I’m looking forward to watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution this Friday (March 26th, 2010 @ 8pm PST) on ABC, and it’s not just because of my fondness of British chefs. Jamie Oliver is a man driven by passion, a passion that matters. If you haven’t heard what he is on about, I recommend his TED talk. Be sure to watch the bit starting at 11:14 of the video clip with the kids who do not know which basic vegetables are which.

It is shameful to know that the children of today are predicted to be the first generation to have a shorter life span than their parents! Fortunately, there is plenty we can do to improve our chances: be mindful about what we put in our mouths, and work to clean up the food production and distribution systems. Mr. Oliver will likely get this message across far more effectively than I, so tune in tomorrow evening with me (I’ll likely be tweeting about it).

If you are looking for a teaser for the show tomorrow night, watch the trailer for the show.

Eve Ensler is best known for writing the play The Vagina Monologues and has for being a long time anti-violence activist. In November of 2009 she gave this talk about embracing our inner girl at TED India. Be sure to watch to the end to see powerful piece from her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, as it is well worth watching.

Eve Ensler states that within each of us, men and women alike, is an inner girl. This inner girl essence is where our compassion, empathy, vulnerability, openness, and  intuition reside. She reminds us that:

Compassion informs wisdom and that
Vulnerability is our greatest strength and that
Emotions have inherent logic that lead to radical appropriate saving action.

But, our patriarchal society has systematically annihilated this inner girl, perhaps more harshly in men than in women, denying each of us the willingness to embrace our compassion and empathy. While we’ve been busy embracing our inner men, our competitive, empire building natures, we have allowed great cruelties to happen. Horrific atrocities against girls, against people, in the form of wars, genocides, rapes, beatings and female mutilations continue to happen each and day, despite the fact that there is a little voice in each of us, trying to yell at the top of her lungs, that this pain must stop. If we embrace our inner girls, and listen to their empathetic cries, would these atrocities continue?

I’ll be honest here, I have long been an anti-feminist. It is not that I don’t believe in equality for women. I most certainly do believe in equality. I believe that each person has inherent value that should never be denied, irrespective of sex, race or any other defining characteristic. I have a distaste for the way the feminist movement was executed, and the results that came out of it. Mainly the doubling of the work force, that essentially cut the value of labour in half, and made it so I will most likely not be able to afford to stay home to raise my children.

Ensler’s sort of feminism is quite different from the variety that I find myself resenting. Watching this moving talk made me realize that I have been throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. I have been a very lucky person, my parents supported me, and encouraged my endeavours as ferociously as they would if I had been their son. I never felt the effects of sexism growing up. For this I am grateful. Ensler reminded me that not all girls are as lucky as me. Girls across the globe still need to be stood up for, as do our inner girls! Our compassion and empathy must be valued in order to put a stop to violence against against girls, against people.

Comment Zen*

I would love to hear about your views of feminism, both of feminism of the 1960s whose consequences we live with today, and of modern feminism. How does today’s women, and men, best embrace our inner girls to allow the inner girls of tomorrow to thrive?

* The term “Comment Zen” is lovingly stolen from Havi Brooks.

Have you watched Dan Pink’s TED talk: The Surprising Science of Motivation yet? It’s a really interesting talk that delves into the mismatch between what science knows about motivation, and what business does in trying to motivate people to do things.

Dan Pink

I encourage you to watch Pink’s talk, but something is giving me the motivation to give you a run down of what he is on about.

The Candle Problem

The Candle Problem by Karl Duncker

Pink starts his talk by explaining The Candle Problem, which was introduced by Karl Duncker back in the 1940s as an illustration of Functional Fixedness. The task is to take the candle, matches, and tacks held in a box, and affix the candle to the wall so that the wax does not drip on the table. To solve the problem one must think “out of the box” to figure out that s/he must use the box that the tacks are in to solve the problem.

The Candle Problem Solution

Sam Glucksberg, Psychology Professor at Princeton University, used The Candle Problem to measure the power of incentives. He gave two groups of people the problem. The first group was told that they would be timed and the second group was told that if they solved the problem the fastest, they would be rewarded monetarily. The results showed that the group offered the financial incentive to solve the problem quickly took an average of 3.5 minutes longer than the first group.

What?

The incentive hindered creative thought! Pink continues on to explain that over and over again psychologists and economists have found that incentives do the opposite of what we want to do in many modern day situations. The old rewards and punishments system works well for the well-defined tasks of the previous century that primarily require mechanical skills and the ability to follow instructions. The problem is that these tasks are becoming a rarity in the modern work day. More and more we have to utilize our cognitive skills to think creatively in our daily work. Incentives and other extrinsic motivators have been scientifically proven to dull thinking and block creativity.

Modern businesses that require employee engagement must stop using old methods to motivate their employees, and move towards intrinsic motivators to improve performance. Pink breaks down the three elements of intrinsic motivation to be considered:

Autonomy – Urge to direct our own lives

Mastery -  Desire to be better and better at something that matters

Purpose – Yearning to do something in the service of something larger than ourselves

Given these three elements amazing things can be achieved. Pink offers several examples:

• Google 20% time yielding some of Google’s best products including Gmail, Orkut and Google News
• Encarta vs. Wikipedia
• Results only work environments

Each of these three elements are at work motivating me to write this post:

Autonomy – It is my idea to write this, on my own time, exactly as I choose to write it.

Mastery – I desire to become a better blogger, and see this as good practice for my writing abilities;.

Purpose – I wish to share some neat ideas so that they may spread for the benefit of all.

For the benefit of my future working life, I do hope that business listen to Dan Pink’s advice!

Check out Dan Pink 2006 book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future for more on this topic, and watch for his next book Drive due out this December. Both books are no on my To Read list after watching his TED talk.