Breaking Rank

By Steven Coutinho

"There is only one thing that holds people and nations back. It's a story that explains who they are and what they can and cannot do. Breaking Rank helps you to understand the mind and unlock people's true potential."

Summary:
How can you motivate people and empower them to make better choices, when stories about their social rank have imprisoned their minds? How can people's mindset not only negatively influence their own well-being and wealth, but also that of an entire society? This book provides a fresh perspective on the answers, as well as the tools to change that mindset. Steven Coutinho takes you on a fascinating journey into how the mind has evolved, how it is shaped by society and how it shapes society in turn. You will learn why some people think they can't, while others are convinced they can, how the story of color has stagnated post-colonial economies, and the story of capitalism has kept the West unequal.

Whether you are simply interested in understanding behavior, or are a parent, teacher or manager ready to lead change, Breaking Rank is bound to shift and sharpen your perspective. You will never look at your own behavior – or the behavior of others – the same way again.

Ten things you will learn from reading this book:

THE ORIGIN OF STORIES

# 1. The evolutionary origins of human emotions and thoughts. You'll learn why for example some people feel scared or demotivated, and why others think they "can't".

# 2. The historic origins of prejudice and how European colonizers used the story of color to rank people in the colonies. You'll also learn how the story of color is similar to the story of capitalism.

# 3. How behaviors are shaped by situations and the stories that describe people's role in those situations.

THE MAKING OF CHOICES

# 4. An alternative approach to decision making based on evolutionary psychology and the latest insights from neuroscience.

# 5. How the stories that have shaped postcolonial societies have led to similar economic choice patterns and continue to stagnate economic growth.

# 6. How the stories of capitalism keep people anxiously occupied and have led to economic inequality.

THE ROAD TO CHANGE

# 7. How mindfulness strengthens specific brain areas that increase emotional self-control and lead to improved decision making.

# 8. How education can be reformed by helping children understand WHO they are, WHAT they can do, and HOW they can do it.

# 9. How to motivate and empower people in organizations by changing the perceptions they have about themselves, their level of control and their skills.

# 10. How to discover the potential you already are...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Coutinho
• Release date: Jun 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386624943

Steven Coutinho

STEVEN COUTINHO worked as regional managing director of Royal Bank of Canada in the Caribbean before pursuing his dream: empowering postcolonial minds. His firm, Xpand, helps leaders unlock the true potential of people, drawing on decades of experience advising governments and companies on sustainable growth. Steven holds a Masters in Medical Physics, cum laude, from the University of Groningen, and an MBA from the Wharton School. With a catchy title like Breaking Rank though, why should you care about his rank? Go on, read the book, you'll be glad you did!

Book preview

Knowing others is intelligence;

knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;

mastering yourself is true power.

- Lao Tze, 2,400 years ago

CONTENTS

Dedication

Food for Thought

Prologue: Six Ineffective Behaviors

Introduction: Stories, Choices & Change

Part One: STORIES

1. Is it True?

2. It’s a Just World

3. Triangle of Perceptions

Part Two: CHOICES

4. Scriptures, Storybooks & Wealth

5. Jose & Maria

6. The Emotions of Nations

Part Three: CHANGE

7. Mind & Reality

8. Who, What & How

9. Organizational Democracy

Epilogue: Who am I?

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Notes

Prologue:

Six Ineffective Behaviors

HAVE YOU EVER SUFFERED from stage fright? That your thoughts about how you were perceived by others induced such anxiety in you that your mind blocked and all you wanted to do was disappear? Well, this book is about people’s perceptions of themselves and others at the societal level. Perceptions that have come to block not only people’s minds, but also the economies that they attempt to build.

This book explores an alternative explanation of the wealth of nations by looking at what creates wealth in the first place: our mind and the stories that shape it. It’s the stories about our world and our place in it that shape our perceptions of what we can and cannot do. It’s our perceptions that then move us to make choices that either lead to wealth – or keep us in poverty. Our journey starts in one of my classrooms back in 2005:

Good morning Sir, the class said in chorus. Good morning everyone! Please just call me Steven. I replied.

