From SVB to the BBC: why did no one see the crisis coming?

Michael Skapinker in The FT  

Silicon Valley Bank collapses after its investments in long-dated bonds made it vulnerable to interest rate rises. The BBC is thrown into chaos after suspending its top football pundit and colleagues abandon their posts in solidarity. JPMorgan Chase suffers reputational damage and lawsuits after keeping sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on as a client for five years after he pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution, including from a minor. 

In all these cases, we can ask, as Queen Elizabeth II did on a visit to the London School of Economics during the global financial crisis in 2008: “Why did no one see it coming?” 

Did anyone in the BBC’s leadership ask whether, if they suspended Gary Lineker from presenting its top Saturday night football programme Match of the Day, other pundits might walk out too? Did SVB run through the risks attached to its investment policies if interest rates rose faster than expected? And why did JPMorgan accede to senior banker Jes Staley’s desire to keep Epstein on? These are dramatic examples of what can go wrong, but any organisation that fails to keep its possible risks under regular review could go the same way. 

All too often senior managers fail to consider the worst-case scenario. Why don’t they listen to doubters? 

Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, says sometimes it is because there are no doubters. Leadership groups become so locked into a “shared myth” that they ignore any suggestions they might be wrong. “We’ve got the well-known confirmation bias where we are predisposed to pick up signals, data, evidence that reinforce our current belief. And we will be filtering out disconfirming evidence,” she says. 

It is like taking the wrong route in a car. “You’re on the highway driving somewhere and you’re heading in the wrong direction, but you don’t know it until you’re just hit over the head by disconfirming data that you can’t miss: you suddenly cross a state line that you didn’t expect to cross.” 

This groupthink and confirmation bias is prevalent in the wider society, where people leap on any evidence to support their view on, for example, climate change, Edmonson says. “Oh my gosh, this is the coldest winter ever. What do you mean global warming?” 

In many cases, there are doubters, but they are either reluctant to raise their voices or, when they do, colleagues hesitate to join them. At JPMorgan, there were questions about Epstein. An internal email in 2010 asked: “Are you still comfortable with this client who is now a registered sex offender?” 

James Detert, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says evolution has hard-wired us not to deviate from our group. “If you think about our time on earth as a species, for most of it we lived in very small clans, bands, tribes, and our daily struggle was for survival, both around food security and physical safety. In that environment, if you were ostracised, you were going to die. There was no solo living in those days.” 

We carry this fear of being cast out into our workplaces, compounded by the experience of whistleblowers, who sometimes suffer retribution from their employers and are shunned by colleagues. Dissenters present their colleagues with an uncomfortable choice: either to view themselves as cowards for not speaking up too, or to regard the rebel as “some kind of crackpot”. The second is often easier. 

Isn’t the Lineker saga a counter-example? His colleagues supported him, forcing the BBC to quickly see how badly it had miscalculated. Detert says this was an unusual case. Celebrated footballers-turned-commentators are brands themselves, Lineker in particular. The BBC realised how much it needed him, and how easily he could have secured a contract with a rival. Usually, he says, rebels find themselves isolated. 

So what can leaders do to encourage doubters to speak up, to ensure they consider all the possible downsides of their strategies, and escape eventual humiliation or disaster? Detert is not a fan of appointing a “devil’s advocate” who is tasked with giving a contrary view. It is often clear that they are simply going through the motions. He prefers what he calls “joint evaluation”. As well as the preferred policy — investing in long-dated bonds, for example — senior managers should draw up a distinctively different policy and compare the two. This is more likely to show up the flaws in the preferred strategy. 

Simon Walker, whose roles have included head of communications at British Airways and spokesman for Queen Elizabeth, and Sue Williams, Scotland Yard’s former chief kidnap and hostage negotiator, told me at an event organised by the Financial Times’ business networking organisation, that leaders should involve every function from communications to legal to HR when examining possible future crises. Detert agrees this can be valuable, provided the presence of often under-regarded departments such as HR is taken seriously. 

Leaders’ behaviour is a signal of whether they want staff to speak up. Edmondson says: “Leaders of organisations have to go out of their way to invite the dissenting view, the missed risk. Before we close down any conversation where there’s a decision, we need to say, without fail: ‘What are we missing?’ We say: ‘OK, let’s just say we’re wrong about this and it goes badly awry, what would have explained it?’” She recommends calling on people by name, asking what their thoughts are. 

Detert adds that office design can signal to staff that their thoughts are welcome: the leader sitting in open plan, or having bright stripes on the floor indicating the way to their office, or sitting at square tables without place names rather than at rectangular ones where their seat position makes it obvious they are in charge. 

