Today we look at what’s going on in and around your head.
According to current research, being an overconfident, rude jerk is a great way to get ahead and have people look up to you. (In reality this only applies to men.)
In other words, overconfident people are perceived as having more social status, and social status is golden. (…) …research suggests that we also see rudeness as a sign of power.
Offended? Good. Because before you decide that jerkism is your best path to success see why it doesn’t really work most of the time
For all their charisma, bravery and bravado, jerks don’t do as well as you might think.
Jerkism covers a multitude of sins including positive thinking (free registration required), especially when it holds 110% sway over the minds of leaders.
But several recent studies have critiqued the positive thinking movement, highlighting the negative personal and organizational effects (…) In short, Prozac leaders can wind up believing their own narrative that everything is going well.
People spend large amounts of time these days trying to assimilate all the available information applicable to their job, project, etc, because it will improve their results. But maybe that’s not such a good thing; instead consider the idea of two lists.
It’s hard to do because maybe, just maybe, that next piece of information will be the key to our success. But our success actually hinges on the opposite: on our willingness to risk missing some information. Because trying to focus on it all is a risk in itself. We’ll exhaust ourselves. We’ll get confused, nervous, and irritable.
What will your life be like as you age in an era of DIY toughness? If you are lucky, EngAGE, a program that enhances life for the 99% will become a model.
“We see people without money, who had very hard lives, who are not aware of their own potential,” said Maureen Kellen-Taylor, the chief operating officer of EngAGE, a program in the Los Angeles area that provides arts and other classes for some 5,000 people — the vast majority of them low-income — living in senior apartment communities.
The world is certainly changing and not necessarily for the better. Not just banks, those constant whipping boys and deservedly so, but tech and the general population.
Google has increasingly found itself in the regulatory crosshairs as privacy advocates decry how it handles users’ personal information as it looks to maintain its dominance in search, which still makes up the bulk of its revenue.
Right up there on the privacy evil yardstick is Facebook, not in the US, where privacy is a joke, but in Germany where it’s law. Facebook claims that it is outside Germany’s jurisdiction, because only marketing is done in its German offices, while engineering is done in Ireland. Not everyone agrees.
In March, in response to the dispute, the European Union’s top advisory panel on privacy, the Article 29 Working Party, released an opinion that the collection of biometric data without the explicit consent of users was illegal.
For 20 years Craigslist has been held up as an example of doing good by doing well, but don’t kid yourself. It’s just another hypocritical bully that cons its users into thinking it’s one of the good guys.
This isn’t the first time Craigslist has claimed such violations. The Internet is littered with digital carcasses that once built on top of the listings site. Their pixelated tombstones are inscribed with one-liners that Craigslist killed access without any notice, or they were sent a cease-and-desist letter by Perkins Coie, a top corporate law firm that frequently represents Craigslist.
And now a word from the more personal side.
Cheating and using performance-enhancing drugs is nothing new in sports, but the blatant hypocrisy of Melky Cabrera took it to new heights. After he was named MVP in the All-Star game he said, “I think the one person that has the most influence on me is the Lord. He is the one that embraced me in terms of playing better.” I wonder if the Lord told him to embrace testosterone—he was suspended for 50 games—but he apologized, which these days makes it all OK.
What is your reaction to a coach who talked more than trash to one of his own players and excused his actions by saying sexual harassment was acceptable because it is part of the sport’s culture?
Over six days of competition, though, her team’s coach, Aris Bakhtanians, interrogated her on camera about her bra size, said “take off your shirt” and focused the team’s webcam on her chest, feet and legs. He leaned in over her shoulder and smelled her.
Of course, there is the easy accessibility of Twitter where people can revile their past employer or, from the comfort of their armchair, sit in judgment of those whose feats are so far beyond them 140 characters at a time.
He is a cryptographer, blogger and iconoclast in the world of computer security, and his latest subject of inquiry is trust: how it is cultivated, destroyed and tweaked in the digital age.
Last Saturday I provided links to innovation based on thinking different; there’s more of that this week, with some very inventive solutions to common problems.
The cost of setting up shop for a budding designer is beyond prohibitive, especially if they want to be close to their prime clients in urban areas like Manhattan. But just as an interest in food and fashion often go together so the food truck solution adopted by new chefs is being snapped up by young designers.
Styleliner is among a handful of mobile retail stores in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and across the U.S that are hawking vintage accessories, sexy shoes and denim to die for in their haute wheels.
An old industrial building in Brooklyn is signaling what could be a small renaissance for local manufacturing. It’s an approach that could be applied in many urban areas by developers with a more creative and longer-term vision than loft condos.
A surge of young entrepreneurs eager to produce $7 chocolate bars made from hand-roasted and hand-ground cocoa, or build theater and movie sets or fashion high-end furniture for a connoisseur’s market find the smaller spaces carved out of these old factories precisely what they have been looking for.
