Dan Erwin

What the 21st Century Career Looks Like

Twnety-five years ago if you had significant technical skills you could count on a good, well-paying job. That was especially true in manufacturing. But even in other vocations, little more than a well-developed technology was all that was required to rise in the organization and get a good-paying job. Of course the introduction of desk-top computing in the mid 1980s started to change that. Over the next ten years it became clear that everyone in business had to understand and be able to use the digital tools. The US economy was beginning to travel beyond the industrial age. 

The most significant changes were still to come. Working as a consultant at some of the leading edge American corporations, the changes were regularly called to my attention by 1990. And they were straightforward. Not only must you have a strong technical competency as part of your background, but you will need both analytic and social competencies. If you're a manager in IT at a firm like the old Pillsbury, you need to be able to manage and communicate with cross-functional team members. 

Although my clients at leading companies like 3M, Honeywell, Pillsbury and American Express made me very aware of those needs, 90% of US workers and managers were either unaware or found the demands frustrating or even terrifying. 

The salary differential first surfaced in a thorough-going research report from the Dallas Fed as recent as 2003. They identified a talent hierarchy, ranking 6 competencies underlying careers in the following order, from the bottom up: muscle power, manual dexterity, formulaic intelligence, analytic reasoning, imagination/creativity and people skills.The greatest future needs were for people skills, even more than the creative and anlytic skills.

Recently Richard Florida reported on this very subject in the October Atlantic on essay, Where the skills are. Although the article ostensibly describes and locates America's smartest cities, tucked into his essay is an absolutely fascinating and illuminating salary report on careers driven by the analytic and social competencies. Here are the salary stats, based on his study of the US Bureau of Labor detailed information on more than 800 occupations:

• Breaking up each of the vocations by required skills, he found that those in the top quarter as measured by required analytic skill, pay $25,600 more than those in the lowest quarter.
• In shocking contrast, those vocations in the top quartile requiring social skill pay $34,600 more than those in the lowest quarter.

Jobs requiring analytic skills are heavily concentrated in the larger metro areas. And jobs requiring the highest level of social skill are the most concentrated in the very largest metro areas--where, combined with the high prevalence of anlytic skill, they underpin faster rates of innovation and growth. 

So, you ask what do social skills have to do with innovation and creativity? Great question. Innovation without social competencies never gets to the drawing board. In fact, it's quite appropriate to say that if you and your team can't sell your idea and your innovation, it'll never get funded or manufactured. 

Let's clarify one important issue. Social intelligence is more than emotional intelligence or mere sociability. Social intelligence includes persuasion, social perceptiveness, the capacity to bring the right people together on a project, the ability to help develop other people, and a keen sense of empathy.

Merely being a "good communicator" won't cut the mustard any longer. There are no naturals with the competencies of social intelligence. Florida pulls together his ideas this way: Cities can't work as inovative engines unless they are populated by people who can effectively promulgate, and marshall support for new ideas. 

"Blindspots: The 10 Business Myths You Can't Afford to Believe."

I wish I had written this book. It’s desperately needed, has a built-in audience, and is written by a Gen-Yer for business Gen-Yers on the make for business success. My friend, Alexandra Levit, challenges the big ideas that so many believe, but are so damned wrong. She does it in a gracious, thoughtful, reasonable fashion, with illustrations that are eye-popping, leading-edge research, and a great deal of fun. Her delicious writing just sneaks up on you. Furthermore, she focuses on what will make you successful in today’s world, not yesterday’s. 

I think it was Lindsey Pollak, the well-known career blogger, who’s written that Gen-Yers lack street smarts. Well. . . in this book, Levit goes a long way toward resolving that problem. And before I sign off on this paragraph, I need to emphasize that though she’s written to her youthful audience, her ideas are just as needful and just as relevant to all the generations. And yeah . . . all the professions. I’ll allude to that in a few paragraphs. 

As the title reveals, she deals with those silly ideas that some, perhaps most believe are gospel truth. Let’s look briefly at a few of them without spilling the beans. Hopefully, it’ll entice you to run to Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com before the sun sets. 

