[Sue Mattison, Dean, College of Professional Studies, University of Wisconsin- Green Bay]

Welcome everyone to the U.W.-Green Bay Last Lecture Series in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the University of Wisconsin Green Bay.

Given the opportunity, what would faculty say if they had one last lecture to give? Thankfully, this is hypothetical question and the six people who were generous enough to deliver a last lecture this year, this is not their actual last lecture.

Describing the faculty in the words of William Wordsworth, “What we love, others will love, and we will show them how.” And that’s really the truest sense of the faculty because of their passion for their scholarship and their field of study and they transmit that knowledge to the students.

So, it’s my great honor tonight to introduce you to the Last Lecturer Doctor Phil Clampitt. Doctor Clampitt got his PhD from the University of Kansas. He is the Blair Endowed Chair of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He was previously designated the Hendrickson Chair of Business and the Wall Street Journal and M.I.T. Sloan Management Review have highlighted his work on decision downloading, which details how companies can effectively communicate decisions to those not involved in the decision-making process. It’s a really important skill.

He most recent – His most recent book, Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness, is a SAGE Publication best seller. In addition, he’s co-authored “Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century” and “Embracing Uncertainty, the Essence of Leadership.” Along with being on the editorial boards of numerous, numerous professional journals, top journals in the field, his work has also been published in these journals. Professor Clampitt is a recognized expert on communication assessments, having conducted more than 100 communication audits and he uses these experiences to write chapters in the “Handbook of Communication Audits for Organizations and Communication Audits” by Cal Downs.

In addition to many guest-speaking opportunities in the United States, he’s also been invited to speak internationally at the University of Pisa, the University of Aberdeen, University of Ulster, and a number and numerous multi-national businesses and professional organizations. He’s consulted on communication and leadership issues with a variety of organizations such as Pepsi, Manpower, Schneider National, American Medical Security, Dean Foods, the Bolt Company, Phil Mani Papers, Dental City, Prevea, the U.S. Army War College, the City of Appleton, the Neville Museum, and Nokia.

And that’s not the full list.

In addition, he created a website devoted to improving critical thinking and communication practices. And I believe that’s the drsowhat(.com)? And I went to the site and it’s – and its really quite helpful. The site contains complementary communication tips and various tools discussed in his seminars and classes. So, speaking tonight on the magical connection between uncertainty, innovation, and the human spirit

[slide featuring the title of the presentation, The Magical Connection between Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Human Spirit by Phillip G. Clampitt, PhD a.k.a. Dr. So What]

– please join me in welcoming tonight’s Last Lecturer, Doctor Phil Clampitt.

[applause]

– Well thank you for those kind words. It’s just enormous pleasure to be here and see so many former students and current students and friends of mine in the community. It’s just a huge honor, so it put a lot of pressure on me, and I just said, “I’m gonna have fun.” And we’re gonna have fun tonight. I wanna share with you some thoughts about something, and it’s gonna be a little bit different for those of you who need refresher lessons, I assume that’s why some of the alumni came, so we’re gonna be a little bit different than you’ve seen before, it’s gonna be a little bit more about my life and how I came to to think about these issues in a way that I did.
And so, you’ll get a little bit of insight into that. And and I think you’ll have a lot of fun and I think you’ll learn something as well, at least that’s my hope.

So, I’m gonna start at the beginning, and I’m gonna start with this diagram right here.

[slide featuring an illustrated map of the solar system with the Sun on the far left and the planets indicated by name from left to right]

And you think that’s an odd place for a communication professor to start. It’s an odd place for a lot of people to start, but apparently that’s where I started, because my father told me that one of the first things I learned to say when I was a young kid – in fact before I said, “Mommy and daddy”- I learned all these planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

And he was quite proud of showing all his science friends. He worked at Oak Ridge, the Oak Ridge Lab, right after World War II and he was quite proud of demonstrating that even though

[Philip Clampitt, on-camera]

– I couldn’t, at the time, I’ll probably say mommy and daddy. I could say all those things and he was quite proud of that. And my father was quite instrumental because I remember and I’ll never forget, we used to go out at night, he built a home-made telescope, and I’ll never forget going out late at night and all the other kids were doing what other kids were doing and we’d look at the stars

[return to the solar system slide now with an inset illustration of a father and son looking through a telescope with a large supermoon in the background]

– we’d look at the moon, and we’d learn all these incredible things, and he told me these incredible stories and those are vivid, vivid memories as a kid. Because it was cold, not as cold as Wisconsin, but cold, and the best time was the winter sky to go out and see things as some of you know. We’ve got a scientist in the room who probably knows that better than I do.

But I remember doing that and how profound it was. And then, he told me a story.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And this is what really got me going on my path. It was about the the planet Neptune, and those of you who have studied Neptune and know about it know that

[return to the solar system slide now with an inset photo of Neptune beneath the inset illustration of the father and son and telescope]

– one of the things that was most interesting about the planet Neptune was, nobody could see it. My dad could point me to Venus, and I can still point to Venus, believe it or not, and I know where Saturn and Jupiter and all those, but you couldn’t see Neptune, nobody could find it. But they knew from mathematical formulas that you could predict the not seen or something that wasn’t seen from a mathematical equation.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And this just intrigued me to no end, how you could take things like telescopes and math and find things that don’t exist by doing this.

And this had a profound impact on the way I began to think and look at the world. I dont – I didn’t recognize it at the time, and I think a lot of these things we don’t. I recognize it I recognize it today.

And I’m gonna share with you one other thing. My lovely wife is back there some place. She doesn’t know this story, so, I am – and there are some of my basketball buddies, right, you wanna raise your hands. Guys I play basketball with, they will admit it, they’re here and we play basketball over at the gym every now and then and we used to play more regularly. I’m going to give you the ultimate power word to use with me. Okay?

So, you guys, this is just for you. Okay? But it also had a profound impact, and this slide’s gonna say like, “What in the world is going on?”

[slide featuring three photos a stop sign on the far left, a photo of a frog on the upper right, and a photo of a set of steps on the lower right]

So, here we have a stop sign, we have a a toad, and we have some stairs. And when I was in high school, I played football and I was I was a junior in high school and the coach, I’m not gonna name his name, but he was, the coach made us run stairs. Okay? That was how we got in shape. Okay? And all the basket – all the football team would go up and down the stairs just to get back in shape and and and and frankly, today, even today, this morning, this afternoon, I spent 30 minutes on stairs climbing them, it’s a lifelong habit I picked up. Jay’s sitting there and he knows I do that, he taught me some new things.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

But what in the world does that have to do with the stop sign and the toad? Okay? Well, here’s the way this particular football coach motivated everybody. We were running up the stairs, he would always say to the fat to the to the the seniors who he’s trying to groom, “Hurry up you toad!” And if you were going slow, he’d call you a toad. And that was the worst thing you could ever be called is to be called a toad. So, guys, if you want me to stop dead in my tracks, just say, “Don’t be a toad, Phil. ” So, Laurie, you can say that, “Don’t be a toad. And I’ll probably just a visceral reaction to that. Now I’ve got a counter argument to that, but I’m not gonna let you know what it is.

[laughter]

So, as you imagine I would. But the interesting thing was, I had never been called a toad while running the stairs, I always kept running up and down the stairs and I was never called a toad. This particular coach was the driver’s ed instructor.

Now I’ll never forget this. It’s weird how, you know, how we all have these strange situations where we remember things, and this is a strange one. I was in a car I was in a car with a young lady who was driving the car and the coach, the coach who called everybody a toad would start – we were driving along and – I can actually name the street and know where it is – we were driving along and the young lady stopped at a stop sign and the coach turned to me and said, “Did she stop?” And I went, “Well, kinda, sorta, yeah.” “Look, do you wanna be a toad? Did she stop or did she not stop?” I said, “Well she kinda, sorta.” “Well did she stop, or did she not stop?” I knew what the answer was, I knew what he was hinting at, I dont agree with it – I didn’t agree with him, she stopped. “She did not stop, Coach.” “Okay, so you’re not a toad, wonderful, okay.”