How relevant are these workplace layouts when, post-lockdown, employees no longer come into the office every day? “That’s the $10mn question,” Detert says. On the one hand, remote working might be making it harder for leaders to read the signs that people are uneasy with a strategy. On the other, it could be that people find it easier to speak out from their own homes. They may also feel that other aspects of their lives, such as family, are now more important than work, which could encourage them to talk. 

Others think SVB’s relaxed remote-working culture, which meant senior executives were scattered across the US, contributed to its failure. Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford professor who has studied remote working, told the Financial Times: “It’s hard to have a challenging call over Zoom.” Hedging interest rate risk was more likely to come up over lunch or in small meetings. 

Leaders also need to persistently praise people who speak up. The penalties for doing so are often more obvious than the rewards. Those who keep their heads down are seldom blamed. As Warren Buffett said: “As a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.”

Vaccines: Follow Science or the Dollar? | Hinduphobia in California and Oxford?

 

How to talk your way to the top

Janan Ganesh in The FT 

Always doubt the Stoicism of a “Stoic”. If the point of their creed is cool detachment from the world, the active espousal of it seems perverse, like an anarchist’s fiscal policy. Marcus Aurelius, don’t forget, never meant his Meditations — sales of which boomed even pre-lockdown — to be read. Whether his appropriation by the shamans of modern self-help is his triumph or his ultimate rout, I can’t decide. 

Strange, isn’t it, which bits of antiquity we exhume, and which we let lie? The American right wants more of the neoclassical architecture that makes Washington so grand, and so inert. Britain, which is definitely a serious country, is trying to revive Latin in schools. I’d be keener on this Restoration if there were a place for the most sorely missed feature of the ancient world. Bring back, for the sake of the young, the teaching of rhetoric. 

I have seen enough meetings, parties, job interviews, broadcast slots, panel events and dates to sense which habits of speech harm a person’s standing with others, sometimes without either side quite knowing it. They include the filler words “like” and, in England, “sort of”, often pronounced, with nervous speed, “siddiv”. They include starting a sentence with, “I guess . . . ” and ending it with, “Does that make sense?” They include, above all, the interrogative tone in non-interrogative statements. 

What links these familiar but far from exhaustive examples is their disclosure of self-doubt. And not the endearing kind. “Like” stems from a deep fear of pauses, lest the other person stops listening. Upspeak is a constant probing for approval. These tics are all the worse in a non-American as they suggest a further, almost meta lack of confidence: that in one’s own culture. 

The aesthetic case against a lot of modern speech is easy to mount. The challenge is to convince people of the strategic stakes: that mere avoidance of the glitches above will raise their perceived stature. 

In today’s economy, few workers get to be judged on output that is discrete and identifiably theirs (such as a newspaper column). More often, they are among the many contributors to a rolling and amorphous process: a corporate merger, say, or IT maintenance. One effect is that, in all candour, I have no idea what most of you do. 

Another is that a career can hinge on meetings and other “performances” between the actual doing of work. When someone’s added value is so hard to delineate, the spoken word becomes a clue. And this, to stress, is just the professional risk of modern speech habits. It says nothing of the social and romantic costs of sounding like a teenager from Encino. 

The flaw in most self-help is that it dwells on the interior life, rather than outward technique. To exhort someone into a state — of confidence, of Stoicism, of anything — at least in a lasting way, is hard. But small adjustments in what they do can transform their outcomes. And from those real-life gains comes the gradual change in inner state. 

I don’t wish I had had, when young, some protein shake-reviewer on YouTube urging me to live in alignment with my values, dude. What I wish I had had was someone to tell me that nothing — not eye-contact, not spread arms — conveys confidence like a mid-sentence pause. Or that a flat, declarative tone in a room full of upspeakers is such an advantage as to be tantamount to cheating. This, which we moderns learn through trial and error, if at all, is what an Athenian would have recognised as rhetoric. It is a life skill, not just or even mainly a political one. 

When and why our culture stopped treating it as such, others will know. But the victims are all around us. To speak commandingly does not require a John Updike vocabulary or grammatical exactitude. It does not entail the crushing of regional accents and demotic idioms. I offer Manchester’s own Noel Gallagher as a model to emulate, and legion Sloanes as the inverse. As for America, many decades into upspeak, no one who has that tic of the elite campuses and the modish industries has had a sniff of the White House. The people have, in whatever style, spoken.

