Curiosity is Key. Ask Me How.

Posted on by Stuart Murray
CIMG5944. By Tim Sheerman-Chase
CIMG5944.  Photo courtesy of Tim Sheerman-Chase.

At work, do you sometimes feel guilty about indulging your curiosity?  Well, it turns out curiosity is a bigger benefit to your workplace that you might have expected.

Zandure Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, asserts that curiosity is the attribute we most desperately need in today’s corporate environment.  He provides data co-created by SurveyMonkey showing that curiosity is significantly under-valued.  Senior leaders “…are speaking more and more about the importance of curiosity, recognizing it as the ultimate driver of success.”

This opinion is consistent with the finding that the best leaders are good learners.  The rules keep changing because of technology, political disruption, and demographic shifts.  Your excellence in past years may be irrelevant to the future, whereas your ability to learn-forward from your current state is critical.  You can keep pace with moving goal posts.

In Lurie’s data, executives mostly think there are no barriers to asking questions in their organizations.  But there’s a problem:  employees think otherwise.  I think executives are gripped by wishful thinking.  They wish they had a culture in which information was free-flowing upwards while decisions were moving in the direction of their own voice.  And then they talk a good line about a two-way exchange of information and decision making.  But the sincerity is perceived to be lacking.

Citing research from Stanford’s Carol Dweck, Lurie asserts that

“The Culture of Genius is largely to blame. In this type of company culture some minds are seen as inherently more brilliant than others, and others are intimidated to question things and speak up as a result. It can create a toxic environment that’s stifling curiosity and has many employees doubting whether they ‘have what it takes.’”

In the process of his article Lurie references an interesting academic paper from 2014 by Matthias Gruber, Bernard Gelman, and Charan Ranganath.  To spare you the polysyllabic details: curiosity improves learning.  This finding is sensitive to the learner’s innate curiosity about a topic (i.e. intrinsic motivation), which implies that we cannot always prescribe what others ought to learn.  It’s a nuance in workplace learning, as organizations often have a list of prescribed skills and attributes (i.e. competencies) that they perceive will determine organizational success.  But if they impose this learning obligation, they might get inferior results.

The learners who are best for an organization may be those who are already fascinated by the topic-area where an organization needs growth.  Identifying and cultivating a pre-existing fascination may be more of a recruitment-and-selection question than a performance-appraisal thing.  It poses some touchy questions about leadership style: do leaders have to hang back in those cases where the employee is already growing into a challenge of their choosing?  What shall we do with the performance scorecard, core competencies, and the mandatory learning modules?  Where’s the part where the leader “causes” important things to happen?

If a leader wants to “drive” high performance in learning, I think they would need to be good at spurring intrinsic motivation.  This has to be the hardest of soft skills.  I have a son who is fascinated by police, and there is a game he plays (in Roblox) where he’s required to write a report for every arrest he makes.  If I could just get him to write his reports with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation, he would be producing a robust volume of writing every day under his own motivation.  But he didn’t seem to care when I last suggested this, so I had to back off.  I’ll try again next week.

The paper by Gruber and co. also finds that when learners are engaged in their curiosity they remember random trivial information in the surrounding environment.  You may have experienced this yourself: that moment you learned that one amazing thing… you can recall the room you were in, who you were with, and the weather that day.

This is notable because in business analytics it’s understood that information is data in a meaningful context.  All happenings are sensitive to the history, geography, economy, and culture in which they occur.  We don’t really get to decide what’s important and what’s trivial.  The large-and-small of every situation co-determine one another, such that tactics are just as important as strategy.  Given the research, it’s fortunate that brains remember the core experience as well as the context, as this gives us a natural opportunity to combine science and story.

Lurie makes compelling suggestions on how to turn curiosity into a strategic resource.  Make questions central to your daily work.  Encourage transparency.  Ensure the environment is safe for this exploratory behaviour.  Ensure diversity at all levels, to signal that all perspectives are cherished.  Direct this curiosity towards contact with customers.  “Celebrate prudent risks that fail – otherwise you will create a culture where employees are risk averse, thereby limiting your upside.” (Emphasis added)07

Most intriguing is that Lurie asserts that since Artificial Intelligence will allow robots to out-do us on efficiency and quality, “Being curious is our best defense.”  As we name compelling human instincts that cannot be imitated by robots, future careers become increasingly evident.  Decide for yourself what you think is interesting and share your discoveries with executives and clients.

