Deon Barnard

In the spirit of reason, logic, communication and rationality, I am going to suggest a few reasons why people so often don’t make sense, and what they can do about their sense-less-ness. I refer to the way people engage in conversations, debates, critiques and other interactions with people where they’re trying to say something, but in fact say something else – or even worse, are trying to say something that really has nothing to do with the topic or context of the conversation.

There are several root causes for the dreaded disease of sense-less-ness:

• People don’t listen. Many people have the insanely annoying habit of listening only for gaps in the conversation so that they can continue to spew forth their out-of-context agenda at any cost. These people have no idea what anyone is talking about because they’re not engaged for the purpose of discovery or learning anything, but rather to give… and give… generously from their never-depleting resource of knowledge and oracle-like opinions. There are others in this category who simply don’t have time to both listen AND speak, so they err on the side of speaking. And then there are others still who can’t listen to you if they don’t like you – so the more offended they get, the less they hear anything you may have to say. You will never make sense until you learn to listen.
• People don’t understand or care about the rules of rational argument. This is my personal favorite! I can still handle someone who may not understand that they have broken three rules of logic in one sentence because they simply don’t have a clue what logic is or how to use it, but when someone who understands logic, insists on being illogical, for manipulative and bullying effect, I tend to lose my sense of humor. The following are NOT reasonable or logical arguments:
  • “Because I say so!”
  • “It must be true because I read it in a book”
  • “I’m fond of carrots. Some cakes have carrots in them – so I love cakes”
  • “Zulus are taxi drivers”

  It’s one thing for someone to get their argument muddled up in the heat of verbal dialogue – not everyone thinks quick on their feet – but there’s no excuse for sending an illogical email or letter which you’ve had time to think through and double check with a colleague for instance. Logic takes practice, and I have a strong conviction that all children should be taught logic and rational debating skills at school in their language classes, especially because so many kids drop mathematics as a subject in grade 10.

• People are dominated by their right or left brain. Not all systematic and logical people (left brained) make sense – mainly because they often lack in the emotional and people skills department. Often discussions only make sense in the context of both feeling (right brain) and fact (left brain). For instance, an emotional wife says something like “My whole world is crashing around me!!” Her left brained husband says “Don’t talk rubbish!” Of course, from a purely logical point of view he is correct in his assessment that his wife may be overstating the case, but he’s not connecting with the emotional truth that she feels as though she’s about to be crushed by a heavy weight. Her statement makes more ‘sense’ than his in the context of what is being discussed. Equally, an entirely right brained person might take every conversation down a rabbit hole of fantasy and feeling and ignore all rules of logic. To be truly good at problem solving you need to develop both sides of your brain and also learn to be in tune with irony and sarcasm, as most people don’t usually ‘literally’ say what they mean.
• People don’t know the difference between healthy debate and emotional warfare. All points of view that can be argued or defended are merely that – points of view. There are multitudes of people who simply cannot discuss some topics without getting ‘personally offended’, as though the topic defined them, and any disagreement is perceived as an attack on their character. Here are examples of points of view that have such people lashing back with personal attacks and irrationality:
  • “I don’t think God exists”
  • “Marriage is irrelevant today”
  • “Pornography can be healthy”
  • “Women should have the right to have an abortion”
  • “There’s nothing wrong with being gay – people have the right to have sex with anyone they like”
  • “George bush was correct to invade Iraq”
  • “The bible is not God’s word. It was written by men”

  These are the sorts of topics that cause people to switch off, stop listening and shut down – and they shouldn’t be! It’s 2010 – time to grow up and stop living in the dark ages of cultural and religious censorship.

So what can one do when they discover the early symptoms of sense-less-ness in their lives? Pray… Only kidding! Read – grow your paradigms and vocabulary which are tools for rational discussion. Learn about the language of logic (Philosophy 101). Listen! Listen to hear and understand – not to respond – then your responses will make sense. Grow your general knowledge and sense of the world. Practice – engage in debates on hot topics with people you trust and feel safe with, this will help you practice the techniques of reasonable and rational debate. And finally – don’t take everything personally – have fun talking to people, even when they disagree with you… no wait – ESPECIALLY when they disagree with you!