But I’ll never forget that incident because you know what I thought; I still think to this day. We all do this, right, we sort of stop, and then there are other people that have a full stop. Both of them count as stops, okay, in my book. Particularly around – we have any police officers in the room?

[laughter]

You know, both of them count as stops, okay? Now, you’ll kind of, now you’ll say, “Why is he telling that story?” And it’ll come – come – to – to fruition in just a minute. And then, years later, I was – I got my PhD and I had fun and that was all great and I enjoyed it. And I was invited to go to the –

[slide featuring a photo of the campus of the North Norwegian University of Science and Technology along with the universitys logo]

– North Norwegian University Science and Technology, this particular school that you see right here. Very, I mean, very, like almost Cambridge-like in the way it looks and Oxford-like. If you’ve ever been there, it’s just incredible. And so, I was asked to go there to be on a committee for a defense committee of somebody getting their PhD.

And so, they tried to get the top scholars in the field of organizational communication for this young woman’s defense. Okay? And I knew the other two people, who I’m not going to mention right now –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– but I flew over, I was the outside international observer. They paid the whole way. It was great. It was a great time.

Well, I didn’t get the dissertation ’til I got on the plane. Okay? And I read it on the way over, and – on the way over on the plane – and the first 10 pages or so were almost direct, they weren’t – they werent plagiarized, but they were almost direct citations and comments from one of the members of the committee. And then I read 10 more pages and they were from the second member of the committee. And I read 10 more pages and it was how wonderful and brilliant professor Clampitt was for saying all these things. And it was all my stuff, you know? And I kept saying, “This isn’t what,” to myself, “This isn’t what a dissertation’s supposed to be about, it’s supposed to be about creating new knowledge.” So, I said, “What’s the one question I could ask, that would really cause this candidate to pause and think about what she was doing?” And so, I thought of that question.

And so, we’re in this really big auditorium, twice as big as this, it’s much more intimidating, this environment, and it looked like it came right out of Cambridge or Oxford and it’s a cold day, it’s beautiful, and the candidate walks in, her parents are in the back, and it’s really exciting and cool, and the candidate comes up.

And the couple of the former – those of you who know dissertation defense, I know some of you do, it’s kind of like what some of us have done and most of you have done who have had class with me, you do the Q and A afterwards, right? So, she makes a presentation, and the primary thing was Q and A. So, I started doing a Q and A.

And the first question I ask after they got done was, “If you could name one idea” – it happened to be on leadership and communication – “If you could name one idea in the literature that you disagree with about leadership and communication, what would it be?” And I said, “I’ll give you bonus points if you contradict any one of the three of us in the front row.” The reaction was amazing. She was set there in stunned silence. She couldn’t – now she had just been answering for 30 minutes all kinds of other technical questions and everything. She could not answer. And so, being the person I am, I have been through this, Im gonna – she’s gonna go through a little grief as well. I’m thinking, I’ll just pause and see what happens, and she still couldn’t say anything. And so, finally I said, “Let’s take a break. And when we come back, can you answer the question?”

And we took a break, and I could see there was nervous chatter going on in the background, nobody talked to me, ’cause I – I was the guest, except my colleagues that I knew, and they said – and I came back, and I asked her the question. Now guess what happened next?

Could she answer? And the answer is no. She still couldn’t answer, so we had to go on. Okay? Now I will – the – the good news is, I said, “In America, in the United States, I would not say yes to this dissertation. Cause it didn’t create anything new. But in that culture, that was what they – they taught as a dissertation. And then they told me something when we went back in the committee room to deliberate this word –

[return to the slide featuring the logo and photo of North Norwegian University of Science and Technology, now with the Norwegian word janteloven in a speech bubble]

– janteloven, okay? Janteloven. And I had never heard this word before. It sounded kind of sexy, so I thought.

[laughter]

Well, I’d better learn what janteloven sounds. I wanna be able to say that to a lot of people, you know. And as you begin to look at the – the notion of what janteloven is, I want you to look –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– I just pulled this from Wikipedia recently. Janteloven.

[return to the N.N.U.S.T. slide now with the definitions of janteloven to the right of the speech bubble and the phrases below]

You’re not to think you are anything special. You’re not to think you’re as good as we are. That’s why she wouldn’t answer me. She’d put me up on this pedestal, the three of us who were, you’re on a pedestal, you’re not to convince yourself you’re better than we are. You’re not to think that you’re more than we do. You’re not to think that you’re more important than we are. You’re not to think you’re good at anything. You’re not to laugh at us. Well, I love laughing, so I don’t understand that. You’re not to think anyone cares about you. You’re not to think you can teach us anything.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

That’s completely the opposite of the kind of environment in which I grew up, which I grew up in a sense of wonder, you always question, and you answer. Okay? And in fact, today, in Norway, there is an anti-janteloven movement and I won’t say, since we’re on television, I won’t tell you what they named the anti-janteloven. You can look that up on your own, but it’s – its pretty abrasive, they really wanna go after it.

Okay, so, what does – what do all these stories have in common that I wanted to talk about? Well, I’m gonna give you what I call social scientist journey – journey. I always thought my father was the best because he was, you know, he was a PhD in – in chemistry and he was like – he was like a real scientist, but that wasn’t what I was interested in. I was interested in social science. So, I’m gonna give you my journey about it and I’m gonna start with these four things.

[slide titled, A Social Scientists Journey, with four bullet points, Contemplation and Experimentation, Incubation and Innovation, Argumentation and Implementation, and Devastation and Reconciliation, with the first of these Contemplation and Experimentation highlighted in bold print]

This is essentially an outline of what we’re gonna talk about. The first one is contemplation and experimentation. The second one is incubation and innovation. I wanna get my notes here. And then we’re gonna talk about argumentation, implementation, and then I’m going to try to talk about devastation and reconciliation –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– which is really quite hard for me to talk about, but it’s important because it’s part of the journey of life.

So, let’s start with contemplation. And here’s the contemplation. Think about this, what happened to Pluto?

[slide titled, Contemplation, and featuring a photo of scientist Mike Brown along with a photo of his book, How I Killed Pluto, and Why It Had It Coming]

This guy killed it.

[laughter]

It’s no longer a planet, okay? It’s no longer a planet, okay? Its – they don’t do it. So, that thing that I memorized, what could be more solid and – and – and more, you know, stable, than the planets? It’s no longer a planet. That’s one thing. Another one –

[slide animates on the word janteloven in the speech bubble]

– janteloven. We just talked about it. What does janteloven do? It suppresses uncertainty. And this is the picture that some of you may not believe, but this is what I do in probably the place I’m most comfortable, a picture of me at the University of Oklahoma –

[slide animates on a photo of a much younger Phillip Clampitt studying at the University of Oklahoma]

– when I was a young boy studying. It was taken – it’s on the back cover of the Oklahoma University catalog. I was in such deep thought. I don’t even remember somebody taking it.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

That’s what I did. I thought about all this stuff. Okay? Yes, there’s hair there, I know.

[laughter]

I know it’s me because of the – the watch. That – that was a very unusual watch at the time.

[return to the Contemplation slide]

So, what did I do? What -what do you do? Well, I think you always start when you don’t understand something –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– by reading and getting all your facts. In fact, that’s why those of you who’ve taken classes with me know that we always start with 100 facts. What are the 100 facts that you have. I don’t care what they are, but you always start.

