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?

Today’s Awkward is Tomorrow’s Cool

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Prom 1983. By Andrew Kitzmiller
Prom 1983. Photo courtesy of Andrew Kitzmiller.

Basically, 2017 was the year in which all of the adults became anxious and depressed teenagers at a high-school dance, after we just got 51% on a big exam, and our crush sent mixed signals just before they moved away.  The moment of clarity from 2017 was that adults are just as susceptible to adolescent anxiety as the teenagers are.

And workforce analytics is right in there, disrupting the pecking order.

Analytics is a major threat to those who presume their authority and excellence should be based on wins from years gone by.  Therefore, all office politics are up for grabs.  Every job in every sector is under intense change, and at the very least we’ll each have to pick up some new tools and apply them to our current job just to break even.  But it’s far more likely that your job is the subject of a double-or-nothing bet.

Can people change?  Yes, but they have to work at it.  This is an interesting article about malleable personalities.  The idea of a malleable personality is that we can change who we are based on the circumstances, or in a chosen direction of who we want to be.  This idea is newer than most people think.

There has been a shift in psychiatry away from the decades-long theory that our brains are fixed after a certain age.  Instead, our brains are subject to neuroplasticity, in which we are always growing and adapting.  I was first exposed to the concept a decade ago by Dr. Norman Doidge in his 2007 book The Brain That Changes Itself.

Doidge was one of the earliest researchers in the psychiatry of neuroplasticity.  He had a really hard time convincing fixed-mindset people in his own field that people can change.  Major shifts in scientific thinking can take decades within the academic discipline.  Then the researchers need to convince the general public, which takes longer.

So, let’s see how quickly we can pick up a new concept and apply it to our lives, starting now.

The newer research about malleable personalities was about helping teenagers cope with anxiety and depression.  The researchers created a 30-minute video for teens to watch, explaining some new concepts:

“They heard from older youths saying they believe people can change, and from others saying how they’d used belief in our capacity for change (a “growth mindset”) to cope with problems like embarrassment or rejection. The teenagers learned strategies for applying these principles…” (Emphasis added)

The study showed noticeable improvements, relative to a control group, in depression and – lesser so – with anxiety over a nine-month period.  The study looked at both the self-reporting by the teens and the opinions of those teens’ parents.  The researchers were particularly enthusiastic that this brief video is scale-able, can be offered to all teens universally, and can set up kids for a more successful intervention later in their lives.

Adopting a Growth Mindset in a Changing Workplace and Changing World

Although the study is limited to teens in a clinical sample, the findings may be relevant to the general population’s adaptability to change.  Workplaces are in upheaval because of technology and globalization.  Every region is gripped by either unemployment or unaffordable housing.  Inequality and social media are making people increasingly anxious they haven’t made it.  Democracies are vulnerable to demagogues who offer temptations to turn back the clock.

In the workplace, what should we do?

Adopt a growth mindset, change our personalities as we see fit, and give ourselves permission to become two or more different types of people.  Scheme to have a backup plan or a side-hustle.  Put down the smartphone and start reading.  Regard societal upheaval as a topic of exceptional cocktail banter.

Then talk about your feelings, eat a sandwich, and have a nap.

You’ll need the rest.  Because tomorrow is another person.

Failing to Fail is Our Greatest Risk

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Anguish. By Porsche Brosseau
Anguish. Photo courtesy of Porsche Brosseau.

Failure is often imposed upon us, in settings where we didn’t get a fair chance to perform well.  It’s an incorrect word that we cling to when gripped by self-doubt.  Often this failure spurs an adaptability which sets us up for long-term success.  This means that failure is a word that we must take back and own, mid-process during growth.  There are not winners and losers any more, just those who adapt and those who do not.

Adaptability is the new smart.

Every now and then a good consulting firm offers some exceptional free material online.  Today’s find is Academic Impressions from Boulder, Colorado.  Academic Impressions prides themselves on providing “high quality learning opportunities for academic and administrative leaders in higher education.”

The article that caught my attention, Preparing Students to Lose Their Jobs, encourages postsecondary institutions to prepare students to get their next job, then lose that job, then move on to the next one.  The article calls on robust sources to interpret that “The future of work is adapting to change, failure as a norm, and …a longer career arc in which to experience many different and uniquely distinct careers.”  They also endorse the emerging opinion that technology and globalization will rationalize routine efforts, obliging all (employed) humans to focus on empathy.

Theirs is an opinion that adaptability to change will be the core attribute of successful and well-educated adults.  Therefore, learning to be adaptable must be a top priority.  Adaptability requires a variety of attributes that are agnostic to IQ and “the acquisition of predetermined skills”, the old hallmarks of a solid bricks-and-mortar education.

