the business bro weighs in on the end of lombardi

Good morning,

Back in February, the boss announced in his newsletter that he would no longer preview upcoming books. Do you remember this irrelevant missive, reader? It referred to the monthly book ‘preview’ which was stupidly organized into three categories – stop and go, dense, and light. The obvious problem – well, obvious to everyone except the author of the newsletter – was that no reader ever knows what kind of a book it is until reading it.

Fortunately for you, dear reader, I’m here today to squeeze a little juice out of the lemon that was the February newsletter. You see, this whole nonsense about books and categories reminded me of an entirely different problem – premature categorization. What I mean here is that sometimes worrying about finding fits for predetermined categories creates more trouble than all the extra effort from categorizing is worth.

Let’s consider the boss for a moment. His goal is to write boring newsletters and read as many good books as possible. Did the process of looking at the books and categorizing them for the newsletter help or hurt progress toward this goal? I bet it didn’t help because the time he spent categorizing could have been used reading those books! Plus, what if he categorized incorrectly to begin with? If the book he reserved for those drowsy moments before bed required a high level of focus, the effort of reading the book would have been wasted.

I see this type of problem all the time in organizations. Instead of building an infrastructure to train new hires and waiting patiently for appropriate opportunities to arise, organizations are tempted by the short-term efficiencies of specialization and start defining projects, job descriptions, and career arcs at the minutest level of detail. When a new opportunity suddenly arises, these organizations are unable to shift resources and take advantage because all the available resources are locked into their specific responsibilities. In the worst organizations, good opportunities pass by completely unnoticed because everyone is so focused on carrying out the plans they made seven months ago.

An organization that could hold off on defining specialties until the very last minute would be able to quickly adjust their strategy to meet new opportunities. It would also be better positioned to understand what a new employee does well before finding a specific project, team, or role for the new employee. Many organizations pay lip service to this by boasting about internships or rotational programs but these are not as important as simply being able to properly assess performance. If the organization is assessing performance accurately, it should have no trouble finding the right roles for its employees.

The manager is likely in the best position to carry out this function. A good manager should be able to assess an employee’s strengths, think about what role would best utilize those strengths, and find a way to shift resources within the organization to match strength to role. If the manager’s performance assessment ability is limited, there is no way for the organization to gain the information required to reliably move employees around and take advantage of new opportunities. This is because a bad manager would only assess performance in the context of the assigned role. Inevitably, the manager would focus on shoring up weaknesses (perhaps in the vain hope of turning ‘a weakness into a strength’) and this in turn would mean internal movement was no guarantee of strengths aligning to opportunity.

Those who constantly build up skills, accurately assess performance, and always align strengths to opportunity will win. Those who train poorly, retain delusions about performance, and cannot apply strengths to opportunity will lose. It’s hard to understand why anyone would consciously call losing plays but that’s what seems to happen almost by default. I think premature categorization does a great deal to explain why.

When something gets categorized, it is no longer possible to reach one’s full and unique potential – instead, it is only possible to be good enough in the context of the category. A category rewrites the entire program for self-improvement by shifting the focus from doing what we are good at to improving where we are deficient. And of course, at the team or company level, questions like ‘is this the best opportunity right now?’ become questions like ‘are we still taking advantage of the opportunity we defined in the past?’ because categories create a shared tunnel vision. This tunnel vision is sometimes referred to as ‘focus’ but all I know about focus is that too much of it on one thing makes it impossible to see a better possibility somewhere else.

There is no irrefutable rule that suggests avoiding premature categorization guarantees success. But how does it help? Most of us have very little understanding of what we are good at until we try things. Rather than guessing first then doing everything possible to affirm the guess, we should instead define criteria for success, try as many different things as possible, and stick with whatever works. Focus on reaching your potential instead of being good enough by the standards of someone else's category. If you can stick with that, I think the categories will eventually work themselves out.

Signed,

The Business Bro

i read aids and its metaphors so you don't have to

AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag (May 2018)

After the release of Illness as Metaphor in 1978, Susan Sontag followed up with AIDS and its Metaphors in 1989. The two books differed only in the specific diseases they examined – Illness as Metaphor focused primarily on cancer with an occasional look at tuberculosis while AIDS and its Metaphors examined sexually transmitted disease in general with a strong focus on AIDS.

Much like it was for Illness as Metaphor, the general idea that the military metaphor is particularly harmful to those suffering from disease is central to AIDS and its Metaphors. The metaphor leads society to view treatment as a form of mobilization and encourages taking whatever means necessary in the name of repelling the invader. This point of view is preposterous because it does not acknowledge that when the body is the battleground, ‘giving it all’ can simply mean death by a medical method. And if we really are committed to thinking about disease only by military metaphor, why not acknowledge that sometimes surrender is an option?

There was a good thought here about the pervasive fiction of ‘the easy death’ that accompanies any disease not considered awful or shameful. I thought about this for a while before concluding that perhaps this fiction enables the military metaphor because a patient who fears death from the awful and shameful disease is probably more like to be interested in radical treatment options. These patients are also probably more likely to accept the ‘battle at all costs’ mentality demanded by the military metaphor (1). If the idea of ‘the easy death’ were extended to all illnesses, the influence of the military metaphor would lose some of its power.

On a final and somewhat unrelated note, I liked learning that the origin of the political ‘left and right’ is rooted in its own metaphor. During the time of the French Revolution, the radicals sat to the left of the presiding officer while the conservatives sat to the right.

Footnotes / well, an endnote

0. Publication note

This book was released as a follow up to Illness as Metaphor. In fact, in the copy I read, the Illness as Metaphor was included in its entirety before the section AIDS and its Metaphors, so perhaps a better way to describe this book is to call it an additional essay, section, or addendum to Illness as Metaphor.

I still counted reading it as a full book, though. Don’t like it? Sue me…

1. Another way to put it…

On a related note, Sontag’s points out that the reputation of cancer adds to the suffering experienced by its patients. Again, my response worked out like it did in the main post – when everyone around the patient responds to the disease as if it is a death sentence, the patient comes under a lot of pressure to adopt the group’s mentality and embark on a ‘win at all costs’ battle.

reading review - illness and its metaphors

Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag (April 2018)

Susan Sontag examines how metaphorical understandings of illness influence the perception of the sick and alter the way we approach treatment in this short 1978 book. Sontag’s primary focus is on cancer but she also looks into the history of other disease metaphors (particularly tuberculosis) in this insightful work.

Longtime readers will know that metaphors are a TOA staple and therefore this book should be… metaphor alert… right down my alley. In a sense, this insight is fully accurate. However, I also have some basic rules of thumb (another TOA staple) that I try to keep in mind whenever I resort to use metaphor.

First, I try to use metaphor only when I feel there is a wide gulf between what I understand and what someone else understands. In these instances, I use metaphor as a tool to help someone else learn from me. A common tactic I use is to relate what I understand in the context of what I know the other understands. I’ve always felt that if I could explain something I understand in the context of what someone else already knows, then I should be able to teach anyone anything. The metaphor is the best way to use this teaching method.

However, my second basic rule is to avoid metaphor when I do not understand something. This is the more important of the two rules because a metaphor can mask gaps in knowledge if used about poorly understood topics. From my experience, a metaphor used in this instance leads me to talk more about the comparison rather than the original topic. A metaphor allows me to talk about what I understand well instead of revealing the gaps in my knowledge about what I do not understand. The result is an illusion of fluency that masks how little I understand about what I'm talking about.

This is where my approach to metaphors intersects with the ideas from Illness as Metaphor. When we casually use the military metaphor to describe cancer as an attack on the healthy body, the natural extension of the metaphor suggests the only acceptable treatment for the illness must take on the form of a counterattack. If the metaphor paints the slightly different image of an invasion, then the natural extension of the metaphor supports any action taken to drive out the invader at all costs – including with treatment that many acknowledge is worse than the illness.

The understanding of a disease will always influence the treatments allowable for it. Although the advancements made since the publication of this book have been significant, we still do not understand cancer well enough to discard the metaphor of the body defending against the invading cells. As long as the military metaphor stands in place of understanding the disease, treatment will be dictated by how we understand military operations.

I suppose the closest thing to a concluding thought in this book is Sontag’s comment that the healthiest way to be ill is to avoid any semblance of metaphoric thinking. I like the idea in general but do wonder if throwing away the value of the metaphor is worth it just to avoid suffering from its possible downsides. Perhaps a better approach finds the middle ground that I partially alluded to above – use metaphors to help spread understanding while avoiding them in matters where the understanding remains undeveloped.

One up: I liked the references made to research that dispels the myth of how negative feelings can influence the likelihood of someone becoming sick. The difficulty of living with disease is more than enough for one person to handle. In these circumstances, there is no need for the ill-informed chorus that whispers in the shadows about how so-and-so earned earned the disease by always being such a 'negative person'. And there certainly is equally little room for anyone who wishes to step forward and prescribe ‘positive thinking’ as a remedy for the newly diagnosed disease.

The way to change this perception requires a lot of hard work from the research community. It means finding two groups, identical in all ways save for one and only factor, and then proving that the suspected cause (in this case, negative feelings) has no relationship to whether a person ended up in one group or another. Tough task, but that’s the job.

