Three Ways Poker Can Help Your Career

To all emerging change-makers, wherever your career may take you, these poker-inspired tips will give you insight into improved decision making and judgement.

Rafe Furst is a World Series of Poker champion, an angel investor, a mentor for groups like the Unreasonable Institute and All Day Buffet, and an advisor for the Decision Education Foundation. By his account he simply “connects ideas, people and resources and makes things happen faster."

With his degrees in computer science, symbolic systems, and a deep understanding of poker our conversations with Rafe kept coming back to how to make decisions. Considering how many decisions we make every day, and how directly connected our ability to make good decisions is to accomplishing anything, it's surprising how little attention the subject gets.

So, thanks to Rafe, we now offer three tangible rules that you can use not only to pick up your poker game, but also to help you get wherever you want to go—faster.

Rule #1: Use The Small Edge
Says Rafe: "Let's say there are 10,000 decisions that you make in the course of winning a poker tournament, each with different odds of a positive outcome. The key is taking very small edges (55/45 here, 60/40 there) over and over and over again. If you keep waiting for the perfect hand, you'll lose all your money in antes. Most people’s perceptions of how much of an edge they need to make a ‘correct’ play is totally off."

The daily decisions we make follow a similar pattern. We can either wait for the odds to be obviously in our favor before making a move or we can take hundreds of smaller chances where we have a small edge. So ask yourself: Are the odds of this particular job, conference, or opportunity going well better than flipping a coin? Yes? Then do it again and again and again.

Rule #2: Decisions are Different From Outcomes
We've been raised to think that good decisions always lead to good outcomes. Problem is, they don’t. If you follow the small edge rule, any decision you make that has a better than 50 percent chance is a good decision. You both win and lose, but over a long period of time, you eventually make it big.

Learning to trust that you made a good decision even when you get that bad outcome is what enables you to keep making those hundreds of small-edged decisions that lead you to win over the long haul. If you see decisions and outcomes as the same, then slowly you begin to make decisions only when you have a close-to-guaranteed chance of success, you miss out on opportunities.

As Rafe told us: "Making a good decision most of the time in poker and in life is dependent on being able to decide based on the expected value as opposed to the particular outcome." So embrace those decisions, and realize that if you have that small edge, it was a good decision regardless of the outcome.

Rule #3: It’s All One Big Game.
Sitting at a card table, dealer in front of you, can make one feel like this hand and this opportunity is going to be your last chance to make money, to play, to win. But as Rafe explains, “It’s not like this session or this game has any more importance than the one I have tomorrow or the one I had yesterday. A lot of times what happens in poker is people have the wrong mindset. They make decisions in the game as though it’s their last.”

It is this mindset of the immediate that affects the kinds of decisions we make. The feeling of a lack of time, or of limited opportunity changes the ways we make decisions subconsciously and makes it hard to determine what the correct small edge decision is.

In poker, as in life, there is never just one opportunity and taking the long term view knowing that the perfect opportunity is still ahead will help you become more in tune with yourself and your ability to know what that correct small edge decision truly is.

Contributed by: Dev Aujla

Dev is the Founder and Executive Director of DreamNow, a charitable organization that produces ideas that do good for the world. As a producer, DreamNow brings together people, raises money and plans for the growth of ideas. The ideas which Dev has played a role in producing reach over fifty thousand people annually and have collectively raised over 3 million dollars. Dev’s work and writing has been featured through numerous media outlets including Time Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Huffington Post, Paper Magazine and CBC Newsworld. He currently sits as an advisor to several start-ups and is a director of both the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition and Resource Generation. Dev holds an English Literature degree from the University of Western Ontario and currently lives and works in both Toronto and New York. He is currently at work on his first book which will be published by both Penguin and Rodale.

Also posted on GOOD.

Volunteers: Harder than managing paid employees, but so much more impactful!

Having managed over 250 student volunteers over the last five years, I can definitely say that volunteers are harder to manage than paid employees. Yet when a group of motivated volunteers work together well, the impact on them and on the organization’s goals is unparalleled in the world of 9 to 5.

Having witnessed exceptional volunteer teams, as well as those ending in utter catastrophe, there are a few commons aspects of productive, motivated volunteers.

Understanding Their Priorities: To engage volunteers effectively, you need to realize that most don’t work on your initiative 8 hours a day. For most volunteers, you are 5th or 6th on their priority list, with the top 4 including themselves, their family, their friends, school (or work), and, for students, maybe a hobby or a part-time job. This means you need to recognize where your organization exists in their priorities. By doing this exercise, you can determine how much time and energy they are willing to invest so you can best gauge their level of involvement. Improperly done, volunteers will either be overwhelmed, often resulting in them leaving without addressing the issue with you, or become disengaged with your organization since you didn’t properly identify their desire for more what?.

Providing Meaningful Experiences: With an idea about their desired level of commitment, in order to keep them stimulated, you need to provide them with meaningful experiences. Unless they are head-over-heels for your cause and just want to help out where they can, most volunteers won’t be enthusiastic about folding informational brochures for 10 hours a week. In addition to helping a good cause, many (especially students) are looking for opportunities to grow and develop personally. This is by far the hardest aspect of volunteer management – providing growth experiences for their few dedicated hours a week, which may require you to delegate a task? of a rather critical aspect of your organization. This is a highly accentuated instance of the traditional management scenario of delegation vs ‘doing-it-yourself’. Do you get a volunteer to help define your new marketing strategy? But if they botch it, you’ll have to significantly redo it - how will your volunteer feel about their usefulness when you do this? But if you tried to avoid these growth experiences, how do you ensure volunteers feel valued?