The ‘Zeitgeist’ of doing business is rapidly changing in the world. Gone are the days when boards of directors could make autocratic decisions for their own gain at the expense of people or the environment. As people are waking up (finally) to the fact that life is precious,and to their own sense of self worth, and right to an opinion, businesses are starting to realize that they don’t exist for the benefit of their bosses, but for all the role players involved, which include lowly tea ladies and even the Earth itself. This paradigm shift is taking the focus off making money only and moving us to a more human, right-brained and caring approach to the way we do people – and it’s about time too!!

There are still a few dinosaurs out there in business who think that barking out three word commands to their employees is a valid communication technique. There are still a handful of emotional infants who are bewildered when an employee stands up to their bullying, and simply can’t imagine what gives this rebel the idea that they might be “equal” to their own high and mighty self. There are still an outpost of colonial rednecks in business who see people as a necessary inconvenience in the ultimate goal of raping the system and every resource available to further their personal ambitions of wealth and popularity. These are the people who don’t read articles like this one. These managers, and even a few intelligent and approachable types, see team building as a complete waste of time and money. “Why would I want to spend precious Rands or Dollars to take my staff away just to have fun? What good is a little temporary motivation? First show me the math that demonstrates how this will positively impact my bottom line! I don’t do games!!”

This is a very shortsighted and ill-informed view of things. If you’re left brained about the whole thing, here is some people math to help you along:

• People + Resources = Income Potential
• Positive People + Effective Resources = Greater Income Potential
• No Team Building + no Communication + no Motivation = Negative People
• Negative People = strikes, go slows, time wasting grievances and reduced Income Potential
• Team Building + Communication + Motivation = Positive People
• Positive People = Energy & Enthusiasm & Ownership = Greater Income Potential

The numbers seem quite clear to me – if you want to increase your income, get with the program, after all, it is 2010 and people actually matter these days!

So what is team building? Many people that have a negative view of the concept have developed this outlook on adventure team building events like river rafting or wall climbing. The problem with these events is that they often promote competition and being ‘better’ than everyone on your team, resulting in one or two ‘superpeople’ loving the event (because they ‘win’) while the losers feel left out and useless – and there ends up being more animosity back at work than there was before. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m one of those people who loves to compete and do crazy things and would personally enjoy such events – but not because they build teams – rather because they’re fun and a great stress relief for people like me. So let’s call these traditional ‘team building’ events… stress relief sessions. To build a team you need to inject the kind of dynamics that get people thinking, talking, playing and laughing together. Once you’ve achieved this you can move onto getting them to ‘work’ together. Here are some key ingredients for an event that actually builds teams:

1. Start by building the individual. Raise self esteem and self worth. I use three specific activities to achieve this: The Dream Walk, Personality Power and Wheel of Life depending on the time available. All of these are done in a conference room and require no physical prowess or competitiveness – instead they leave the delegates feeling uplifted, motivated and open to whatever else may be on the program.
2. Create opportunities that force people to share without interruption and listen without interrupting. For this I use a commercially available board game called ‘The Ungame’ and other activities like ‘Walk Talks’ and ‘Kneecap Sessions’.
3. Do right brained activities! We spend so much time in left brained environments that many of us have a shriveled nut for a right brain. Right brained activities are things that involve color, creativity, music, dance etc. My Hero Game activity has people sitting around assembling and painting figurines. At first people are tentative about such exercises but once they get started they don’t want to stop because they’re healing and growing and it feels great!
4. Do physical activities that don’t prevent the average person from getting involved in a meaningful way. My favorite team building game is team Frisbee which gets the team dynamic going and everyone can get involved. Team volleyball with an enormous lightweight plastic ball is also fun. There are hundreds of clever ways to get people playing together in a way that is not overly competitive, so stay away from having winners and losers – more especially individual losers – rather have 20 people on a team all ‘losing’ together.
5. Energy and Fun!!!! Don’t get an accountant to run your team building event – rather make sure your facilitator has an inspirational quality about them or you’re going to have a lot of rolling of eyes and huffing in frustration from your group. Also make sure the facilitator doesn’t come across as ‘cheesy’ or ‘cliché’ in the way they bring things across. Use variety to keep things alive.
6. Get people doing unexpected things together like making pizza in teams from raw ingredients or solving puzzles together.
7. Give people homework – a personal goal, or something they have to do as a team over the following days and weeks. This will ensure that the energy of the event continues to have positive effect in people’s lives once it is over.

Team building works. Regular team building works even better. But best of all is Team Building followed up by interested managers who care for, and communicate with, and motivate their people every day. Feel free to contact me for some ideas for your team building event.