One study Sontag cites shows that this kind of work is diligently taking place behind the scenes. This research found that there is always a correlation between disease prevalence and an era’s chief complaints. This result suggests that if in the future researchers looked back on our time, they would find that the prevalence of something like depression in the general population would match the prevalence of depression in a cancer patient prior to the initial diagnosis.

One down: The prevalence of a disease metaphor is a strong indication of how well the general population understands the causality of a disease. When we do not understand, we create associations, explanations, and stories to help calm our fears and quiet the inner noise.

Another strong indicator is the number of factors thought to cause a condition. Historically, diseases believed to have multiple causative agents are eventually discovered to have one principle cause. There is no reason to believe today’s unsolved medical mysteries will be exceptions. And yet, until the exact single cause is determined, there is always the ‘this time is different’ contingent that firmly believes in the multiple cause theory.

Just saying: The view that disease is caused by a bad disposition, an unhealthy personality, or a negative outlook are very dangerous because they divert attention away from the potential cures and treatments that might benefit an ill person. Although a well-educated member of the medical or research field is likely to complete all the technical work involved in curing a mystery illness, a clever idea that points the way can come from anywhere. When myths about the cause of disease are widely held, however, the average person’s energy and brainpower is wasted by responding to myths instead of thinking about ideas that might lead to possible cures or solutions.

A good way to spot these myths from a distance is to note their similarities to what is considered taboo in the society at the time. A highly religious society, for example, might link the cause of an unknown disease to the wrath of God. This kind of thinking can also apply to subsets of a society. An organization committed to avoiding certain types of food might be more receptive internally to ideas or theories that link the ‘taboo’ food to disease causes. The same thought applies in reverse – those who tout the benefits of certain foods would be more receptive to suggestions that the food can help treat, reverse, or prevent the disease.

i read letters to memory so you don't have to explain it

Letters To Memory by Karen Tei Yamashita (March 2018)

Reader, I’ve been at this blank page now for something approaching fifteen minutes. My problem is very simple – I like to start these ‘reading reviews’ with at least a token summary of the book in question but I’m having a tremendously difficult time describing exactly what Letters to Memory is all about. In a time like this, perhaps the best approach is to simply take a step back, approach the task methodically, and try not to accomplish too much with one sentence or paragraph.

So, Letters to Memory – what does the title mean? I think it notes the loose theme the author bases this collection on. For Yamashita, each essay, letter, or photograph she gets her hands on is a new key that unlocks an old memory. The specific details of the source don’t really matter – it could be a government notice describing the reasoning (‘reasoning’) behind WWII Japanese-American relocation, a yellowing decades-old photograph of her extended family, or a letter written from one cousin to another at an unknown date. As Yamashita points out, the dead usually leave behind a lifetime of stuff and embedded in each of those objects is the lingering spirit guide who knows the way back to a long-lost recollection.

The author is a Japanese-American. I write that tentatively, Japanese-American, knowing my own exasperation and frustration with the magical hyphen that seems to take away a lot more than it offers. It’s not a plus sign for a reason, you know? I think Yamashita would be fine with my use of it, though – when she notes how ‘Japanese-Hyphenated-Americans’ seem to have a certain compulsion to leave places such as picnic tables, rental units, and … concentration camps… ‘internment camps’ cleaner than when they arrived, I at least got the sense that she was in on the joke, so to speak. Plus, ‘Japanese-American’ is in her bio – so what else can I do with that, right, except state it just like it is?

As for the book itself, on balance I think it occupies an important but underrepresented niche in the literary world – books that meditate on the implications of a homeland. There is a strong case for the importance of feeling rooted in a place. And from my experience, saying that someone ‘never forgets where she/he came from’ is considered a positive remark. But there is also the other side of the idea that begs the question – why must our birthplace or family origins play such an important role in who we become?

The contradiction raised by The Homeland might be the biggest challenge I’ve struggled to face. Letters to Memory doesn’t have anything specific to say about this challenge but it does acknowledge at least how the dream of a homeland is simultaneously the most beautiful and most dangerous creation of the mind. How we collectively approach this same contradiction at the societal level seems like it will be the biggest challenge humanity will face over the course of my remaining lifetime.

tales of two cities special edition - angel bikes update

As I mentioned in the July newsletter, the bike share program formerly known as Hubway introduced a rewards program to encourage members to balance the bike distribution across the system. The simple explanation of how this works is that riders will score points for completing trips that start from a full rack and end at an empty rack. These points can then be redeemed for prizes like memberships, gift cards, and whatever else.

As I also mentioned in the July newsletter, this ‘Bike Angels’ program is a carbon copy of an idea I mentioned to them in one of their annual member surveys. Maybe one day I’ll sit here and demand some credit but for now I’m just pleased to learn that not everything I write on the internet disappears unread down some URL-lined black hole!

Of course, there is another reason I gave my idea no thought since I brought it up in that survey – the idea isn’t very good. Sure, having members move a bike here or there can’t hurt, but let’s be blunt, reader, this idea is a treatment rather than a cure. People like me who use Hubway - excuse me, Blue Bikes - as a substitute for bike ownership create the problem of unbalanced racks because at the end of the day (literally) we need a place to leave our bikes while we aren’t biking. This means bikes are always going to pile up wherever we go – at work or recreational areas during afternoons and living areas during the evening.

To put it another way, the unbalanced rack problem is caused by the very activity encouraged by the program – riding a bike from a high-density area to a low-density area. The very act shifts the problem because a low-density area becomes a high-density area merely by biking into it (just like a high-density area becomes a low-density area by biking out of it). And since I assume Hubway – eh hem, Blue Bikes – generally attracts similar types of riders, I assume what one person does during rush hour is what one hundred other people are likely to do as well.

On the plus side, this ‘Bike Angels’ idea is all upside. It can’t hurt to give it a try and see the results, right? But in the first week since the rollout of the plan I’ve had two cases where I couldn’t dock a bike due to a full rack. Bike gods, will you send thee angels? (And in the meantime, let’s hope the business bros over at Blue Bikes HQ aren’t patting themselves on the back, congratulating each other on solving the problem of unbalanced racks!)

The real solution is going to come from better design of the overall system. Yes, reader, I know you are glad I cleared this up, but that’s the answer, and probably the only one. This is an admittedly boring solution that no one can write an excited press release about. However, I think it is the only one sure to work over the long term. There are two common problems in the bike share system that the ‘Bike Angles’ program addresses – too few racks or too few bikes. The solution would need to address these problems directly through improved anticipation of rider demand during busy hours and continued vigilance about balancing racks according to historic rider usage patterns during off hours.

That’s the solution to the problem. It isn’t easy and it isn’t sexy but this is the truth of solving most chronic problems – we generally know what to do, recognize it will be tough, and look for ‘low-hanging fruit’ that will fix everything in one fell swoop. Well, for every real-life example of a silver bullet solution, there are probably a thousand other examples of problems that were not adequately solved the first time around, so I’m confident in saying that this time next year I’ll still be biking around town late at night, looking in vain for a place to store my bike after discovering the first two racks I tried were full.

The overall pattern seen here is fairly common in complex problem solving – the easy to implement, ‘all upside’ solution gets the attention while distracting casual observers from how little is being done to address the core issues. ‘All upside’ solutions are probably a good idea when nobody involved has any clue about the core issue. In those instances where the root cause is obvious, though, I’d like to see more effort made to come up with durable changes intended to resolve a systemic issue for good by directly attacking the root cause of the problem.

Footnotes / endnote / sometimes, these are good, but other times…

0. A colorful analogy?

The ‘Bike Angels’ rewards program is like requiring all public beaches to dispense free sunscreen – the idea can only help but if people want to protect their skin then the solution isn’t to lather up in subsidized SPF, the solution is to go home and sit in the shade. But I guess since the equivalent of sitting in the shade for a bike share isn’t very good – it would mean not biking, which is the exact opposite of what Blue Bikes wants its members to do – then maybe this isn’t the best analogy in TOA history...

Oh well.

But then again, beaches do remain popular at time of writing despite what we all know about skin cancer, so… well…

Never mind, I’m going for a bike ride.

i guess this is my north star on dieting

I hear a lot of questions about dieting and nutrition, questions like what’s the best food to eat? or what’s the best way to divide meals? or even should certain foods go with others? I always try to answer these questions to the best of my ability. But everyone knows my answer is a load of crock.

This isn't a knock against my knowledge or efforts - I don’t know the right answer because no one knows the right answer. In the field of dieting and nutrition, uncertainty is the present condition. I expect there will be more and more research done in the field and, in due time, someone will come up with the right answer. Until then, the best approach seems to be gathering all the possible answers through reading, writing, and thinking about the question before trying to make the best possible decision.

But sometimes, too much information confuses the issue. A good dose of simplicity can help clarify a large chunk of the right answer even while all the little details are being worked out. At the beginning of a long journey, it’s good enough to start by just going in the right direction. If the destination is north, go north; there will be plenty of time to sort out all the other little details later.

When it comes to dieting and nutrition, my north star is this: almost every fully understood system in the body benefits from alternating periods of intense activity and prolonged rest. Thus, the right approach to dieting and nutrition must harness the power of this principle.

The wake-sleep cycle is a good general example. For most people, a full day of being up and about is followed by a long period of rest. The way we build muscle or develop cardiovascular health also follows this pattern - activity, then rest. It is healthy for even the most fair-skinned to spend a little time in the sun before breaking in the shade. And permanent disease immunity is a hard-earned peace after the immune system emerges victorious from its all-out war.