The importance of failure

Success can dazzle, even blind. It's in failure that those like Jonathan Trott can address their weaknesses

Rob Steen in Cricinfo

March 19, 2014

 

Jonathan Trott: mired in a personal trough © AFP

What happened to me? Did I lose my talent? Am I ever going to be good again?

Find me a public performer who hasn't echoed Bill Murray's self-pitying, crestfallen lament in Wes Anderson'sThe Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Jonathan Trott might have served his cause better had he plumped for such candour and simplicity - it might even have spared him Michael Vaughan's intemperate outburst - but no matter. Depression, stress, burnout, anxiety, panic - variations on the theme of mental unfitness are endless.

"I remember day two or three, it was a bit of a blur, I was getting headaches and all sorts of things and I wasn't eating properly towards the end and that's when the sleep started getting disruptive and emotionally that was when I was worst and it just boiled over. I had nothing left in the tank - mentally and emotionally pretty drained." The number of appearances of the word "and" in the first of those sentences tells us a lot.

As Trott recounted his feelings during last November's Brisbane Ashes Test to Sky Sports viewers, the memories jostled for breathing space; a disorderly queue of negative emotions was being flushed out. Eye contact was strong and certain, but that doesn't mean the scars don't hurt. Amid more measured comments, yes, those references to "crazy" and "nutcase" were supremely insensitive - one of the few things Vaughan was right about in his own insensitive, somewhat hypocritical tirade (well, he did resign the captaincy of his country mid-series). But perhaps Trott felt that distancing himself from a graver clinical condition was a necessary part of his recovery. The message was plain: "I can be good again… I will be good again."

A few years back, "burnout" was a genuine and growing concern: even before the IPL was a glint in the BCCI's eye, multiplying formats and a concertina-like international programme were placing an ever-increasing strain on the leading performers. Then came the domestic T20 eruption; now all bets were off. Now "burnout" was the fear that dare not speak its name. If the players chose to spread themselves even thinner, well, that was their funeral. Frankly, my dear, who gave a damn? Trott's travails should compel us to think anew, with greater compassion. The employers who arranged 61 Tests for their charges over the past five years have far more to answer for on that score than they do over the way they handled his sudden fall from grace.

Older readers might find themselves harking back 40 years to a similar episode involving Geoff Boycott, whose intensity Trott has always seemed bent on emulating, as Mark Ramprakash did before him. The superficial cause was Boycott's repeated humiliations by bowlers of trifling gifts, primarily Eknath Solkar (such is the contempt in which the Yorkshireman holds the late Indian left-arm swinger, the latter is not even accorded the respect of a forename in Boycott's first autobiography, published in 1987).

"Batting to me is more than a mechanical use of techniques," Boycott explained. "I have to feel in a good frame of mind if I am to do well." There was a lot preying on it: difficulties over his benefit season, a rotten start to the summer by Yorkshire, and the usual internecine squabbles at Headingley, let alone the selectors' galling - as he saw it - preference for Mike Denness as England captain over his own claims.

	When nothing is working as it should, as had been the case for Trott since August 2013, convincing oneself that class truly is permanent and that form can only ever be temporary can tax the hardiest of hearts

The tipping point was another cheap dismissal in the first Test at Old Trafford. Nor did it help that it was "glaringly obvious that Denness wanted about as much to do with me as the Black Death". In taking stock, attested Boycott, "I realised, to my horror, that the desire and drive to play for England had gone. There was no satisfaction in it, very little involvement, even less pleasure… I couldn't take it any longer."

He duly informed Alec Bedser, the chairman of selectors, that he was "in no mental or emotional condition to play well for England". Yet when he put the phone down he felt no relief, and certainly no better. By the time he reached Bath, for Yorkshire's match against Somerset, he was "low, confused and physically ill… it might have been stress-related, I really don't know, but it was real and painful enough".

That September, by when his reign as Yorkshire captain was under threat, he did the unthinkable: he turned his country down. "Had anyone mentioned the mere possibility of it to the kid who played in the South Yorkshire back-streets or the young man who battled his way into the Yorkshire and England sides, he would have been invited to go forth and multiply. I would have considered him certifiable. But the culmination of events, circumstances and attitudes was too much to resist. I knew I could not go to Australia and do a good job for England." Not for another three years would he do international battle, yet recover he did, and prosper. Trott can draw hope from that.