Alexandra begins with the historically monstrous, American myth that “overnight success is possible.” She went right for the illustrative jugular by demythologizing Susan Boyle’s first round performance on television and YouTube that pumped the “overnight success” of a singer who supposedly had never sung in public before. Sounds fascinating, says Alexandra. But that wasn’t exactly the way it happened. Susan attended the Edinburgh Acting School and sang at churches and karaoke bars, and trained with a professional voice coach before auditioning for musicals. But Alexandra’s recommendations for achieving success flow right out of the same research of the more academic works of Jeff Pfeffer’s reality stuff on power and Teresa Amabile on small wins. But Levit is immediately practicable, providing some very concrete recommendations for setting goals, coping with setbacks and keeping your goals from getting the best of you. 

In another chapter she completely discredits that nauseating Midwestern and Geek belief that if you work hard at your job and are good at it, it’ll be the key to success. There are a number of reasons for success, but the reality is that there’s a very weak link between job performance and career outcome. Among the sub-topics for that chapter are, Why knowledge isn’t power, The popularity factor, Getting on the executive radar, and Promoting yourself without bragging.  Here Alexandra recommends, among other things, that one way to establish that needed public persona is by becoming the go-to person on a particular subject. Be a perpetual learner and showcase your knowledge by serving as an organization spokesperson and creating a convincing online brand. 

In today’s economy, her debunking of the myth that really essential people don’t get laid off is exceptionally valuable. The driver for job security isn’t necessarily that of taking on the role of essential employee. It’s rather easy to confuse the good work you’re doing with the organization’s bigger picture. Those two don’t inevitably overlap. It’s not just essential businesspeople that get laid off. If you’ve been around medical clinics and law firms, you should know that both essential physicians and lawyers have gotten laid off. And essential teachers? Well, ‘nuff said. You hope that lay-offs just happen to poor performers, but the truth is that even top performer get laid off. Especially useful in this chapter is a long set of clues that your demise is imminent. 

I was curious to find out whether Alexandra would deal with the “passion” myth. Yep. There it was in the place of honor. Last on the list, the most prominent place to put an important chapter. Do what you love and the money will follow is a swell way for a title to get at the real issue. It’s a set-up for both debunking passion and reframing strengths into more useful recommendations, and Alexandra succeeds at both. I had to chuckle at her comment that passion is not a panacea. The cliché, “starving artist,” she writes, came about because the dream of millions to become an artist results in only a lucky few being able to make a living off their job. Their passion got them nowhere. 

While reading Blindspots, I couldn’t help but think of that study at Google that demonstrates the fallacy of deeply held beliefs—and the power of accepting and acting on evidence, even when that evidence clashes with ingrained beliefs. Like most tech companies, Google believed that the most important quality for managers is deep technical expertise. They believed the best bosses left people alone and mainly, when needed, helped people with technical problems. That’s not what the research showed at all. When Google examined what employees valued most in a manager, technical expertise ranked last of eight attributes they examined. What did employees value most in a manager? Google found that the keys were asking good questions, taking time to meet with people, and caring about those employees lives and careers. They’d been hiring on the basis of their beliefs, but their beliefs were dead wrong. And the employees suffered as a result. 

Studies show that we see what we believe.  In other words, believing is seeing and not the opposite. Alexandra Levit’s book challenges many, perhaps most, of our beliefs with great research, enticing illustrations and a great deal of reasonable sense. This is a book that’s chock full of great ideas and practicable recommendations. It’s an ambitious career work containing a striking series of vignettes illuminating how to become a successful businessperson today’s world. It provides the kind of intelligence and street smarts needed for careers in the New Economy. It shrugs off the irrelevant, the obvious and the trite, landing us squarely in reality. Michael Port’s comment is right on: “Hard-hitting, honest, and course correcting . . . What it really takes to be successful in business.”

See my list of "Good Books" on the left margin

"Changing Companies' Minds About Women"

In my previous blog, Why do men hold back women in the workplace, I referred to the groundbreaking Mckinsey report by Joanna Barsh and Lareina Yee that addressed the frustrating lack of women at senior levels in America’s business. 