Why would the digestive system be an exception? I can’t think of why it would be. It suggests to me that the best way to eat recognizes the body’s need for hunger. Therefore, my idea of a good meal plan would take in all the necessary nutrients while also allowing enough time for prolonged rest.

This is why I try to avoid having more than one full meal each day. Ideally, I would eat two decent sized meals (with each meal happening around eight to sixteen hours after the previous one). It’s not a perfect plan and I’m sure a lot of the details will turn out to be wrong. But I feel I’m definitely pointed in the right direction because it allows the digestive system the same period of prolonged rest that every other system in the body requires for peak performance.

reading review - slaughterhouse-five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (May 2018)

I’d originally read Vonnegut’s 1969 time-bending (and apparently somewhat autobiographical) account back when I was in high school. As it tends to be the case with great books I read so long ago, I realized recently that I had no recall about anything from Slaughterhouse-Five. So, as I’ve done lately with some other books I haven't read in over a decade, I decided to go back and reread it.

This book is often describes as an ‘anti-war book’ (according to the back cover: "Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world’s great antiwar books"). This, I suppose, was true enough – the book didn’t really advocate for war, but then again, what book does? I think I was expecting the antiwar message to come through a little more directly but this turned out not to be the case.

I suppose the book – and its message – was better off for it. The book that simply criticizes war and points out its horrors as a warning to the coming generation is an important book, no doubt about it, but perhaps an easy one to write. Slaughterhouse-Five took a slightly different approach by essentially saying – look, people are generally going to do what they have to do, one way or the other, and if there is a war on those things they end up doing are going to be pretty horrific.

One up: I can’t speak to the effectiveness of any specific approach to delivering the antiwar message. However, the books that glorify elements of war or the movies that star famous or glamorous actors probably don’t offer much in terms of helping this message.

One down: One thing I do recall from high school was a mock debate in my sophomore year history class. We were divided into different teams and asked to discuss the merits of using nuclear weapons.

What I don’t remember from that class was how we discussed the alternatives. I’m fairly certain that whatever went into the real-life version of this debate back in 1945, the death toll was probably not high among the discussion topics. This is because by August 1945 the death toll from non-nuclear bombing missions was comparable to the eventual tally from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fire bombing of Tokyo (the incident that most closely resembled the firebombing of Dresden that was the central historical event of Slaughterhouse-Five) resulted in around 100,000 deaths - roughly the same figure cited for Hiroshima and possibly twice the death toll at Nagasaki. When framed in this way, the death toll might have been an argument against the nuclear weapon for those who believed it wouldn’t have taken as much life as another fire bombing.

Just saying: I borrowed a trick from how I read essay or short story collections by marking down pages seventy-one and seventy-two for a reread. In this section, Vonnegut describes what a war movie looks like when watched in reverse – guns suck bullets out of broken bodies, fighter jets whisk dangerous weapons away from war zones, and soldiers turn in their neatly folded uniforms before reverting back to children.

I marked down the passage because I’d found it almost moving on my initial read. The second time completed the process. Ten years from now when I think about what I recall from Slaughterhouse-Five, I'm sure to go back to this section that is so central to Vonnegut's main message.

the business bro ponders a not quite life-changing book about bobby fischer

Good morning,

Every once in a while – about once a week, by my count – my counterpart here at True On Average wastes everyone's time with a blubbering collection of sheer nonsense. He labels these excretions with official-sounding designations like ‘proper’ or ‘review’ to lend them false credibility. I mean, a 'life changing book'… get a life, I say, before telling us about how it changed.

Luckily, I am here to clear up the confusion caused by his uncommitted generality. My loyal readers deserve to know how to apply the basic principles behind some of those ideas. Let's consider his recent post – uncited, mind – that describes a rule of thumb he came up with after reading about how Bobby Fisher trained for chess matches.

According to TOA, Fisher’s fitness routine demonstrated some kind of 'ying-yang' balancing act of cultivating strengths and shoring up weaknesses. I also read the book so I know his conclusion is rubbish. Fisher trained his body because he was a winner (a topic I have forgotten more about than TOA will ever understand). Fisher was a true competitor and, as real competitors know, the difference between winners (The Business Bro) and losers (True On Average) comes down to the finest margins (1). A competitor in such a situation does every little thing possible to gain the narrowest but possibly decisive edge.

I understand Fisher’s approach and have found ways to apply it to my own career. It hasn’t been simple. However, we BBs do have one big thing in common with the grandmaster – our jobs emphasize mental capabilities over physical ones. This is with good reason. The ability to complete a job is unrelated to my looks (dashing), height (ideal) or foot speed (4.15 seconds in the 40-yard dash give or take a few seconds) (2).  However, nothing excuses me from doing all that is possible to maximize my performance. I bet most of my colleagues would perform better on the job if they whipped their bodies into something resembling peak condition.

The first big lesson I learned out of college was the advantage my fitness gave me in the workplace. It happened sort of in a backwards way – I didn’t help me so much as it prevented me from inadvertently harming myself in the way my colleagues did. During flu season, for example, I looked at the empty desks of ill colleagues and wondered what would happen to my unused sick time. After lunchtime, I regularly witnessed my colleagues who ate unhealthy meals mentally crash as the aftereffects of their food set in. And anyone who sat with poor posture required frequent breaks to stand, stretch, or go to doctor’s appointments.

I, on the other hand, was never sick. Lunchtime vegetables mostly powered my afternoons and I could always be found standing with excellent posture at my self-constructed upright desk. I got more out of each day than most of my colleagues simply because my fitness and nutrition routines meant my body never prevented me from working. Being even five percent more productive each day adds up quickly, especially in workplaces where learning is cumulative.

Undoubtedly, I consider the role of my fitness in my career development to have been invaluable. However, I do not recommend some silly rule of thumb about ‘plateau this’ and ‘upward progress’ that. Do you really think Bobby Fisher became a grandmaster worrying about these rules of thumb things? No way – like anyone truly successful, Fisher identified everything in his control that would help him play better chess and then he did every one of those things. It has nothing to do with balancing strengths and weaknesses – rather, it demands harnessing competitive drive to do everything it takes to get better, day after day, until you are finally in a position to win.

Until next time,

The Business Bro

Footnotes / hypotheticals / the editor is HR, I guess

1. What if… I have no weaknesses?

Now, I should add here, mortal reader – I do not have weaknesses and thus only work on my strengths, which is everything. TOA is more of a wishy-washy sort who views life as a constant balancing act, worrying that if one side of the see-saw goes up, the other must go down. I recommend doing as I do - stop complaining about such nonsense and simply lift the see-saw straight over your head.

2. Editor’s note…

A reminder, reader – focusing on such metrics like looks, height, or foot speed while discussing job performance is spelled D-I-S-C-R-I-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N and D-I-S-C-R-I-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N is a serious legal matter.

There is simply no place in any organization for the overzealous business bro who cannot separate appearance from ability. These bigots… (Business Bigots?...) should regularly update their resumes in preparation for their imminent dismissal (and perhaps befriend a lawyer or two to help with projected legal issues).

i read a man called ove so you don't have to

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (May 2018)

In the first chapter of A Man Called Ove, the title character struggles to understand and then accept the difference between a tablet and a computer. It’s a great opener for the book, a hilarious story about an older man who at first glance seems to have been left behind by the superficial aspects of modern life. Or perhaps, willingly kept himself behind is a better way to describe it for Ove makes no secret about his desire to remain apart from the all-talk-and-no-action elements of life manifesting in modern nonsense such as pushy salesmen, soulless bureaucrats, or physically inept IT consultants.

At the core, Ove’s philosophy is to measure others by what they have done rather than what they have said. This approach to life creates much of the conflict in the book and explains why he is always at odds with his mostly younger or superficial neighbors. However, as the story progresses Ove finds opportunities to work together with those interested in simply doing the right thing. Although some of these moments run counter to the first impressions we readers form about Ove, they reinforce the lesson that people committed to helping their neighbors and building stronger communities can always overcome surface differences in order to work together.

Like the main protagonist, A Man Called Ove is full of surprises. A consistent source of these surprises came in the form of the narrator’s observations about human nature. He notes, for example, that although sorrow has the potential to bring people closer together, if left unshared it can drive people apart. He also points out that those who insist on making anything tradable quickly render loyalty useless and force those around them to abandon focus on quality.

The narrator also mentions in one passage that memorable people insist on seeing potential in others when the consensus suggests there is none. The thought is a fitting lesson for the book because it applies to many of the relationships among the characters. Most importantly, it also applies directly to Ove – until he recognizes his own potential, he is unable to help others who need him more than he does.

Footnotes / endnote?

0. Origins

Although A Man Called Ove was fairly well known (bestseller, became a movie, etc) I came by way of it through a direct recommendation.

0a. So, what next?

After I finished reading, I looked into more work from the same author. Luckily, I didn’t need to go far – the back of this book had an excerpt for another, Britt-Marie Was Here. And just from the little snippet, I thought I might like this one as well – it’s always a good sign when you laugh out loud while reading, you know? Barring any unforeseen events, I think it is very likely I’ll be back to read another novel or two from Backman.

