Evolve or Die

by Thomas C Triumph

  Aversion to Change

  Industrialist J. Paul Getty was right when he said, “In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.” It’s often the most experienced people who are the most resistant to change. But the bottom line is this: people get comfortable doing things a certain way, and as a result are participants in putting up resistance to what’s new.

  Ignorance

  I’ve seen people fight something new, simply because they don’t really understand it. Or they have no ability to distinguish between something critical versus unimportant. It’s like the anecdote about a $1 part holding up a million-dollar Space Shuttle launch. I’ve seen people delay a new product because it didn’t yet have its own accounting charge code, and they didn’t want to bill their time to a general charge code.

  Lack of Courage (Fear)

  Nobody will ever admit that they’re afraid of innovation (or change). But the fear of trying something new, and failing, is ubiquitous. It’s often the reason for protracted product testing or failure to ship.

  Any of the above suspects can be used to kill innovation, and usually more than one is at work simultaneously. Their danger is easily overlooked for a couple of reasons. For one thing, everything on the list is common and familiar. We experience resistance so much that we almost don’t recognize the pull toward oblivion. It’s like a gravitational constant in our work environment. Maybe like an open elevator door we step through every day. Another reason these dangers are overlooked is that they’re observable by everyone. And that shared awareness makes them feel less threatening.

  Despite the above list of suspects waiting to kill your idea, hard work and awareness will help you avoid them. And, of course, sometimes we get lucky. Which is what happened to me in the elevator. The elevator indeed had malfunctioned. But, fortunately, my fall into the abyss was short, as it had stopped a foot below the level of the floor. Decades later, I can tell you, nonetheless, it was a memorable drop. I collected my wits and the computer printouts that had fallen to the floor, promising myself that in the future—I’d look where I was going.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson!”

  The Twelve

  Dimensions of Courage

  I’d only been out of college for a few years, when my manager made an offhand comment that has stayed with me for decades. He said, “I like to take words apart to better understand myself.” His name was Alan. I don’t remember his last name, but I remember he used to talk slowly—like he was thinking about every word. He seemed old, though looking back, he was probably in his late thirties. I asked him what he meant. “Well, I’ll give you a real example,” he said, “one from just the other day.”

  We worked at a large aerospace company outside Los Angeles. My desk was made of gray sheet metal and was in the middle of a cornfield-size room with hundreds of other identical gray desks arranged in a grid on the linoleum-tiled floor. It was a strange place, full of unusual characters. An old engineer, used to remove the cap from a BIC pen and nonchalantly scrape wax from his ear canals while talking to you. On one occasion, I earnestly asked someone named “JP Smith” what the initials stood for in his first name. He became enraged and yelled, “Those aren’t initials. That is the name my parents gave me, and it doesn’t stand for anything!” Another guy whistled made-up tunes—continuously. I mean, he always whistled. It was torture. To this day, hearing someone whistling makes me cringe.

  In comparison to the other people surrounding me in the cavernous cubicle farm, Alan was normal. We were in his office. It was one of several cubes, which had seven-foot walls but no ceilings, that formed a row alongside the open floor plan. He took out a sandwich from a paper bag and while eyeing it said, “Take the word discourage.” He exaggerated the prefix dis. “Well, the dis is Latin for apart. So, whenever I might be feeling dis-couraged,” he continued, “I ask myself ‘Do I want to be the kind of person that’s apart or separated from courage?’”

  I nodded in understanding. For whatever reason, I’ve thought about that conversation occasionally over the past 30 years. And during that time, whenever I read about someone with courage, or saw someone act heroically, I would think about Alan’s comment and the difference between courage and discourage.

  Here’s what I think courage often looks like. These are just rough guidelines, of course. A fundamental reality of having courage is that it’s available to anyone. There are no age, sex, race, religion, or cultural requirements. And there’s no one way (or even twelve) to be courageous. But this is a start.

  Staring Down the Fear

  Sooner or later, we’re all going to be face to face with something we’d rather not be facing. Loss of a job, illness, economic calamity, natural disaster, death of someone we love. You name it. It’s not that courageous people don’t feel fear, it’s that at some point, they decide to stare it down and punch fear in the face.

  Speaking Up

  Not everybody has an equal voice. Not everybody sees what you do. When Beatle George Harrison learned about the starvation and suffering in Bangladesh, he decided to use his voice for those without one. George helped organize the first charity concert, the Concert for Bangladesh in Madison Square Garden in 1971.

  In addition to raising visibility and money, the Concert for Bangladesh was the model for all future benefit concerts. In his book, 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, author Tom Moon wrote, “Pull this out whenever your faith in the power of music begins to wane.”54

  You don’t have to look far to find someone without a voice. Speak up for them.

  Silence “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;

  courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

  —Winston Churchill

  Solitude

  It’s difficult to stand apart from the crowd, to be the lone voice, to go where you’re not supposed to go. It’s easy to get behind the curtain (symbol or dogma or culture of the times) and repeat what everyone else is saying.