And as I begin to read about the whole idea of certainty, we came up – there were all these types of things. I created this diagram called certainty of the things that are known, that are law-like, sure, clear –

[slide titled, The Uncertainty Continuum, featuring two columns one of Certainty and one of Uncertainty with at two arrowed line above them. The list includes a matching uncertainty word for each certainty word – known/unknown, law-like/chaotic, sure/unsure, clear/vague, predictable/random, absolute/provisional, simple/complex, and stable/turbulent]

– predictable, absolute, simple and stable. Uncertainty is unknown, chaotic, unsure, vague, random, provisional – I love the word provisional. I think that’s really interesting. We’ll come back to that. Complex and turbulent. Okay?

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And so, trying to weigh this out in my head, because that’s the way I was when I was in a library, I’d always think about it. I had a – I love going to the library, I’ve always loved being surrounded by books because there was so many ideas there, but it was a calm, peaceful place where I could think about them. Okay?

And so, let me give you an example of why this is so important. So, one of the things I do is test myself, debating back and forth. So, here’s some alleged certainties in the world that we’ve had.

[slide titled, Alleged Certainties, with a list starting with the bullet point, the world is flat]

The world is flat. That was one for a long time.

[slide animates on the next bullet point; The world is composed of only four elements – Aristotle]

Aristotle, pretty smart guy, right. The world is only composed of four elements. My favorite one, there’s a great book about this –

[slide animates on the next bullet point; hand washing does not prevent the spread of infections]

– hand washing does not prevent the spread of infections, okay? You all know about that. For 50 or 30, 40, 50 years there were people that just refused to believe that. These are smart, good people, okay? Theyre not – theyre not – there’s nothing nefarious about them, they’re just – theyre just misguided.

[slide animates on the next bullet point; there is no need for the photocopy machine]

There’s no need for the photocopy machine. Some of you in the room will remember carbon paper and messy stuff. Many of you do not. And then of course our famous most recent one

[slide animates on the next bullet point; there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq]

There were no- there were W.M.D. in Iraq.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And so, you can find these kinds of examples forever. In fact, when I stated getting ready for this lecture, I started finding tons of these examples. One of my favorite one though goes back to something I already talked about.

Remember Neptune? You know, Neptune, we discovered it. There’s also something nobody talks about. It’s called the hunt for Vulcan –

[return to the Alleged Certainties slide now with the cover of the book, The Hunt for Vulcan animated on]

– which was another planet that was predicted that is currently going on and nobody could find it. For 50 years people looked for it, until Einstein came along and looked at it a different way.

So, I can find examples in science –

[Philip Clampitt, on-cam]

– I can find examples in social science, et cetera, and all those types of things, those are alleged certainties. Let me give you another example of – of what types of issues you start thinking through when you start playing with this continuum of – of uncertainty and certainty. Here are – Here’s an example of just some statistics –

[slide titled, Errors and the Law, showing a bar graph of 86 cases of wrongful convictions broken down by the type of error with eyewitness errors, forensic errors and police misconduct being the three biggest errors]

– about wrongful convictions, and what you see in the wrongful convictions literature is so many are done because eyewitness testimony is wrong, okay? And we hear about D.N.A. exoneration and all that, but even eyewitness testimony can create it. So, you start looking into this, you find that things that you thought were so certain and so powerful turn out to be not necessarily true. In fact, there was a book written several years ago called “The Wisdom of the Crowd,” and don’t forget, these are all jury convictions and that was a crowd of people who thought through the evidence, and they were wrong, the evidence was wrong.

My favorite one is a book I just started reading recently –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– called “Snowball in a Blizzard.” Now I’m just gonna read this really quick because it has to do with medicine.

[slide titled, Uncertainties and Medicine, featuring the cover of the book by Steven Hatch, M.D. called Snowball in a Blizzard and containing the following quote]

“My argument is that uncertainty is the great unspoken secret of medicine and that by ignoring fundamental uncertainty, we are doing real harm to ourselves. False certainty can lead us as doctors and patients to misinterpret data and thus make bad choices.”

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

One of the craziest, and one of the ways that you begin to start thinking about this is you realize we go to – we go to experts, like I was, in Norway, and you say they have all the answers. Well, even doctors don’t know, oftentimes. There’s a high degree of probability that the diagnosis is perhaps wrong. It – it – even – even there – there’s even less probability that they know exactly what – what the – the prescription and what it will end up doing, so obviously we trust them, and we have to live in that environment, so how do you do that?

And then let me give you another profound one that kind of affected me personally when I was in college. I’m just giving you a – a group of things that kind of roll around in my head. And here’s another one. Some of you may remember, there’s a wonderful film called “Sophie’s Choice –

[slide titled, Certainties and Power, and featuring a photo of an ad for the movie Sophies Choice]

– and it got me right here, okay? And it was about a terrible decision. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t tell you any more than this, other than a woman had to make, a mother had to make a choice between two children. And she knew one of them was gonna go away to a concentration camp, so that really got to me, and I – it caused me to go from here to here up to my head

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– and say, “Well, how do those kinds of – Where does that come from?” And there’s lots of reasons and lots of things you can do it but at the same time, I was reading a book, around the same time, a very famous book called “The Ascent of Man. –

[return to the Certainties and Power slide, now with a photo of the book cover of J. Bronowskis The Ascent of Man animated on to the right of the ad for Sophies Choice]

– I still think it’s a wonderful book, it’s long gone, and there was a series on P.B.S., believe it or not, about – about this that was absolutely stunning. And in there he talks in The Ascent of Man about – he has this wonderful phrase that helped explain to me how something as terrible as – as that, what is pictured in Sophie’s Choice could happen, and he says – he calls it “the monstrous certainty of the leaders.”

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And I know, you don’t know, follow me, I’m the only answer. And so, there’s an issue of certainty and power as laying out. So, all this stuff kind of rolls around in my head, and I’m gonna start thinking about this. How does this – how do you begin to make sense of a world where people kind of crave certainty, but they also hate uncertainty, et cetera, and so I developed this kind of idea, so I’ll go through this quickly.

On the one hand, uncertainty –

[slide titled, Pluses and Minuses, now back to the same two columns of certainty and uncertainly and now with a bulleted list of pluses under uncertainty – creativity, growth, and innovation]

– allows creativity, it allows growth, it allows innovation. Okay? We’re in kind of an uncertain time here at the university. And in one sense it’s really good because, you now, we can do all kinds of innovative cool things, okay? On the flip side of uncertainty though –

[the slide animates on the minuses of uncertainty being fear, insecurity, and paralysis]

– is, it creates fear, it creates insecurity, and it creates paralysis by many people, okay?

And on –

[slide animates on the pluses of certainty in the certainty column as, order, predictability, and stability]

– the positive side for certainty, there’s order, predictability and stability. We know what to do, we know how to do it, we get it done. But –

[slide animates on the minuses of certainty in the certainty column as stagnation, conformity, and boredom]

– it can create stagnation, conformity, and boredom, okay?

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

So, where do you come down? It’s a false dichotomy, I know that, between uncertainty and certainty. In fact, the – there’s been all kinds of research about a lot of – most people crave certainty. Very few people like uncertainty. And then the pendulum swung back. They – they crave uncertainty, but they – they – they want some certainty. So, the pendulum’s gone all over the place in the literature. So where do you come down on this?

Well, I come back home to football. Okay?

[return to the Pluses and Minuses slide now with a photo of Aaron Rodgers in football action for the Green Bay Packers between the certainty and uncertainty columns]

The Green Bay Packers. Now, think about this. Certainty and uncertainty, okay? Why do you go to a football game? You don’t know what’s gonna happen, who’s gonna win, right? At the same time, there’s all this uncertainty for a certain period of time, and then at the end, you’ve got a certain result. So, my suspicion is that – that most of us like to live in that middle zone, probably more closer to the uncertainty area.

