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Forrest Christian, consultant with The Manasclerk Company, is the author of most of these pages. Unless noted otherwise as written by another author, all of this site's content is Copyright 2002-2010 E. Forrest Christian, Valparaiso, Indiana, USA. All Rights reserved.
Category Archives: Reviews – Articles
That Boring Job Really Could Be the Death of You
Taking years off her life.
Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com.
Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com.
Research published last month in the International Journal of Epidemiology…
Posted in Careers, Change, Government, Reviews - Articles
Tagged boredom, career coaching, civil servants, jobs, Whitehall
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Recent Reading
List of what I have been reading so I can keep track. Possibly less than interesting. Continue reading
Posted in Change, Reviews - Articles
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Note: Basic Assumption MeNess (ba M)
Brief quotation from an 1996 article by by Lawrence, Bain, and Gould (“The Fifth Basic Assumption”, Free Associations Volume 6, Part 1 [No. 37]: 2855) Continue reading
Elliott Jaques’s “Intellectual Odyssey”
Douglas Kirsner of Deakin University spoke with Elliott Jaques before he died, and wrote up the results from the perspective of another psychoanalyst. Jaques abandoned psychoanalysis but would later refer to that as perhaps going overboard. It’s an interesting read…
The Powerful Are Lousy Planners
The University of Kent is reporting a forthcoming research article by UK social psychologist Mario Weick and Ana Guinote of University College London on how feeling powerful affects one’s estimates. The more people felt powerful, the more optimistic their completion…
Posted in Project Management, Reviews - Articles
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Why Boards Go Wrong: “It’s the Group, Stupid!”
A board that is probably not going to have these problems
Reviewed: Rakesh Khurana & Katharina Pick. 2005. “The Social Nature of…
Posted in Governance, Reviews - Articles
Tagged Board of Directors, groups, Khurana, oversight, social psychology
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McKinsey on how companies spend money
From “How Companies Spend Their Money” [PDF] (McKinsey Global Survey)
A survey of executives from around the world highlights how frequently — and why — a company’s resource allocation decisions go wrong.
Companies start off well, respondents say: senior executives
…
Posted in Decision-making, Reviews - Articles
Tagged Decision-making, misrepresenting, resource allocation, risk, risk aversion
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7 Decision Making Approaches: EMPIRICIST
Empiricists love data. Lots of data.
Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie posited that there are seven, and only seven, unique mindsets or approaches humans…
Posted in Decision-making, Reviews - Articles, Warren Kinston
Tagged Decision-making, Empiricist, Jimmy Algie, levels of work, Warren Kinston
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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] Continue reading
Posted in Reviews - Articles, Underachievers
Tagged design, Hidden High Potentials, high potentials, MAYA Design, SmartPlanet
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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] Continue reading
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] Continue reading
Posted in Decision-making, Managing, Motivation, Reviews - Articles
Tagged affect, career, Decision-making, happiness, management, productivity
2 Comments
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] Continue reading
Treat Your Boss Like a Baboon in a Cage
Dan & Chip Heath talk about how to use animal training techniques to “train” your boss. Unfortunately, it’s more than a bit simple minded. There are better techniques for manipulating your boss, all that take advantage of deep human patterns. Click through for the link. Continue reading
Posted in Careers, Reviews - Articles
Tagged animal training, bosses, chip heath, dan heath, fast company, management, monkey
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Barbara Fredrickson Talks Positivity on WUNC
Alicia recommended this NPR show in a comment on “Unhappy? Stop Trying to be Happier!“. It wasn’t podcasted yet, but is now.
If you missed it, like I did, here it is, with no added commentary from me. (Maybe…
Posted in Motivation, Reviews - Articles, happiness
Tagged barbara fredrickson, positive emotions, positivity, wunc
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Young Stars vs. Systematic Innovators
The Young Genius vs. Old Master ideas of David Galenson, professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Probably a pretty straight-forward idea but one that troubles the fields of art and economics both. Hidden high potentials are often systematic innovators, and since these are less valued in our society, there are interesting implications. Continue reading
Posted in Reviews - Articles, Reviews - Books, Underachievers
Tagged artist, creativity, David Galenson, genius
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Why Rewarding Competitiveness Is Stupid If You Want To Make Money (Repost)
Here’s a repost from 2006 that didn’t make it over. It describes a set of studies that so disturb the basic religion of MBA that it required replication across the world to get published. With minor revisions.
American business rewards…
Posted in Managing, Reviews - Articles, Theory
Tagged competition, cooperation, J. Scott Armstrong, Kesten Green, Myth of Market Share, profit
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"How To Make a Madoff"
Ben Levisohn, “How To Make A Madoff“, Business Week, December 16, 2008.
You don’t have to do anything to get a Madoff. They are always with us, like the poor. The question is whether or not you will create the…
Posted in Organizations, Reviews - Articles, Theory
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Why Is Career Advice So Useless?
eWeek, a leading rag in the corporate IT industry, has a new article by Rich Milgram on “How to Ensure IT…
Posted in Careers, Coaching, Reviews - Articles, Underachievers
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ASSOCHAM: Indian Firms May Fire 25%
ASSOCHAM threatens that Indian firms may lay off 25% of their workers in the next 10 days, according to Expressindia. This seems a bit excessive even by my apparently ghoulish attitude to the current recession/collapse. I’m not sure what this…
Crisis Week: Price the Placebo Appropriately
Reuters, the global english news service, reports on this months Ig Nobel Prize awards: the award for Medicine goes to a team “who showed that high-priced placebos work better than cheap fake medicine.” This has implications for pricing your services during the Crisis. Continue reading
Posted in Careers, Financial crisis, Reviews - Articles
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