Empiricists love data. Lots of data. Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie posited that there are seven, and only seven, unique mindsets or approaches humans use when making decisions about action. This is conscious decision, not simply unconscious reaction based on stimula-response. I’ve got the full article available, although the quality is wanting. (See [2]) Warren Kinston and Jimmy Algie weren’t …
Why You Need Native Writers: ICBC China’s Embarrassing Recruitment Page
Here’s a good lesson demonstrating why you need native speakers to help you write your materials when working abroad, especially in non-Western languages. The illustration comes from the other way around, the world’s largest bank. This is ICBC China’s attempt at English in an official recruiting site: Our leading enterprise needs excellent talent, and excellent talent also looks forward to …
Money is a Proxy for Ability: Why “Recession” Graduates Make Less Over Their Lifetime
Did you know that if you start work during a recession, you are likely to never make as much as someone who started working during good times? This is probably not news to you: Forbes and the Wall Street Journal both covered this back before the class of 2009 graduated in May.
It turns out that economic research showed that people who graduate during a depression not only make less money when they come out, because the market is depressed and jobs are scarce, but they continue to make less for years to come and may never catch up with people who are exactly like them but graduated a couple of years earlier during a run-up. Even when times get better, they still earn less money for the same jobs.
The reasons for this should be obvious, but that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to spout useless claptrap.
For example, Forbes’s David Serchuk (“How To Graduate In A Recession”, 2009 April 16) wrote that:
Having the bad luck to graduate in a recession can mark someone’s entire career, as it can lead workers to start careers at smaller firms that pay less….
[S]ometimes having your plans shattered can bring you to make a career out of what you’d really like to do with your life, as opposed to simply chasing the money.
John Osborne, later in the article, said that
Graduating into a recession or a Great Recession or whatever we are calling it is a great gift, a real blessing in disguise. Why? For two simple reasons: You are learning in dog years (one year equals seven years of experience), and you are getting more experience since you are more actually valuable.
If your Bullshit Detector hasn’t already gone off, it should. Forbes, of course, doesn’t make money by telling people the truth which is why they seemed blissfully unaware of the impending crash even though everyone knew that it was coming. These are nice thoughts but they clearly aren’t true, or at least aren’t true for the vast majority of graduates.
To see why this is bullshit, we need to look at why recession-era graduates will make less, even after the recovery. [read full post]
My Google Failure, and Thoughts on Elliott Jaques
It seems that I’ve done something here to upset Google. Back when I started writing about Dr. Elliott Jaques, my blog was #3 when you searched for “elliott jaques”, right after his own Requisite Organization and Art Kleiner’s excellent introductory article on the man and his stratified systems theory. Now it’s #76. It’s clear that somehow I’ve done something wrong, …
Forrest on Organizations, Visually
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]