The robots won’t have a clue.

BLT McMuffin Ruined My Morning and Possibly My Career

Posted on by Stuart Murray
BLT McMuffin Ruined my Morning and Possibly my Career
steak mcwheel. Photo courtesy of jordanalexduncan.

The new Egg BLT McMuffin nearly ruined my life.  I have data, I can prove it.  Don’t get me wrong, it tastes good.  But if you’re trying to get some morning mojo by picking up something in the drive-thru, do not buy this sandwich.

The bacon is an inconsistent shape and flatness, and the lettuce has a springiness that makes things unstable.  After three bites, my McMuffin started to fall apart, and the mayo ended up on my shirt and pants.  My first experiment with this horrible sandwich was on the day I met my new top client for the very first time.  When the moment came, I started talking before she had finished her sentence.  Twice.  My first impression with a very powerful person happened the day that McDonald’s chose to ruin my career.  I hereby call for a boycott of the Egg BLT McMuffin.

Your morning mood, prior to arriving at work, has a measurable impact on your workplace effectiveness.

Nancy Rothbard from University of Pennsylvania wrote an meaningful article in July 2016 in Harvard Business Review.  Rothbard was summarizing a paper she co-authored, “Waking Up on the Right or Wrong Side of the Bed: Start-of-Workday Mood, Work Events, Employee Affect, And Performance,” by Nancy Rothbard and Steffanie Wilk.  Academy of Management Journal, 2011, Vol. 54, No. 5, 959-980.

The study looks at customer service representatives in an insurance company — which had good performance metrics to begin with — to which they added surveys about employees’ moods.  They found that people who started their day happy “…stayed that way throughout the day, and interacting with customers tended to further enhance their mood.”  Those with a good start “…provided higher-quality service: they were more articulate on the phone with fewer “ums” and verbal tics, and used more proper grammar.”  And I bet they don’t cut people off, either.

By contrast, those who started their day in a bad mood “…didn’t really climb out of it, and felt even worse by the end of the day…”  The negative moods caused people to take more breaks, and the breaks were significant, “…leading to a greater than 10% loss of productivity.”  In my case, I struggled in the bathroom trying to get the oil out of my shirt with paper towel and hand-soap.  I am paid to do metrics, not laundry.

What can managers do to help?  Rothbard suggests that not sending evening emails will improve the employees’ recovery time, improving the likelihood of a good mood the next day.  And managers “…can allow employees a little space first thing in the morning, for example to chat with colleagues before an early meeting.”  Beyond Rothbard’s comments I think there is much more that can be done.

Managers are first and foremost the leaders of the mood of their team.  They need to share inspiration and positivity, since their mood has a contagion-effect on those who look up to them.  The manager needs to decide to be in a good mood, organize their life accordingly, and use their emotional contagion for the better.  If you are a leader, you might not be free to control the home life of your staff.  But you can finesse your own morning routine, and boost your team indirectly with a contagion-effect.

In a helpful article in Inc.com, Allison Davis suggests that in order to have an effective morning, we need to take care of morning tasks the night before.  Your gym bag, your lunch, and your wardrobe must be in place before you wake up.  You need to plan your week or month prior to arriving at work, so that you arrive with a clear game plan.  You need to think through your “worry” items ahead of time, then write them down, forget about them, and arrive at work with a clear mind.

For this reason I ensure my shirts are cleaned and pressed on the weekend.  All I need is for McDonald’s to put a McMuffin into my hands, and I’m ready to get to the office a few minutes early and rock my day.  Just another perfect morning, with a spotless shirt and an Egg McMuffin in my hand.

I once took a great course on emotional intelligence through Coursera, taught by Richard Boyatsis from Case Western Reserve University.  The course is called Inspiring Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence, and you can find it here.  Emotional intelligence is a complex field because it’s not just about being positive.  There’s significant brain science involved, and your understanding how the brain works in a clinical sense has a big impact on understanding and managing your gut response.