Their recommendations for resolving the problem are both realistic and practical. But for some reading this blog, I need to reinforce the fact that dealing with the problem simply because it’s the right thing to do won’t cut the mustard. A diverse leadership team is highly is highly advantageous for their business. 

Many of the leading consumer products firms understand the business rationale for women in leadership. They recognize, as the McKinsey report asserts, that there is a bevy of research that highlights strong statistical correlations among large numbers of senior women, financial performance, and organizational health. The bottom line: companies gain hard business benefits from a more diverse senior team. 

Based on the experience of successful companies the report makes five recommendations:

• Injecting greater rigor into people processes
• More data on the subject
• Thoughtful targets pushing women into key roles
• A company specific case for women
• Better sponsorship approaches 

I believe that all five of the issues can be exceptionally useful. Although some firms are merely giving lip service to the discussion of women in the workplace, most companies are aware of the problem, but not many are aware of the benefits of the diverse senior team. 

I’m committed to the proposition that long term innovation, whether in the form of change or new products and services, is first and foremost built on our ability to sell its benefits to the relevant stakeholders. Steve Jobs is the master at that issue. Some think it’s the quality of his innovations, but I doubt that. In the final analysis Jobs is focused on benefits his products and his services can bring to the consumer. Jobs understands the consumer as well as anyone on earth. Thus, changing companies’ minds about women is fundamentally a sales job. The McKinsey article addresses this issue, but it fails to make clear enough that every organizational leader who understands the benefits of women in leadership had better be able to address the benefits of their proposal to the fundamental stakeholders of the organization. 

There’s solid agreement today that In order to do different things and make change, at least on a consistent, systematic basis over a sustained time period, organizations and their people must begin to think differently. What that means is that data is exceptionally important. In order to change thinking there are going to have to be a great number of conversations. Conversations which openly deal with the assumptions a manager makes and the data underlying those assumptions. What that implies, also, is that execs take data seriously, that they make data a central part of their decision making and that they can recognize that the inferences and ultimate conclusions they draw are built on data. Now the data they use may be poor or inadequate, but still they need the expertise to think data. Organizational cultures vary in their willingness and ability to deal with data. Lacking those characteristics makes the change process far more difficult.

Furthermore, for execs to commit themselves to change is one thing. But it’s another to actually make progress on those commitments. Leaders will need to guard against backpedaling and be sure to continually keep the process going.

These McKinsey women have made a significant contribution to women in the workplace. It’s an article that HR people and the company leadership will find very useful.

Why Do Men Hold Back Women in the Workplace?

I’ve got a lot invested in this issue. It’s not just the many clients of the female gender whom I’ve coached over the years or my background in gender communication. But three beloved daughters, all professionals. So Joann Barsh and Lareina Yee’s article in the September McKinsey Quarterly struck a chord with me. Their article sets out to change companies’ minds about women. And they’ve done a swell job.

Despite the Arianna Huffington’s of the world and corporate commitment to women’s career advancement, progress appears to be stalled. The stats are telling:

• Women account for 53% of entry-level employees
• Women hold only 37% of middle-management positions
• Women hold only 28% of vice-president and senior management roles
• Women hold only 14% of seats on executive committees

[This week’s Newsweek reports that women in the U.S. seriously outpace men in college degrees: 36% of women and only 28% of men in the age group of 25 to 29 hold bachelor’s degrees. (The U.S. is tops in the world for educated women. That includes education level, literacy and gender parity in schools. Who says government legislation and campaigns can’t impact problems from the mid-twentieth century? Those statistics are a far cry from my generation of septuagenarians.The flip side of that issue is that the educational attainment of men is of tragic proportion.)]

As the authors of the McKinsey research point out, corporations have trouble retaining promising women or promoting them into top jobs. The real issue is the “invisible, but powerful beliefs” held by managers. These mindsets subtlely and unintentionally hold back women.

Long term, this is an important issue for corporate America. Systematic research shows that companies gain very solid business benefits from a more diverse senior team. Consumer products firms take this issue seriously.

The McKinsey study digs deeply into the problem, finding that at every point in the U.S. talent pipeline, the odds of advancement for men are twice those of women. When it comes to the big leap, from executive committee to CEO, nearly four times as many men as women succeed.

