Propagate the Signal, Not the Noise
You Are Not Your Feed
Microsoft's Leadership Principles are "Create Clarity", "Generate Energy", and "Deliver Success". The rolling out of these principles nearly a decade ago was accompanied by a video from CEO Satya Nadella. When Satya was expanding on the Create Clarity principle, he said, "Don't propagate the noise … propagate the signal." That comment itself was very clarifying for me, and I have held onto Satya's words since then, repeating them regularly to my team and to my mentees.
"Tomorrowmind"1 is a terrific book by Gabriella Kellerman and Martin Seligman that explores how to thrive in an environment of much uncertainty. Early in this book, in a section named "The Nature of Change", they gave a lovely detailed description that furthers Satya's above line. "In 2000, 400 million people, primarily in North America, were online. Today it's 5 billion. That's 5 billion points of origin, 5 billion points of amplification and mutation, for any piece of information -- for any ripples or rapids in the whitewater around us. The size of that ripple corresponds to the size of the impact that each piece of information, or each global event, will have. The ripples will interact -- some will amplify each other, others may cancel each other out. Each of us sits amid these billions of ripples every day, deciding which to attend to, which to ignore, and which might signal a life-altering shift we must get ahead of."
The volume of noise in the system is increasing at an exponential rate. Without intentionally amplifying the signal, we will descend further into chaos. All of the noise will make us deaf.
This is an ongoing fight to increase our signal-to-noise ratio. This is not a battle that any one of us can singularly win. It is enough individuals stepping up that will ensure that we don't collectively lose. Be the signal you want to hear in the world.
Don't Re-act; Act
I have shared part of my favorite Stephen Covey quote in an earlier post2, and I can assure you that I will be sharing it with you more in the future. This quote found me at the right time in my journey such that it struck deep and instigated a deep change in me.
"In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon."
Stephen's words helped me to tease apart my passion from my emotion. I used to see the two as being inextricably tied together: I like that I am passionate, but unfortunately that comes with me being emotional. Stephen allowed me to decouple these two, so that an involuntary emotion did not hijack my voluntary action.
"In the space" gives you time to reflect. "It is the choice of acting or being acted upon" is highlighting the value of using this space. When response immediately follows stimulus, that's re-action. When thought is placed in between the two, there's the opportunity for pro-action.
Take action. Be intentional. And you will propagate the signal.
Turning Down the Noise
It's awesome when you are in more control of your responses. But you can also make your life a lot easier by just removing noise from the system. Much like Scott Young's guidance3, "Removing temptations is easier than resisting temptations."
Microsoft Windows Phone had "Live Tiles" on the start screen. Live Tiles were dynamic tiles that could cycle through different information via animations. These tiles typically represented apps, where notifications from those apps were shown on the tiles. But these tiles could also represent individual people that you had "pinned" to your start screen. I had all of the friends that I cared to follow set up as live tiles on a "Social Page" of my start screen. And I could see the live tile update for each person that had posted something new. It was awesome. I got all the benefit of Facebook, with no need to touch the feed. All signal. Zero noise.
I was spoiled by this, so when Windows Phone went away, I looked for a way to recreate this very targeted view in Facebook. Here is the solution that I came up with:
go to Facebook home page
Click "See more" in left pane
Choose "Feeds"
Choose "Friends"
Bookmark that page in my browser, titled "Friendsbook"
Use said bookmark every time I want to visit Facebook
There are still ads in that view, but that's still a huge improvement. Do you have an even better solution than what I found? Do share!
Footnotes
Tomorrowmind, Gabriella Kellerman & Martin Seligman (Goodreads)
The "Other Microsoft Examples" section of Nuance and Generosity
The "Ten Phone Tames" section of Control Your Phone, Or Your Phone Will Control You
Responding vs. Reacting. Using the "space" to choose. So powerful!