My favorite take-away was the distinction between two modes of thought.  The sympathetic nervous system is the mode where you are under some stress.  This mode is good for rules compliance, cranking-out large volumes of identical outputs, and – in my experience – a certain kind of perseverance.  By contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system is a relaxed state where you are open to new ideas; grateful and hopeful; and superior at creative thinking, strategy, and looking at the future.

In terms of how to get into this positive state, you should know that you typically wake up that way.  As frustrations and annoyances pile up through your morning, your blood thickens with stress and your mind narrows.  You’re usually done by noon, ready for an afternoon producing large volumes of rules-compliant outputs.  You can minimize these frustrations if you can plan a good morning routine.

Managers under significant stress are routinely pulled into the sympathetic nervous system.  They become uncivil.  They display a lack of emotional intelligence as they rise through the ranks.  Their reduced ability to understand those unlike themselves has an adverse effect on inclusion.

To be a good leader you need to control your stress, not just on-the-fly, but also in terms of how your life is organized.  Your get-out-the-door errands are typically thoughtless and mundane.  Therefore, it is best to take care of them when your sympathetic nervous system is active anyway, such as on evenings and Fridays.

Early in your day and early in your week is the natural time for creating great new ideas.  By contrast, bad decisions are typically made on a Friday afternoon.  How many really bad ideas can you think of that happened on a Friday afternoon?

I can think of one.  The sandwich-that-shall-not-be-named.  The Egg BLT McMuffin from McDonald’s.  I’ll bet five bucks it was invented on a Friday afternoon.  Because that’s the worst idea that has ever existed.

Cheap Labour May Soon Be a Thing of the Past

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Migrant Worker Style. By Matt Ming
Migrant Worker Style. Photo courtesy of Matt Ming.  (In communist China, being a labourer is considered dignified, hence they often wear nice coats)

What would happen if the world ran out of cheap labour?  It’s a threat, or an opportunity, depending on your perspective.  But it could happen in our lifetime.  In an earlier post I described how unemployment was low but wages weren’t rising.  If job growth were to continue all around the world, we could soon be surprised that there are few people left on earth who will work for low wages.

In a January 2018 New York Times article from January 2018, the article points to a global economic up-swing.  The reason why the economy is improving is different in every country.  The global economy has been recovering for a decade, since the 2008 recession arising from the sub-prime mortgage fiasco in the U.S.  This time around, the thriving economy is different.  Economists note that because the growth is broad-based, there are fewer star performers.  If any one country slips into a recession, the rest of the global economy could keep things going strong.  The world economy is forecast to grow by 3.9 percent in 2018 and 2019.  This growth includes a lot of developing countries.

However, this may be a house of cards about to come crashing down once you factor in the “Lewis turning point.”  The Lewis turning point describes when a developing country grows enough and creates enough jobs that there is no more surplus labour.  That means that in order for businesses to grow they must offer higher wages than other employers to draw people away, such that economic growth causes wage growth.  Before the turning point, investors grow their businesses taking for granted an unlimited supply of cheap labour.  After this turning point, the country sees notable changes in their society.  People suddenly stop working in the very lowest-paid jobs.  Employers offering benefits and job-permanence develop an edge over the competition.  Workers get picky about where they want to work.

In this interesting article on a website called The Diplomat, researcher Dmitriy Plekhanov looks into the speculation that China’s era of cheap labour has come to an end.  The methods of measurement are complicated and confusing, but in brief:

“No matter which indicators are employed, they all point out that wages have more than doubled since the year 2009. Such a pace of growth obviously has serious implications for the Chinese labor market and its international competitiveness in terms of relative wages.  The pool of cheap labor has definitely dried up.”

These changes narrow the wage gap between Chinese labour and the rest of the world.

There has been an active debate for some time about whether China has reached, or is about to reach, the Lewis turning point.  One paper from 2011 asserted that it had already happened.  Over at the International Monetary Fund a paper in 2013 estimated that the turning point “will emerge between 2020 and 2025.”  The paper notes that demographics will be a major issue.  Due to the aging of the population and their drop in fertility a few decades ago, China’s labour market is now at its peak size and will start to shrink in the near future.