0b. Highlights...

The most entertaining section involved a honking horn and Ove calling someone a stupid bastard. I'll stop here lest my endorsement ruin the scene for anyone intending to read this book.

reading review - why i have not written any of my books

Hi folks,

A short while ago, I briefly recapped Marcel Benabou's Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books. In my summary, I talked a little bit about how the process of writing is a form of torture for most writers and, therefore, next to impossible at almost all times.

I made this point in part by borrowing from Benabou's analogy that compared writing to the story of Sisyphus rolling a boulder up the hill. Of course, I should also note that Benabou points out an important detail about Sisyphus that often gets lost in retelling of the famous tale – Sisyphus was probably a pretty muscular guy after all that work! Even if the boulder doesn’t stay at the summit doesn’t mean there was no benefit. I think if a writer – or anyone who takes on the challenge to create – keeps this fact in mind, the challenging aspect of writing can be reframed as practice or training for the real writing that is sure to come.

One up: Benabou makes an interesting point about how most lives are universal enough that others can easily recognize themselves in anything after tweaking a couple of minor details. I suppose a writer who understands this can leave some of the work of relating to the reader (though this is certainly easier said than done).

If this is a tough concept to grasp, let me remind you – most work gets misinterpreted anyhow so what’s the point of worrying so much over how the message gets crafted?

One down: There was a laugh out loud line in this book about how a person could live off of happy memories much like rich aristocrats could live off the dividends of their investments. The thought obscured a darker point, however, which is that a life steeped too much in past memories makes us reluctant to step forward into the future. A memory should encourage us to look forward, not spend all day gazing longingly into the rear-view mirror.

Just saying: One of the more thought provoking ideas from this work related the experience of writing to the first tooth – like the one-toothed child, a writer knows that sometimes reaching a destiny is a matter of waiting for what has always been within to burst forth at the time of ripening. This is a nice metaphor and a perfectly useful way to think about enduring a moment of difficulty.

However, I do not think I really agree with it. At the very least, I can see the other point of view. Life doesn’t usually mean waiting around, enduring a ten second spot of pain, and then being rewarded the next morning with some money under the pillow. Rather, life is a different challenge, maybe better, but certainly different, where as I get older I simply have to do more things and commit more time to the pointless process of being 99% as good as I was last year.

So, what is the truth? I suppose it doesn’t matter much. This is life, unfortunately – we try to enjoy ourselves, find out we are wrong about a few things along the way, and then we die. So to say one idea or the other is ‘true’ strikes me as a waste of time. But surely, one worldview represents a healthier perspective for the writer?

Well, I do not think the former is very helpful. There is something I’ve noticed among the successful writers I’ve studied – they tend to do a fair bit of writing. A writer who believes in The Moment Of Ripening just as a child believes in the second tooth is surely not a very busy writer!

So, here at TOA, we officially endorse the latter point of view. Writing is a lot like trying to keep healthy – we slowly learn exactly what to do yet find circumstances continually conspire to make it harder to do those things. Reader, let’s not live in the Never Never Land of tooth fairies where The Myth of the Ripening Writer rules all!

Instead, let us admit that we do have a good idea of what writing requires (writing) and yet need the help and support of those around us to do it (write). Let us, in short, agree that acknowledging reality is the key step and any worldview that encourages otherwise is corrosive – for if we cannot acknowledge reality, how could we ever hope to change the future?

the business bro simplifies management, part 5

Generalization: a manager is someone who grows into the role

Simplification: a manager is someone who manages

Hi folks,

Today is the last post of this series. It will be a little different, dear reader. I got a question last night from a hopelessly lost soul and I thought answering the question would help make my point for the fifth and final simplification.

Before we start, I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for reading. Best of luck to you all on your upcoming journeys to becoming helpful, truthful, and punctual managers. Always remember to train everyone in your teams and never forget to keep it simple.

******************

Dear BB,

I’ve read your posts and I’m inspired.

I’m ready to manage NOW!

But, I’m not a manager yet – so what should I do?

Signed,

Me from six years ago

******************

Dear… me,

Goodness, how did you find my email? I’ll answer your question if you promise never to write in again. Got it?

OK… here goes…

My advice is to just start managing. I know this doesn’t really make sense and you worry that you’ll piss some people off. Don’t worry – you’re gonna piss people off, anyway, so might as well do so because of something you want to do rather than for some other thing.

But anyway – just start. I know my advice this week was directed at managers and it would certainly be easier to do those things if you were already in the role. But just like any skill, managing is something you need to do, not say you want to do, because otherwise no one will ever really see that you want to (or can) do it.

Here’s how I would frame my four simplifications to approach this:

Simplification: a manager must do things on time

This means you have to get your work done on time. Trust me, no one is going to make you responsible for other people’s work if you can’t get your own stuff done.

Simplification: whoever helps makes it possible to work

This means always prioritize helping others ahead of doing your own thing. I know this might sound like a contradiction of the above, but it isn’t – the job is bigger than your current one and therefore comes with more responsibility. If you can figure out a way to do both, you’ve got the basic attributes needed to manage.

Simplification: a manager must train

Basically, this means showing people how to do things whenever you get the chance. The step up from helpful colleague to manager means formalizing the help you give others. Get in the habit of following up on an informal chat with a detailed process document. If you are regularly asked the same questions, prepare a basic FAQ so that others have access to your knowledge without needing full access to you.

Simplification: management techniques exist for those unable to tell the truth

Keep it simple and tell the truth. A manager must gather and distribute information – getting in this habit now will ensure that the information you give out is of the highest quality. If people see you as a good source, they’ll come to you with their own information.

And finally…

Simplification: a manager is someone who manages

Just start.

You wouldn’t hire a writer who didn’t write, a programmer who didn’t program, or a driver who didn’t drive, right? So why would a manager be different? Remember - the easiest person to promote is already doing the job.

Signed,

The Business Bro

the roulette wheels reveals all

I met a friend one winter night for a couple beers and a bite to eat. We sat at the upstairs bar in Redbones, a Davis square BBQ restaurant. There were twenty-four beers on the draft list.

For me, I prefer to look at the entire beer list before ordering a drink. I think this is why I like places with a limited number of options. In most places, I don’t even glance at the bottle or can list - I just go straight to the draft list in order to cut down on the number of choices. The twenty-four options at Redbones might have been a tad past the point of having just enough options and I took a little longer than I preferred before making a selection.

After our beers arrived, we noticed a roulette wheel on the wall behind the bar. This wheel was broken up into twenty-four sections. A whiteboard next to the wheel assigned numbers to draft beers. The way the wheel worked was a customer would spin the wheel, match it to the assignment on the whiteboard, and buy the corresponding beer. The price was based on the menu so the wheel served only a decision-making function.

As customers came up from time to time to spin the wheel, I watched closely and put myself in their position. During one spin, I came to a sudden realization: I would be happy with only four of the twenty-four options.

The realization reminded me of times in the past when I’d come to a sudden understanding about my preferences. These moments would come just after I’d made a decision or ceded my decision-making power. In these instances, it was almost like my gut took over for my brain and brought me to the conclusion I’d failed to reach via thought.

There is probably a larger lesson here. Maybe there is something that happens in the mind when we make a commitment (or alter our mental states, or whatever). I’m sure it is being examined right now by some kind of study I'll mock on TOA three years from now.

In the meantime, I’m willing to try a simpler thing. Why not just get a roulette wheel to make my marginal decisions? Even a coin would do the trick. Just assign options to one side or the other and give it a toss. If I find myself hoping for heads or rooting for tails, I’ll have learned something important about what I actually want.

And if the coin bounces off the ground before I have my epiphany? Reader, I can’t think of a surer sign that in the end all decisions are fifty-fifty, after all. In those cases, perhaps the best decision maker is indeed random chance.

the business bro simplifies management, part 4

Generalization: a manager must understand management techniques

Simplification: management techniques exist for those unable to tell the truth

The list of reliable management techniques seems to expand everyday. Like any of my generalizations thus far, no such technique is a bad idea on the surface. But when I think about management techniques, what I almost always end up concluding is that these are ways to help managers tell the truth.

Consider the following example – the top management technique from the first result of my Google search for 'best management techniques':

Dole out recognition when it's deserved.

Now, this seems like a basic but critical piece of advice. Someone does something well so you should recognize it in some way. Great work, manager!

But... is this really a management technique? It looks a lot like just plain old truth-telling to me, a lot like the equivalent of laughing at a funny comment or applauding when you witness an impressive accomplishment. And don't we always compliment the cook when we first sink our teeth into a delicious meal?

Here's another example from a result from the Harvard Business Review (via Time):

Get through your to-do list.

Again - a management technique? If it's your list of things 'to do', it probably makes more sense than not to do them, no? Otherwise, what's the point of making a list of things you are going to do? Truth telling isn't just limited to others, you know.

Have a look yourself, reader, for these pieces of advice. They are all over the place. I warn you, though, for rare is the piece of advice that does not reveal itself to simply be another version of 'tell the truth' when placed under close inspection.

Even some basic managerial staples like productivity measurements turn out to be very well disguised versions of this idea in action. Instead of going to an employee and saying – look, the recent performance just hasn’t been good enough – a manager might spend two hours baking a pie chart just to get the same message across. This could work – unless the employee feels the given metric doesn’t account for something important. If this happens, the likely outcome is a simultaneous pair of one-way conversations. Good luck expanding on your pie chart to explain a larger trend while the employee feels the whole conversation is based on a faulty premise.