So why do men hold back women? This is what surfaced in their research:

• “She’s too aggressive” (or “too passive”) I can’t imagine a man getting the feedback. Furthermore, women won’t receive that info directly. In my interviewing for women clients I’ve picked it up, but in every instance the client told me she had never received that feedback. They quickly set out to remedy the problem in constructive fashion.
• “I don’t want to tell Bob he didn’t get that job.” Leaders are not comfortable telling their male protégés, whom they have groomed for years, that someone else is getting that job. What McKinsey didn’t point out is that that response is the remnant of the “boys club.”
• “I don’t know how to talk or mentor her.” Men tend to sponsor men. They gravitate to the sex with whom they find more common interests. There’s also plenty of nervousness about mixed gender relationships in the workplace.
• “If I put a woman in that role and she fails, it’ll set back all women.” This is an inadvertent mind-set that treats women as representative of their whole gender. I can’t imagine men being treated as other than individuals.
• “A woman isn’t right for that job.” Those stereotypes are still there, though vestigial. One of the upsides of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is the placement of women in the front.

This is a vicious cycle for women, difficult to deal with primarily because the statements are deeply held. They can be resolved one-on-one, but that approach is unfair to women. It’ll be the 22^nd century before the change takes place.

A Critical Look at Organizational Ethics

In Alexandra Levit’s glorious new book, Blind Spots: 10 Business Myths You Can’t Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success, she states her rationale for writing in clear, uncompromising terms. Blindspots is a book written by a Gen-Yer for Gen-Yers basically because she was tired of reading silly theories and platitudes by business and career authors who sell their work by giving these myths credibility and by telling readers what they want to hear.

What’s clear is that we have a new page in business authenticity. She shrugs off the irrelevant, the obvious and the trite, landing us squarely in reality. In that same spirit, I want to think and talk critically about business ethics. Firms can say an awful lot about organizational ethics, and they have good reason to talk about the issue. The Ethics Resource Center released, in 2009, a survey which indicated that unethical behavior is prevalent in the workplace. Some of the relevant findings include:

• 22% observed abusive or intimidating behavior toward employees
• 16% observed a situation that places employee interests over organizational interests
• 11% observed violations of safety regulations
• 10% observed misreporting of actual time worked
• 14% observed discrimination on the basis of race, colord, gender, age, etc.
• 9% observed stealing or theft
• 7% observed sexual harassment
• 19% observed lying to employees, customers, vendors, or the public

These statistics demonstrate that unethical behavior does not seem to be rare in organizational life. The consequence is that organizations have attempted to establish ethics programs. About 70% of employees indicate that their organizations had implemented ethics training. And, the results also indicate that ethics training seems to have a positive effect on organizations.

In the spirit of Blindspots, not least because many have asked about ethics in organizations, I want to look at the realities of organizational ethics. I believe firmly that the more we understand the organizational setting, the more potential we have for work security and career success. And yeah, organizational ethics is one area where we need to get our head straight.

Organizational ethics is a very mixed bag. As a consequence, it’s important to stop thinking that the world is a just place. One of the first reactions many employees have is that the organization is going to be loyal to them. After all, ethical codes socialize an organization’s members into a culture of acceptable behavior, and announce that the organization is a worthy partner. That’s just not always true. Another reaction is that employees can be counted on to be honest in their dealings with the organization. That’s not true, either. So where is ethical reality in the typical organization?

Specialists in organizational communication have been looking at this question for some time. I’m especially indebted to the work of Modaff, Butler and Dewine in the growing field of organizational communication. They find that the answers are nuanced. So keep the fact that organizational ethics is a mixed bag in your front lobes. It’ll help you learn from all situations and all people, even those you don’t like or respect. Furthermore, it’ll keep you from naivete, and make it possible for you to deal with ethical and political reality.

1. Never forget that sometimes an organization’s code of ethics could be a public relations gimmick, designed to lure stakeholders into a false sense of security. And, of course, serve as a recruiting means for highly prized recruits.
2. An organizational code of ethics could be a means of imposing values upon employees upon employees that are not truly accepted by those employees. My own experience with that very issue created tensions impacting my productivity and personal life.
3. The code of ethics could be a way of regulating the behavior of employees in the interests of management.
4. Even though a code of ethics may encourage whistle-blowing, it’s clear from data that the worker who does so may face organizational retaliation.