We all have vivid memories of certain movies we watched as children. These movies moved us – provoked us – scared us – amazed us! In many ways these movies shaped us, and gave us clues about what we wanted to do when we grew up and what our tastes were. I quickly fell in love with the fantasy genre and all things wizard, sword and warrior – although cinema technology in those days couldn’t always do justice to the ideas. I remember finding ‘Westerns’ boring, but ‘Eastern’ kung fu movies were awesome!! So here are a few movies that had an enormous impact on me growing up. Many of these I have watched well over twenty times and I still consider them some of the best movies ever made. If you missed any of these movies, do yourself a favour and track them down and give them a watch.

Enter the Dragon – Robert Clouse (1973… of course I didn’t watch it then!)

Bruce Lee kicking ass in his own special way! Every time I saw a Bruce Lee movie I became a raving kung fu master for a few hours and practiced my technique on my sister.

Pete’s Dragon – Don Chaffey (1977)

One of Disney’s first full length features with real actors interacting with animated characters. The dragon was seriously cool and cute.

Wizards – Ralph Bakshi (1977)

This movie blew my mind!! It’s a seriously weird and dark futuristic fantasy with strange animation, negative photo effects and a fascinating story. A must see!

Superman (the movie) – Richard Donner (1978)

The one that started them all! Christopher Reeves will always be the only Superman to me. I’ve wanted to be superman ever since. I used to love collecting the superman stickers off the Pepsi bottles.

The Dark Crystal – Jim Henson (1982)

One of my top 5 movies of all time. An epic fantasy adventure done entirely with puppets and robotics (not muppets). The story was fantastic and the production was ahead of its time.

Tron – Steven Lisberger (1982)

The first sci-fi I really enjoyed. People get sucked into the ‘internet’ and end up fighting sentient viruses that look like badly dressed people with killer frizbees… OK, so you need to see it to understand it. This had some ‘Matrix’ concepts long before the Matrix.

The NeverEnding Story – Wolfgang Petersen (1984)

Who didn’t love this movie?! A classic fantasy tale with one of the most memorable theme songs ever (after Rocky’s “Eye of the Tiger”).

Labyrinth – Jim Henson (1986)

OK, so Jim Henson rules!! Another masterpiece with puppets and actors in the form of David Bowie and (sigh) Jennifer Connelly in her first major role. This also has my favourite soundtrack ever – performed by David Bowie.

Willow – Ron Howard (1988)

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love this movie, starring Val Kilmer in one of his best performances ever, this movie has everything: love potions-action-adventure-wizards-swords-comedy-short people-even shorter people-trolls… you name it.

Please send your list and share your memories!

I have received a couple of requests to do an article about success. Is success dependant on hard work or is it all just chance? I spent some time thinking through these concepts and have developed a three colour theory on success. Firstly, we need to be on the same page with our use of the terms ‘Success’, ‘Hard Work’ and ‘Luck’ – all three of these terms have a huge number of applications and meanings. For the purpose of this article, here are the definitions:

Success = Achieving a personal goal to do, have or be something

Hard work = Application of personal energy, effort and time in the sense that it requires some degree of personal sacrifice or exertion.

Luck = Chance or random coincidence outside of your direct personal control, or if you insist – an act of God.

The definition of success here is the critical factor. Bashir, who asked me this question, used the following example: two people with similar backgrounds, with the same education and of the same cultural and language grouping are employed at the same time in a large company. After 5 years one of them has a middle management position and earns double the salary of the other who is still in a clerical position ‘at the bottom of the ladder’. What made the one more successful than the other?

My immediate question to Bashir is, “Who are we assuming to be the more ‘successful’ of the two?” to which Bashir might reply, “Huh? The first of course! The one with the position and the money!!” And that’s exactly the problem with how we see success. If our personal goal is to make a million dollars, we tend to rate the success of everyone around us by that same goal, i.e. Carol hasn’t made a million dollars so she’s not as successful as Bruce. But according to my definition of “Achieving a personal goal”, Carol may be entirely successful at her goal of ironing the laundry for the day, and in Bashir’s example, the middle manager is only ‘successful’ in the context of a personal goal that goes something like, “I want to be a manager and earn double my current income in the next five years”. For all we know, the clerical guy might be more successful if his personal goal was to have a simple 8 to 5 job with low responsibility and no take home work so that he could spend more time enjoying his wife and kids.