And now the story of Tito Beveridge, whose career proves that rarely does one get from point a to point b via a straight line. It does prove that constant personal exploration is needed to get from, say, premed to computers to geology/oil to your true passion—even if it takes a couple of decades—which sure kicks a large hole in today’s instant gratification mindset.
I saw a motivational speaker on TV who suggested that people at a crossroads consider what they enjoy doing and what they’re good at doing — and to find a job where the two intersect. I had been making infused vodka to give to friends at Christmas, and I really enjoyed that. I thought that was my answer.
Even people who like babies get tired of the endless stream of pictures posted on various social media, but that is especially true for those folks who, by age or by choice don’t have any. Twenty-somethings fit that demographic and a group of them have provided a solution.
Launched last Wednesday, Unbaby.me will scan a users Facebook newsfeed for certain words and phrases that indicate that a picture of a baby will be looking back at them. (…)The service describes itself as, “A Chrome extension that deletes babies from your newsfeed permanently – by replacing them with awesome stuff.”
I love the English because they embrace the unusual, quixotic, eccentric and downright odd. Being pragmatic, they allow gambling (knowing people will do it whether of not it is legal). You can bet on anything if you find the right bookie—there is even a term for it—novelty betting.
The history of novelty betting in Britain can be traced back nearly a half century, Adams said, to a man named David Threfall, who in 1964 requested — and received — odds of 1,000 to 1 on a man walking on the moon by Jan. 1, 1970. Threfall, obviously, turned his £10 ticket into £10,000, giving rise to an ever-growing legion of bettors who are interested in betting on the obscure, unlikely and (sometimes) unimaginable.
We’ll end today on what I hope will be a thought-provoking note. How many friends do you have? Not Facebook friends, but real ones; the kind you would tell you need serious help and would be there for you. Take a look at why the further out of college the more difficult it is to form real connections. If this shoe fits then you may want to commit some time to finding at least one new pair.
As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Innovation isn’t always about a new product or service (on or off the web); it applies equally to a change of thinking leading to a new approach.
Venture capitalists have long been known for shunning publicity for themselves, while funding innovation by others—now they are funding both.
Venture capitalists are hiring full-time public relations experts to tell bloggers and reporters of their investing prowess. They publicize their every doing and thought on Twitter and in blog posts.
Adeo Ressi, 40, a serial entrepreneur with eight companies to his credit, started Founder Institute a few years ago with a novel approach to moving new companies forward on a global level.
For tuition of less than $1,000, students attend classes with one goal in mind: to create a fully operational company. In fact, they are required to incorporate before they can graduate.
Utilities are rarely seen as cutting edge when it comes to convincing people to conserve energy; but that’s changing with the use of everything from a fictional family’s story in a series of web videos to social media ego strokes and neighborly competition for bragging rights.
Motivating people to save energy isn’t really about the money, behavior experts say. Successful programs foster a sense of achievement and identity. And competing to beat your friends and neighbors at the savings game doesn’t hurt.
Mention mobile technology to most people and they think of people talking and doing stuff on their smartphones from playing Angry Birds to email to closing deals for their company while on vacation. Talk to the mobile players and they are far more focused on machines talking to machines—no people involved.
Berg Insight, a research firm in Goteborg, Sweden, says the number of machine-to-machine devices using the world’s wireless networks reached 108 million in 2011 and will at least triple that by 2017. Ericsson, the leading maker of wireless network equipment, sees as many as 50 billion machines connected by 2020.
My day job involves supporting people and ideas that have the potential to change the energy game. It’s about managing disruptive ideas and managing people who have disruptive ideas. In my non-Shell life, I teach leadership development workshops based on meditation practices. (…) I approached my manager and proposed a program that would bring together my innovation management role and my leadership development background. He encouraged me to build an educational curriculum blending the two because innovation begins with an idea in the mind.
Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Let’s start with a question; is it possible to effectively manage electronically? Research going back to the 1940s shows that it’s not.
Managing is not a science; it is a subtle and nuanced practice, learned mostly on the job, through paying close attention to gestures and tone of voice. (…) Information technology can and should expand your range of communication, but cannot be a substitute for interactions that build trust, share vision, and enhance community..
“But we humans have found ways to not feel so bad about it when we behave a certain way — we basically disconnect these self sanctions.” (…)”If you were to go to church or temple, that’s a moral domain. People tend to not think about business as a moral domain.” — David Mayer, management professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business
For leaders to establish those policies, they’re going to have to fear the consequences themselves. (…) By paying attention to how the environment affects our choices, people can begin to treat their ethics as a skill to develop and continue developing, even as students graduate, enter the workforce, and become executives.
But [after two decades] Beth Brooke was growing tired of hiding, particularly after being tapped to head Ernst & Young’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
Managing, retaining and hiring employees are three of the most important actions I any company of any size and in any location.
It’s ironically amusing that it amazed some of the biggest names in workforce research to find that minimally improved management yielded enormous payback. Of course, workers have been saying that for decades when they vote with their feet.
