The Achievement Habit (25 page)

NOTES

1
.
     
The course’s original title was “The Individual and Technology.” Four years later I revised it and renamed it “The Designer in Society.” Neither title is an adequate description of the course content.

2
.
     
“Forget B-School: D-School Is Hot,”
Wall Street Journal
, Jan. 7, 2012.

3
.
     
For example, Tim Brown,
Change by Design
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

4
.
     
Snell Putney and Gail J. Putney,
The Adjusted American: Normal Neuroses in the Individual and Society
(New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

5
.
     
Another version of the design thinking process uses
understand
and
observe
instead of
empathy
. The
define
part of the process is often labeled “point of view” (POV). In this case the process is: understand, observe, POV, ideate, prototype, test.

1
.
     
People are more concerned with their self-image than with their actions. See experiments reported in Christopher J. Bryan, Gabrielle S. Adams, and Benoît Monin, “When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
142, no. 4 (2013): 1001–5.

2
.
     
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
(New York: Random House, 2006), p. 6, emphasis in original.

3
.
     
The film
Professor Poubelle
can be found on YouTube.

4
.
     
Self-efficacy is discussed in many publications by Albert Bandura and his coworkers. See especially Bandura,
Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control
(New York: W. H. Freeman, 1997).

5
.
     
Kenneth P. Oakley, “Skill as a Human Possession,” in
A History of Technology
, ed. Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and A. R. Hall (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), 1: 2–3.

6
.
     
Dr. Rudy Tanzi recommends these steps in his television series
Super Brain
. Also see his book coauthored with Deepak Chopra: Deepak Chopra and Rudolf E. Tanzi,
Super Brain
(New York: Harmony Books, 2012).

1
.
     
Eric Hoffer, in
The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955), says it best in his aphorism no. 70: “We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

Epigraph: This was a favorite saying of Rolf Faste’s, derived by turning the usual platitude about doing things on its head. To me it is the perfect caution against charging ahead when you have mistaken an answer for a question.

1
.
     
There are several variations for defining a POV. One of the most common calls for a phrase describing a specific user followed by a phrase specifying a need and finally a phrase giving an insight to what (not how!) the solution needs to accomplish. An example of a POV statement is: A poor single mother needs financial know-how so she can learn to use her money efficiently.

2
.
     
See, for example, Vijay Kumar,
101 Design Methods
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013).

3
.
     
Hamilton later wrote to his son describing the history of his discovery: “Your mother was walking with me, along the Royal Canal, to which she had perhaps driven; and although she talked with me now and then, yet an
under-current
of thought was going on in my mind, which gave at last a
result
, whereof it is not too much to say that I felt
at once
the importance.” Quote taken from a letter dated August 5, 1865, reprinted in Robert P. Graves’s biography of Hamilton.

4
.
     
The idea of checklist solitaire seems to have come from John E. Arnold, a professor at MIT and Stanford. He actually had card decks made with graphic illustrations of each transformation. They were hand-drawn and
used in his classes and consulting practice. There seems not to have been any commercial production of these, however.

5
.
     
S. I. Hayakawa and A. R. Hayakawa,
Language in Thought and Action
(San Diego: Harcourt, 1991).

1
.
     
Experimental verification is difficult when the results do not fit into existing paradigms. See, for example, Henry M. Collins and Trevor Pinch,
The Golem: What You Should Know About Science
, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), which presents several case studies in which the perceived efficacy of experimental studies strongly depended on whether they matched the existing paradigm. Collins and Pinch discuss some famous experiments that were defective in proving what was claimed yet were accepted because they were in accord with current beliefs, and some that were rejected because they did not fit into the then current belief system.

1
.
     
The original meaning relies on the fact that
proves
meant “tests,” not “confirms.” So it actually implies that an exception (i.e., a single counterexample) is enough to disprove the rule. I choose to use the interpretation where
proves
means “confirms.”

2
.
     
Actors know that in addition to what they say, how they behave (i.e., body language) is very important. In an interview on the PBS program
Charlie Rose
, Academy Award–winning actor Dustin Hoffman described his frustrations in mastering the characters in such difficult roles as the crippled street hustler in
Midnight Cowboy
, the autistic brother in
Rain Man
, and an actor pretending to be a woman in
Tootsie
. He was blocked in each case to the point of wanting to withdraw from the part, and then he had a breakthrough thanks to seeing someone who inspired the behavior he wanted to portray.

3
.
     
Thomas Gordon was an American clinical psychologist and colleague of Carl Rogers. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in teaching communication skills and conflict resolution methods. The model he developed came to be known as the Gordon model or the Gordon method, a communication style for building and maintaining effective relationships.

Epigraph: This is from an actual conversation I had. It took place long before Facebook, Twitter, and other social media existed. The irony between
Harold’s attitudes and those of the current social media–addicted generation should be obvious. Temperamentally, I am with Harold: I really don’t want strangers (and most friends) to know “my business.”

1
.
     