As you can see, answering the question ‘Is success hard work or luck?’ has a lot to do with what someone is trying to be successful AT. I propose that luck and hard work play different roles depending on the context of success. The rules change depending on what we’re talking about in the same way that Newtonian physics doesn’t seem to apply at a molecular level, for which we use a different set of rules which we call Quantum physics.

I propose three ‘contexts’ for success: The Red Zone, The Blue Zone, and the Twilight Zone.

In the Red Zone our success is entirely dependent on us doing something about it. Unless a bolt of lightning escapes the twilight zone to thwart our attempts at success, we will achieve our goal through at least some sweat and effort. Of course the whole notion of working ‘smarter not harder’ can also apply here, but nevertheless, work is required. Examples of achieving Red Zone success are:

• Having a clean home. The dishes aren’t going to wash themselves no matter how lucky you are or how much God loves you.
• Becoming a novelist. You’re going to have to write a book to achieve this, there’s no getting around it.

In the Blue Zone our success is not entirely up to us, but it’s not entirely out of our influence either. In this zone our own efforts tend to improve our probability for success even if they don’t ensure it. Examples include:

• Recovering after a car accident injury. Our own desire to recover and subsequent interventions (hard work) will have a positive effect on the success of our recovery but we cannot determine the ultimate specifics of our recovery. There may be unknown neural or spinal complications outside of our control which have countering effects, thereby ‘lowering’ our chances of success.
• Getting employed. You can go to a job interview and say all the right things and wear the right clothes, but someone else decides if you’re the right candidate for the job. Performing well at the interview will ‘increase your chances’ for success but not guarantee your position.
• Winning the lotto. Even though the probabilities are almost entirely against this, success still requires human intervention in the form of buying a ticket. This is very close to Twilight zone success but still in the blue zone.

In the Twilight zone our success has (seemingly) nothing to do with our own efforts at all. At first glance it would seem that this type of success is entirely random or accidental. Examples include:

• Inheriting a fortune. You didn’t ask for it – you didn’t work for it – you just got born in the right place at the right time.
• Sudden death. You’re Donald Trump about to complete your latest hotel venture and your helicopter crashes to the ground or you’re struck by lightning. Not your choice, but you have to live with it… or die with it in this case.
• You get ‘found’ by a talent scout. There are millions of really beautiful girls in the world but some talent agent travels to Morocco and finds a village girl who he takes back to the US and turns into the world’s next big supermodel. Her beautiful friend is still collecting water from a dusty desert well. Hard work? I think not.

There are any number of theories that attempt to ‘explain’ the results of the twilight zone including God, a universal ‘force’, fate, karma, etc. but for the purposes of this article we will leave these ideas alone, except to agree that things happen to us that we don’t control.

These zones could be represented with two circles, the Red and Twilight zones, intersecting at the blue zone as in the diagram below:

Any personal goal or ambition we have will fall into one of these ‘zones’. Understanding which zone the goal is ‘in’ is important for understanding why we regularly fail or succeed in achieving those goals. For example, someone who constantly feels like a ‘failure’ in their job searching because they have a misplaced belief that they don’t need to ‘do’ anything except ‘wait on God’ might find themselves wondering why they never succeed. Job hunting is a Blue zone activity which becomes more inevitable the more effort/energy is applied to the search. Then again someone might spend days and days doing a rain dance in the Sahara in dry season and wonder why their ‘efforts’ are not being rewarded, i.e. attempting to increase twilight zone success. I will write more on these ideas in future articles.

I want to focus here on the Blue zone – an area that is not unlike a strategic war game, where regular good tactics usually overcome the ups and downs of bad dice rolling. My sense (untested at this point) is that some people are more skilled at understanding the probabilities at play in their success and the ingredients required for managing those probabilities and improving their chances at success. So let’s consider Bashir’s question about the middle manager and the clerk. I will assume that the two people in question had a similar personal goal – to get promoted in the company and earn lots of money – one succeeded and the other ‘failed’. This goal is clearly a Blue zone goal: their success, although not entirely in their own hands, will be influenced by various factors (I’ll use the term ingredients) including attitude, communication skills, work hours, problem solving and other personal sacrifices or efforts by the individuals involved.