Adapting to Change Via Professional Development and Workforce Analytics

The new attributes required for workplace success are:

  • An agile mindset which relies on empathy, divergent thinking, and an entrepreneurial outlook.
  • Having the social and emotional intelligence “to adapt and thrive in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.” Their critique mirrors Elif Shafak’s TED talk on embracing complexity which also became public in September 2017.
  • Improving the speed at which we try, fail, adapt, and grow upward into the next level of challenge. External factors that drive us to failure or obsolescence will become more common, so avoidance of this change will not help.  Rather, we must learn our way into the next opportunity.  New opportunities abound, so get to them promptly… by moving on.
  • Developing a personal history of having changed context and perspective, either from a change of country as an immigrant, a shift in personal identity, or having adapted to some kind of “failure.” These shifts do not have to be shameful.  They can an important part of a meaningful story that makes us whole.
  • Our negative internal voice – the one that tells us the failure we are experiencing is because we are lacking in some shameful way – needs to be regulated, mitigated and subdued by self-reflection, meditation, and connecting our opinions to concrete evidence.

That last item is music to my ears.  On one hand, we need a general positive attitude and healthy self-image.  On the other hand, a little bit of good data can nourish us and help us overcome ill-conceived notions about our worth.  Logic and emotion come together to make the ultimate hot-and-sour soup, like a comfort food in times of change.  You need to seek new information, let it soak in, and talk yourself through it.  Then product-test your new self image with your friends, to make sure it rings true.  And, no punchline, just go!

Hippos Need a Devil’s Advocate

Posted on by Stuart Murray

Hippo II, by Andrew Moore
Hippo II.  Photo courtesy of Andrew Moore.
Hierarchy is the enemy of information-sharing.

In this Linkedin article by Benard Marr the author identifies that people are extremely reluctant to express views contrary to Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion, or HiPPO for short.  Marr cites the book Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, by Avinash Kaushik, in which that author describes the dynamic;

“HiPPOs usually have the most experience and power in the room.  Once their opinion is out, voices of dissent are usually shut out and in some cases, based on the culture, others fear speaking out against the HiPPO’s direction even if they disagree with it.”

Marr references the Milgram experiment in 1963 in which obedience to an authority figure overpowered peoples’ personal conscience.  There is an additional study that finds that projects led by senior leaders fail more often, because employees “…didn’t feel as able to give critical feedback to high-status leaders.”

What is the solution?  Marr asserts that relying on data is critical; we must line up the data to inform a decision prior to gut decisions being expressed by high-ranking people.  There is also an example of Alfred Sloan of General Motors who insisted that a decision should not be made until people have considered that the decision might not be the right one.  Sloan fosters the devil’s advocate in the process of decision-making.

I think this critique and the related research implies that modesty is mission-critical.  It’s an important contrary idea because it implies that confidence might not be a leading indicator of effectiveness.  We wish our leaders were strong and brave and looked the part, but it’s far better when our leaders are right… because they thought twice, and waited for new information, and new opinions, from people with less status.

I also think that a properly organized social network of knowledge is usually superior to the thoughts of any one individual.  With education and access to information, it should become evident that you barely know one percent of what could be known.  However, if you aspire to having a diverse network of people with different backgrounds, contexts, professions, and knowledge, you can bundle together better insights from those who each know a different one percent.

Finally, a pro-social spirit of dissent is key to getting the information moving.  When information goes up the hierarchy there are problems of posture, reprisals, hubris, and corrosive office politics.  If you love knowledge, you should develop a sense that all those things are silly little power games that have nothing to do with wisdom or effectiveness.  To be good at your job, is to regard your superiors as capable agents of decision-making who are morally your equal.  And it’s your job to make them stronger, whether they like it or not.

It’s a troublesome attitude, but that’s part-and-parcel of disrupting decision-making with new and relevant information.

Is This the Face of a CEO? It Should Be.

Posted on by Stuart Murray
toothless
Toothless.  Photo courtesy of Chris Penny.

In order to become a CEO you need to “look like” a CEO.  And it’s not about wearing the right suit, climbing mountains, or having a cruel handshake.  No, the main indicator of whether you “seem like” the CEO type is that you have a complete absence of baby-face.

The research paper is entitled “A Corporate Beauty Contest” published in July 2016 in Management Science.  The research was entirely about men because status-quo data is already sexist to begin with.  The authors are John Graham, Campbell Harvey, and Manju Puri, all from Duke University.  There’s a good news article about it in the Wall Street Journal, but I’ll summarize it more briefly:

  • Survey participants can easily identify if two people with identical demographics are a CEO and a non-CEO.
  • People judge the CEOs of larger organizations as being “more CEO-ish” than the CEOs of smaller organizations based on the same facial features.
  • Those executive with more “mature” facial features were paid more than those with less-mature facial features. To clarify, even within the arbitrary demographic category of tall straight white able-bodied males with a bit of grey hair, there is an additional category of pay discrimination based on genetics: mature-face.
  • The authors found the findings surprising because it is assumed that CEOs are selected by corporate boards based on metrics and expertise.   The main driver of a successful executive search is metrics about the shape of the executive’s face.
  • Just in case you’re about to ask if super-effective people tend to develop a mature face over the years, hold your horses. “The look of competence isn’t correlated with superior [business] performance,” says co-author John Graham.  That is, discrimination based on looks can forgive corporate performance altogether.

We just throw certain types of people into high-level jobs regardless of how good they are at running our economy.

What to do?  First, thou shalt laugh.