A regular status meeting is another good example. These meetings are good opportunities to look over the work and talk about ways to progress. However, it also temps employees to hold thoughts until the meeting. How valuable is Monday’s insight on Wednesday? There is certainly logic to wait for the appropriate moment, of course, but what is accomplished by withholding a valuable insight for two days? The world works better when Monday’s truth is stated on Monday and anything that discourages this result should be viewed with suspicion.

Is it really better to bluntly tell the truth at all times? I’m sure it is. Think about it this way – does anyone ever describe the ideal manager as someone who withholds information? This reasoning helps make a distinction between two very similar types of managers – a manager who doesn’t lie and a manager who tells the truth. I think this distinction is lost on many because most people don’t have a good sense of what they mean by ‘telling the truth’. A person who tells the truth doesn’t tell lies. But just because a person doesn’t lie doesn’t mean they tell the truth (1).

I think when most people think of an honest person or describe themselves as an honest person, what they are really saying is that an honest person doesn’t tell overt, obvious, or hurtful lies. It can’t really hurt for a manager to not tell lies, of course, but I don’t think it necessarily helps, either. What the manager really needs to do is tell the truth, preferably quickly, and to do so in a clear way that helps move the team, the work, or the employee forward (2).

Footnotes / well, endnote…

0. This will apply until Amazon buys The Dark Web and offers it to prime members

Now, of my five simplifications, this one does come with a real caveat. In some environments, a manager probably cannot reasonably tell the employee the truth. I could see this being true in highly regulated environments such as a hospital or a courthouse. In fact, I know from my limited health care experience that there is actually a law that I’ll loosely refer to as ‘the minimum necessary’ standard to limit what employees can share with colleagues in certain situations. In such situations, I suppose the good management techniques I dismiss here do go a long way.

1. No, seriously, I thought this post was GOOD…

Most people are probably so conditioned by the many little lies of daily living that they don’t realize their own comfort level with small lies. These lies are often made in the best of the human spirit – to maintain harmony, to keep good things going, to protect and nurture relationships. All of these concepts are just as important to maintaining a good work life as they are to maintaining a good personal life. When we say that the email looks fine, the meal doesn’t taste too bad, or that jaywalking isn’t really against the law, what we are really saying is that we value certain things more than a bull-headed consistency with telling the truth.

2. Now, this isn’t easy…

The ability to tell the truth is the most unnatural skill a manager must learn. However, it is a vital skill necessary for completing the larger managerial objective of gathering and distributing information. The difficult part is that I think this skill must be learned on your own. The significant obstacle is rejecting ‘not lying’ as a substitute for ‘telling the truth’. Once the difference between the two is well understood and the idea is put into practice, a manager should experience a lot more success.

The best argument for this idea that I could not fit into the post was how some of the managerial techniques championed by mediocre managers seem designed to make employees feel like cogs in a machine or caricature sketches from a textbook. The resulting conversations are stilted, forced, and demoralizing. It is probably better for a manger to stumble awkwardly through a real conversation than to zip skillfully through a scripted exchange.

i read why i have not written any of my books so you don't have to

Why I Have Not Written Any Of My Books by Marcel Benabou (April 2018)

French author Marcel Benabou muses on the great challenge of writing all the books he has yet to write in this 1986 book. This tongue-in-cheek reflection came my way via a loyal TOA reader who thought it fit nicely with my “books I’m not writing” series from the end of last year (1).

This book had a quality some writing has where it is nominally about one thing (the books Benabou has yet to write) but is really about something else (writing, or perhaps the challenge of writing). An extended metaphor, some might say, or perhaps simply a reflection of reality – if writing weren’t so challenging, surely no book would go unwritten.

I think anyone who has created anything will understand this feeling. Writer’s block, as some call it, is not an affliction limited merely to the paid writer. Who has not sat, stoop-shouldered and bleary-eyed, staring at the laptop in vain as the search for the perfect email salutation reaches a third hour? Or how about the experience of trying to find the perfect words for a simple birthday card? It is a wonder that those who have ever struggled to write would then commit to writing more, perhaps professionally, but I suppose that’s the true definition of a writer: someone who writes, sometimes, when able, and willing.

Unfortunately, as Benabou points out, being unfit for writing has little relationship to the desire to write. It seems like once the bug bites, there remains little choice but to scratch away until the words align into paragraph-ready sentences. And is the job done after that? Of course not, not in any sense, for the real torture of writing comes when proofreading a completely illegible paragraph. All that work to feed the backspace key!

I suppose the real torture for Sisyphus came not in pushing the boulder up the hill but in watching it roll back down to the bottom. If Sisyphus were a writer, perhaps his eternal punishment would have been to sit at a blank Microsoft Word document, the vertical line winking knowingly at him, compelled to write while knowing that each word he typed into the program was destined to disappear into the ether the moment his fingers stopped hitting the keyboard.

Footnotes / the fourth law

1. Thank you for the recommendation!

It’s always interesting when a real life thing ‘happens’ because of something I wrote on TOA (don’t worry, reader, it’s only been little things here and there so far, reader, nothing major, but still). It speaks to a larger idea that I maybe will write about someday – for all the time we humans spend talking, it is actually extremely rare when something we simply say changes the world around us.

My general rule of thumb for TOA reflects this understanding in a way – for the most part, I simply pretend TOA doesn’t exist. Even if I am sure that I am speaking with someone who read a post, I still speak as if the post never happened. Although this approach means I repeat myself from time to time in the company of loyal readers, I think this is the fairest way to do it – the last thing I want to do is create the illusion that I am imposing my rubbish on any reader.

my first rule of thumb?

One of the topics I often discuss here at TOA is the importance of building on strengths rather than shoring up weaknesses. I believe people tap their own unlimited potential when they focus on cultivating strengths while they merely reduce their own downside risk when they focus on improving deficiencies. This philosophy does not mean that I go through life seeking only the activities I do well. Like with most dualities, I look for the optimal amount of give and take between building on strengths and shoring up weaknesses.

The first book I remember reading that really explained this idea well was a chess book I picked out during my junior year of college. This book (whose author and title I do not remember) went into great detail about Bobby Fisher's training routine. At the time, I (like I imagine is the case for many) considered chess as the ultimate contest of minds. The body's role in chess was purely administrative – outside of moving the pieces, hitting the clock, and farting strategically to break an opponent's concentration, it was almost entirely unrelated to playing the game well.

Well, eh hem, said Mr. Fisher, the great American chess champion. For the grandmaster, the demands of the body limited the mind. He felt that to sit at a table and focus on an eight by eight square for six uninterrupted hours required a body in top condition. Or to put it another way, a body in less than top condition risked lapses in concentration stemming from a host of physical distractions – a headache, a sore shoulder, a tight muscle. Any of these distractions might prove decisive during intense games. Therefore, Fisher prepared for his matches by training his body with the same intensity he brought to his mental preparation. If I recall correctly, his physical training included a careful diet and a couple of hours in the swimming pool each day.

I have no idea if this approach made the difference when Fisher sat at the chessboard and competed at the highest level of the game. It is entirely plausible that this effort was trivial and that his ascent to the top of his profession was inevitable due to his superior mental skills. He would not be the first highly successful person to misattribute his success to an irrelevant but controllable factor.

But on the other hand, his logic is sound and the results speak for themselves. And who would I be to disagree with the logic of a chess grandmaster! If anything, what his story tells me is that although strength-based approaches to training are preferable, weaknesses left unattended will eventually limit potential.

The story about the grandmaster's approach to maintaining superior physical fitness made a major impression on me. Though I vaguely understood the importance of emphasizing strengths at the time, it was not until this introduction to Fisher's methods that I understood when to switch my focus toward building up a weakness. It left me with something resembling perhaps my earliest attempt at a rule of thumb:

Utilize strengths until I hit a plateau, and then build a weakness until upward progress resumes.

I’ll have some more to add in an upcoming post about the ways I apply this rule of thumb today.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Footnotes / you can’t win if you don’t play, but…well…

1. Director’s cut: bad analogy edition…

I cooked up some good analogies for the opener that didn’t quite make the final cut. Here’s one: is it better to try and win the lottery… OR… to clutch onto every dollar you ever come in contact with?

Maybe this one fits better: should you try to run as fast as you can and maybe fall down once or twice… OR… just stand completely still, secure in the knowledge that you’ll never fall down?

The closest one to getting in was this one: what is the best way to learn how to ride a bike? I suppose one way is to simply avoid falling – you could pedal from here to anywhere that way. But that doesn’t quite feel right, either – these days, it always seems like I do better when I just focus on pedaling and maybe the best way to learn is to do it this way right from the start.

the business bro simplifies management, part 3

Generalization: a manager must measure performance

Simplification: a manager must train

The manager’s job isn’t always directly involved with the work. There might be times, for example, when the manger must simply shut the door and do an individual task. But with the door shut, how will a manager ever know if the work is being done well?

The generalized approach makes sense at first. Get a printout of the figures, crunch a couple numbers, and figure out if things are good, right? As is the case with all generalizations, I agree with the logic to an extent.