In an interview published in the Times last Saturday, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard professor billed by Rick Broadbent as an "expert on losing streaks", spelled out the commonalities linking sport and the world beyond. "In a losing streak everything deteriorates. There is often infighting and a lack of desire to show up for work because the situation is so unappealing. You see it in inner-city communities too, where neighbourhoods form gangs and fight against each other rather than working together." In an unusually perceptive moment, the all-too aptly named footballer Robbie Savage recalled the "soul-destroying" nature of a horrendous streak for Derby County not only robbing him of enthusiasm but reducing him to hatred for the game he once adored.

Trott, though, was mired in a personal trough. He'd gone 18 Test innings without a century before (and not that long ago). He'd also gone four ODIs without reaching 30 before, twice. This time, both happened concurrently, gnawing at his marrow.

One of the chief advantages of playing a uniquely multi-format sport is that success in one discipline can refuel another, or even persuade you to focus exclusively on a single discipline, the better to spare yourself all that angst and pain. But when nothing is working as it should, as had been the case for Trott since August 2013, convincing oneself that class truly is permanent and that form can only ever be temporary can tax the hardiest of hearts (unless, of course, your scorebook entry reads DG Bradman or SF Barnes).

****

	Has a sporting figure ever treated success and failure with such startling equanimity as Rafael Nadal? Stephen Dunn / © Getty Images  Enlarge

Repeated exposure to failure can be our undoing, but it can also reinvigorate. As that hoary old saying goes, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. For professional sportsfolk, unlike most mortals, failure, however relative, is transparent and statistical, sometimes tweetworthy, always inescapable. For all of us, what counts is how we cope with it, and the way we heed its lessons.

The challenge to those recuperating from a setback is whether to risk the self-diminishing agonies of failure again. All the more reason, then, to salute those who take that risk for our amusement, and when there is little or no apparent need. Witness Rafa Nadal, whose improbable comeback from a career-threatening injury has been immeasurably more successful than the tennis writers and even his doctors predicted.

Had that regal racqueteer's stomach churned at the prospect of failure, he would have taken one of two courses: he would never have dared return to the court (it's not as if he needed the pesetas or kudos) or, in so doing, that renowned courtly behaviour would have lapsed. Neither happened, almost certainly because Nadal possesses the quintessential prerequisite of all champions: those competitive fires still burned. Has a sporting figure ever treated those twin imposters with quite such startling equanimity?

We make much of self-assurance as the most priceless of assets. Not only does it embolden, it also enhances the power of bluff. Confidence, achievement and reputation form a virtuous circle; how often do off-form achievers prevail purely by dint of repute? Ian Botham managed just 40 wickets in his last 23 Tests, and most of those owed more to name than skill. That confidence may or may not be innate; for those whose work exposes them to daily ordeals by competitive fire, in public view, it can certainly be mercurial. One numbing or humbling failure at an inopportune time can do more to deflate it than a hundred triumphs can buoy it. It depends on how deep it runs.

Yet strength can only be enhanced by reducing or eradicating vulnerability; by logical extension, therefore, failure can be more important than success. Failure means those glances in the mirror are likelier to be stares - broodier, more searching, less self-deluding. Weaknesses are likelier to be addressed, lessons learned. Success, conversely, can dazzle, even blind. It can also deter acknowledgement of the influence exerted by sheer blind luck, an ingredient never more potent than in the competitive arts. Perhaps only the tiny ranks of the doubt-free actively desire failure - as motivation, as a counter to complacency - but maybe that's what keeps us all going. Should we fear it? No, but a spot of constructive loathing can come in handy.

Bill Murray/Steve Zissou relocated his mojo - or at least a semblance of it - with a gun, saving his crew from a band of murderous pirates. A less violent loosening-up might do Trott a power of good.

Let's have some sympathy for the jury

My verdict on our justice system

Let's have some sympathy for the Vicky Pryce jury. Sitting in judgment is a tough job

• 
• • Victoria Coren
  • The Observer, Sunday 24 February 2013

12 Angry Men: the jury system as it ought to work. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

The jury in the Vicky Pryce case were, no doubt, just being conscientious.

After sitting through days of evidence in the Mysterious Case of Mrs Huhne and the Speeding Points, they came back to the judge with 10 questions to help them reach a verdict.

Mr Justice Sweeney was so horrified by the questions that, when they said they were unlikely to find agreement, he abandoned the trial and sent them all home on the grounds that they didn't understand what they were doing. The prosecutor, Andrew Edis QC, said the jurors had shown an "unparalleled" failure to understand "very basic concepts of jury trials".

No doubt they meant well. It is good when jurors take their job seriously. Unfortunately, their earnestness simply makes the questions even more hilarious. I think my favourite is question five: "Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it, either from the prosecution or defence?"