I’ll give you one –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– other quick example. If any of you’ve ever taken – I’ve taken, my wife and I have taken, and – and she’s taken students on trips abroad, okay? Many of them who’ve never been on a plane, many of them who’ve never been abroad before. The amazing thing that happens is this. We get off the plane, wherever it is. Where’s the first place they wanna go? They’re looking around. Theres all – you’re in Paris, for goodness sakes. Where do you wanna go? McDonald’s, you know! Why do you go to McDonald’s? Why is there such a stampede towards McDonald’s? Because it’s certainty amidst all the uncertainty there, and hopefully you move out of it. So, there is this kind of interplay between – between them.

So, now this is where you get to – to help me out, because I’m gonna give you a quiz. So, all this is rolling around in my head, all these types of things are rolling around in my head, and I create, we create with a colleague of mine, we create this thing we call the uncertainty management matrix, and I’m gonna show it to you right now and there’s a quiz, alright? We’ll see how good you are. Alright?

I will just tell you with this quiz – I got the answer wrong, which is exactly what a good researcher should do. I got the answer wrong. So, here’s the – heres the grid.

[slide titled, Uncertainty Management Matrix, featuring a two-by-two grid with Stifling Climate and Dynamic Climate in top two boxes left to right and Placid Climate and Unsettling Climate in the bottom two boxes left to right. Additionally, there is what is called the Employees Uncertainty Management Approach on the y-axis with Embrace in the top left and Avoid on the bottom right corner and the Organizations Uncertainty Management Approach on the x-axis with Avoid in the lower left corner of the grid and Embrace in the lower right corner of the grid]

And what we did is we – because I’m interested in organizations and how they work, and we created an instrument. You can take it. It’s all – all online and stuff. But do you – does your organization on this bottom layer, does the organization encourage you to embrace uncertainty? Do they talk about their doubts? Do they talk about what types of things they don’t know? Do they share that information? Do they – do they embrace change with all that type of thing? Or do they avoid it, and do they suppress uncertainty in one way or the other? That’s what the bottom axis is all about.

The – the – the vertical axis though is employees management. What do I wanna do? Okay? Do I like to live with uncertainty, which would be embracing it on the top, or do I not – do I try to avoid it? And that creates these four climates called, the stifling climate is a stifling climate where the employee embraces, the employee says, “I love uncertainty, but my organization depresses it.” Then you’ve got the placid climate, which is, “you know what, I don’t like uncertainty, my organization doesn’t provide it, and it’s gonna be placid.” And then you’ve got the unsettling one, was, which is really the really kind of an interesting one, hint, hint, hint, because it says, “Look, my organization embraces uncertainty, I’m not particular comfortable with it.” And, of course, you’ve got the dynamic climate where you have people who have, you know, they like uncertainty and their organization embraces uncertainty.

[Philip Clampitt, on-cam]

So, here’s the test, okay? We – we – I think we surveyed 2,000 people or something like that. In fact, a lot of them were public employees, which, this is why I was really stunned at the results, and I’ll see why in just a minute. But, which – which climate produced the most employee engagement, excitement – and – and – and – and just to buy into what the organization has done? How many of you think it was the dynamic climate? Will you raise your hand?

[wide shot of the audience with very few hands raised]

Okay, I think I maybe set this up a little too good. That – that’s the answer. Okay? That’s the one that most employees like, dynamic climate. But here’s the one that is really stunning, in my view, and so I’ve set this up a little bit too well, I suppose. What do you think is the second most energizing, exciting climate up there? Think about that just a minute.

This is one of the most, this is just – I will tell you, I was stunned. See, I get a little too excited about these things ’cause I – I was wrong on this. So how many of you think – we’ve taken dynamic climate off the table.

[return to the Uncertainty Management Matrix slide]

How many of you think that the climate that was most, you know, enriching, motivating, people think it’s a well-led, was placid climate, anybody?

[wide shot of the audience with a couple of hands raised]

Alright, well, you know, some of you, you’re on my team. Okay? Sorry, you’re on my team. You’re on the wrong team, though. Sorry, as often comes the case. How many think it was stifling?

[wide shot of audience with a few hands raised]

Some of you. It’s actually unsettling. People want to work –

[return to the Uncertainty Management Matrix slide]

– in a climate where things are changing even when they don’t personally – and they embrace uncertainty – even when they personally find difficulty doing that, okay?

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

In fact, we got statistics that indicate this. So, I think that’s pretty cool, because I actually thought, because of all my training, that the placid climate would, the two, the placid and the dynamic climate, that’s where everybody wants to live. That’s where I thought they would wanna live. It turns out that’s not the case. People can- and I suspect I know why – is because they know the world is changing. Even if they can’t deal with it, they – they – they know that there’s uncertainty out there and they trust the group, they trust – they trust the leadership to help them embrace the uncertainty. So, that’s why the unsettling is there. In fact, we got data to support this.

[slide titled, Climates in Well-led vs. Not Well-let Organizations, featuring a set of bar graphs with blue bars equaling a perception of a well-led organization and red bars equaling a perception of a not well-led organization, the y-axis is percentage of employees in each climate and the x-axis has the four different organizational climates – dynamic, unsettling, stifling, and placid. The data shows that by a large margin employees who work in a dynamic (46% well-led to 16% not well-led) and unsettling (32% well-led to 13% not well-led) organizations perceive their organizations as well-led, while the opposite is true for the placid and stifling climates]

I won’t go through all of this, but we surveyed and looked at what employees deemed as well-led organizations, and that’s the – the blue one, and you see how – how high the well-led organizations are in response to, as opposed to the not well-led organizations and you see the placid climate, which is what I thought would be the high, actually turns out to be just the opposite. Not well-led organizations tend to have placid and stifling climates. Well-led organizations tend to have dynamic and unsettling climates.

[Phillip Clampitt – on cam]

Well, that’s kind of profound and kind of interesting. It’s not particular actionable, so we need to take the next step. It’s not enough to just have data that shows that, because in my world where I have to – to implement this stuff with real people and real executives and real students, how do you live and create those kind of environments?

So, what I would argue is that I had to begin to incubate and think about those ideas –

[return to the A Social Scientists Journey slide now with the second bullet point, Incubation and Innovation highlighted as bold]

– and develop innovative approach to dealing with it, and so we tried to take this to the next level. Okay? And the next level says, You know what, when it looks for –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– when you start thinking about this, there are different kinds of uncertainty and the ways that people deal with it. And I would call the difference being, the difference between what we call tweaks and jumps. Okay?

[slide titled, Innovation, featuring two columns – one labelled Tweaks and the other labelled Jumps]

And let me give you an example of what I mean by tweaks and jumps and how that – that plays into it and we’ll talk about that in a little detail.

[slide animates on the bullet point Remodel house under the Tweaks column]

So, here’s an example of a tweak. You remodel your house. Okay? Here’s a jump –

[slide animates on the bullet point New house under the Jumps column]

– you get a new house. Okay? You say, It’s time to move on to another house. Okay? I can’t tweak it anymore. I’ve watched enough H.G.T.V., and I’m sick of watching it, just get me a new house! I didn’t love it, list it baby!

[laughter]

You know? Okay?

[Phillip Clampitt – on cam]

So, it’s one of those types of things. Okay? Or here’s a new sitcom. You create a new sitcom.

[return to the Innovation slide with the Tweaks and Jumps columns and the slide animates on the bullet point New sitcom in the Tweaks column]

Alright, that’s somewhat innovative and somewhat interesting but –

[slide animates on the bullet point Reality TV in the Jumps column]

– it’s nothing like when reality TV came on, that’s a whole another genre, if you will. Here’s –

[slide animates on the bullet point New iPhone model in the Tweaks column]

– another one. A new iPhone model. Okay, yeah, we got that.

[slide animates on the bullet point iWatch in the Jumps column]

The iWatch, that’s a whole different ball – ballgame.