My colleague Professor Douglass Wilde advocates using personality type to compose teams. He has written three books describing his methods, the latest being
Teamology: The Construction and Organization of Effective Teams
(London: Springer-Verlag, 2009).

2
.
     
For more about Synectics, see Gordon,
Synectics
(New York: Harper, 1961), and George M. Prince,
The Practice of Creativity
(New York: Collier, 1970).

3
.
     
By 2005 the Mechanical Engineering Department had grown from three to five divisions. Then the department chair decided that the word
division
was too divisive, and the names of all the department’s divisions were changed to replace the word
division
with
group
, so the Design Division is now called the Design Group.

4
.
     
An in-depth treatment of the negative side of using competition as a motivator is given in Alfie Kohn,
No Contest: The Case Against Competition
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).

Epigraph: This appears in many variants from many sources. Its use here is not meant to discourage taking chances and making mistakes; it is meant instead to remind one about the sin of arrogance.

1
.
     
A detailed analysis of life’s stages related to the social forces leading to marriage can be found in Gail Putney Fullerton,
Survival in Marriage (
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972).

2
.
     
Argyris is the James B. Conant Professor at the Harvard Graduate Schools of Business and Education. The quote is from his article “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,”
Harvard Business Review
, May 1991, p. 103.

3
.
     
On boosting creative confidence, see Tom Kelley and David Kelley,
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
(New York: Crown Business, 2013).

4
.
     
The Truth Process uses guided imagery and is related to other self-awareness methods including those used in gestalt therapy, primal scream therapy, mind dynamics, the Silva Method, and the auditing practice in Scientology.

Epigraph: This Nietzsche quote is used as the prologue for the text in Putney and Putney,
The Adjusted American
. In using it I have two purposes.
First, it is my homage to
The Adjusted American
for providing the first motivation for this book. Second, I like that it implies that it is normal for people to have a sane life even though we live in a crazy world.

1
.
     
Kurt Vonnegut,
Player Piano
(New York: Doubleday, 1952).

2
.
     
Harry Braverman,
Labor and Monopoly Capital
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).

3
.
     
Gandhi is quoted as having said this in Delhi in 1924 by Mahadev DeSai; cited in the preface to Mahatma Gandhi,
Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule
(Ahmedabad, India: Jitendra T. Desai/Navajivan, 1938), pp. 5–6.

4
.
     
E. F. Schumacher,
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
(New York: HarperCollins, 1973).

5
.
     
Ibid., pp. 56–66.

6
.
     
Lawrence Weschler,
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

7
.
     
The quest for personal autonomy in a harsh assembly line environment is insightfully portrayed in the short story “Joe, the Vanishing American” by Harvey Swados (1957). This and fifty-four other classic writings dealing with the relationship between people and machines are republished in the anthology, edited by Arthur O. Lewis Jr.,
Of Men and Machines
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1963).

8
.
     
From Lewis Wirth’s preface to Karl Mannheim’s
Ideology and Utopia
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936), p. xxiv.

Epigraph: Rolf Faste used a variant that I prefer: “Hardening of the categories leads to art failure.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, J. L.
Conceptual Blockbusting
. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2001.

Argyris, Chris. “Teaching Smart People How to Learn.”
Harvard Business Review
, May 1991, pp. 99–109.

Bandura, Albert.
Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control
. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Braverman, Harry.
Labor and Monopoly Capital
. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.

Brown, Tim.
Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Bryan, Christopher J., Gabrielle S. Adams, and Benoît Monin. “When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
142, no. 4 (2013): pp. 1001–5.

Chopra, Deepak, and Rudolph E. Tanzi.
Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being
. New York: Harmony Books, 2012.

Collins, Henry M., and Trevor Pinch.
The Golem: What You Should Know About Science
. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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Alzheimer’s, a Love Story: One Year in My Husband’s Journey
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.
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.
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Make Space
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Dweck, Carol.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
. New York: Random House, 2006.

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Survival in Marriage
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Gandhi, Mahatma.
Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule
. Ahmedabad, India: Jitendra T. Desai/Navajivan, 1938.

Goncharov, Ivan.
Oblomov
. Translated by David Magarshack. 1859. Reprint. London: Penguin, 1954.

Gordon, William J. J.
Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity
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Graves, Robert P.
Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton
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Language in Thought and Action
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The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
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Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
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No Contest: The Case Against Competition
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101 Design Methods
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Of Men and Machines
. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1963.

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Ideology and Utopia
. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936.

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A History of Technology
, ed. Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and A. R. Hall, 1: 2–3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954.

Prince, George M.
The Practice of Creativity
. New York: Collier, 1970.

Putney, Snell, and Gail J. Putney.
The Adjusted American: Normal Neuroses in the Individual and Society
. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Schumacher, E. F.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
. New York: HarperCollins, 1973.

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Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing
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Player Piano
. New York: Doubleday, 1952.

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Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
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Teamology: The Construction and Organization of Effective Teams
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