Ever wonder what what I write looks like? I Wordled the first page of my Organizations category archive. This is what it looked like: click to enlarge It would be interesting to do a full blog archive and see what I really think about.
Why the iPhone Design Wouldn’t Have Flown With Another Firm
SmartPlanet’s Andrew Nusca interviewe MAYA Design’s chief, Mickey McManus. McManus had some interesting things to say about making things so easy that they were intuitive, so easy that the user becomes “smug”:
We have a graph we write out. On one end is the customer that apologizes or make excuses. At the other end of the spectrum is smug. We want users to be smug. We’ll paper prototype it, then we’ll Wizard of Oz prototype it. After a few iterations, they’re smug. “This is so obvious, I don’t need to say it out loud.” And we want that.
If you think about it, this is something that Hidden High Potentials do regularly. (More on that below.) What’s even more interesting is his discussion of the Command & Control for the US Army. [full post]
Incompetence Makes Bosses Bully
Research published this month “examine[s] the effects of self-perceptions of incompetence on power holders’ tendency to aggress.” Or, why bully bosses are likely to be incompetent at their role. [Full Post]
Being Happy Makes You Less Productive. Sometimes.
Happy workers are better workers, right? Nope. At least not all the time. And maybe not even most of the time. Find out why. [Full Post]
Them that’s got and them that’s not: Today’s employment
Them that’s got shall get Them that’s not shall lose So the Bible said and it still is news “Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%” The New York Times reports today on the situation of unemployment in the United States. The numbers, which I have been mentioning, differ from the standard ones issued by the government because they …
Optimists Get Better At Predicting Performance Over Time
The old research has been pretty consistent: optimists are lousy at predicting what will really happen because they always assume “happy day”. But no one has ever seen how optimists predictions change as they get more information.
Until now.
A recent study (currently a working paper) tracked MBA students performance predictions across semesters…. [Full post]
NY Times on Unscrupulous Job Search Firms
Article in NY Times about how job search firms can rip you off.
Top 5 Job Assignments to Produce Learning (revisited)
Here are the Top 5 job assignments to produce learning with commentary: [full post]
Updating Old Posts
I’ve been writing about work levels and stratified systems theory since 2003, just after I started writing this blog. Some of these older posts are great, full of wonderful information that you’ll no doubt find useful. Other posts are clearly wrongheaded: I had much to learn. My clean up is just to get rid of some of the problems in …
Asking for a Raise? Bring Coffee. Or Fire.
“He’s such a cold bastard! Even the room gets a chill when he walks in!”
We’re weren’t even out of the room and my consulting pal was already berating our client. He had point: it had been chilly in there, and the client — never someone who filled your heart with bonhomie — was in particularly icy form that day.
[Click through to read how Temperature affects our emotions and even intellectual performance]
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![Employees at Mid-Continent Refinery [ca. 1943 Tulsa, OK (LOC). By John Vachon]](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2179123915_75b400bf47_o-men-group-Employees-at-Mid-Continent-Refinery-c-1943-Tulsa-OK-LOC-Vachon-John-e1377964113665.jpeg?fit=862%2C519&ssl=1)