What’s worth as much as a 25% increase in your labor force, or a 65% increase in the amount of your invested capital? A one-point improvement in your company’s management practices! That’s the shocking conclusion of in-depth study conducted by researchers at McKinsey, Stanford, and the London School of Economics that looked at more than 4,000 companies in the US, Asia, and Europe.
Fred Wilson is a top VC who also has a ton of common sense; while his focus is startups his advice is applicable to any company. Here he discusses six requisites to retaining your people.
There isn’t one secret method to retain employees but there are a few things that make a big difference. (…) Communication…, Getting the hiring process right…, Culture and Fit…, Promote from within…, Assess yourself, your team, and your company…, Pay your team well.
The most successful people in business approach their work differently than most. See how they think–and why it works.
Every manager looks for good ways to learn about candidates and every candidate loves insight as to what they might be asked. Inc. suggests managers ask the same questions about previous jobs.
Go through each job and ask the same three questions:
How did you find out about the job?
What did you like about the job before you started?
Why did you leave?
Finally, when job hunting resumes are key, so it’s good to know why, when and how to better your chances. Here are six examples (five were hired) of using creativity to get noticed. After that, you need plenty of substance to back it up.
“One-in-five HR managers reported that they spend less than 30 seconds reviewing applications and around 40 percent spend less than one minute,” Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder said in a study released today.
Every so often I read something that seems to fly in the face of accepted practice or is contrary to previous expert information.
For example
According to the media it’s a given that the young, college educated, both students and recent alumni, are focused on following their passions, but, as the saying goes, it ain’t necessarily so.
…91 percent of college students and 95 percent of Millennials (here referring to college graduates between ages of 21 and 32) said that being financially secure was either essential or very important to them.
Our conscious mind is pretty good at following rules, but our unconscious mind—our ability to “think without attention”—can handle a larger amount of information.
“Guilt-prone people tend to carry a strong sense of responsibility to others, and that responsibility makes other people see them as leaders,”says Becky Schaumberg, a doctoral candidate in organizational behavior who conducted the research with Francis Flynn, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Organizational Behavior.
If you were publishing something you wanted people to remember would you choose a simple font or a fancy one that was more difficult to read? If you said ‘simple’ you’d be wrong.
Fancy fonts might be harder to read, but the messages they convey are easier to recall, according to boffins at Princeton and Indiana Universities.
Speaking of publishing; does freedom of speech mean you can use any words you want on the Net with impunity? Maybe, but words like ‘leak’, ‘flu’ and ‘gas’ could put you on a watch list.
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
The links I’m sharing today are meant to be taken personally. They are about you and others in your world, so you may want to share them.
A couple of weeks ago I pointed you to a discussion that HBS professor Jim Heskett had initiated questioning the 24/7 style of today’s work. The forum is closed and Heskett has summarized the results based on comments that are well worth reading.
“There is a lot wrong with the way we work… (…) But ultimately the primary culprit is us.”
Following that came an essay on busyness to which I really related. Busy seems to be the new black, but you may want to consider varying your wardrobe.
They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
Now take a look at why living optimistically (not touchy-feely everything is wonderful) has real health benefits and the follow-up real-world example.
“…optimism is not about being positive so much as it is about being motivated and persistent.”
Years ago I wrote Being “Special” Can Ruin Your Children’s Lives and then watched as Millennials graduated college and entered the workforce with no clue that there was more to it than showing up and trying. In a high school commencement speech the speaker told students that they were neither special nor exceptional, but that did not change their value (you can see the entire speech here).
I wonder if there is any room for the ordinary any more, for the child or teenager — or adult —…who will be a good citizen but won’t set the world on fire.
— we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement,” he told the students and parents. “We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”
Personally, I believe there is not only plenty of room, but also great need.
We are of enormous value in our own world as well as the world at large.
They are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Fred Smith, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Howard Schultz, Mark Zukerberg, John Mackey, Herb Kelleher, Narayana Murthy, Sam Walton, Muhammad Yunus
These founders created and then nurtured healthy, sustainable organizations that now have a combined market value of more than $1.7 trillion. They directly employ more than 3 million people…
Each of their companies sits at the nucleus of a thriving ecosystem that has cultivated and nurtured dozens if not hundreds of other enterprises.
There is a short profile of each at the link; considering it’s a kind of holiday weekend that’s enough reading.
There are multiple articles in two of today’s links, so you may want to bookmark them.
The first is from the IBM Institute for Business Value (to which you can subscribe for free) and offers links to several studies on social CRM. You can also participate in a short survey about how social is being used in your company.
We launched the inaugural Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation nearly a year ago. Today, we are so proud to announce the grand prize winners as well as the “Management Innovator of the Year” Award.
Facebook has agreed to make it clear to users that when they click to like a product on Facebook, their names and photos can be used to plug the product. They will also be given a chance to decline the opportunity to be unpaid endorsers.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Today we look at what’s going on in and around your head.