Yes Sir.

Um, try that one again.

Yes Mr. Steven. Oh, sorry Sir, it’s difficult to call you by your first name. We were not raised like that.

Ok, I guess there’s no harm in that. So I’m here to share with you some practical approaches to business strategy. I’d like to work with you on a real case if that’s ok? Silent nods. At the time I was leading the drafting of Suriname’s[a] economic development plan, and lecturing was my way to give back to my community. I continued: So imagine you’re advising a tour operator who has been losing money. What are some of the things that you would want to know first? Silence. Save for the scratching sound of pencils on paper, I’m sure I was at a Buddhist meditation retreat. The students were writing down every word I was saying, including the commas! "Um, ok, no problem, I’ll just call on some of you. Hi miss, yes you with the blue shirt, what would you like to know? And then it happened. After the shock realization no one around her was wearing blue, her eyes widened like that of a deer staring into the headlights of a Mack truck. Well that was… unexpected.

If it wasn’t for the desk behind her, she would have fallen off her chair. People, what’s going on? I asked. They replied: Sir, you’re the teacher, we’re just students. We’re waiting on you to share your knowledge with us… Sir. Students weren’t used to teachers asking them for their opinion. I knew from my own experience partially growing up in this country: children are conditioned to sit quietly and obediently, their opinions are not valued, and asking questions is equated with stupidity. Children who transgress are scolded and shamed publicly for all to see. Thankfully tar and feathers weren’t readily commercially available anymore when I grew up.

Much later I became regional managing director in the Caribbean of the Royal Bank of Canada, and started lecturing at a university in Curacao, until recently one of the last bastions of European colonialism. Different country, different culture, different ethnicities, same fearful reaction. Which one of you aspires to help companies thrive? No hands. You? No Sir, I would be too afraid to make a mistake. I’d rather have someone else make the decisions. What are you afraid of though? Failing Sir. Who told you it was a sin to fail? Everyone Sir. The class nodded in agreement.

The answers of my students kept reverberating in my mind when my work across the Caribbean revealed similar behavioral patterns, from employees to politicians: We can’t. It’s someone else’s responsibility so we assume none. In 2008, the Dutch Prime Minister visited a primary school in the Dutch Caribbean and remarked that children seemed passive and needed to take more initiative if they wanted to contribute to their economy. Alternatively he could have asked two questions that are central to this book:

First, where did their behaviors come from and how does that influence the economy? This book proposes to answer this question by taking a novel approach towards understanding a puzzle that has occupied economists for over a century: stagnating economies in the developing world. It is based on more than fifteen years of research during my work across the postcolonial world as a consultant, economic adviser, bank executive and lecturer to understand this puzzle of stagnation. The picture of the puzzle finally revealed itself when I was willing to do one thing: move away from labels of ‘Others’ in the postcolonial world, towards understanding the mind of ‘Us’ as a human species. An understanding of how our emotions, thoughts and choices in a domain such as work, play or relationships depend on the control we perceive to have in that domain – and how that control is shaped by the stories that shape societies. It’s our perception of control that makes all the difference in thinking I can and taking action, or I can’t and remaining passive.

Second question: what can be done to improve those behaviors that stagnate an economy? If the problem of economic stagnation lies in the mind, there too must lie the solution. This requires a deeper understanding of our mind’s mail goal: survival. We achieve survival by forming perceptions about ourselves and others and then behave accordingly. The solutions proposed in this book help to change these perceptions.

Breaking Rank is a book for those in postcolonial societies who are looking to bring about change. This change can come in many forms: maybe you’d like to enable your staff to take on more responsibility or become more independent. Maybe you would like your students to be more undertaking, or maybe you want to take more risks yourself. The ability to bring about change ultimately comes down to your understanding of the mind’s perception of its control – and your ability to change that perception.