Goal Congruency is essential: Up until this point, you have focused on your volunteers, a necessity to running a non-profit organization, but your organization will not achieve its goals without aligning them with your now properly identified and stimulated volunteers. The key to this is proper planning. Figure out what you need done, who you have to do it, what they wish to get out of volunteering, and what they can offer. With those questions answered you can then devise roles and responsibilities that meet their goals and your goals. Sounds easy? Think again. Properly delegating tasks to part-time volunteers is a science. As well, being 5th on their priority totem pole gives volunteers at least 4 potential ‘outs’. Being low on the list means their loyalty to your organization is much lower than to the higher rungs. If any of the higher priorities need more of their time (school is getting busy, part-time boss wants me to work weekends now, etc), you are first on the chopping block. To effectively manage a team of volunteers, the planning process needs to be constantly reviewed to ensure your goals are being met, something which in itself can take up an enormous amount of your time.

Develop volunteer loyalty – communicate and empower: As a manager of volunteers, you will most likely be more committed than your volunteers to the cause and the organization. To help develop a greater sense of loyalty in your volunteers, show them why you are so committed and make them feel that they are an integral part of the organization. As volunteers start to drive results, many will begin to internalize the organization’s goals and won’t be helping to reach ‘your’ goals, but they will be helping to reach ‘their’ goals.

If this has scared you from working with volunteers, that was definitely not the intention. Working with volunteers has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. When these four things listed above are present with your volunteers, the results are simply euphoric.

Contributed by: Greg Overholt

Greg Overholt is the founder and executive director of the national student-led social venture SOS: Students Offering Support and a recent business and computer science graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University. Students Offering Support supports local SOS chapters residing in universities across Canada who offer SOS’s interactive ‘Exam-AID’ group review session to their peers. Over the last six years, SOS volunteers have tutored more than 10,000 university students and raised over $440,000 for sustainable educational projects in developing nations that are built by SOS volunteers on annual outreach trips. By using inventive entrepreneurial business practices, the SOS model provides university students a unique means to acquire valuable extra-curricular and entrepreneurship experience while helping children around the world gain break the cycle of poverty through access to a quality education.

Also posted on the FP Executive Blog.

Walking together towards social justice

"If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, we can walk together." -Lila Watson

Are you involved in any public service or volunteer work? Have you worked with non-profit organizations is the past? Have you participated in rallies, demonstrations, or other activist movements? At the very least, do you donate to non-profits occasionally? I suspect the answer is yes -- especially since you’re reading this blog.

If you have any interest in social change, take note of the above quote. There’s a difference between seeing the beneficiaries of any philanthropy, volunteer work, or non-profit services as “charity cases” and seeing them as simply - human beings. There’s a difference between wanting to help someone through feelings of pity or compassion, and wanting to do the right thing because of a feeling of empathy, because you truly understand their struggle.

Do you see the poor, the abused, the marginalized as people you have to help? Do you ever think the poor are weak, helpless? If you do, you’re seeing yourself as a savior, and seeing the poor as people who need to be saved.

Such a viewpoint is not simply inaccurate, but actively harmful. By thinking of yourself as a savior, you’re building a barrier that separates yourself from the poor. The “savior complex” means that you start to think of the poor as the “other.”

Instead, think about adopting a different attitude, viewpoint, and worldview. Instead of elevating yourself to the status of “savior,” take on a simpler approach -- that of togetherness, community, friendship, mutuality. Believe that you’re working with the poor to achieve the same goal: to improve this world we live in, and to contribute to social justice. See yourself as a friend, a brother, a sister of those you previously wanted to help. Develop empathy, where you are actively working to understand the lives and struggles of those who you hope to work with.

If you want this perspective, what is most vital of all is to gain experience working directly with poor and marginalized communities. Get out into the Bronx to tutor kids. Attend a migrant workers rally and listen to their stories about employment inequality. Work abroad with a (trustworthy, effective) local community-based organization in India or Uganda. Live with a host family, and understand their lives. Become a community organizer. Don’t separate yourself from the poor. Work with them.

My most meaningful learning experiences have come from working directly with the poor, and listening to their stories. I’ve spoken with immigrants from Haiti, homeless individuals attempting to find public housing, drug addicts seeking rehabilitation, disabled individuals on housing vouchers, men with a past criminal record attempting to find a job. I’ve spoken with a range of low-income and disadvantaged people and I can tell you one thing: I could have been in their shoes. There is literally nothing that differentiates me from a poor person, except luck - the household I was born into, the community I grew up in. These experiences have taught me to have empathy, not sympathy. They’ve taught me not to see myself as the savior -- because I’m not.

Only if you work alongside the poor will you understand that you are not the key to their liberation. But you can make a difference. You can bring your skills and experience to the table and join them in the journey of achieving their goals. You’ll understand that “helping” someone is not the key to social change -- but that empowerment is. You’ll see that poor people are incredibly resourceful, motivated, smart, talented, resilient, courageous, and making do with what they have. But you’ll understand that the system is biased against them -- and that’s where you come in. You’re not there to give them charity, but you’re there to help twist the system to achieve greater social justice. You’re here to empower people so they can better face the challenges they encounter in life.

There is a role we can play -- but it’s not the role of “savior.” And only by developing a keen sense of empathy with poor communities and by tearing down the barriers that separate “us” from “them,” can we find the key to achieving social justice.

Contributed by: Akhila Kolisetty

Akhila Kolisetty is a Legal Assistant for a civil rights law firm in Washington D.C., where she works with clients who have experienced housing discrimination and assists lawyers in fair housing litigation. She recently graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, and has worked with a range of human rights non-profits. She is passionate about expanding access to justice and legal services for indigent populations worldwide. Read her blog at Justice for All and catch her on Twitter at @akhilak!

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