It’s important to consider China in the context of the global economy.  For some time, globalization has been perceived to be a phenomenon of manufacturing job disappearing in the industrialized world and then re-emerging in China.  Yes, there were other low-wage countries to relocate to, but China was the big kahuna.  If this low-wage option disappears for investors, they must suddenly look to other countries with fewer workers.  Switching countries for a second, an article from January 2017 notes that India needs to create 16 million jobs to reach the Lewis turning point.  The article interprets that this is a lot of jobs, but that’s almost nothing in the global scale.  We’re not very far away from both China and India running out of surplus labour.

This means that investors must go farther afield.  The Times article describes a major investment being made in Rwanda, which might have been a no-go zone in years gone by.  In those cases where investors stick with their domestic populations, they need to change their perspective and seriously consider hiring ex-convicts, people with limited education, people with disabilities, and those who have experienced prolonged bouts of unemployment.  Employers can find contractors in the gig economy, but those contractors can also become scarce given that gig workers are part of the labour market.

All around, it is employers themselves that must put on a good show at the selection interview.  So if you ever thought human resources was a support function, think again.  Your competitive pay position, the quality of the employment experience, and the effectiveness of your recruiting function might become critical to business success.  Oh, and by the way …don’t tell the unions.

All Qualified Felons Are Encouraged to Apply

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Under Arrest, by Chris Yarzab
Under Arrest.  Photo courtesy of Chris Yarzab.

When you think of a prison work force, your mind naturally drifts to chain gangs in striped clothing smashing rocks with pick axes. Well, it may be time to update your perception. Employers in the US are increasingly hiring job applicants who have criminal records.  It’s a sign of a tight labour market where employers are desperate to fill positions.

In a great New York Times article from January 2018, Ben Casselman details the many ways in which people are getting a little more out of the jobs market.  To clarify, workers are getting more out of it.  But employers have to put in extra effort.  The criminal-hiring phenomenon appears in varying degrees depending on the unemployment rate, particularly in places where unemployment is below 4%.

“In Dane County, Wis., where the unemployment rate was just 2 percent in November, demand for workers has grown so intense that manufacturers are taking their recruiting a step further: hiring inmates at full wages to work in factories even while they serve their prison sentences.”

The effects of the low unemployment rate go beyond those with criminal records.

“Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based software company that analyzes job-market data, has found an increase in postings open to people without experience. And unemployment rates have fallen sharply in recent years for people with disabilities or without a high school diploma.” (Emphasis added)

Those who have experienced prolonged bouts of joblessness are also able to make gains.

When governments attempt to design better social programs, they often say the labour market does the heavy lifting.  That is, when those dependent on social supports are suddenly able to work and then they find work, employment does big things for their wellbeing.  A man named Jordan Forseth is showing up at work in a car that he bought with the money he earned while in prison.  He says that this arrangement is giving him a “second chance.”

In the United States, labour force participation fell dramatically over 20 years.  During those two decades a lot of people lost good jobs in the manufacturing sector, or lost jobs in their small-town locale.  They assumed they would never find similar work.  Discouraged workers create the illusion of low unemployment, because they don’t show up in the statistics for “people seeking work”.  But as employers exert more effort to hire those who had been passed-over, there is encouragement, and those workers come back into the market.

It’s a feel-good story, reading about employers who are going out of their way to hire the disenfranchised.  But what does this mean for ordinary employers who have not put in this effort?  Well, they could soon be in a bind, and this could mean you.  The active recruitment of discouraged workers is a social technology, if we were to define technology as a way of organizing production.  If the external environment has created a combination of opportunities and threats that imply that we should adopt a certain technology, then the businesses that adapt first can have a competitive advantage.

It can take a year or longer to adapt to other social technologies such as anti-bullying legislation, the acknowledgement that addiction and mental health are one-in-the-same, and the obligation to terminate super-stars who sexually harass juniors.  These new methods of organizing can be just as disruptive as computer-based technologies such as cloud computing, online delivery of learning tools, and the use of analytics.

