Humanity

A bulky research report titled The Global Gender Gap Index has been published annually since 2006 by the World Economic Index. The current 325-page report analyzed the status of women relative to men in 134 nations (out of the world’s 193) in four categories: Health, Education, Economy, and Politics. Every nation was then ranked, from 1-134, in a list of best-to-worst nations for women. What nations were picked in 2010 as the best in the world for women?

The books on leadership will tell you that the best time to think about your legacy is at the beginning of your tenure at the top. Another good time is right before you squander it with misbehavior, but that's not my subject today.

I was recently asked to take the reins of a small, venerable little organization, whose dedicated membership had dwindled to a handful of enthusiasts: The Shakespeare Readers.

Have you ever been overwhelmed by a restaurant menu with far too many options? The Cheesecake Factory is notorious for this — they hand out a Bible-sized booklet of different dishes you can choose from. Most of us feel a little lost examining these menu treatises. How can we possibly decide on what to eat when there are so many options?

There's a faction of behavioral economists who think that too much choice is a bad thing; we, as humans, don't know how to optimize our choices when presented with more than six or seven options. Are they right?

When we ask why, in regards to distribution of technological solutions, most of us are usually compelled by political economics to think “solutions are simple, if they are in fact the objective”.

An Ivy League education, capped with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics is a magical door opener and a gilt-edged beginning to a promising career. And if your Ph.D. is unique – for example, interviewing the top 40 leaders and opinion-formers of Egypt and Israel and receiving a Peace Medal for your efforts – you will be even more impressive. I know this, because that’s my history.

About three months ago, I embarked on a less-than-epic, although very entertaining, quest to confirm or deny the famous Six Degrees of Separation experiment, originally conducted by Stanley Milgrim. My goal was to send out letters, as in the original experiment, and have those recipients do their best to get those letters to a named someone in Boston. Each link in the chain would write down their name on the letter, and, by the end, we’d have a list of how many people the letter went through to get to that final person.

Well, it’s time to report out on that experiment. Get ready to have your mind blown.

Not one letter made it to my contact in Boston.

Why did this happen?