"Unintended consequences" waiting to happen (WSJ):
Many salaried workers in the U.S. may soon be obliged to punch a time clock, thanks to the Labor Department’s proposed regulation raising the income level for workers to qualify for overtime. More overtime pay sounds great. But what Labor fails to mention—and its economists surely understand—is instead of paying more workers overtime, many companies will simply cut back their hours or lower their salaries.
The ideas of weekends, 8 hour work days, a "living wage" and 5 day, 40 hour work weeks are ones we have Henry Ford to thank (in order to compete for the best workers at the time) - not unions.
Personally, I've always been a big believer in free association and have no issues with the formation of unions. I question though the monopoly they generally demand and wonder if they are an anachronism today. But maybe they always were (theFederalistPapers):
On this day in 1926, Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford’s office workers the following August.Henry Ford’s Detroit-based automobile company had broken ground in its labor policies before.
In early 1914, against a backdrop of widespread unemployment and increasing labor unrest, Ford announced that it would pay its male factory workers a minimum wage of $5 per eight-hour day, upped from a previous rate of $2.34 for nine hours (the policy was adopted for female workers in 1916).
The news shocked many in the industry–at the time, $5 per day was nearly double what the average auto worker made–but turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, immediately boosting productivity along the assembly line and building a sense of company loyalty and pride among Ford’s workers.
The decision to reduce the workweek from six to five days had originally been made in 1922. According to an article published in The New York Times that March, Edsel Ford, Henry’s son and the company’s president, explained that “Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation….The Ford Company always has sought to promote [an] ideal home life for its employees.
Getting healthcare right for the poor (WSJ):
Indian philanthropist and cardiac surgeon Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty is the Chairman of Narayana Health in Bangalore. Born in a small village, Shetty went to school in Bangalore before studying in the UK. After returning to India in 1989, Mother Teresa had a heart attack, and Dr. Shetty was called to operate on her. From then on, he served as her personal physician.
Shetty founded Narayana Health in 2000. He is often called the “Henry Ford” of heart surgery in India. 12 percent of heart surgeries in India are performed by Narayana doctors. Narayana Health is a network of 32 hospitals in 20 locations throughout India. The company provides affordable health care to India’s poorest citizens. Shetty plans to expand Narayana Health internationally to Africa, Asia and Latin America. His first hospital outside of India is in the Cayman Islands.
[...] First of all, we have invested a huge amount of money in the infrastructure of the hospitals. If the same amount of infrastructure is provided in hospitals in the U.S. and Europe, it hardly gets used for eight to nine hours a day. We use our infrastructure for 14 to 15 hours a day. Secondly, we perform one of the largest number of heart surgeries in the world. Through working with us, companies capture 12% of the Indian market for cardiac health care. This brings our input costs down. Third, we’re also an academic institution training heart surgeons, cardiologists, perfusionists and nurses. We conduct 79 training programs on campus, so half of the workforce here is not paid by us. They are students undergoing a training program.
Why do so many laborers choose to move to more conservative states that are purportedly less friendly to labor? (theDailySignal)
The so-called “progressives” love to talk about how their policies will create a worker’s paradise, but then why is it that day after day, month after month, year after year, people are fleeing liberal blue states for conservative red states?
The new Census data on where we live and where we moved to in 2014 shows that the top seven states with the biggest percentage increase in in-migration from other states are in order: North Dakota, Nevada, South Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, and Texas. All of these states are red, except Colorado, which is purple.
Meanwhile, the leading exodus states of the continental states in percentage terms were Alaska, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Kansas. All of these states are blue, except Alaska and Kansas.
From Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (Inc.):
There are four big problems with using passions as a guide: (1) They're hard to prioritize, (2) they change, (3) a passion may reflect something you aren’t actually good at and (4) following your passion is kind of self-centered.
Focus on one thing, repeat, repeat, repeat (Quartz):
Bruce Lee said, "I don’t fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks. I fear the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times."
Hint: surprisingly, not California (venturebeat). This is just snapshot data, but I'd be curious if there have been any trends here.
A somewhat related and hopeful, if tangential, article to the discussion of "safe zones" sheltering students from ideas (or White people) at institutions of learning (NationalPost) - resilience can be learned (WSJ):
He and Mr. Charney came up with 10 traits of people who survived war, assault and disasters, as well as less traumatic events, and ultimately thrived. These people tend to be optimistic—thinking things will work out—and are able to accept what can’t be changed and focus on what can be, he says. They recognize that even though they didn’t have a choice in their loss, they are responsible for their own happiness.Harvard researcher Angela Duckworth defines grit as being "the ability to persist and passionately pursue your goal of winning, whatever it takes." According to Ducksworth, when it comes to success, grit is more important than talent. (99u)
Although genetics plays a role in being resilient, it isn’t a huge one. Resilience can be learned and enhanced, he says. For example, people can develop a more optimistic view by cultivating friendships with positive people and challenging negative thoughts.
“When you change the way you are viewing things, it has a pretty big impact on all sorts of things,” Mr. Southwick says. It isn’t easy to do, he acknowledges.
It's pretty basic economics (Reason):
Forecasts differ on the specifics, but they generally point to automation being disruptive as far as traditional workplace roles are concerned. A recent Oxford University study put nearly half (47 percent) of all jobs at risk of replacement by automation in two decades. A Wired article puts the number at 70 percent by the end of this century.I think the more interesting question will be how long we will tolerate the public sector unions who earn far more than their private sector peers and the politicians who have been beholden to them.