Control & Behavior

From an evolutionary perspective our ability to effectively bring about change in our environment – to control our environment – meant all the difference between having crocodile for lunch or becoming crocodile lunch ourselves. It shouldn’t be surprising then that our perception of control, the sense that we can make choices to bring about change, affects the way we feel and behave[1]. Having control leads to feelings of safety, happiness and in some cases overconfidence. Losing control however results in anger and the feeling that we want to regain that control. Think back to when you were a child and insisted Let me do it!: you wanted to take control. This often led to frustration for your parents as they felt less in control. What happened when they insisted? You frowned to signal aggression, stomped on the floor, slammed the door or kicked a rock because that’s how you regained your perception of control again. However, when attempts to regain control fail, that can lead to anxiety, loss of hope, depression and illness[2]. Even death[3].

Our own behavioral habits are gradually formed by all our efforts at taking control, because the results of those efforts inform us how effective we are. Imagine how different you would be today if you would have always gotten your way, versus never. It’s through the prism of our past experiences that we view our current ones. If you could, you will. If you couldn’t, you won’t. Apart from our own experiences, observing the control others in our group have, or believing in certain social stories can also inform that perception.

Stories inform our beliefs of how the world works, how we ought to behave in it, who gets control and who doesn’t: my boss is allowed to do this, my teacher that, and my role is to be quiet and stand idly by. They give rise to mental images that enable us to make sense of ‘us’ in our world, but they’re never really true - unless we believe in them. Guided by our experiences and all these stories that inform them, our own efforts at taking control also inform other people’s perceptions of us and themselves.[4] In this way society becomes a sandcastle of stories and individual efforts at taking control, while society shapes those individuals in turn. It may be psychology’s greatest insight: the human mind both forms and is formed by society[5]. A society that encourages its members to take control is one that encourages individual mastery, a society that blocks taking control will hamper its members from taking action. Having grown up in a society that blocks, I wanted to understand how such societies originated, how they influenced individual behavior, and how to solve for the ineffective ones that seemed to derive from it. The Caribbean allowed me to gain that understanding and develop solutions that not only worked there. They proved to be applicable anywhere.

Postcolonial microcosms

When people think of the Caribbean, images of islands with white sandy beaches, waving palm trees, reggae and sounds of soca usually come to mind. However, in contrast to these heavenly images, societies in the Caribbean are just as complex as many other societies around the world. Postcolonial societies to be more specific.

Take a closer look at this part of the world and you will see very distinct countries, peoples, beliefs and histories. Twenty-five islands and three Guiana’s on the northern coast of the South American continent were once ruled largely isolated from each other by either Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Swedes and Danes (yes, even them). Today the descendants from various ethnicities, who were once brought from other parts of European empires to provide labor, continue to live and trade on the islands – while the islands continue to be isolated from each other.

Despite each island’s isolation, six similar behavioral patterns can be observed across each of them. Patterns that I had encountered across other postcolonial parts of the world in which I had worked as well. Living in the Caribbean just made these patterns clearer because the islands lend themselves to closer observation. The behaviors of people are easily observable there, their decisions more easily linked to the economic outcomes that result from them. Slums exist on the opposite side of streets from gated communities, the prime minister is somehow always a distant cousin of your cousin, heads of local development agencies are your drinking buddies, the daily debates on ‘ethnicity’ are always there – and so are six behavioral patterns. Although not everyone exhibits these patterns, nor are they observed in every setting, these patterns are prevalent enough that they seem to explain the stagnation of many of the region’s economies. Let’s take a closer look at some examples of each of them…

Six behavioral patterns

Pattern 1: Low Risk Tolerance

Better safe than sorry

One day in 2005 during a presentation to a development minister in Suriname, the following discussion unfolded: The Ministry of Finance projects a 5% annual GDP growth during the upcoming planning period. A positive time of growth and prosperity.