One of the most challenging features of this new social technology is that people will need to trust prisoners and ex-convicts in order to work with them comfortably.  Similar to a newfangled device being brought into your workplace, you might worry that the new way of doing things can cause harm.  However, it should be noted that in several jurisdictions, there are human rights rules that prevent an employer for screening-out applicants based on crimes that are irrelevant to the job requirements.  For example, a drunk-driving conviction might be prohibited grounds for a job that does not require any driving.  This means that the social technology may already be in place, as legislation, and it’s just a question of whether you will comply and keep up with the times.

It’s ironic… that in order to screen-out job applicants who have broken society’s rules, an employer would be put-upon to break a different societal rule.  These rules are tucked inside human rights codes alongside rules against discriminating on the basis of race and sex.  And we should know from the advanced class on employment equity, that in order for us to all get along we need to know each other’s stories.  So what was the convict’s story?  Are they so much different from you, as a human?  Perhaps with your strength and wisdom you have an obligation to cultivate trust, rather than use mistrust as an excuse.

In order to stay at the cutting edge, employers need to adapt to one more compelling, externally-imposed change:  rethink your ideas about the less-fortunate.  Because one day they might be helping you.

Technology Can Reverse the Pecking Order

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Photographers expand horizons in 2010 Army Digital Photography Contest 110311. By U.S. Army
Photographers expand horizons in 2010 Army Digital Photography Contest 110311.  Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army.

It’s funny how a small change in technology can disrupt hierarchy.  As new technologies collect better information about employees, it puts management under increased scrutiny.  In my last post I summarized Josh Bersin’s 2018 forecast of disruptive technologies in HR.  While it is interesting to see that there are tools available that allow us to be more effective, there are dramatic implications to the way we work.

After much delay, it appears that the long-awaited labour shortage has finally arrived.  Bersin notes that this will make an appearance as a “war for talent” with recruiting becoming more competitive.  Chatbots are automating parts of the recruitment process, applicant-tracking systems are making things simpler, there is a wider range of tools for assessing candidates, and I would note that it’s possible to use technology to reduce bias (assuming the AI has been taught to not pass forward pre-existing bias).  Many of these technologies have been pioneered already, which means 2018 will be a year of diffusion.

I think there is a social element of this war for talent that warrants more discussion.  That is, when good employees are being fought over they are more likely to ask for pay increases, apply for promotions, and leave their current workplace for something better.  But it can get even more dramatic when employees are bold enough to sign union cards, tell-off their harasser, and speak openly about how to improve management.  These shifts oblige managers to change.  We can’t pretend that everything is normal.  Hiring managers must start treating employees like they are valued, respected, and deserving of growth.  That’s what it looks like amongst managers who are keeping pace.  By contrast, it may suddenly look odd that there are managers who lack this collaborative orientation.

In the discussion of continuous performance management, Bersin references goal-setting and coaching.  We can’t really slip these items into a discussion of performance management without acknowledging that ground-up performance conversations are not yet fully established.  If emerging research recommends that good managers take a coaching approach, what are the implications for managers using a prescriptive approach running off a forced-distribution scorecard?  Simply put, command-and-control managers need to change their style.

For decades, the research has been bubbling just beneath the surface.  The reality is that for employees, true motivation comes from within, and their ability to align personal motivations to their employer’s strategic environment is key.  Engaged employees achieve two-times or three-times the productivity of other employees, and leadership style is a major factor in achieving high engagement.  The new technology is designed to help managers with that leadership style, but there aren’t a lot of apps that will help advance an archaic style.

On the wellbeing side, there is a variety of new tools to monitor cognitive overload and nudge people to exercise, sleep better, and eat better.  We have so overburdened people with meaningless and counter-productive work obligations that we have to reduce workload to improve productivity.  Deloitte has a good model that describes how engagement, productivity, and wellbeing are integrated into a unified concept.  Wellbeing is not really about fruits-and-veggies advocacy any more; it is integrated into peoples’ ability to focus on their best work.

I’m fascinated by the way this trend up-ends the hierarchy.  As a result of the wellbeing imperative, the people who need to “work harder” are management and leadership who are obliged to clarify goals, cultivate a positive work culture, and encourage employees to seek growth opportunities.  Looking back, it seems like a manager-driven culture which obliges employees to follow orders and be happy with their lot in life is hopelessly archaic.

Thankfully, we don’t need to debate the best leadership style because transformational leadership simply out-performs the alternative.  Just wait a few years and the only teams left standing will be the ones that have stayed at the forward edge.  Lucky for us, this collaborative style makes work more fun.