As I write this, what crosses my mind is that the very people who educated me on the organization’s ethical realities were not low level employees or managers. They were senior execs, people who’d achieved at the highest rungs of organizational life. Once they became clients and friends they regularly urged me to deal with the inherent negative conflicts of corporate reality. These same execs who might reinforce the ethical codes were also telling me that I needed to recognize the implications of these rules. To recognize them meant that I was able to be more vigilant and proactive to ensure my own success. Those execs were very good at the process. Understanding these issues can also serve your interests.

Are Top Salespeople Born or Made?

My blog title is from an HBR blog on critical sales skills, written by Steve W. Martin. Martin argues that over 70% of top salespeople are born with “natural instincts” that play a critical role in determining their sales success. His conclusion, he writes, is drawn from his “research.” So, Martin believes, top salespeople are born, not made. Duhhhh! We got rid of that same notion regarding top leaders about ten years ago. Now we have to go through the same song and dance about top salespeople. Aaaargh!

But are sales skills actually a matter of natural instinct?

Take, for example, what Martin regards as the first and most differentiating factor of sales success--language specialization. Very few, he writes, are language mavens who can conduct intelligent conversations about the details of daily business operations. . . . Successful self-made salespeople possess domain-area expertise and speak the corresponding business operations language, or have deep knowledge of the industry's technical language. These languages are the yardstick by which customers measure a salesperson's true value and greatly influence their purchase decisions. Lesser-performing self-made salespeople are not as fluent in these languages, so they tend to focus on likability and friendliness with prospective customers.

This reminds me of my favorite movie line by Jason Bateman in the opening scene of “The Switch” in which he talks about his inability to relate: For most of us it’s about not being able to say what you need to say when you need to say it. Martin would say that Bateman’s problem is biology. Less than 30% of the top conversationalists are self-made. They are born with natural conversational instincts. So it’s our inheritance--the luck of the draw.

That’s utter nonsense. Martin hasn’t done the right research. It’s one thing to say that top salespeople grew up in families where good fiction that develops one’s experience was read, and critical thinking and interactional conversation were modeled and emphasized—and most don’t have that luxurious background. It’s another to say that some have natural instincts that play a critical role in determining sales success. I wrote asking for his research. Thus far, a month later, no response.

True. There is such a thing as language instinct, but only at the most basic level. Unless there’s a physical impediment such as Down or Joubert Syndromes, where a portion of the brain is underdeveloped, evolution starts us all out with basic language grammar. If you pay attention to toddlers you can recognize the grammar. Our eldest, when a toddler, understood it was “raining” or “snowing,” or the “sun was shining.” So of course when the wind was blowing, it was also “winding.” That’s toddler grammar—and it is instinctual says Steven Pinker.

Where we go from there is highly dependent upon environment, opportunity, learning and motivation. If you’re familiar with the conclusions regarding deliberate practice, you know that expertise in any domain requires a great deal of modeling, feedback, coaching and practice. That’s true whether the issue is chess, golf, math--or language. Buy shoes at Nordstrom’s and buy tennies at the local discount shoe store and ask both salespeople about their shoes. It doesn’t take much to recognize the language distinctions of trained middle-class people versus those of poorly trained people trying to work their way out of poverty. That’s the result of environment and education. Yeah, I know. The students of deliberate practice don’t want to rule out some special giftedness for world-class performers in golf, violin or chess. But let me assure you, you don’t need to be a world-class performer to become a top salesperson.

But at one point, I’m in full agreement with Martin. Top salespeople sure as hell need more specialized language skills than they’re liable to get in 95% of families or even in the better schools. They need to learn the art of conversation.

Why are the skills of interactional conversation so lacking in business culture? Or, for that matter, in the American culture? The answer is hidden in plain sight. The interactional skills of top salespeople are built upon a number of obvious issues: domain, operational and strategic knowledge. But interactional skills are also built upon dialog competencies. Specifically, critical thinking, listening, advocating, inquiring and turn-taking.