Second, you should actively recruit people who don’t look the part but who have good formal indicators of competence.  In the book Moneyball, Billy Beane relied exclusively on metrics to decide which baseball players to recruit into the Oakland A’s.  He ended up with an team of weird-looking people.  One guy pitched under-hand, some people had a lot of moles and birthmarks, and there was a legend about that once you look at the numbers, overweight catchers tend to be selected because of their great batting performance.  We’re not selling blue-jeans.

If you could identify the most baby-faced darlings who had exceptional corporate performance, those might be your best candidates for CEO.  And their salaries would be a total bargain, too.

Quitters May Be Your Most Valued Resource

Posted on by Stuart Murray

209365 - What Goes Around... by Adam Wyles (=)
209365 – What Goes Around… Photo courtesy of Adam Wyles.
Do you ever get that strange feeling when someone leaves your workplace that the work friendship is finished?  It’s an odd feeling, but you need to get past it.  That’s because the relationship continues to be  important even when your former colleague is working elsewhere.

“Boomerang employees” are people who have left a workplace and then come back.  Boomerangs are an emerging trend because people are changing jobs more frequently.  It’s posing new challenges in the way we think about work.  Several of the major insights about boomerangs are reviewed in a study from September 2015, from the Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated and WorkplaceTrends.com.

In brief, employers are developing more mature opinions.

“Based on survey results, nearly half of HR professionals claim their organization previously had a policy against rehiring former employees – even if the employee left in good standing – but 76 percent say they are more accepting of hiring boomerang employees today than in the past. Managers agree, as nearly two-thirds said they are more accepting of hiring back former colleagues.”

A majority of managers and HR professionals give high priority to job applicants who had left in good standing.  The warm feelings go both ways, with nearly 40 percent of employees seriously considering going back to a former employer.

Brendan Browne, VP of global talent acquisition at LinkedIn, notes in an article in Business Insider that “…jumping between jobs doesn’t mean that employees today are less loyal. Rather, the concept of loyalty has simply evolved. Employees might move around more, but they also remain much more connected to former employers.”

Getting The Best Out Of Boomerang Employees

What about the nitty gritty about how we would go about this?  First, there is the business case for favoring a returning employee.  According to Browne, Boomerangs are;

“already familiar with… [the organization’s] culture. There is an established employee-employer relationship that adds another layer of employee loyalty to the company, which in turn leads to increased retention. Boomerangs that have been away for a few years also have direct business value, as they bring with them new experiences, connections, points-of-view, and even potential customers.” (Emphasis added)

Molly Moseley in a blog post adds that “…you know their skills firsthand — strengths and weaknesses — so there shouldn’t be any big surprises.”  That assumes that the employer has a fresh memory or has kept the good records about the employee’s history.

There can be pitfalls, for sure.  Moseley asserts that employers must answer one question “Why did they leave in the first place?  …You must have this conversation, get a clear answer and ensure all parties have agreed on the resolution. Did they leave for higher pay, a promotion, shorter commute, better benefits? Whatever it is, are you able to amend that problem?”

Kevin Mason in an article in TLNT echoes this sentiment about knowing their reasons for quitting.  Mason also identifies a double-edged sword of employee morale.  If people were sad to see this employee leave in the first place, there can be a boost in morale when they return.  However, it’s also possible that people were happy to see them go, and their return can be bad for morale.  Mason says “It’s critical to get the pulse of your key players before bringing an employee back.”

Fostering Employee Engagement With Former Employees

How do you go about actively recruiting boomerang employees?  Browne makes a comparison to alumni engagement efforts with college and university students:

“While the idea of keeping alumni invested used to be confined to academia, it’s now a growing trend in the workforce. LinkedIn’s alumni program started out as a LinkedIn group that a few alumni employees created on their own in 2014. Today, our in-house alumni network has more than 3,300 members, which includes both current employees and alumni. That way, alumni can build relationships and feel like they are still part of the company.”

It’s notable that of all the social media button-click things we can do to cultivate this talent pool, the key concern is the underlying shift in workplace culture and opinions about employee engagement.

Joyce Maroney from the Workforce Institute says that “it’s more important than ever for organizations to create a culture that engages employees – even long after they’re gone.”  It’s the ultimate de-silo-ing of the people under your span of control.  You’re not just responsible for engaging those outside your own reporting relationship; you also need to engage those who have left the organization entirely.

This idea that a career is a series of adventures maps easily to Millennials.  Millennials change jobs more quickly (because they are younger) and are therefore more likely to be boomerang hires, according to Dan Schawbel of WorkplaceTrends.com.  And let’s not forget that if you’re a socially responsible leader, you’ll take an interest in mentoring these people regardless of whether it’s right for the corporate bottom line.  There is an onus on good managers to also be good people.

In the employee’s eye, former employers take on the status of old friends, places they have visited, and books they have enjoyed that they still keep on the shelf.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could all just stay connected, live a varied life, and seek meaningful work in which we’re encouraged to grow?  Employers will need to find people who want to put in the extra effort to cultivate this dynamic environment?  How about you?  Do you want to help build this kind of workplace?