Computers are getting smarter and stronger while employees, with their health insurance, pensions, and vacation time are becoming increasingly expensive. The writing is on the wall; plenty of jobs, at least as performed by humans, aren't long for this world.
...it's all in how you manage them and prevent them from becoming toxic (HBR):
The best managers recognize the psychological underpinnings of office politics and do two things in response: they manage the way they themselves behave, and they are careful about how they motivate others. People who are perceived as apolitical display high levels of congruence between what they say and what they do, and they are also good at rewarding others for what they were required to do, while holding them accountable for what they fail to deliver.
As such, good leaders focus on the bright-side personality characteristics associated with their ability to navigate office politics: social skills, emotional intelligence, and intuition. They recognize that the more secretive, selfish, hypocritical, hierarchical, and incompetent they appear in the eyes of employees, the more political the organization will become. So they are driven to come across as competent, transparent, approachable and altruistic.
And in motivating their employees to try harder, they avoid pitting employees against one another and instead focus on out-performing common adversaries: the company’s competitors. They do this through articulating a meaningful mission — a vision that resonates and motivates people to achieve a collective goal. This keeps the team focused on beating their competitors, rather than each other.
Apparently one is better than the other (Time). Not terribly surprising - though that's speaking as an introvert who sometimes tries to emulate extroverts.
An interesting paper from HBR:
With remarkable consistency, the data confirmed that communication indeed plays a critical role in building successful teams. In fact, we’ve found patterns of communication to be the most important predictor of a team’s success. Not only that, but they are as significant as all the other factors—individual intelligence, personality, skill, and the substance of discussions—combined.
Incentives matter - particularly the right incentives. From Amy Wrzesniewski and Barry Schwartz (NYT):
Whenever a person performs a task well, there are typically both internal and instrumental consequences. A conscientious student learns (internal) and gets good grades (instrumental). A skilled doctor cures patients (internal) and makes a good living (instrumental). But just because activities can have both internal and instrumental consequences does not mean that the people who thrive in these activities have both internal and instrumental motives.Personally, I'm of the view that in an ideal world, instrumental consequences reinforce internal consequences. Instrumental consequences can and should, however, guide how you effect internal motivations.
Our study suggests that efforts should be made to structure activities so that instrumental consequences do not become motives.
Apparently his tweets were controversial - but I'd agree... plus it helps to actually love doing something that contributes (BusinessInsider):
Better career advice may be "Do what contributes" -- focus on the beneficial value created for other people vs just one's own ego. People who contribute the most are often the most satisfied with what they do -- and in fields with high renumeration, make the most $. Perhaps difficult advice since requires focus on others vs oneself -- perhaps bad fit with endemic narcissism in modern culture? Requires delayed gratification -- may toil for many years to get the payoff of contributing value to the world, vs short-term happiness.
Starting with the advice to one startup from Peter Thiel: Don't f*** up the culture (HN).
Makes sense (Stanford, PDF via DavidJaxon):
Personal Exceptionalism. Definition: A macro sense that you are in the top of your cohort, your work is snowflake-special, or that you are destined to have experiences well outside the bounds of “normal”; not to be confused with arrogance or high self-esteem. Benefit: Resilience, stamina, charisma. Deadly risk: Assuming macro-exceptionalism means micro exceptionalism; brittleness.Related: 35 habits of highly productive people (with a somewhat dizzying infographic). (Entrepreneur)
Dichotemous Thinking. Definition: Being extremely judgmental of people, experiences, things; highly opinionated at the extremes; sees black and white, little grey. Benefit: Achieves excellence frequently. Deadly risk: Perfectionism.
Correct Overgeneralization. Definition: Making universal judgments from limited observations and being right a lot of the time. Benefit: Saves time. Deadly risk: Addiction to instinct and indifference to data.
Blank Canvas Thinking. Definition: Sees own life as a blank canvas, not a paint-by-numbers. Benefit: No sense of coloring outside the lines, creates surprises. Deadly risk: “Ars gratis artis”, failure to launch, failure to scale.
Schumpeterianism. Definition: Sees creative destruction as natural, necessary, and as their vocation. Benefit: Fearlessness, tolerance for destruction and pain. Deadly risk: Heartless ambition, alienation.
Not exactly surprising. But the benefits for getting it right, are substantial (HBR via HN):
If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup finds that great managers have the following talents:
Gallup’s research reveals that about one in ten people possess all these necessary traits. While many people are endowed with some of them, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company’s performance. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers.
- They motivate every single employee to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.
- They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
- They create a culture of clear accountability.
- They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
- They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.
While it's sometimes funny how out of touch managers seem around Christmas... this is probably the best approach to take - even if your budget isn't zero (WSJ):
Oh, and don't complain to them that you're not getting anything either. You're making enough to live on. They have three roommates, one bathroom and nothing but beer, Chinese takeout and half a jar of capers in the fridge.
So what can you do if your budget is zero?
Unless you're the CEO, spring for some nice blank cards and write a personal note of appreciation to your employees. I said personal. To each of them.
Yeah, it'll take more than 10 minutes. But recognizing something they've accomplished will be appreciated more than you know.
Don't even think about getting your assistant to do it for you. They know your handwriting.
Not sure I agree with this entirely as learning to code is also developing a framework for problem solving, but I can't fault their approach (99u via Lifehacker):
If becoming a programmer is appealing to you, great. But seeking employment based on any one "hard skill" is an outdated way of thinking. The rapid evolution of technology forces us to constantly reconsider which hard skills are in demand. (And we should). Staying on top of the hard skills needed is a necessity in the short term, but one of the best ways to position yourself for success in the long term is to focus on the soft skills needed no matter what technology you are working with.