The problem with this method is that you will need to do this every single time. Otherwise, how could you know if the work is fine? But if you are relying on output to demonstrate competence, you’ll have no choice but to assume the employee was incompetent in the event something goes wrong. A manager concluding an employee is incompetent isn’t a problem… if the employee is incompetent. But getting this one wrong isn’t a proven recipe for managerial success. If you point a finger at an employee based on some printout, all you are doing is demonstrating to the employee that manipulating what goes on the printout is more important than actual performance. You might want to be sure about this one first, hotshot manager, before dishing out the blame.

So – what does training have to do with this? Well, in training, it becomes clear who is ready for show time and who is not. A coach who sees a player perform at a top level every day in practice will overlook a bad performance or two in a game. If a well-trained employee does something poorly, a manager will have a strong sense of whether this is simply a case of performance variation. The only way a manager will know for sure is if he or she conducted the training.

The manager who trains will also use performance measurements differently because he or she will already know how good the employees in the team are. And when something goes wrong, this manager will have a head start in figuring out the issue when compared to a manager who does not know the team. Although training is often framed as an investment in the trainee, in terms of resolving unexpected issues the investment is really made in the trainer because those who train will not waste time learning about the skill levels of the team involved in the issue.

the business bro’s weakness was his 3.7 GPA

Hi folks,

A couple of days ago, TOA posted some thoughts on why the GPA system does not reflect how success is measured in the real world. Today, I’m back with a hypothetical example to further illustrate how GPA isn’t the best way to approximate real world success.

Let’s say we have a school with one hundred students. They all take five courses and score a ‘B’ in the first semester of each for a GPA of 3.0.

Next, suppose a new kid moves to town. He gets one ‘A+’ and four ‘C’ grades for a GPA of just above 2.5 in the second semester. Everyone else continues to get a ‘B’ average to maintain their 3.0.

Now, consider what happens when the third semester rolls around. Let’s say the students all want to study and improve their scores. The new student can help all the others in the one ‘A+’ subject while every student can help the new student in the four ‘C’ subjects.

If we set up a marketplace for tutoring services, how much could the ‘A+’ student charge? What about the ‘B’ students? The marketplace would look like this:

1) 1 ‘A+’ student demands 1 tutor in ‘C’ subjects – supply is 100 tutors
2) 100 ‘B’ students demand 1 tutor each for five ‘B’ subjects – supply is 1 tutor

Then, we would apply the basic laws of supply and demand:

1) Supply   = 400 > Demand = 4… price goes down
2) Demand = 500 > Supply = 1… price goes up

In this extreme example, the ‘A+’ student is going to basically auction off tutoring services to the highest bidder. And guess what? The price is going to go up and up and up…

The other side of the coin is just as interesting to me. The ‘A+’ student will need four tutors, one for each ‘C’ subject, and there will be one hundred students capable of filling the demand. There will be another auction, reader, but the direction is going to be in reverse – the price is going to go down and down and down…

Do we see now why the relationship between school and real world success isn’t as close as many like to portray? No? Not yet, eh, reader? Maybe the idea of ‘a tutoring marketplace’ outlined in my over-specified hypothetical high-school isn’t as compelling as I thought. You drive a hard bargain, reader, so let’s try this example instead...

Suppose we have some sort of highly competitive post-graduate program, maybe an MBA sort of thing. The students are all highly driven, intelligent, and so on. In the first semester, they all get ‘A’ averages.

Now, let’s say a hypothetical student comes to a realization – if everyone gets the same grades, how will employers pick out the next hire? And the short answer is: they can’t because everyone has the same attributes. This student decides to differentiate a little and goes for an ‘A+’ in a favorite class – let’s say it's related to supply chain operations – and gets the top grade in the second semester. It comes with a cost, though – the rest of the grades fall off, let’s say down to a ‘B’, and now this supply-chain wizard of a student has the lowest GPA in all of the school! So, what next?

I see two scenarios. In scenario A, the student blindly goes ‘into battle’ in the job market armed with the lowest GPA in the class and a string of excuses – eh hem, excuse me, explanations. This student may or may not get a job. The one thing I know for sure is that, in the event of a tie with a fellow classmate for a given role, this student will probably not get the job (since the classmate has a higher GPA and should therefore win the ‘tiebreaker’).

In scenario B, the student is more tactical with the job search and goes for roles where the ‘A+’ is relevant. This student also may or may not get a job. But the considerations are different here – things like expertise in a specific skill are more important factors. And if there is a tie with a classmate, the tie now goes to our hypothetical student (who has a higher skill-specific grade of ‘A+’ than the classmate’s ‘A’).

When I think about this scenario long enough, I start to wonder if this isn’t one of those cases where the example is actually less clear than the reality. The job market, after all, is merely a series of skill alignments with open opportunities. The faster a prospective employee starts to create differentiation from the competition, the faster this prospective employee will find a good match of skills with opportunity. It might pay off right away in the initial job search after the graduate program or it might pay off a decade later when a former classmate remembers to hire the one student who was in the 99th percentile for a specific skill. The key isn’t really when it pays off but rather cultivating the mentality of differentiation by learning to become comfortable with performance variation across your entire range of skills.

Of course, the case for the ‘well-rounded’ student will always remain a strong one. But ultimately, I think the students who seem forever capable of working anywhere risk never discovering the ideal role for them. A perfectly smooth puzzle piece doesn’t lock in very well to any jigsaw puzzle, you know?

the business bro simplifies management, part 2

Generalization: a manager makes it possible to work

Simplification: whoever makes it possible to work is a manager

Most employees rely on the manager at a day-to-day level to remove obstacles, clarify confusion, and coordinate tasks. In the long term, they entrust the manager to facilitate skill development and guide career growth. If the manager fails to do these tasks properly, it will become increasingly difficult for the employee to do the job well and next to impossible for the employee to build a career. So, again, on the surface the generalization here goes a long way because everything the manager does is intended to make it possible for an employee to work.

However, the manager who takes this generalization as a given is bound to end up in big trouble. This type of manager frames failures as a matter of yet – I haven’t removed the obstacle yet, I haven’t answered the question yet, I haven’t taught the new skill yet. Yet isn’t a good word for a manager because it contains an infinity (and those tend to go on forever).

To put it another way, the difference between yet and never is another person's perception. This perception is based entirely on the reality of how often you say yet when the expectation was something different. The more you say yet, the more others are going to hear never.

Reader, any guesses on who has no time for yet?

(Waiting…)

(Other than me?)

If you guessed the employee, you are close – the employee is included. In fact, the correct answer is everyone. It isn’t just the lowest employee on the company chart here – it’s the head of the company as well, and everyone else in between. Whether it’s a daily operational concern or a matter of developing employees, the luxury of time implied by yet is not afforded to anyone in a position to help. People who are able to help must help, right away if possible, or otherwise risk the opportunity passing them by.

The simplification here reflects the reality of managing – there is the manager and then there is the real manager. The manager is the person employees assume will help them while the real manager is the person who actually helps them. When people identify someone as manager material, they are usually just pointing at the person who always helps. It works the same way in reverse – those regarded as bad managers are basically the leaders no one ever asks for help.

what i learned about gpa

The biggest challenge I see in getting people to apply a strength-focused approach to personal development is that many people remain (blissfully) unaware of the value of a weakness. When people view all of their skills equally, they work on their skills until their performance in their weakest area is as good as their performance in their strongest area. They never allow themselves to fall short of doing their best. Unfortunately, though well intended I think this mentality leads people to inadvertently reduce their own potential.

How does this process work? My experience suggests that the process of asking people to 'wear many hats' and excel across the board starts as soon as students receive their first report card. In school, a kid who gets an 'A+' in one subject but fails all the other subjects is never considered smart (especially if he got the high mark in something trivial like art, music, or blogging). The kid who gets a 'B' across the board, on the other hand, is at least considered smart enough to understand how to be well-rounded. If the student can lift a handful of those ‘B’ grades to an ‘A-’ level, the student is often considered smart. Eventually, the pressure of the GPA stunts and molds a student into a graduate incapable of focusing on doing one thing very well (except for, maybe, conforming).

I meet a lot of people these days that assess value in the way schools identify smart kids. This is understandable in the logic of the GPA. Just do the math… and the science… and the history… right? The concept applies the ‘Renaissance Man’ ideal to students. In doing so, it punishes the variation across secondary performance categories observed in those who often achieve specialized real world success. In real life, we are rewarded based on what we do well and encouraged to find someone else to help us with what we do poorly (2).

By that standard, a student who gets an 'A+' in any subject should probably be considered in the same class as the straight-B student, even if the 'A+' kid fails every other course. An 'A+' in one subject is extremely difficult to get. From my experience, taking one 'A' up to an 'A+' took much more work than maintaining any number of “B’s” across the board (3).

In real life, people who manage an 'A+' in one area tend to hire other people to 'sit the exams' in their ‘C-’ areas for them. A chef might hire a plumber to fix his toilet, for example, while the plumber might hire a tailor to fit his suit. And who might the tailor pay to fix him dinner? This little cycle on repeat is called My Boring Society and it's a magical place where the toilets flush, the clothes fit, and everyone looks forward to dinner. Sounds OK, right? And yet, the way schools pressure students you'd think everyone's dream was to live in a place where your plumber was just as good at cooking fish as the tailor was at unclogging your pipes.