I am disappointed that the judge sent them home without asking: "You have a reason based on no facts and no evidence? What in God's name is it?"

Nevertheless, he deserves credit for amusing the nation with his response to question four ("Can you define what is reasonable doubt?"), to which the judge replied: "A reasonable doubt is a doubt which is reasonable. These are ordinary English words that the law doesn't allow me to help you with."

It is cruel that all this has been made public. My guess is that these questions were submitted by perfectly intelligent people, who were being driven slightly mad by the warped logic and limited understanding of some fellow jurors.

I've done jury service; trust me, that's likely. I imagine an exhausted schoolteacher sighing: "No, we can't accept your theory that 'marital coercion' involved Huhne tickling her until she screamed. If you don't believe me, let's ask the judge."

The questions do look preposterous on the page. Many barristers will, I'm sure, have jabbed their fingers at the newspaper and shouted at their spouses: "You see what I have to deal with? These are the people I'm talking to, day after day, week after week, year after year! Their blank, uncomprehending eyes! Their open, drooling mouths! Their constant scratching! And then you think I want to spend my Sunday at Ikea!"

Based on my experience, I would say that 90% of jurors struggle with the distinction between inference and speculation. They really have amazing trouble getting it. But I would also say that, somehow, justice is usually done. It's like a messy goal: there is fumbling, shoving, confusion and mud, but the ball fumbles its way to the back of the net. The jury system is a precious and wonderful thing.

I would bet that this case was discussed by a majority of good, bright people and scuppered by a couple of idiots. Then again, by the law of statistics, there must occasionally be 12 idiots on a jury. Last week, a conversation about a different case somewhere else in the country might have unfolded like this…

Juror One I reckon he's guilty. Can't wait to find out! They tell us the answer before we go home, right?

Juror Two No, no, you have to write in for the answers. [Writes on paper: "Dear judge, who did it?"]

Juror Three I reckon he was drunk. Drunk driving. As well as speeding.

Juror Four Speeding? This is a murder trial. He was on foot.

Juror Three No, I reckon he was driving. And I'd have a drink if I'd just murdered someone, wouldn't you? It's all a cover-up. [Writes: "Dear Judge, are we allowed to find him guilty of a crime he's not currently accused of?"]

Juror Two Speaking of drinking, who's for a lemonade?

Juror Five How is this supposed to work?

Juror Two I think you pour it in the glass and then you just sort of have it.

Juror Five [doubtfully] Should we ask the judge?

Juror Three Am I the judge?

Juror Seven No, you're the foreman.

Juror Three I forgot that [drinks lemonade miserably]. So I have to work out how long he goes to prison, and then I stand up and say it?

Juror Eight Yes, or you can choose to do the non-religious one instead.

Juror Three I've got hiccups.

Juror Nine He's not guilty, anyway. I saw him in the cafe at lunchtime.

Juror Two So?

Juror Nine So how could he have been drunk? He was only having a piece of toast.

Juror Two But he's allowed to be drunk. There's no law says you can't be drunk when you do a murder.

Juror Five I don't think the crime was today anyway. It was, like, a week ago.

Juror 10 But I was on holiday a week ago! How am I supposed to know what happened then? [Writes: "Dear Judge, I love skiing. Do you?"]

Juror Three I've just googled him on my iPhone.

Juror 10 That's not allowed! They specifically said, no research!

Juror Three This isn't research, it's inference. It helps me infer he's guilty. Look, here he is burgling a house.

Juror 10 That's not him, that's Ronnie Barker.

Juror Four I thought he was fatter.

Juror 10 It's an old picture. [Writes: "Dear Judge, can we have a DVD of Open All Hours?"]

Juror 12 [Waking up suddenly] Right! I think we've covered everything.

Juror 10 You're right. We've cracked it. Let's go back in, ask the questions and find out who won.

They ring for the court usher.

How to let your kids fail

by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer in The Times

Don't confuse your success with your children's. Separate yourself from your children. Neither their failures nor their successes are yours. Ask yourself why either matter so much to you.

Don't set unrealistic standards. Allow your children to set their own achievable goals and move on to the next one when they are ready.

Don't punich failure and see it as shameful; this can lead to lying, cheating, defiance, self-doubt and anxiety.

Don't generalise from any setback or mistake. It is not helpful to say, "You'll never be successful in life if you carry on skimping ...."

Don't reject them if they disappoint you or adore them if they succeed. Love them for who they are, not for what they can do.

Don't demand perpetual progress so that no success ever seems good enough. This could lead to anxious perfectionism and burnout.