Here are some of the ingredients I believe increase the probability of success:

• Perseverance: Often the probabilities increase simply because, in time, the competition moves out or moves on, leaving you in a better position to “fill the gap”. Giving up too soon negates this principle.
• Knowledge: This increases your ability to apply your efforts wisely and play a more tactical war game. Reading and practice are critical here.
• Resources: It goes without saying that many probability reducers go away when you throw a little money at them.
• Self belief: Low self esteem is sure to lower your chances at success. Self belief influences every thought and action of your life.
• Courage: The ability to suppress terror and take action despite fear of loss, rejection, humiliation, conflict etc. is a key ingredient for success.
• Relationships: Developing a strong network of allies will weigh the dice in your favour.
• Communication: You’re more likely to attract the resources and people you need for success if you have good communication skills. People also take you more seriously.

These are just a few ingredients for improving your odds in the Blue zone. Of course all the luck in the world won’t help you if you throw double 1′s, or a bolt of lightning leaves the twilight zone and zaps you, but because we have no control over these mishaps of luck it makes sense to apply your efforts to improving your odds until success becomes inevitable.

My good friend Basil suggested that the Blue zone is where the good stuff happens – the creative stuff – the innovations. I agree with him. I think we’ve all been zapped by a few unexpected ‘acts of god’ in our lives, and when that happens we tend to be scared of going too close to the twilight zone and prefer to scuttle around in the Red zone where things are entirely predictable and ‘risk free’. You may find that your ‘impossible dreams’ are not so improbable when you start applying some of the ingredients I have suggested. Remember, to win the lotto you have to buy a ticket – and although I don’t respect gambling because of the insane odds, I think some of the so called ‘risks’ we’re so afraid to take have very respectable odds when it’s all broken down.

Please send your comments. I’m especially interested to hear what you think are the factors that influence the odds in the Blue zone.

I always find it amusing when I hear people use the phrase ‘There’s nothing worse than…’ when I can usually think of 10 things worse than what they’re suggesting in an instant, for instance: sardine milkshakes. This led me to thinking, what are those things for which I myself might use the phrase ‘There’s nothing worse than…’ and the following came to mind:

1.    People who simply don’t pitch when they’ve made a commitment to attend something. They don’t call, they don’t apologize and they don’t care who they let down.

2.    People who are determined to be fashionably late for everything. If a show starts at 6PM they start getting ready to leave at 6PM. The first half an hour of any event is clearly an unimportant formality that does not require the dignity of their presence.

3.    Parents who call their children ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ or ‘Hindu’. As though any child of age 5 or 7 or even 11 could conceivably contemplate all their options and make a rational, informed decision about their religious views while being brought up to fear and distrust any point of view other than that of their parents. This type of religious brainwashing and morbid indoctrination by parents should be outlawed in society as a crime against freedom of thought and human rights.

4.     Back pain! It really sucks.

5.    Dentists. Who are these creatures in white robes that insist on drilling against nerves that lead straight behind your eyes into your brain with such explosions of acute pain that your nightmares pale in comparison. On top of that they insist that you lie on the most uncomfortably designed horizontal chair known to man, for an hour, with intense light shining in your eyes, after which you need a chiropractor to sort out your spine. Your jaw and lips are tugged at and extended to the extent that you have bruises and a strange clicking in your jaw the first time you try and eat anything. It brings back a line from the musical score of little shop of horrors: ‘You’ll be a dentist. You have a talent for causing things pain! Son, be a dentist. People will pay you to be inhumane!’

6.    Poor customer service. I think particularly of those receptionists who can’t even be bothered to hold eye contact as they bark out one word answers to your questions and make it very clear that you’re wasting their valuable Tetris time.

7.    Tasteless cooking. Turning dull, tasteless food into something worth eating often takes nothing more than a suggestion of an imagination, a sprinkle of herbs, or a dash of soy sauce. I cannot understand why people settle for the mundane in this area of our lives that consumes so much of our time and which has the power to add such joy and adventure to each day.

8.    Teasing repartee and hurtful banter. I often sit in amazement as I watch one or two of my friends or guests pick up on a few vulnerabilities in someone in the group and then spend the rest of the evening honing in on those weaknesses with great jest and laughter and seemingly not able to stop themselves until the victim is utterly exhausted or brought to tears. The fact that these wolves see this as some kind of social victory is even more bewildering. Of course, these same people have no ability to withstand even a portion of what they dish out and ultimately show themselves to be the cowardly schoolyard bullies that they are.

9.    Grand prix. Sorry I just don’t get it. Hour after hour of cars going round in circles. I have similar feelings about cricket and golf which are, in my view, just male excuses for spending less time with the family.

I’d love to hear some of your ‘There’s nothing worse than’ ideas.