The better schools teach critical thinking, advocating and active listening. But questioning and turn-taking are a completely different animal. Business people, and especially the male of the species, are taught to advocate, not inquire and interact. Leaders who ask questions are thought to be weak and looked down upon. Amazing to me how that “W” is thought to be a leader because he advocated, but “Obama” is not, because he questions. And does it publicly. More nonsense from the idiocracy.

We’ve got a pot full of research explaining why in our culture and especially in the professional and business cultures we don’t inquire. (Lawyers question—but only with leading questions. Those aren’t the interactional and collaborative questions of development, innovation and strategic sales.)

In one of a number of studies, Fiona Lee asks, When the going gets tough, do the tough ask for help? She finds that individuals do not seek help—translated, they do not ask questions. Why? Help seeking implies incompetence and dependence and is therefore related to powerlessness. At bottom, questioning implies vulnerability and fear to most people. Letterman asks questions, but only so he can make fun on his show. They aren't the questions of dialog.

So, is language specialization instinctual for the few? Not at all. What holds us back is the fear of vulnerability and ignorance of the questioning process. Can that mental model be changed and people gain the necessary competence of dialog: the art of talking, thinking, turn-taking and questioning together? Of course. But it won’t happen overnite. As my friend, Alexandra Levit, puts it in her brilliant new book, Blind Spots (see my Good Book list on the left column), the widely held belief of overnite success is pure myth.

Once more. Is the language specialization necessary for top salespeople a matter of instinct? Of course not. Those who think so haven’t done their research.

Fiona Lee, “When the Going Gets Tough, Do the Tough Ask for Help? Help Seeking and Power Motivation in Organizations.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol 72, No. 3, pp. 336-363, 1997.

Photo: Flickr, by Valerie Everett

Quotation of the Week: President Theodore Roosevelt

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

               --Teddy Roosevelt, Labor Day, September 7, 1903

As the latest Economist points out, the billions who seek that prize are finding both feast and famine.

Why is that true in the US? The consensus is that there are two causes: globalization and technology. But Michael Spencer, the Nobel winner, argues, rightly, that globalization is the more potent cause.

Tyler Cowen, the economist and compulsive blogger, also agrees, but adds a different twist in his book, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will Eventually Feel Better. (The title is classic Cowen.) Cowen argues that for much of our history, we enjoyed the benefits of free land, immigrant labor and powerful new technologies. Those advantages have faded, and now we need to start over again. In the meantime, there are winners and plenty of losers. And some of the problem is not fixable.

What do we do in the meantime?

The Economist answers that question with the obvious.  Lowering this new natural rate of unemployment will require structural reforms, such as changing education to ensure that people enter work equipped with the sort of skills firms are willing to fight over, adjusting the tax system and modernising the welfare safety net, and more broadly creating a climate conducive to entrepreneurship and innovation. None of these reforms is easy, and all will take time to produce results, but governments around the world should press ahead with them.

[I’ll add a not-too-welcome caveat. When voting time comes this means that you’d better make certain that jobs and education (a sub-topic of jobs) are a higher priority than fixing the deficit today. The deficit needs to be fixed, but it doesn’t have to be fixed today. On that, ninety-percent of those in the know are agreed. Too often fixing the deficit is more an ideological issue of downsizing government than taking care of our own backyard.]

What do we need to do for our careers?

Education and learning are an inevitable prerequisite for success and security. Or, as Laura Pappano has argued in a summary: The Master's as the new Bachelor's. Nearly 2 in 25 people age 25 and over have a master’s degree. That’s about the same proportion that had a bachelor’s in 1960. That’s not just the MBA, but includes such degrees as the M.S. in supply chain management, the M.S. in technology and etc. 

In her research she finds that the degree of the moment is the professional science master’s, or P.S.M., combining job-specific training with business skills. Where only a handful of programs existed a few years ago, there are now 239, with scores in development. Florida’s university system, for example, plans 28 by 2013, clustered in areas integral to the state’s economy, including simulation (yes, like Disney, but applied to fields like medicine and defense). And there could be many more, says Patricia J. Bishop, vice provost and dean of graduate studies at the University of Central Florida. “Who knows when we’ll be done?”