Thanks Julia. What assumptions are you using? The graph intrigued me as past years had shown 3% growth at most.

Well, between 1953 – 1956 we also grew at 5%. Silence. The twenty person team of ministers and staff nodded silently in agreement. This silence was familiar from my classrooms. Thanks Julia. That was a different period with large investments in our hydro-dam. In which sectors do you expect growth to be generated this time and why? Julia froze. That reaction was also familiar. Um, bananas and rice. The ministers nodded at each other in acknowledgement, proud of the plantations they had once inherited from their former colonizers. Thanks again Julia. We’ve been trying to compete in those sectors for more than half a century, lobbying European politicians to protect us from cheaper competitors in other poor countries. It seems to be a race to the bottom as to which poor country can cut salaries the most. Her answer was also familiar: But this is what we were raised to believe in.

Across the different ministries I observed similar conservative, risk avoidant decision making. When I became a regional bank executive I realized that it wasn’t confined to Suriname’s borders: all across the Caribbean politicians and directors showed a similar anxiety in making alternative choices that broke away from the traditional approaches. They believed they didn’t have control of the outcome if they would do so, and were afraid to fail. Instead they left the decision to others considered to be more competent. It wasn’t their ‘place’ to decide, and if it was, the choice was given to a consultant to evaluate, to a commission to reassess, or to a cabinet drawer to make the matter magically disappear. This avoidance to make decisions explains a second pattern:

Pattern 2: Helplessness, Deference & Victimization

It’s not my decision to make

In many of the ministerial offices in the Caribbean region which I visit, consultancy reports are stacked to the ceiling collecting dust. Western donors fly in technical ‘experts’ to these countries and are paid much more than their local counterparts – despite having no familiarity with the local environment, the local relationships nor the local issues. They walk around for a couple of days interviewing locals, and then return home to write lengthy reports, with limited insight and no plan to implement their advice. No local dares to say he doesn’t understand the advice because posing questions shows stupidity. And after all, it was written by an expert – and a foreigner at that. Politicians consider themselves helpless in this process, and simply leave it to another donor to reassess the first report. The emperor has no clothes on, but no one dares to say anything. Instead many look helplessly in another direction where people are more capable: the West. The West though is trying to dance to a different tune: give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Recipients however don’t believe they can hold the fishing pole, nor even that they should. ‘Circumstances’ put them there so it was someone else’s job to help them out. That’s called victimization.

This behavior isn’t cultural though, it’s psychological. Feelings of helplessness, deference to others, and victimization are similarly found in the elderly who are stereotyped by nurses as incompetent.[6] In the book ‘Life at the Bottom’[7] British alcoholics and murderers similarly deny responsibility for their actions. They consider themselves victims of the widespread availability of alcohol, guns and knives instead. Such passive victimization can even creep into the language: in Papiamentu (spoken in the Dutch Caribbean) people say the knife cut me instead of I cut myself. It is symbolic for people who consider themselves to be passive bystanders in a world that is not of their own making, a world that is now obligated to help them. The reasoning is: Others put us here, so it’s their job to help us out of it. In many cases though, those ‘others’ have another line of reasoning: Our job is to help ourselves.

Pattern 3: Low Altruism

Power benefits the few at the cost of the many

There’s a saying about people who can’t do anything well: Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach Across the Caribbean these people unfortunately also enter politics, and it has led to widespread corruption. The story of authority has however become such that politicians are now expected to share most of the taxpayer booty among the few, and to only share crumbs with the many. In this fatalistic story, corruption has come to be viewed as the prerogative of those at the top of the social food chain; a zero sum game in which winner takes all. It’s a story that not only leads to, but also justifies, the persistence of the social inferiority of the many, at the inept hands of the socially superior few. This social inequality is created by both sides, one deferring responsibility for his own wealth to the other, while the other simply takes the wealth.