It's not crazy that people think about themselves in the way they were first taught in school. Everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten, right (4)? Anything stressed since such a young age seems natural after enough time. Some of the positive qualities that adults envy in many young children – curiosity, a tendency to experiment, the ability to articulate needs – give way gradually throughout childhood to make room for the negative qualities that adults feel burdened with – discomfort with change, a preference for verified fact, an inability to express themselves. Schools and their routines, correct answers, and overwhelming pressure toward conformity undoubtedly play a major role in this transformation.

A lot of what schools do is highly valuable for the young minds in their charge. But if the stated goal of a school is to prepare students for real world success, then everything in their power should work toward this goal. The GPA system is a trivial but highly symbolic part of the current misalignment between schools and this goal. Instead of giving equal weight to every subject a student studies, schools should consider a scoring system that better approximates how graduates succeed in the real world by cultivating strengths while helping students learn to work around rather than eliminate their most valuable asset: their weaknesses.

Footnotes / a warning about hat racks / logically speaking

1. Maybe if I kept some hydras in my company…

I’d love to know the origin of the expression ‘wearing many hats’. I’ve seen a lot in my three decades but I’ve never seen someone actually wear multiple hats – usually, people wear one hat at the most (and most people don’t wear a hat).

In a sense, asking people to ‘wear many hats’ is like asking them to become hat racks. Hat racks are nice. They store many hats. But most people compliment others for the hat atop the head, not for all the hats that are stored at home. TOA verdict: don't be a hat rack.

2. Internal logic never holds up, unless it does…

The logic to the GPA system is entirely internal – so it either makes no sense or perfect sense, depending on your point of view. It made sense to me when I was in school and makes no sense to me now. Know what I mean?

3. Anyone wanna help me open this private school?

A GPA system that ranked students into tiers by their highest grade and broke ties within tiers using traditional GPA calculations might work pretty well here. It would account for gifted students in areas like music, art, or sports without punishing the nerds who did well in the old system (by basically getting an 'A+' in everything).

The system would 'harm' the straight 'B+' student by pushing their class ranking down. But is this a horrible result? A lot of young adults drift early in their careers, worrying about 'committing' to a career path and wasting valuable time in the process. I wonder if part of the issue is a lack of experience in committing to anything in high school – a time when generalization and keeping options open is encouraged. How could a high school help students practice commitment as a skill? My GPA setup could be one way to do so.

4. I went to an alternative kindergarten...

We were taught to (a) never to accept candy from strangers and (b) never get into a car with a stranger unless (c) they were driving us around town on the behalf of a ride share company.

the business bro simplifies management

Yesterday, my counterpart on TOA posted some incoherent babble about the general and the simple. I thought I would stop by this week to take those ramblings and apply them directly to the manager role.

First, I’ll consider some common generalizations about management that I find useful but unclear. Then, I’ll simplify them into a set of skills every manager needs. I came up with five – for now – so let’s keep it simple and do one per day through all of this week.

Generalization: a manager must be good at time management

Simplification: a manager must do things on time

Time management is a nice way to frame this idea. We could spend all day talking about this skill. However, instead of creating a complicated process, let’s just measure time management ability against a simple performance question – was the task done on time? If it was, then the time was managed appropriately. If it wasn’t, then the manager must manage time better.

When a manager says something will get done at 4pm on Tuesday, it simply has to get done at 4pm on Tuesday. A manager unable to meet the schedule consistently might as well not have a schedule at all. Who on the team will trust a schedule or worry about a deadline if nothing ever gets done on time?

in general, it’s simple

I realized the other day that in my writing I consistently toe a fine line between generalization and simplification. Why is this important? I think generalization is a good short-term goal while simplification is preferred in the long-term.

The difference lies in the detail. A generalization ignores detail to apply an idea across as broad a range as possible. In contrast, simplification leverages detail to eliminate excess.

A quick example – what is calculus? The generalized answer is that calculus means complex math. This answer is 100% true. But does this help us understand calculus? All the generalization does here is strip away the detail that differentiates (!) calculus from analysis or advanced probability in order to compare it against arithmetic or geometry. We get it, but we don’t really have an idea of what calculus is.

The simplified answer is that calculus means rates of change. This answer is 100% true, as well, but it gives better insight into what calculus is. It uses the detail of the subject matter to define it while stripping away all the excess that is not required by the question.

For the most part, I think the general and the simple work hand in hand. As dismissive as I am of the general in the above example, I do admit that anyone who knows calculus as the subject studying rates of change will also know it as complex math. If there is an order of operations, the general should precede the simple.

The general is a good place to start but a bad place to finish. The trick, I suppose, is in knowing when to transition from the general to the simple. I think a lot of people wait too long and stunt their own learning process. It is fully understandable – someone speaking generally always has a fluency that is outwardly impressive. This creates the impression of full understanding and others will naturally want to mimic this level of expertise.

However, I think it is always better to dive into simplifying as quickly as possible. The process of simplifying always reveals gaps in understanding. Though embarrassing at times, these gaps are invaluable for the learning process. Without knowing what to study or think about next, the day of fully understanding the world around us will never arrive.

and…the biggest word I know

Good morning all,

I originally thought today’s post was going to be a creative twist on the notes I took from Peopleware. It started off that way, for sure. Partway into the post, I stopped for a moment to think over an idea – why did I take notes on certain thoughts while entirely skipping over others?

It was one of those moments where I started down a line of thinking I expected to last for around a minute and found myself still knee-deep in my own gray matter an hour later. I eventually relented and started writing a new post (this one, reader) to track the entire line of thinking I went through in response to my own question.

So – why do I write some things down and not others? It’s an important question, I think. Let’s use my current note taking process as a starting point to explore the idea.

1) First, I seek out books about specific topics and choose the books that I suspect are well written and seem to be an appropriate length.

2) Next, I read the book and try to absorb the hundreds of pages as best as I can. While I read, I mark the specific sentences, paragraphs, or pages I want to return to later.

3) After I finish reading, I return to the book and take down notes from those pages I marked down.

4) Finally, I use my notes to shape my own thinking and writing.

On the surface, it doesn’t look so bad. But if you think about it, the whole process is a little strange. The basic problem is that I make hundreds of tiny decisions as I read a book about whether the given thought is interesting enough for me to return to later. If this doesn’t seem so strange to you, reader, think of it like this - the way I take notes requires that I make snap judgments about ideas from experts who have spent years thinking and writing about a subject I may have spent as little as no time thinking or writing about (1).

I’m not afraid of making these quick decisions, reader, but… well, I guess the question is, what are my criteria? I suppose the way I make most of these little decisions is based on whether I find the given note interesting. This leads naturally to the next thought – what makes a note interesting? For me, it seems like anything I agree with makes the cut. This leads to the next (and hopefully, the last) thought – what do I agree with?

That’s the real question here, I think. What do I agree with? I’m only writing down notes for what I agree with, really, so this feels like an important question to understand. In a way, I think most people spend their entire lives asking themselves this question, over and over again, in slightly varying forms. I wish I could give a simple and important answer like – well, I agree with The Truth – but I don’t think such a high-minded response gets at the point of the question (though it would dovetail nicely with the name of the blog) (2).

This is life, right? Life is trying to answer the question - what do I agree with? You grow up, try to do the right thing, find out you were wrong a few times, and then die. This is life: a perpetually repeating sequence of rejecting hypotheses and gaining knowledge that contradicts what you knew yesterday, a process on endless loop until, well, until one day it actually does end. And at the end of every day in this cycle comes the same question, knocking on that bolted shut door at the edge between the mind and the soul – what do I agree with?

It’s a little bit reminiscent of an idea I borrowed from George Saunders that I’ve highlighted around these parts once before – living in the vibrating space between our little contradictions is the big challenge of life (3). It seems like this 'vibrating space' is surrounded on all sides by the things I might possibly agree with. Being here is a task that we aren’t well equipped for – it's the space we occupy whenever we love our pets while we salivate over bacon or when we want to make a change while we master the status quo. Ever time we agree with seemingly deep thinkers on things we’ve never given serious thought to ourselves, we step right back into this space (4).

Why do we feel so poorly equipped for this task? I don’t think it helps when we frame a complex topic as this or that. I also don’t find much value in defining the whole as always equivalent to one (as in, 'the whole' = 1). This kind of thinking frames decisions as negations because it means agreement with one idea causes a disagreement with another. And yet, by accepting a this or that mentality, we make it difficult to think of new ways to grow as human beings.

The key word, I believe, to break this thinking down is and. When we use and, we break down barriers and make the infinite a possibility. And replaces the words that create little divisions and prevents them from expanding into solid borders and warring factions (5). And takes the reservoirs of the past and connects them to the parched hopes for the future.

It shows you that today is the oldest you’ve ever been... and... that today is the youngest you’ll ever be. It reminds you of the people you needed yesterday... and... introduces the possibility of becoming those people tomorrow. And creates the moments that we string together, forever, so that we can safely navigate from our most recent contradiction to the next.

From and, people grow. It is the seed that directs itself toward light, the outlet for the overflowing emotion, the passport that ensures safe passage beyond our limits. And makes it possible to live a life where you find out you are wrong, again and again, about the things you always believed in… and… allows you to enjoy it. And is the shield you stand behind while you tell others just what they need to hear because you believe in it, you believe in your words… and… you aren’t quite ready to heed those words yourself. With and, we can do anything, and anything else, and maybe answer a question or two correctly along the way.