All of this means that your kids should do at least one of two things: go to an elite college where the major doesn’t matter (liberal arts, including the humanities are just as marketable from those schools), or major in one of the STEM areas (science, technology, engineering and math).

Although I’ve always thought that Teddy Roosevelt was the first master of spin, I started this blog with his statement because it is just as relevant today. For fun, Mark Twain once grumbled that Teddy Roosevelt, “would go to Halifax (that century’s Timbuktu) for half a chance to show off” and “to hell for a whole one.” Still, Roosevelt’s comment couldn’t be more prescient.

The Market Has Spoken--Conclusively--on Climate Change

The Republican debate this past week was especially enlightening, showcasing, in several instances, the current state of the idiocracy. Take Rick Perry’s comments on climate change. Any trained debater will tell you that his worst stumble of the night was on that subject. Perry has previously stated that the science of climate change is not settled. Inevitably, when challenged by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and the moderator about how he came to that conclusion, Perry was adrift. He could name no scientist he had read, much less provide evidence to lend support to his position. He just repeated that we still “need to find out what the science is” and “the fact of the matter is that the science is not settled.” 

It’s not unusual for politicians to dissemble about risk, often because voters don’t like to get bad news.

But whatever the hoi polloi think about climate change, the free market has already spoken on the business of climate change. And it’s in direct conflict with the naysayers.

The insurance industry, in contrast to many politicians, makes its money by giving it to you straight. How long you’re liable to live, what price you’ll get for your home and even whether you should repair and keep your car a bit longer—or get rid of it. 

As a recent article in Businessweek has indicated, the insurance industry has already factored climate change into its models for measuring, pricing and distributing risk. The writer is cautious in his explanation. It’s not possible to say for certain that any single weather event is caused by carbon emissions, which leads to more rainfall, floods and snowfall over parts of the planet. But last year was the hottest on record and Arctic ice is at record low levels. 

Swiss Re, the second largest reinsurer, is developing scenarios using probabilistic modeling to help government officials cope. It studied the effects of climate change in vulnerable areas such as Samoa, Mali, the Caribbean islands, and Miami. No matter which model it chose—current patterns continue, moderate changes, or extreme changes—Swiss Re concludes it’s cheaper to adapt now rather than wait. It recommends building codes that require more water- and wind-proofing; zoning laws that prevent planting trees close to buildings and power lines; redesigned beaches that absorb storm surges; and restoration of wetlands. 

Damages from Hurricane Irene are estimated by insurers at between $5 and $7 billion in claims. That hurricane traveled farther north than hurricanes usually do, dropping extraordinary amounts of rain. At the same time, the tube is showing damages from fires caused by drought, high temperatures and Dust Bowl conditions. And Houston hit an all time high of 109F on the same day that Irene was roaring up the Seaboard. 

It continues to astound me how much the public is anti-science and willing to swallow whatever pseudo-science comes from political opportunists. That rhetoric, as I’ve written in the past, contains some of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard. But as the Businessweek article concludes, though politicians have enjoyed enormous success calling scientists into question, the market is not proving to be such an easy target.

The Surprising Relationship Between Work Communication and Personal Health

Research is increasingly establishing links between the quality of communication a worker receives and that worker’s personal health. Worker satisfaction has been tied to productivity for years, but extensive research has now found that interpersonal communication has a surprising impact upon personal health. Sounds like there’s more than one reason to get rid of asshole employees and managers. They impact not only productivity, but also the cost of employee health coverage. 

The research shows that persistent messages of hostility, domination, not caring and avoiding issues are examples of patterns that create stress and impact more than productivity. They also negatively affect a person’s immune system. Indeed, when stressful interactions occur repeatedly, they are more likely to lead to physiological problems and even shorten one’s life span. That’s one reason blue collar workers rarely collect more than a couple years of social security after retirement. They have little control over their work situation, so they die young. Life span is clearly a class-based issue. 