[slide animates on the bullet point Synchronized traffic lights in the Tweaks column]

Synchronized traffic lights. Doesn’t that sound cool? That’s one way to control traffic flow, or –

[the slide animates on the bullet point Round-abouts in the Jumps column]

– you could do round-abouts. Those are very different. That’s a bigger – bigger thing. Here’s – heres another one –

[slide animates on the bullet point Marriage counseling in the Tweaks column]

– marriage counseling. We need to tweak our relationship –

[slide animates on the bullet point New spouse in the Jumps column]

– or get a new spouse.

[laughter]

Okay?

[Phillip Clampitt – on cam]

A new girlfriend, new boyfriend. And here’s another one, more fuel-efficient cars, electric cars.

[return to the Innovation slide with the two columns Tweaks and Jumps now with the bullet point More fuel-efficient car in the Tweaks column and the bullet point Electric car in the Jumps column]

So – so, those are the kinds of things that – that you begin to think about –

[Phillip Clampitt – on cam]

– when you start thinking about the types of innovation, and I’ll link this back to – to uncertainty in just a minute.

So, then you start saying, “Alright, well how do we put this all together in a way that’s manageable?” So, I’m kind of giving an insight into how people like myself and others who – who think in these ways, how we contemplate and how we come to these ideas. They look much sexier when you read them in a book, I’ll tell you that. But this is the origins of – of where they come from.

So, I developed this little diagram called –

[slide titled, Innovations and Platforms, featuring tow diagrams, one diagram is labelled Microscopic view of Node 1.1 and features a circle with the word Exploring in the top of the circle and the word Refining in the bottom of the circle and in the middle of the circle is a wave form that grows, left to right, from a large wave to smaller waves and ends in a small dot. On the right of the slide are four circles labelled Platform Iterations that are stacked one on top of the other with a slight overlap on the bottom and are designated as 1.1 to 1.4]

– that – that deals with the idea of platforms. And – and so, if you look on my far right, your far left, you see a little, what I call a node. Okay? So, in that node, you create the first time it’s ever been created, and I call it node 1.1. And in there you have these episodes of exploring an idea, refining an idea, exploring an idea, refining an idea, until you get something that’s relatively stable. Those of you, students in the class – in the room, you know how I encourage you to have these arguments in your – your groups because that’s the process of – of creation, that’s the process of innovation, et cetera.

And then, once you’ve got a stable, a relatively stable platform, like 1.1, that becomes what you throw out there. So, think of it this way, it’s the first –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– iPhone that comes out, the very first one. I don’t know, they were like clunky or something, you know. And you’re big. Or it’s when Danielle Bina, where are you, Danielle? Someplace. Danielle and I helped create a new course on this campus because of continuous improvement feedback that one of our students provided said, “We need a – we need a course in social media.” And I said, “Well, nobody has a course any place that I can think of that has a place – that has a course in social media.” And I know many of you graduates never had that. We – I created it, we created it, right? We’re teaching it now. And so that was 1.1. I don’t know what iteration we’re on, Danielle, but probably we’re at 1.4 or something like that.

And every time we try to make it better. Okay? So, what is that node from 1.1 to 1.2 to 1.3 to 1.4? It’s continuous improvement. It’s taking what we already do and improving it and making it better. And – so, you know, it’s really, really cool. And that’s – thats kind of one spirit of innovation. It’s not the only spirit, though.

The other spirit is this.

[slide titled, Innovation and Progress Model, featuring a diagram of platform development which has Extreme Uncertainty at the top and Extreme Certainty at the bottom with an arrow moving from Extreme Certainty to Extreme Uncertainty labelled Exploring and a different arrow moving from Extreme Uncertainty to Extreme Certainty labelled Refining. Additionally, in the middle of the diagram are three columns of different Platforms labelled one to three each with their own stack of nodes and an arrow pointing to the right from Platform number 1 to Platform number 3 that is labelled Progress]

Now that’s a complicated diagram, but what I want to point out is that the one on the far right, platform one, is one platform. There’s another platform, there’s platform two, platform three. Ignore the dotted lines for just a minute. Here’s, I have to go back to space. I don’t know why, but I always go back to space. Those – some of you in the room are young enough to remember when we were kids, the most exciting thing that was going on in the world –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– was not who was calling what politician what name. It was – it was the most exciting thing was the space program. Okay? And I – I followed it as a kid. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Walter Cronkite getting on and doing all that stuff. So, it was always just great. And you begin to look at that, what was that? If you go way over on my right, your left, platform one was the Mercury Program.

[return to the Innovation and Progress Model slide]

One astronaut going up to see what we could do and not do. Platform two, the Gemini Program. Starts off, there were some bumps, and there were some accidents, some tragic accidents, and it got better and got better. But platform one or platform two couldn’t put somebody on the moon. You had to go to platform three, which is where the Apollo Mission occurred. Okay? And that’s when you had three astronauts. Now, that’s a rough overview of how I think innovation works –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– and how you embrace uncertainty.

The lines that are there – so, notice the line, the dotted line that says number two.

[return to the Innovation and Progress Model slide]

The minute I get something really, really, really good, I have to jump back up to uncertainty and do something I didn’t – I don’t know what I’m doing, exactly, to establish this new platform. Now I can take the lessons I learned from platform one and use them in platform two, but still, it’s a jump, and it’s a leap into uncertainty. Now that’s a very, very simple overview –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– of what I would consider to be the innovation process.

Now we’re coming to the part that a good 90% of you know is going to happen at one point or the other in this presentation. You know what it is? It’s this.

[laughter]

So what? We have a So What? T-shirt here, right? We have a So What? – somebody who’s taken So What? T-shirt to Antarctica I believe –

[new slide featuring an illustration of a blue person with their hands up in supplication and the phrase So What? underneath the illustration]

– is that right? Where are you? And some of you may wanna know where did Dr. So What come from? Right here, Ben Kotenberg. Okay? He’s riding with me on a cycling, and he said you should just call yourself –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– forget about saying “So what?”, just call yourself Dr. So What? And I said, “Sure, let’s do that.” And so, I started doing that and he’s the one who kind of created it. So, we created this kind of idea of how do you think through problems, so what –

[return to the So What? slide now with 6 more illustrations on the right-hand side with the names, Assumptions, Evidence, Patterns, Effectiveness, Ethical Impact, and Alternatives]

– what are your assumptions, all these types of things. By the way, those of you who are grads, we got a little gift for you, a So what? gift for you at the end of this, so you wanna get it, you come down, Laurie will give it to you.

[new slide titled, So What?, and featuring a photo of the scientist Andy Grove with his quote – Success breeds complacency]

So, here’s the So What?

[slide animates on the bullet point – Different skills required for refiners and explorers]

There are different skills required of refiners and explorers, and one of the – I – I – in some ways I’m sad about having discovered this because what I discovered is, is that some people that are really good, and I’ve talked about this with a lot of executives and it’s really hard, it’s hard for them to deal with, that something – some people – some people are really good at doing six sigma. Some of you know what that is or doing these kinds of processes that create great efficiency, they’re fabulous refiners. And then you refine things to a point where it’s obsolete –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– and you have to jump to a new platform and that’s where you need the explorers. Okay? And so, the skill sets that you need to be refining and what you need to be exploring are oftentimes somewhat different. Okay? And so, it takes a real test of wills to make that happen in an organization.

[return to the So What? slide now with the new bullet point – Success on one platform is no guarantee of success in another]

Success in one platform is no guarantee for success in another platform. Just ask Michael Jordan, you know?

[laughter]

Great basketball player, you jump to baseball, not so good. I wonder in the teaching world if it’s the same way. Face – great face-to-face instructors may or may not make great online teacher type instructors. I – I know I’m struggling with that. So, those are the kinds of things that you have to deal with.