Footnotes / don’t stop me now ‘cuz I’m having a good time…

1. Go ahead, stop me…

Perhaps 'strange' isn’t the right word here – the better word is probably arrogant. I think it takes a certain level of arrogance to do what I do. Who am I to narrow down a highly detailed, meticulously planned, and thoughtfully written book down to twenty bullet points and a couple of proper admins?

2. Longtime readers will argue…

If anything, those of you readers who have been around here long enough would point out that with all the little personas and alter egos I have trotting around here, it is barely plausible that I even agree with myself. Maybe I should consider sorting out the different pieces in my own brain before I start worrying about what the assembled whole is doing.

Or...

Maybe the brain is the ultimate example of the 'vibrating space' among all our contradictions.

3. Well, not quite what he said, there…

I think this link will bring the curious reader to the right quote.

4. This sentence got cut from the original…

The belt holds up the pants but the pant loops hold up the belt…

Sometimes, I take myself too seriously while writing these posts and I end up removing the kind of nonsense that makes the blog worth writing. I regret nothing, but still.

5. Another reject...

Simple possibilities like the bacon-eating dog lover return from the world of impossible contradictions when one set of negating words is suddenly replaced with and.

They do get cut for a reason, though.

leftovers #3 - being mortal (why did i reread this book?)

Longtime readers may have noticed that I reread this book outside of my prescribed ‘rereading month’ (more commonly known as December). What gives, you may have thought? Well, as I like to say around these parts, whenever unusual things happen there is always a reason… and… The Real Reason.

The Real Reason I reread Being Mortal was because I wanted to check if something I’d believed for about the last three years or so was true. My belief was this: I believed that I’d read Being Mortal in April 2015 and learned that my mom wasn’t just sick but also dying. This was contrary to what I was being told at the time by pretty much everybody else, notably among them the author’s own colleagues (since my mom was hospitalized at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the same hospital where Atul Gawande works whenever he isn’t writing bestsellers).

I’d formed this belief based on an anecdote from the book. As I recalled, this anecdote described a woman with a very similar disease progression to my mom. It seemed to predict the future – once a person reached a certain point in the illness, all the doctors could do would be to oscillate between disease treatment and symptom management until they slowly ran out of ways to do the former.

So, I reread this book thinking about that memory and wondering how accurately I’d read the story the first time. As it turned out, surprise of surprises… my memory wasn’t very good about it at all! It wasn’t like I realized I completely invented this story – I was able to find the anecdote in question and it did cover some of the general ideas as I’d recalled them. But in terms of the specific anecdote I recalled having any predictive value for me in April 2015, well, I can’t really say after rereading that I knew what I was thinking back then.

leftovers #2 - being mortal (self-sacrifice)

The most difficult reality about an incurable disease is that an uncountable number of patients will need to suffer through doomed treatments before the winning formula is confirmed. I think we’ve all had the experience of learning about how doctors once used leeches to ‘suck the bad blood’ out of a patient – it is easy enough to shake our heads now and wonder what madness had taken hold of the medical profession in those days. What isn’t so easy to wonder about is what our grandkids will say when they read about chemotherapy (1).

The one thing the patients of yesteryear will share with those many generations in the future is what seems like an ingrained human instinct for self-sacrifice. Historically speaking, people have always seemed ready to sacrifice themselves for a larger idea. This has played out in large-scale examples such as war and in small moments like an adult risking death to save a stranded child. In medicine, this plays out every day when sick patients opt for an experimental treatment or a last-ditch surgery that, although the odds of success are slim, will at least help the profession learn more about the illness and maybe prove invaluable in helping treat the next sick person.

Footnotes / actually, it ain’t that hard…

1. Scene: some medical school, decades from now….

Wait… the cancer treatment they used to do... could cause more cancer???

leftovers - being mortal

In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande shared the guidelines health professionals use to determine how much function a person has. There were sixteen in all, broken up into two groups of eight, and the general standard meant doing each activity without assistance:

The Eight Activities of Daily Living

-Use the toilet
-Eat
-Dress
-Bathe
-Groom
-Get out of a bed
-Get out of a chair
-Walk

This list looks pretty good to me. In fact, I've already done five of those things today and it's still only around two PM or so - I'm looking good to go eight for eight...

Seriously, though, these are all important things and each requires a basic level of mobility. If a doctor’s primary job was to make sure I could continue doing these things for as long as possible, I’d be fine with it. I would also be willing to bet that these remain the guidelines for a long time because the concepts covered here feel timeless to me.

Let’s look at the next list.

The Eight Activities of Independent Living

-Shopping for yourself
-Preparing your own food
-Doing your own housekeeping
-Doing your own laundry
-Managing your medications
-Making phone calls
-Traveling on your own
-Handling finances

Now, this… what is this? This looks like the Bad Sophomore Album, piggybacking on the runaway smash success of ‘The Eight Activities of Daily Living’. Is there any reason why we needed eight more activities to determine how much function a person has?

Like, make a phone call? Who makes phone calls anymore? I know some folks who’d assume a mutual friend had died if I they ever saw I was calling them. Plus, making a phone call probably requires at least the ability to get out of a bed or a chair, anyway, and those are covered in the first list.

There are a few other examples of repeat ideas in that second list.  How is someone going to travel on their own if they can’t even dress themselves? Or walk? And is laundry really a good idea for someone who can’t bathe? I’d think the skin is more important to wash than a shirt, I suppose, but maybe that’s why I can’t own white things. And don’t get me started on ‘handling finances’…

the 'hello, ladies' post-game show

Back in February, I shared my reading totals from 2017. In addition to simply adding up the total, I also analyzed my results in the fashion suggested by my ‘Hello Ladies’ post and compared the number of male authors I’d read with the number of female authors.

So, after the completion of this project, I suppose the big question is – what did I learn?

Reader, I initially feared that I learned nothing. A lot of what I laid out in the original post played out as described. As the Australian journal and website Vida pointed out, (a) women are writing more books than men yet (b) men are receiving a disproportionate share of the attention. My reading list, unresponsive to (a) yet influenced by (b), serves only as another example of how this conclusion might manifest (and, if others ask me for reading recommendations as they tend to do, reinforce) itself.

The more I think about this project, the more I suspect the average reader is simply exposed to men’s work more often than they are exposed to women’s work. I have no data beyond the anecdotal to support my hypothesis. Still, I feel pretty good about my conclusion. In my original post, I noted how publishers generally prefer promoting men’s writing and added that many publications review men’s work disproportionately to how often they review women’s work. For me, it follows that this will lead only to us average readers seeing more of men’s work displayed at the front of the bookstore, more of men’s work featured online, and more of men’s work appear in those annual ‘best of’ lists published by our favorite newspapers, magazines, and poorly read blogs.

This is crucial for those who assume the hypothetical average reader doesn’t use the author’s identity to decide whether to read a given book (excepting, of course, something like a memoir, where the author’s identity is the topic) because the number of books this hypothetical reader is exposed to will determine how many books this person reads. Let’s make up a number – five – and use it to represent the number of books this hypothetical ‘average reader’ will learn of before choosing to read one. If this person, through some of the mechanisms referenced above, is exposed to twenty-five books by men and twenty books by women, this person will read five books by men and four by women.

In short, for those readers who choose to read a book based solely on merit, the reality is simple: what they choose is pulled only from a slightly larger pool of all the books they see. And if what they see is a disproportionately male authorship, what they’ll get are disproportionately male reading lists.

So, that’s all, folks… right? If everyone else just did their jobs without bias, then I can continue doing my already not biased thing without looking like a sexist reader by accident... right?

I’m not so sure, actually. I’m not quite sure it’s as simple as my clapping my hands together, nodding earnestly, and blaming publishers and reviewers, blaming society, blaming history, blaming anyone but myself, really, for how my 2017 reading list turned out. This is too bad since I find society is among the most convenient things to blame for almost all of my problems! You know what it sounds like, reader... It sure ain’t my fault that my reading list has ‘a majority’ – it’s patriarchy’s fault, it’s the book reviewer’s fault, it’s the bookstore’s fault... I don't think such excuses cut it for me anymore.

I wonder if it’s time for me to stop worrying about everyone else and just ask where I come in as a reader. I sit around in a society, sure, and I did read these books within the context of said society, of that there is no doubt, and I know we're all just living in a society, certainly, but... I also chose to read each of the books. And one thing this society gives me above all else is choice over what I read.

So, I think I need to consider my role as the selector, as the reader. I need to ask not what my reading list can do for me but to ask what I can do for my reading list, eh (1)? At some point, I need to take responsibility for my role in how my reading list looks. In 2017, over sixty percent of the authors I read were male. But maybe I should describe it like this - in 2017, the books I chose to read were written by male authors over sixty percent of the time. And although the factors I've discussed at length in this post and in many others influenced these selections, at the end of the day I did choose to read those books and I need to think about what the aggregate statistic reveals about my choices.

Footnotes / ask not what your references can do for you, ask...

1. I guess that reference is a little outdated...

I suppose the more topical way to put it is 'make my reading list great again' but in the context of a post about systemic bias, it really doesn't quite make the grade, you know?