  Supportive

  It’s easy to be critical. To shout or mumble (or tweet) why something or someone has failed. To pile on the criticism, while secure in anonymity, authority, or distance. A courageous person recognizes bravery in others, and doesn’t stand on the sidelines taking cheap shots. “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do.”

  —Benjamin Franklin

  Saying No Thanks

  If you want to separate yourself from the pack of mediocrity, you can’t spend all your time in the pack. You need the confidence and commitment to invest your time elsewhere. Saying “yes” to everything is going to make that difficult. It’s hard to separate yourself from the pack, if you’re always putting yourself in the pack. And it’s nearly impossible to find the time, if you’re always pursuing other people’s suggestions.

  Consider Russian cellist Daniil Shafran who, after spending countless hours practicing, won first prize at the USSR All-Union Competition for Violinists and Cellists. It was all the more amazing as he was 14 years old and had entered unofficially because he was below the qualifying age limit.

  Shafran would often practice a song at twice the speed to challenge himself technically. He described his attitude as, “mercilessly strict with myself when practicing.” Shafran, as required of any world-class performer, had the courage to put in the countless hours necessary to master his craft and passed up lots of other activities along the way.

  Stepping Forward

  Courageous behavior requires people to take their turn.

  When someone fell onto the New York City subway tracks at the 72nd Street Broadway-Seventh Avenue station and was knocked unconscious, Gray Davis, a dancer with the American Ballet Theater said he, “initially waited for somebody else to jump down there. People were screaming to get help. But nobody jumped down. So I jumped down.”

  Once on the tracks, Mr. Davis lifted the unconscious man onto the platform, and then heard the coming train in the distance. “It was really scary,” he sa
id. “I don’t know if I had time to process it until I saw my wife coming down crying—then I realized it was scary.”55

  The opposite, of course, is shirking from taking your turn. Hoping you won’t be asked to do something uncomfortable because you don’t want to look stupid, awkward, or ill-prepared (much less do something dangerous).

  Searching

  Courageous people are often seeking new ways to improve and new horizons to explore.

  Alexandra David-Néel was a Belgian-French explorer and writer of over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels. Her work influenced writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. To say she lived an adventurous life would be an understatement. She first ran away at age five, wrote an anarchist treatise that was translated into five languages, slept on a bed of nails, and lived in caves. In 1924, she snuck into the Forbidden City. Foreigners were barred from traveling to Lhasa, Tibet, so David-Néel disguised herself as a beggar and then a monk by smearing her face with soot and wearing a traditional fur hat—and then hid a pistol and a compass under her yak wool rags.

  Other people exhibit their courage not by exploring inaccessible foreign lands, but by exploring their inner psychology, or musical soundscapes, or solutions to unsolved math problems.

  Standing Your Ground

  Courageous people reach a point where they say, “enough is enough,” and decide that they’re no longer going to continue forgoing what they believe should be theirs. This stance is often directed not toward an external enemy, but toward themselves. They demand of themselves, “Will the real me please step forward?”

  This is what Eric Thomas, a homeless high school dropout, asked of himself—before he went on to get his high school equivalency, then a college degree, then a master’s degree, and then a doctoral degree.

  Saying You’re Sorry

  Being human entails making mistakes. And when you’re living courageously, that necessitates trying and doing things above and beyond what’s normal. So, yes, there is the inevitability of falling short or screwing up. Accept responsibility. Apologize. Learn. Move on. It’s what brave people do.

  Staying the Course

  American writer and educator George Leonard outlined what the path to mastery looks like in his excellent book by the same title. His conclusion has been proven by neuroscientists and extreme performance coaches and athletes (and our own experiences). Progress is taking place even when there’s not obvious external evidence of improvement. When time is spent, seemingly grinding along on the long stretch of the plateau.

  Starting

  I’ll end at the beginning. At some point, being courageous means getting started. The first step is often the scariest and the most difficult. But without that first step, there is no courageous act.

  I left that aerospace company a couple of years after working for Alan, and we never connected again. It’s been more than a few decades. My hope is he’s healthy and happy. Wherever he is, I know he’s not dis-couraged.

  Why You Should Speak Up

  This is a story about a man named Robert Ebeling. He acted heroically. Mr. Ebeling had the integrity necessary to express the facts, and the courage to do what was right. Even when it was really difficult.

  First, I want to tell you a not-so-significant story. Because it’s this not-so-significant story that gives me the perspective to better appreciate Ebeling’s heroism.

  The CEO made a fist and slammed it on the conference room table. His face was red. Then he yelled, “Damn it, Triumph! Don’t bring that up again.”

  A few weeks later I was fired. At the time, I was working for a medical device company that dominated the industry with more than a 70 percent global market share, and I was explaining (again) the product development roadmap. Specifically, the necessity of completing the development of the next generation product. It was a leapfrog product, and the frog we were hopping was ourselves.