[So What? slide animates on a new bullet point – knowing when to tweak and jump represents the key judgement of leaders]

Third one is that knowing when to tweak and knowing when to jump represents the key skill of leaders and frankly –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– of wise people. The hardest decision I think we ever have to make in life oftentimes boil down to these questions of, Can I tweak this to make it better? Or do I need to dot it – blow it up and start all over, okay, and – and move in a different direction? In our department, for example, we got a really good communication department. We’re just tweaking to make it better. But we have – we have other programs that are brand new. We’re losing a faculty member and we got all young faculty. We’re just gonna blow it up and start over. Okay? And – because we can’t do that. So, we need a new platform for that. We got another platform that we can refine and tweak. And I think that is a really tough judgment and is really tough to pull off. Okay? I call those people that can do that the progress makers.

Well, I don’t ever wanna stop there. I still wanna ask, “Alright, this sounds like a sexy cool idea, Phil. Let’s see if we can make – if you can really use this. And now let’s put it through the grinder.” And so, my grinder is this – is argumentation.

[return to the A Social Scientists Journey slide, now with bullet point number three, Argumentation and Implementation highlighted in bold]

The grinder is – let’s debate it, let’s talk about it. Okay? And so, I’ll sit down with an executive or I’ll sit down with students or my – the faculty and say, “Tell me where I’m wrong, you know, What have I – what are we reasoning? Where are we wrong?” Okay? And they may be wrong. I may be wrong. The good – the best idea wins, that’s the whole idea.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

So, we argue, and then we try to implement. Okay, if we say, and I’m telling you right now, I kind of lean towards let’s embrace uncertainty. Okay? We’re gonna embrace uncertainty. That’s – thats probably the way to do it. Either if we embrace it by continuous improvement or we embrace it by building a new platform. And that’s – thats where I come down on this difficult debate. I don’t wanna live in a janteloven world. Okay? That’s not where I wanna live, and I don’t think that’s what our society and country has been about.

So, alright, if we believe that, what are some problems with that philosophy? Well, here’s one.

[slide titled, How can you make decisions and embrace uncertainty?, and featuring a photo of Rosabeth Moss Kanter giving a lecture]

How can you make decisions and embrace uncertainty? Well, Rosabeth Moss Kanter is one of the premier management thinkers in the world. She says this –

[slide animates on the quote from Rosabeth Moss Kanter below]

– “Perfect clarity is not always possible. Leaders are not always in control of event[s]. But that doesn’t mean the action must stop.”

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And I think acting despite the uncertainty is a hallmark of good leaders. Now here’s another one I get from time to time, and I’ve coached enough executives to know that this is the big one. And it’s this.

[slide titled, How can you be viewed as a strong leader and embrace uncertainty?]

How can I – they don’t say it this way, they’re much more subtle and smooth – How can you be viewed as a strong leader and embrace uncertainty? It’s like, “I look weak if I admit that I don’t know something.” Okay? Now I’ve seen –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– over time people who have developed that skill. Okay? And it’s an enormous advantage. So, I put this to the test. Like, who’s one of my favorite leaders? Well, it happens to be Winston Churchill. Okay? What did Winston Churchill say? This is the most famous speech –

[return to the How can you be viewed as a strong leader and embrace uncertainty slide, now with a photo of Winston Churchill and the quote – We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, the island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Gods good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.]

– he ever delivered. “We shall fight on the -” I wish I could do it like him – “We – we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets and we shall fight in the hills; and we shall never ever surrender.” And then, the uncertainty. “And even if, which I do not for one moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet would carry on the struggle, and in God’s – Gods good time, the new world, with all its power and might, which steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

Beautiful phrase, beautiful thing. And what he was able to do was to weave together uncertainty and certainty in a way that allows him to maintain his ability and perception as a leader.

So, how do you do that in a practical way? Let me suggest that one of the things you can do is, even if you don’t know what is going to happen, you can say –

[slide titled, I dont know what but I do know, featuring a constellation of circles, three across and three down with the center circle, titled Certainties being shared, the circle above Certanties is labelled Process (How), the circle to the left of Certainties is labelled People (Who), the circle to the right of Certainties is labelled Purpose (Why) and the circle below Certainties is labelled Timing (When)]

“Hey, I know – how how we’re gonna do it. That’s the process. I know why we’re gonna do it. That’s the purpose. I know when it’s going to happen. I know I got the best people in the room to make it happen.” Those are the kinds of certainties you have to provide in this kind of environment. Okay?

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And I think all of us, one way or the other, whether it happens to be in a business or it happens to be an organization or it happens to be in our personal life, we have to grapple with uncertainty, whether we choose to or not. And I think it’s the source of innovation. That’s the magical connection, or at least part of it.

So, alright, how do I keep calm and embrace uncertainty? Okay?

[slide with a spoof of the British wartime slogan and poster – Keep Calm and Embrace Uncertainty]

Well, let me give you three kind of thinking tips about how to do this. I could have the whole lecture just about these three things but they kind of –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– they – they – they just kind of permeate the way I think about the world and those of you who are students of mine right now, you don’t know it, but these things are always behind the scenes working.

And the first one is, to think probabilistically.

[slide titled, How?, with the bullet point – Think probabilistically]

Okay? I’m gonna show you what probability’s all about with this balloon.

[sound of a balloon filling with air underneath the slide]

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam, blowing up a blue balloon]

Now, what is he going to do with this balloon? Here’s what I mean by thinking probabilistically. I can guarantee you, almost guarantee you, with 99.9% probability this balloon is not gonna go out through those doors and land on the other side, right? We can almost guarantee that. But we don’t know for sure. Now I know we got some physicists and exciting data scientist kind of guys in the room, too. Right Ben, where are you? Data scientist kind of guys, right? So, you guys wanna say, “I can predict everything.” Well, you can’t predict this. You can’t even predict particles and stuff. All you can predict is that it’s gonna land someplace in the room, and we’re gonna see, if I’m correct in my prediction. That’s the probability. Okay?

[Professor Clampitt lets go of the united balloon and it flutters to the front of the lecture hall]

So, yeah –

[laughter]

– there it goes. Okay? How cool is that? So, when it comes to thinking probabilistically, how do you do that? And I love this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[return to the How? Slide now with a photo and a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald – The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.]

“The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Okay?

Now that sounds nonsensical.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

How do you do that? Well, I – I thought about that for a long time, and I found out an easy way to do it. There’s an 80% probability this will happen, there’s a 20% probability this will happen. And now I’ve got both things in my mind. Okay?

Let me give you an example, you know, another example. I know that the average hiring decision, there’s a 50% probability you’re going to make the right decision. Okay? I know if I ask the right questions, I can increase it to 80% but I still have 20% that I’m not necessarily gonna make the right decision. Okay? We also know probability-wise, those of you who are in finance, my wife is wonderful at doing that, you know. Diversify, why? If you don’t diversify, you may end up like a really big winner, but you also are gonna end up like some people did who invested all their stock in Enron, and you’re worth nothing. So, we diversify.

Health care’s another one. I – how many of you hate it when you hear the drug commercials and they say, “This thing has so and so and so and so potential side effects.” We all hate that, right? And the lawyers made them do it, I know. So that’s fine but I actually think it’s a good healthy thing, because everything you take, whether it’s aspirin or, you know, even a vitamin has a health risk associated with it. I think it’s kind of a nice reminder.

And then finally let me just show you about thinking probabilistically. We live in this age where – where there are so many – you can communicate with millions of people at one time, millions of people. There’s this wonderful mathematical principle called the soft law of large numbers. And the soft law of large numbers says if you communicate to enough people, there will at least be one person who will be offended. Okay? You know?

[laughter]

Or somebody be offended. So, I think, as you think about social media and all those types of things we have to deal with it.

Let me give you a couple other quick examples. I love this quote –

[slide featuring a photo of Robert Rubin with his quote – Anything significant is inherently uncertain and therefore all judgements are probabilistic]

– from the former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, “Anything significantly is inherent – inherently uncertain. Therefore, all judgments are probabilistic.” Anybody who can promise you, who promises you 100% guarantee –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– don’t believe ’em. There’s no such thing. There’s no such thing in life. You can’t have 100% guarantee whether it’s life insurance, whether it’s choosing a spouse, you go to Panera, you know –

[laughter]

– your favorite restaurant, you know, you go there, there’s not a 100% guarantee it’s gonna be perfect but it – it, you know, there’s a pretty good probability. Okay? And – so, you know, you start thinking about that way.