Pattern 4: Demotivation & Disengagement

I’m focusing on me, myself & I

When the mind believes it can’t control its own destiny and depends on others to determine it, disengagement rears its head. Here’s one example: Mark goes shopping for a new pair of jeans on one of the islands. The moths and tropical mold had found a home in his old pair. After politely waiting in front of the shop attendants (he didn’t want to break up their lively conversation) one of the women turns around… slowly. After a brief description of his needs, she mumbles: We don’t have that here. and quickly turns back to her conversation. Oddly enough the jeans are hanging right above her head. Irritated, Mark grabs them and walks towards the cashier, the final obstacle on his way out the store. But as he heads over, the cashier seems to be asleep! Arms on the counter with her head lying on them, she looks vaguely interested at him. He remarks politely: Good afternoon! Chewing on what seems to be gum, she slowly raises one hand above her head to receive Mark’s money. Excuse me miss? And then it comes. She raises her head and looks at him with an attitude that would make even my dog’s head tilt.

After mumbling something, a long ‘steups’ comes out of her mouth, a noise just shy of saying ‘kiss my ass’ – but she might as well have. She shows complete disdain for Mark and the transaction – rather seems to be irritated for his interruption of her otherwise uneventful day. Mark’s request was seen as a task, and he had become the target of a resentment which he had no role in causing. Look closer however at the cashier’s behavior and you can also see a protest: she is doing what she wants, when she wants out of an attempt to regain control. Control which anonymous others had seemingly taken away. It’s this loss of control that led to her demotivation but also a distrust in the intention of others. This brings us to pattern 5.

Pattern 5: Low Trust

Someone’s always out to get me

Street corners across the Caribbean are often filled with vendors perched on fold-out chairs, selling lottery tickets, small bags of crisps or refreshments. People often work multiple jobs to make ends meet, their answer to an economic environment where well paid jobs are scarce. This versatility testifies to the resilience of the human spirit, a spirit that enables people to keep laughing in the face of adversity. These are the makings of a fuse that, if ignited, can lift people towards personal growth. Yet the fuse can also ignite the wrong way, leading to violence that has characterized many parts of the Caribbean region. Such violence erupts when people perceive that they are spoken to in the wrong way, or even looked at in a particular manner. This violence stems from a mind that has become so vigilant in protecting itself that it has become overly sensitive to any potential threat to it. Such minds lose trust in the intentions of others, and become less willing to work together. Collaboration becomes limited to a handful of family members and friends, and nepotism starts to characterize social relationships.

What would be the effects of trying to hold people accountable in an environment where their perception of others has led to mistrust? Earl found out. He runs a cardiac health clinic – much to the detriment of his own cardiac health. No matter how hard Earl tried, he simply couldn’t seem to get his staff to work at an acceptable level of performance. One day, one of his patients made an appointment for an acute catheterization, but the staff had misplaced the patient’s file. When he raised the topic with his staff they angrily rebuked him for his personal attacks. Now you may think of sending Earl to a Dale Carnegie course on ‘How to win friends and influence people’, and you could be right – were it not that his staff’s reaction is common across the archipelago. The assumption that others have bad intent is so prevalent that people bend over backwards to avoid any type of professional evaluation. Evaluation gets too close to their sense of personal identity and makes them feel ridiculed.

Pattern 6: Short Term Focus

Live for today, mañana may never come

Galibi is an indigenous Carib village located across from French Guyana. One morning in 2005 it became the scene of an encounter that is typical between the West and the Rest[8] (read: the postcolonial world). That morning the Chief stared at the bright blue eyed consultant, tilted his head, took the consultants’ shirts and walked off. The consultant was proud of his ideological work: When they sell shirts the profits will lift this village out of poverty. Capitalism will always prevail!

After a month the consultant returned but was shocked at the outcome. You spent the profit? You’re supposed to think about the future by reinvesting those profits into buying more shirts! The Chief and the European both walked off in opposite directions, frustrated with each other’s behavior, ignorant of where that behavior had originated.