  We were having difficulties with the development (new materials weren’t passing life-cycle testing), and it was during such a setback when I was making the case to carry on. Meanwhile, the CFO and his accountants were advocating killing the effort. One of them said (and I swear this is true), “The company hasn’t had a new product for ten years, and we’re doing just fine—so we don’t even need a new product.” So, I was let go just a few weeks after that occurred.

  It was decades ago. It still kind of hurts, if you want to know the truth. Some years after my departure—having still not launched a new product—the company was reorganized and eventually completed the product development effort described previously. In fact, the same head of research and development (R&D) who originally patented the design, and was in the conference room for my chastising, was still there. His leapfrog design still dominates the industry and generates a few hundred million dollars annually.

  Here’s what you already know, despite the huge market share the company had, the world has a way of changing, and competitors have a way of competing. Progress isn’t a direct unimpeded swagger into the future. So, it’s obvious that a company needs to continually be improving its products.

  But, at the time, evidently some people wanted to do what in the short-term must have seemed easier. No heroism on my part. Just a conviction to advocate professionally what I believed was best for the company. I stood up. I got fired. That’s the not-so-significant story.

  Now meet Robert Ebeling. Mr. Ebeling is a hero. Though like a lot of heroes, he certainly did not think of himself as such. In fact, for much of his life he thought he was a loser. He said so. Robert Ebeling was born in 1926. Maybe because his dad was a car mechanic, Ebeling had an affinity for mechanical things, and after several years as an infantryman in World War II, he got a degree in mechanical engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1952.

  After graduation, Ebeling moved to San Diego and worked for an aerospace company called Convair that made the first Atlas rockets used in Project Mercury—the first US human spaceflight program. He then joined a company called Thiokol in 1962 and eventually became the manager of ignition systems for the solid rocket boosters used for the Space Shuttle.

  On January 27, 1986, 26 years after joining the company, which by then was called Morton Thiokol, Ebeling gathered data, and along with several other engineers argued passionately with their managers and with NASA management that the Challenger shuttle launch scheduled for the following day needed to be canceled.

  The problem, they believed, was that the atypical cold temperatures that were then occurring in Florida would prevent the O-rings from properly sealing the rocket booster joints. They argued for hours that because of these conditions, a potential catastrophe was possible. But politics and pressures resulted in them being overruled by their managers and by NASA, and the lift-off was allowed to continue as planned, despite the cold overnight temperature of 18 degrees.

  That next morning on January 28, Ebeling drove to work to watch the Shuttle launch from a large projector television screen. He took his daughter to work with him that day. He was sick with fear, and during the drive told his daughter, “The Challenger is going to blow up. Everyone’s going to die.” His daughter, Serna, recalled, “He was beating his fist on the dashboard. He was frantic.”

  Watching the launch, shortly after what appeared to be a successful liftoff, a fellow engineer told Ebeling, “We’ve just dodged a bullet.” But, that was not the case. Just a minute later, the O-rings failed, and the Challenger erupted in flames and exploded. All seven crew members were killed.

  Ebeling broke down and began sobbing. In some ways, he never recovered from the tragedy. “I’ve been under terrible stress since the accident. I have headaches. I cry. I have bad dreams. I go into a hypnotic trance almost daily.” He left Morton Thiokol. He quit engineering. For decades he suffered with guilt.

  On the thirtieth anniversary of the event, in January 2016, Ebeling told an NPR interviewer that, “I think this was one of the mistakes God made. He shouldn’t have picked me
for that job. I don’t know, but next time I talk to him, I’m going to ask him ‘Why? You picked a loser.’”

  Hundreds of people who heard the broadcast wrote him letters of encouragement and understanding. Ebeling’s old manager at Thiokol called to tell him that, “He was not a loser, that a loser was someone who has a chance to act but doesn’t, and worse, doesn’t care.” The manager went on to explain that, Robert “really did do something.” “If he had not called me, we never would have had the opportunity to try to avert the disaster. They would have just gone ahead with the launch. At least we had the opportunity to try to stop it.”

  Work is usually not a matter of life or death. In fact, for most of us what’s at stake doesn’t even compare to flying a rocket into space. But that’s not an excuse for abdicating your voice, for not doing your best or sharing what you know, for looking the other way and “hoping for the best.”

  It often takes courage to speak up. And it’s often important. As it turned out, Ebeling said all those letters of encouragement following his NPR interview greatly helped relieve his pain. “You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease,” he said. “You have to have an end to everything.”

  Just a few months after his 30-year anniversary interview on NPR, after receiving all those letters, Robert Ebeling died. One of the listeners to that NPR broadcast was an engineer named Jim Sides. Sides said, “Bob Ebeling did his job. He did the right thing, and that does not make him a loser. That makes him a winner.”

  Monkeys Don’t Build Rockets