Bob Sutton reports on a recent study on the impact of nasty interactions. Andrew Miner, Theresa Glom, and Charles Hulin did a clever study in which each of forty-one employees carried palm-size computers. Each completed a brief survey via the device at four random intervals throughout the workday, over a two-to-three week period. The device would alert the employee, a short survey would be presented on the screen, and the employee would have twenty minutes to report (among other things) if he or she had a recent interaction with a supervisor or a coworker, and whether it was positive ornegative. Employees completed a checklist about their current mood, whether they were “blue,” “contented,” “happy,” and so on. The employee had more positive than negative interactions; for example about 30% of interactions with coworkers were positive and 10% were negative. But negative interactions had a fivefold stronger effect on mood than positive interactions—so nasty people pack a lot more wallop than their more civilized counterparts. 

So which kind of relationship communication is better for your health? Those who experience helpful, instrumental relationships and emotional support are more likely to experience greater physical well-being. That’s true outside of work as well. A person’s immune system profits from satisfying social ties. 

Related research also studied whether married people are healthier than single people. There’s widespread belief that being married somehow makes you live longer and enjoy a healthier life. But people in troubled marriages with dissatisfied spouses tend to experience more health problems. And surveys show that the health and longevity of people who get married and stay married isn’t all that different from people who stay single. So the issue is not marriaghe per se, but the quality of the interaction in that marriage (or single life) that makes the difference. People who are happy with their relationships, whether married or single, are more likely to have a health advantage.

Mark Zuckerberg on Personal Identity

Although I’ve a great deal of respect for bright Gen-Yers like Mark Zuckerberg, a quote of his tells me that when it comes to personal identities, Zuckerberg is not too bright. You may have read his quote in Time: "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." Like a number of techies, he’s dumb about people. Michael Zimmer, a well-known information ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, put it this way: Zuckerberg has a history of speaking his mind . . . and what he says is often “fraught with problems, ignorance, and arrogance.” Like a few others I know in the tech field, Zuckerberg needed that Harvard liberal arts degree to learn how to think beyond bits and bytes.

But his attitude toward personal identity is a very common mistake. Indeed, I suspect that his belief on personal identity, what the unwashed herd calls the “real me,” is widely held. I’ve had numerous conversations with those, even PhDs, who thought you could peel back the layers and find out who you really are. But if you’re looking for an analogy for peeling back the layers, the best one for us all is the onion. Eventually, when you peel back far enough, you’ll find there’s nothing there. To quote Gertrude Stein, there is no there there.

If we only have one identity, we’re in luck if business needs that identity. But when that identity is no longer needed, we’re in deep shit. And, by the way, that’s exactly what’s happened to millions of single career American workers. It shouldn’t take much to figure out that the notion of a single identity (which, I assume, equals a single career) is not just damaging. In today’s economy it’s liable to leave you out on the streets

It’s not that I’m trying to be cute about all this. But as Curt Sittenfeld put so well in his opinion article, Zuckerberg believes we should all be the same in every context. He’s got to be kidding. I’m not the same person to my kids, my wife, or my neighbors, much less that monstrous variety of friends and clients. 

So let’s think a bit deeply about personal identity. And here, once more, I’m going to throw caution to the winds and dig into the sacred muck. Herminia Ibarra has summarized it best:

First, your working identity is not a hidden treasure (a passion) waiting to be discovered at the very core of your inner being. Rather, it is made up of many possibilities: some tangible and concrete, defined by the things we do, the company we keep, and the stories we tell about our work and lives; others existing only in the realm of future potential and private dreams. Second, changing careers (for example) means changing ourselves. Since we are many selves, changing is not a process of swapping one identity for another but rather a transition process in which we reconfigure the full set of possibilities. These simple ideas alter everything we take for granted about finding a new career. They ask us to devote the greatest part of our time and energy to action rather than reflection, to doing instead of planning.

This issue continues to surface regularly and in a number of forms. In a previous blog, I spelled out the research of Stanford’s Hazel Markus, and indicated that the notion of a true self--of a single identity--has been thoroughly dispelled by research. Several previous blogs call my readers to think twice before they follow their passion.  But the passion issue has a lot of staying power, and seems stuck in the 1960s, even with bright guys like Mark Zuckerberg.