When he left, the European had expected action, but when he returned nothing had changed. But if poverty is your business, more poverty is more business, and so the consultant came back, this time with a mobile campervan filled with computers attached to a satellite dish and ultimately the Web. Now the indigenous Caribs could google the location of the fish off the shores, catch them and sell them to the French. With the proceeds they could then build more civilized houses and drive more civilized cars (there are no roads in Galibi – building them is another aid project). Today the campervan is still there, and so are the computers. But nobody uses them. The people of Galibi continue to enjoy life in their hammock, and the fish continue to enjoy their freedom.

While much can be said about the benefits of living in the present, when today’s choices limit tomorrow’s opportunities, choices become liabilities. In the financial world across the Caribbean I see that all sorts of actors, from governments to retail clients, make short term decisions: governments take on sovereign loans for short-term yet unproductive projects. Retail clients enter into layaway plans with companies who charge interest rates that pretty soon double the principal. It traps clients in repayment for years. Clients shrug: the future brings such uncontrollable uncertainty, that many just want to focus on satisfying the needs of their ego today. Activities that don’t accommodate the ego are pushed to manana: Why do today, what can be done tomorrow? Tomorrow in turn is deferred to the gods… it’s when people say: God willing.

This isn’t ‘just the way we are’…

All behavior makes sense from the individual’s perspective, or else he or she wouldn’t have acted in that way. Many in the Caribbean try and explain their behavioral patterns and the ensuing economic stagnation of their societies by blaming slavery. Yet if they looked further they would find similar patterns in places where slavery was less widely instituted or totally absent - across Africa, Latin America, Central America and the Pacific Islands. These patterns can also be observed in marginalized communities like those of Aboriginals in Australia and the Native Americans in North America. And these patterns leads to the further marginalization of these communities: in Australia I grew up watching Aboriginals being discriminated for exhibiting these patterns, I experienced the same discrimination of Africans after I had moved to Suriname, and again of indigenous people when working in Paraguay. Each of these groups for itself tries to make sense of its own patterns. They each come up with reasons for the discrimination, often pointing the finger at themselves, blind for the patterns beyond themselves.

And whilst they lament their plight, foreign entrepreneurs parachute in by the hundreds, opening up businesses and capitalizing on opportunities, affirming the locals’ sense of their own inferiority. In her book ‘The World on Fire’[9] Amy Chua describes how immigrant minorities have come to dominate economies across the postcolonial world. In West Africa it’s the minority Lebanese that dominate the economic scenery, in East Africa it’s the East Indians often of Sindhi origin, in South Africa it’s the Europeans and East Indians, in the Pacific Islands it’s the East Indians, and in Latin America it’s the Asians and Europeans. These economies for the most part however remain stagnant leaving the local people desperate and with no other explanation other than: This is just the way we are.

But this isn’t the way they are. Neither race nor culture can explain why their economies are stagnant because the six behavioral patterns that keep them stagnant are too widespread across populations. These populations have nothing in common, except the one thing that once bound them all:

The loss of control which the stories of colonialism once brought.

BREAKING

RANK

Introduction:

Stories, Choices & Change

CHOICES. WE ALL MAKE THEM. But why do some prefer to make one set of choices, whilst others make another set of choices? Some people for example prefer to save their income for a rainy day, while others prefer to splurge on a night on the town. Some choose to hold onto their money, while others go gambling. To begin to unravel this question, let’s begin with a riddle that may shed some light on the answer: What is the similarity between a person romantically rejected and a person living in a postcolonial society? On the surface, not that much. But the more you think about it, the more you realize that for both persons the emotions that they can experience, can drive similar decision patterns.

First take a look at those romantically rejected: some of them blame their rejection on themselves and believe that if they change their appearance or behaviors, they may fall back into favor with the rejecter. Some become timid and risk avoidant, while others engage in short-term gratifications that cater to their now fragile ego, such