[slide with a diagram of an if-then triangle on its side with two lines meeting in the center bottom of the triangle creating a diamond in the middle and two smaller triangles on the sides of the diamond. The top of the diamond is labelled A, the bottom of the diamond is labelled B, the top of the outer triangle is labelled C, the meeting points of the diamond on the bottom center of the outer triangle are labelled D and E, and the bottom corner of the outer triangle is also labelled E. Additionally, there is a photo of Winston Churchill and his quote – Some peoples idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, that is and outrage.]

And the other thing I combine it with is this diagram, is an if-then diagram. Start thinking about things like free speech, you know. There’s kind of an assault going on in free speech. And so, I always think about – okay, “A” is less – less suppressed speech. What are the likely consequences that come out of that? Okay, what if we allow free speech, which would be “B”? What are the likely consequences that come out of that? And that’s the way you can reason through whether free speech is a good thing or a bad thing. And most people end up and the founders ended up, some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they want back before someone says any back that is – that is an outrage. Okay? So, that kind of provides you that kind of – of detail.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

Let me give you two other quick-thinking tips then I wanna wrap up.

[return to the How slide, now with a second bullet point highlighted bold – Identify the proper level and featuring a photo of the first image of a hydrogen atoms orbital structure as well as an editorial cartoon of two scientists – one looking through a large telescope and on at a desk looking through a microscope and both scientists thinking the same thing]

Identify the proper level. I love this image, it’s the first image of a hydrogen atom, and always the difficult thing in any decision making in an uncertain environment – I think the toughest. I mean other than figuring out whether jump or tweak, I think figuring out the level of intervention. Lets say youve got a lazy – how many of you know lazy people? Come on, how many of you know –

[wide shot of the audience a few with hands raised]

– you all know lazy people! Now the question is, go back to my stochastic model of that, do you tell them, “You’re lazy.” What will be the likely response? Direct response is, “No, I’m not!” And we have a big argument about that. So, then you say – so, then you say, “Well what can I do to correct that?” And you say, “I can go below the level of that judgement about lazy.” We can say, “Well maybe the problem is at the behavior. Maybe we can change some behaviors.” Or you could say, you know, “Something with the organizational structure is a problem.” So, you could do that as well. Same principle holds whether you’re talking about organizations, I do this all the time. Our company’s underperforming. Our organization’s underperforming. Okay, where’s the problem? That’s the first question. Is it the people? Is it structural? Is it a policy? Is it something about the culture? Or is there something that’s going on in the industry?

Now the way in which you make that decision and – and reason through that is a probabilistic – a judgment that somebody has to make. And they’re very difficult to make. Okay?

Finally, let me note this, on how to solve this, then we’re gonna move on to the final part, which would be the toughest part for me –

[return to the How slide, now with a new bullet point – Control comparison levels – now highlighted in bold]

– but I wanna do it because I think some of you need to hear this. And that is control the comparison levels. What do I mean by comparison levels?

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

It means what do you compare things to? Here’s an interesting thought problem. When do people, in terms of percentage, when do most people who commit suicide, do they do it on a rainy day, or do they do it on a sunny day?

Very interesting decision.

I won’t ask you to vote or anything like that, but research is pretty clear on this. They are more likely to commit suicide, if they commit suicide, on a sunny day. Because if it’s not, the comparison level is “I’m depressed, I can blame it on the weather. You see how we compare things? I always think that one of the most important decisions we can make is what you compare things to.

[return to the How slide now with two large red arrows – one pointing up labelled Ideal and one pointing down labelled Inferior]

So, when I hear people complain about change or things like that, I always say, “Well, what’s the alternative? You know, We’re gonna perish if we don’t change. This company’s gonna go away sometimes. That’s one of the – the responses. Now, I don’t know if it’s always true, but it’s certainly. Here’s another one, a little trick. I’m revealing lots of tricks, you can call me a toad, and here’s another trick.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

So, here’s another trick I do in grading. Okay? So, you all know about grading, you can get zero to 100, whatever. So – so, I never give 100s on any major project. I never do, and – and most of you are shaking, “Yeah, I know that.” But what you don’t know is, I had somebody complain to me this week – or not this week but couple – couple months ago. “Professor,” and it was an online course. “Professor, what did I do wrong?” I gave him a 95 on this particular project. What did I – I wrote back, “Nothing.” And then, I did this on purpose to create a little dialogue, right?

[laughter]

So, and they’re like, “Nothing? “What kind of crazy guy is that?” And then, “What can I do to get better, to get a better grade?” “Oh, you got an A. ” So we have this little talk. “So, you got an A.” “Okay, but what do I need to do better?” And I said, “Wow me. “That’s what 96 to a 99 is all about. It’s wowing me. Okay.” I have – And you say, “Well how do you wow you?” And I – I have no idea!

[laughter]

Some of you in the room have wowed me. I know you’re on Phil’s Hall of Fame, you wowed me. Im like, I didn’t know I was gonna be wowed today. But I wanna give you the opportunity to wow me. I wanna give you the opportunity to be uncertain. So, if you’re getting a 95, don’t be depressed, just figure out what’s that sexy, wild, crazy thing you can do to get to 96. So that’s that.

I wanna end this by telling you about the saddest day of my life. And it was the day my mother died. And I’m a private person. Believe it or not, I know some of you don’t believe it, but I actually am. And I didn’t tell any of my colleagues about this. I kept it to myself, and I don’t know if that’s the way you’re supposed to deal with it or whatever, but that’s the way I dealt with it. My wife and I would, she knew, I couldn’t even speak at her funeral. I wrote what I wanted to say but I couldn’t speak. I know you find that hard to believe. But it’s true. And as I reflected back on it over the years, I would reflect back and then said, “How will I survive this dreadful loss?”

[slide titled, Devastating Uncertainty, posing the question – How will I survive this dreadful loss?]

Which is the ultimate devastating kind of uncertainty. And I’ve kind of discovered that – And this is a message I hope that resonates with many of you and it’s why I share it, I don’t share this very often, it’s very hard for me to do.

[Peter Clampitt, on-cam]

But I think it is founded in habits that I formed over a lifetime, how I dealt with this. And it has habits of mind and habits of spirit.

[slide titled, Uncertainty, Survival and the Human Spirt, featuring an illustration of a human head in profile made up of multicolored puzzle pieces labelled Habits of Mind, as well as the phrase – Friends and Family]

I had a lot of really close friends that really helped me. I didn’t really talk to them about it, they just were there, they knew I didn’t want to talk about it, and I did. Laurie helped an enormous amount. I’d also had an incredible foundation because of reading.

[the slide animates on four more bullet points, Reading, Exercise, Eating Right, and Double Violin Concertos (Bach) with the Reading bullet point highlighted in bold]

I read all my life and those of you know, who know me well, know I love books and – and I read an enormous number of biographies of really smart people, hoping that I can pick up some ideas. Okay?

[new blank slide]

So, here are some examples of the biographies –

[the book cover of The Story of My Life by Helen Keller animates on the slide]

– of Helen Keller and how she went through enormous amount of – of pain.

[slide animates on the book cover for the book, Einstein, The Life and Times]

My buddy Albert Einstein, who looks at me in my office, when I – who says, Imagination is more important than knowledge when I write, that’s the picture that’s across from me.

