Molecular Jitters, Working from Home and the Myth of Overnight Change
Isolated at home gave surprisingly less time to read! However, here are three interesting stories that I managed to read last week:
While we have always ended up explaining human behaviour, traits and, oddities either as a product of genes (nature) or of our environment (nurture). Characteristics that we cannot attribute to genetic control, we assign to the environmental factors, ranging from upbringing, to nutrition to trauma. This research-backed story however claims that there is yet another force that shapes up – the impact of which is yet not fully accounted. Scientists call it ‘noise’ or ‘molecular jitter’. Loosely explained, the noise is an outcome of molecules bouncing around and interacting in a cell at random ‘which leads to some degree of randomness in how many protein molecules are made, how they assemble and fold, and how they fulfill their function and help cells make decisions’. Measuring these jitters and resulting attributes is challenging. However, early research has focused on cloned crayfish and armadillo quadruplets (read the story to understand why!) to figure out that despite the game gene pool and same environment, these identical beings end up significantly different from one another, and that evolution starts very early (the variation starts showing up when these beings are as little as a 25 cell embryos). Well, if this research holds true then lot of scaffoldings we’d built to better explain human behaviour will need tearing apart and reconstructing all over again.
We all know, and expect, the covid-19 crisis to change the way organisations work. One dimension of this change that will increasingly gain traction is working from home. We all – especially those of us working in big, traditional firms – are learning how to do so, and struggling with tools and practices that come along with it. This short, but insightful take in The Economist argues that we could do better by learning from ‘fully distributed’ start-ups, such as Github and Gatsby. For these start-ups, remote working was less of an option and more of a necessity. They wanted to escape paying high rents and wanted to have access to global talent that may be available in another country. The article lays down a few ground rules that form the backbone of remote operation. All were hugely relevant and good to know, but the one that stood out for me was the importance of documenting decisions. Writing down the decisions and underlying factors leading to it is key, and this forces a clarity in thinking as well. Doing so demands wordsmiths, not glib corporate speakers. In conclusion, the technology and the tools will improve as we learn to work from home; however, it’s the ground rules (many of which will remain tacit) that require rethinking and rework.
If you are reading my newsletters regularly, then you know how much I admire James Clear’s simple explanations. This week he came out with yet another short article explaining why big changes usually fail. The underlying concept is rooted in the idea of feedback mechanisms, which sometimes involuntarily forces us to recede back to status quo. The principle, borrowed from biology, provides a good template for everyday behaviour as well. ´If you step too far outside the bounds of your normal performance, then nearly all of the forces in your life will be screaming to get you back to equilibrium. If you take massive action, then you quickly run into a massive roadblock,’ he writes. What’s the way out then? Make small changes, one that ties in to an optimal rate of growth. Carry out small improvements daily instead of overnight radical change, so that you push the equilibrium to expand to accommodate the new behaviour. Consistent small wins over time will metamorphose into a radical impact eventually.
A quote that I came across last week:
Add up the sum of our days and that’s who we are. We get what we repeat.
- Seth Godin