In my next post we will explore how subjective and qualitative information are making technology and analytics whole.

Waking Up is Not a Competition

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Shadows. By Stuart Murray
Photo by author.

Do you have a strange pang of guilt about your wake-up time?  You shouldn’t.  People have varied natural wake-up times, and the “best” time to wake up appears to be extremely personal.

One of the more important workplace numbers – and one that is rarely discussed – is the normal hours of work and the degree to which hours are flexible.  Work hours are a big deal because people need to make a lot of trade-offs between family size, housing, commuting distance, and family care obligations.  In an office environment, while it’s good to have a general sense of when we want people around for meetings, it also makes sense to ensure peoples’ work and home lives to be compatible.

One item that complicates normal work hours is peoples’ sleep times.  While a lot of people have a typical sleep pattern of 11pm-7am, plenty of people tend to be early risers or night owls.  The variety of sleep times are linked to something called chronotype.  There are many news articles implying that waking early is virtuous, but there is little discussion of whether we can choose to change our sleep patterns.  My reading of the research shows mixed results amongst those attempting to change their wake time.

There are several genetic variables that affect chronotype.  The Wikipedia entry on the topic notes that “there are 22 genetic variants associated with chronotype.”  The sleep cycle is related to our levels of melatonin and our variations in body temperature.  Our age has a major impact on sleep patterns.  Children and those aged 40-60 are more likely to be early risers, while teens and young adults are more likely to be night owls.

In an HBR article from 2010, biology professor Christoph Randler was interviewed about an article he published on sleep cycles.  He cited one study that found that “…about half of school pupils were able to shift their daily sleep-wake schedules by one hour. But significant change can be a challenge. About 50% of a person’s chronotype is due to genetics.”

Looking into people’s personal experiences in attempting to wake up earlier, they will often emphasize discipline and routine in waking up properly.  Other articles identify wake-up technologies that oblige you get out of bed promptly.  The best overview that I could find comes from lifehacker.org, which has a great info-graphic on why and how to become an early riser.

Dr. Randler notes that evening people tend to be smarter, more creative, have a better sense of humor, and be more outgoing.  By contrast, morning people “hold the important cards” as they get better grades and the opportunities that arise from them.  Morning people anticipate problems and minimize them, and are more proactive.  “A number of studies have linked this trait, proactivity, with better job performance, greater career success, and higher wages.”

Team Productivity and Genetic Diversity

What is notable is that early risers have the traits that are most beneficial for their personal effectiveness and their personal career success.  This is troublesome.  You see, if early risers are more likely to get into positions of power and status they are also more likely to end up with a captive audience through which they can imply that others should be more like them.  This may be a factor in the early-rising hype.

I would assert that an employer must always look beyond individual performance and pay close attention to teamwork.  It is common for some behaviours to cause one person get ahead to the detriment of the team, and part of good management is to nip this in the bud and put the team first.  If there is a solid talent pool of night owls who bring smarts and creativity which is historically less recognized in grades or career advancement, their contribution might be strong and also under-appreciated.  We must consider what is best for the entire workplace, and cultivate the best contributions from all sleep types.

If the purpose of our diversity and employment-equity efforts is to get the best out of all people regardless of how they were born, perhaps we should be open-minded about sleep patterns.  The correct moral standard should be inclusiveness and team effectiveness.

Dr. Randler, who is from Germany, is quick to acknowledge that our bias towards early-rising is more circumstantial than fact-based:

“Positive attitudes toward morningness are deeply ingrained. In Germany, for example, Prussian and Calvinist beliefs about the value of rising early are still pervasive. Throughout the world, people who sleep late are too often assumed to be lazy. The result is that the vast majority of school and work schedules are tailored to morning types. Few people are even aware that morningness and eveningness have a powerful biological component.”

We can’t choose to be a morning type any more than we can choose to be tall, male, white, a baby boomer, or someone with executive-face.  And for that matter, we can’t choose to be Prussian.  Under what circumstances would we oblige everyone to fit a single standard of excellence that elevates one genetic type to be superior to the rest?  Didn’t we sort this out already?