[slide animates on the book cover for the book, A Feeling for the Organism, The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock by Evelyn Fox Keller]

Barbara McClintock who won the Nobel Prize for doing something really bizarre called, that – that people, and we got biologists and people in the room who know this better than I do, but the – the biography was fascinating, because she – she worked in obscurity in actual, you know – for a long, long period of time, advocating what are called jumping genes that – that is now accepted practice. And then of course –

[slide animates on the book cover for the book, Surely You Must Be Joking Mr. Feynman, Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman]

– Winston – Richard Feynman who is kind of where I get my craziness because he – he’s a wonderful physicist and I – my dad turned me on to him and he’s just really exciting.

[slide animates on the book covers for the three-volume biography of Winston Churchill called, The Last Lion by William Manchester and Paul Reid]

And of course, Winston Churchill, the whole biography.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And there’s hundreds of more that have done that. And what it does, what biographies do, good biographies, I should say, not Kim Kardashian –

[laughter]

– that good – good biographies do is they teach you about the travails and what goes on in life and how they struggle. Every one of these people struggled through dark times and dark periods and they were able to go on. And so, that’s really important, to be able to have a foundation. So, I’m always reading biographies and I think that’s really helpful.

And then, exercise. I – There were days where the last thing I wanted to do was to go to the gym and play basketball, or get on the stair master, things like that, but it was a habit; it’s still a habit. Some of you in the room know I believe even if you can’t do that, you do integrated fitness, or you never take the stairs. In fact, I know there’s somebody in the room – Sherie – who –

[laughter]

– who says she feels guilty now when she takes the elevator. That’s a good kind of guilt, okay? So, that’s a good thing to do. And, of course, eating right.

And then, the last thing that helped me get through this time –

[return to the Uncertainty, Survival, and the Human Spirit slide with all the bullet points (Friends and Family, Reading, Exercise, Eating Right, and Double Violin Concertos) now highlighted bold]

– was the Double Violin Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. What would happen was I would be so sad coming to school or going to some place, and I don’t think Laurie –

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

– even knows this, but I – I would put this particular piece of music on. I’m gonna play just a little excerpt of it, if you don’t – you mind? Play a little excerpt of it. I’d put this little piece of music on, and I would listen to it like, I -I listened to this, it’s about seven minutes, I won’t play that, I promise, but about seven or eight minutes, and I would play this. I would drive all the way from here to our Door County House listening to that over and over and over again. And there’s something about this particular piece, okay? And – and, you know, Johann Sebastian Bach, and theres – these aren’t necessarily –

[slide featuring two photos, one of a portrait of Johan Sebastian Bach and one of two violinists in front of a symphony]

– the people that did it, there was something about this piece that resonated. I would come – come to school at eight o’ clock morning teach a class and I – I didn’t even know if I wanted to get up and teach a class, but I had to. And it was part of my habit and I wanted to do it right, and I would listen to it all the way from our home all the way to school and by the time I was home – here I’d be ready to go. And I didn’t do it every day, but there were just days that would somehow remind me. So, I wanna play a little piece of this, and then I wanna show you, tell you what I think happened. Okay?

[the slide animates on the words Despair, Hope and Reconciliation]

Hopefully.

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And I think what that recom-, for me, it was like, because I thought about it, and I’m sure Bach never intended this, but people interpret music in their own way. It was like this despair and hope fighting against each other and then if you listen to the two violins, they reconcile and they go apart and they come back together. And I think that was what really helped me through this. It wasn’t the only thing, because the next, the final story I wanna tell tonight, and – and finish is the hardest one to tell, but it’s absolutely true. And I know there are people in the room that maybe have different religious persuasions, et cetera, and you take it for what it’s worth, but what I’m gonna tell you is absolutely true. And some of you in the room have heard this before, but it’s very hard to tell.

I kept going on and on and on and on, using these habits and I was still morose, and I even was reconciled and all these types of things. And Laurie and I went out on a bike trip out to Zion National Park. And – and we were biking – I kept cycling, that was always helpful, and there’d be biking, biking, biking, biking. And we – at the end of that, one of the – the days we were biking, it was just absolutely stunning, it was dark overcast day. And this is all – this came out of a movie, it sounds like, but it’s absolutely true. I hiked this mountain, okay?

[slide featuring a photo of the mountains in Zion National Park]

The one to my – to my right over here. And there are places, you can’t really capture it in a picture, but there are places where it’s literally, if you go one way or the other, it’s sudden death. It’s thousands of feet down, okay? And there are actually handrails that you go in, and Laurie loves to hike, and I love to hike as well, and – and Laurie walked up about halfway, okay? And she couldn’t go any further. I was gonna get to the top of that mountain, okay?

[laughter]

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And the guide that was with us took me up and he said, “You know, I don’t know, do you really wanna do this? Do you really” “I’m going to the top of a mountain, guide.” And the guide would say, “Are you sure?” He said it a couple times. I said, “I’m going to the, and I don’t really get scared of heights very much, I’m going to the top of that mountain.” And I got to the top of the mountain, up in the top on the plateau up there, there were a few people up there, not very many –

[return to the slide of the mountains at Zion National Park]

– and the guide hung back, Laurie was back, I was all by myself, all alone, which is where I think you have to do these things sometimes. And the sun came open and –

[Philip Clampitt, on-cam]

– I – I was okay. It was like I was over, the loss. It all was done. And it was like, I – I can live with this.

And I came back down the mountain after about 10, 15 minutes up there. I was worried that Laurie was waiting for me too long, and so I, you know, I came back down the mountain, and I said, “Guide, that is the most magical place.” I said, “What is the name of that place?” I didn’t know, because I oftentimes go out without maps, as you can see, I kind of go around, you know.

[laughter]

I just go wherever, and I’ll figure out what I’m doing. And the guide said something, and then all the tears came out. He said, “Phil, that’s called Angel’s Landing.” And that was it, I was okay. And it was just a mystical, magical type of thing.

I don’t want to end on a sad note, I wanna end on this note. Because I think this is the key to the connection between them. Richard Feynman my hero –

[slide featuring a photo of Richard Feynman standing with his arms raised in front of a chalkboard and his quote – I feel a responsibility to proclaim that doubt is not to be feared, but that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation.]

– said, “I feel responsibility to proclaim that doubt, even doubt about your own emotions and doubt if you can make it, is not to be feared, but that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings. If you know you’re not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation.”

[Phillip Clampitt, on-cam]

And I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. And so that’s the journey of one social scientist. It is not over. It is going to continue. I hope to have a fifth bullet point someday, but that was my journey.

So, we end with the question we started on.

[slide that poses the question – So whats the magical connection between uncertainty, innovation, and the human spirit?]

What’s the magical connection between uncertainty, innovation, and the human spirit? You’ve seen on display my view of uncertainty, my view of innovation, and – and you’ve seen a little bit of, I’ve shared with you a little bit about my spirit.

[new slide titled, The Magical Connection, featuring the bullet point, Embracing Doubt]

I would say you have to do this. Embrace the doubt.

[slide animates on the next bullet point, Experimenting and debating]

Experiment and debate, embrace the debate.

[slide animates on the next bullet point, Knowing when to jump and tweak]

Know when to jump and when to tweak. Very important skill.

[slide animates on the next bullet point, Moving beyond fears]

Move beyond your fears and express gratitude.

[slide animates on the final bullet point, Express gratitude]

And there’s plenty of people in the room to express gratitude –

[Philip Clampitt, on-cam]

– my lovely wife, colleagues that are around here, students, my former professors who believed in me, the crazy idea of Professor Lee Williams, Professor Cal Downs, and I wanna express my gratitude to U.W.G.B., too, they hired – Cliff, where are you, Cliff – you hired me! Okay? You hired me to allow me to do these kinds of things. What a wonderful world we live in to allow people to kind of go in their own direction, develop, improve, and do those wonderful things, and these are the kinds of angels that I’ve had in my life. And so, I wanna end with, here we all stand, on a solid but uncertain land of our current knowledge and current way of doing things, and we peer, I believe, into the beauty and mystery and wonder of an uncertain but glorious future.

Thank you.

[applause]