a decision.”
I think there is a lot of truth to that, even in domestic policy, where Obama has passively deferred to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on all legislative matters. One can debate whether action is appropriate in Libya or not, but Peters is certainly right when it comes to foreign policy–it is a safe bet that Obama will do nothing, because doing something would require a decision.
Now it just so happens that I think we ought to stay out of Libya, so this is a stopped clock moment for me. I essentially agree with Obama’s non-decision.
However, to the larger point. I agree with Peters completely when he says “Obama loves the idea of President, but he can’t make a decision”. I might have said it a little differently. Obama loves the idea of being President and the trappings and perks. What he doesn’t like is the job.
I think that should be abundantly clear to anyone who has closely observed the man and taken a look at his background. I always remember the words of the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review who said that Obama loved the title of Editor of the Law Review, but he didn’t want to do the work. The managing editor said he rarely saw him except when it was to glad hand or take credit (and praise) for what was being done. Additionally, Obama never wrote a thing for the review during his tenure, something almost unheard of.
In all cases, his problems are leadership problems. He’s simply not a leader. He has no idea how to be a leader. But that doesn’t keep him from wanting leadership roles that offer him prestige, perks and pleasure derived from simply from being in the position.
The reason Obama can’t make a decision is he can’t reason like a leader must. He has no experience. And he doesn’t understand the decision making process as practiced by a leader. He’s never really had to make leadership decisions. So he simply tries to avoid making them. One way he does it is to ignore the problem. Another way he does this is to appoint commissions and panels concerning problems the country faces in order to defer the problem (and decision). He also like to defer to the “international community” on foreign policy or the Democratic leadership in the legislature on domestic things. Again, the avoidance of decision making.
One aspect of the Medicator I’ve never been able to understand is this: They are in constant search of some medicinal balm, some soothing agent. This is why Obama doesn’t want to decide anything, why He wants to “defer to the international community” and so forth. The medicinal balm; the international community decided it, so it must be good. Who needs a recognizable individual to decide anything? Names? Accountability? Who cares. The nameless-faceless-unaccountable iCommunity handed down the decision — there is comfort in that. Head-On, apply directly to the forehead.
The enigma is, why don’t Medicators ever want to be the balm? It isn’t going too far out to say in 2008, when He was campaigning for the office, there was a widespread and popular perception that Barack Obama’s team was building a brand, with a name, and they were doing an exceptional job at this. We were going to get a fantastic leader, a decider, like a miracle ointment. Or a King Midas who would just bring all the right results out of everything He touched. We’d end up with someone like FDR — the only American President ever to be elected to four terms, and there was a reason for this. Obama was supposed to be like FDR. Republicans and democrats alike would reckon with some new vexing problem, and say to themselves “well let’s just apply an Obama solution to that and it will all be okay.” Just like our grandparents might have said “well let’s let FDR handle it and everything will turn out fine.” That’s what gets you four terms in office. Be Blistex. Rub a little of this stuff on that new irritation over there, it’ll probably be good as new.
Does anyone in his right mind, right now, want to subject some exotic, unfamiliar new problem to an Obama fix and hope for the best? Erm…not quite so much. We, as a nation, have become disenchanted. We just got done watching Our First Holy President deal with the oil-in-the-gulf thing. Who’s chomping at the bit to see Him lay His Holy Hands upon the melty Japanese reactors and get it all fixed? Nobody. We’re not going to get anything from that direction, just a bunch of sniveling excuses. Maybe a “you should be grateful” thrown in. People get tired of it.
So the tube of ointment will sit in the medicine cabinet untouched.
Why’s it like this? Why does it always seem to go in this direction? Medicators have such a craving for approval, such a desire to be associated with fun and excitement. Obama certainly does. Do they really suck this badly at thinking ahead? I suppose that’s part of taking a fix; you’re just living for the moment.
Many times I have had to wonder, what would our lives be like if it were natural for the innovative types to seek out ways to exert control over the non-innovative types, rather than the other way around. But, for practical reasons, it must always work the other way around. When you innovate successfully and come up with something new, you don’t have time to think about what the other guy is doing. (And when you’re not successful, you try to figure out why — and so then, too, you don’t have time to monitor other people.) But people who cannot or do not think for themselves, develop this natural jealousy against people who can and do. They start to blockade, hinder, obstruct. It turns into this weird “If I can’t figure out what to do next, I don’t want you to figure it out either” thing.
Speaking of which, you might have missed this thing George Will put together about trains. It’s priceless — I’ll excerpt just a tiny piece of it:
High Speed to Insolvency
Why liberals love trains.
:
[W]hy is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.
And there is your picture of humanity, not only for 2011 Anno Domini, but in eons past and forevermore foward: One guy fixated on systems of ever-increasing complexity that work when assembled properly, and another guy fixated on the comforts of the moment. A man at a drafting table designing something, and another leaning on a plushy cushion smoking opiates. Architect, Medicator. One looks to the future and the other does not, because it’s hard to think about the future when your attention is all on your level of comfort, or lack thereof…today. Right here & now. The designer does not try to control the junkie, because the designer is worried about other things. But the junkie tries to control the designer, because when you’ve dedicated your life to being unable to do something you don’t want to see someone else getting it done.
And because there are other junkies, the junkie will succeed in controlling the designer. Innovation will be arrested, hobbled, chained down. Eventually, snuffed out altogether. That’s what being a junkie is all about. If you manage to get something, in a few minutes you’re going to want more of it, and then you’ll want more and more and more.
So they have the White House, and of course early in 2009 it was obvious that was not enough because they still had cravings. Now we have problems, but their Top Guy isn’t going to make any decisions. But let’s build some trains.
Update: I see over on Memeorandum — it’s like they said to themselves, “Look at that nonsense Morgan K. Freeberg jotted down that doesn’t make any sense. We’d better put up some links, so that what he said makes more sense.” Japanese Nuclear Power Plants’ Operator Scrambles to Avert Meltdowns — and — Obama Scores Laughs at Gridiron Dinner.
Just what I was talking about. No decisions made, no details engaged, the gray matter inside The First Skull isn’t that kind of stuff. But an impressive emotional vibe-connection taking place. Just like last month and the month before that, the year before that…thus it will be, into the indeterminate future. We’ve got a Court Jester sitting on the Emperor’s throne.
Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.
Well, this moratorium has hit Public Policy Polling disproportionately hard. They’re supposed to be polling the public on a variety of issues — maybe they are. But whenever I hear out of them it’s exactly the kind of 
So I tell the girls I don’t have any cash for their cookies, whether that’s true or not. I don’t need ’em anyway. But then again, they don’t look like the graphic to the right.
When I have the oil changed in the car, a guy does the labor…or two guys, or who knows maybe ten or twenty. Probably just one or two. But not a skirt in sight. Once the chariot is all put back together again, I amble over to the front counter and give the money to a female at a computer before driving off. I don’t know if the guys ever see the money.
Something something Gemma Arterton’s butt