the business bro presents: good team, bad team

Good morning,

Last time, I shared my imitation of Ben Horowitz’s ‘Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager’ expectations. The version I came up with used my reading notes from Peopleware to compare and contrast a variety of different managerial behaviors.

Today, I’ll do the same as it relates to teams.

Signed,

The Business Bro

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

Good teams coach each other. They recognize that internal competition has gone too far when peers no longer coach one another. Bad teams do not coach. In bad teams, those learning fear being seen as weak while those teaching suspect a student will use the new skills to leapfrog them in the team hierarchy.

Good teams establish reliable methods of self-coordination. They naturally mitigate problems by knowing how to form ad-hoc coalitions in response to a problem. Bad teams do not coordinate themselves. They must eliminate risk because they are unable to come together to solve simple yet unpredicted problems.

Good teams tolerate error, initiative, and experimentation. Their members do not treat each other as interchangeable pieces and benchmark themselves against challenging but achievable standards. Bad teams create conformity pressure and stamp out all signs of individuality in team members. Their members benchmark themselves against the average team member.

Bad teams talk freely about change without understanding its nature. They assume the new status quo comes quickly and without additional effort. Good teams know that change means chaos. They prepare for the challenge and support each other when outsiders try to reverse the change. Good teams recognize that with change comes a loss of mastery. They teach others how the change will benefit them and work with them to help them achieve a level of mastery in the new status quo. Bad teams do not understand that their colleagues fear making fools of themselves in the process of learning a new tool, method, or process.

Good teams lock into a productive goal and focus on the work until the goal is met. Bad teams constantly stop to refocus attention on company or individual interests.

Bad teams look for overnight solutions to team building problems. They do not make small, incremental contributions to the team every day. Good teams recognize that strong teams are built over time. They watch out for all the ways progress can be undone and intervene whenever they notice a problem in progress.

i read where children sleep so you don't have to

Where Children Sleep by James Mollison (September 2018)

Mollison’s collection is a series of photographs showing where children sleep all around the world. It was a quick read and I zipped through the collection over a couple of nights at the end of September. The photography demonstrates the significant variation of childhood experience – some bedrooms were awash in excess while others were just a comfortable sleeping space. Some bedrooms weren’t bedrooms at all, these running the gamut from a dining room that converted at night into a family sleeping area to a tattered mattress partially hidden by trees in an otherwise open field.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words but I felt the most powerful feature of this collection were the short bios of each child. These were included on the page preceding the photograph of the child’s sleeping area and the bios often explained the context of what came in the accompanying photograph. One occasionally surprising aspect of these descriptions was how they contradicted my initial assumption about a bedroom, the most memorable of these being the revelation that one of the crumbling roofs featured was not from a poor third-world country but was rather from right here in my own United States.

The bios also created little juxtapositions among the children featured that made this a difficult read at times – the starving trash picker and the obese sumo wrestler, for example, or the runaway child soldier and the child who hunts for sport. Using preteen children as examples has an interesting effect because it strips away the usual arguments of self-determination or personal responsibility that are invoked anytime an adult makes decisions that are unhealthy or lives a lifestyle that harms the surrounding community. Instead, all a reader is left with is the understanding that there are countless children out there from every community on the planet that are systemically being left behind, reduced, or erased by the failures of the societies they just happen to grow up in.

leftovers - the 2018 toa book of the year award

Hi all,

Just a few posts ago, I wrapped up the TOA 2018 Book of the Year process by naming Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko the winner of ‘the most irrelevant prize in world literature’ ahead of Simone Weil’s First and Last Notebooks. I realized after the fact that since I’d sent off all the other books from my nominee list with a ‘parting thought’, it would only be appropriate – and consistent – to do so with these finalists. Since these books made it all the way to the end, however, I’ll grant each book an extra thought or two to reflect how far they advanced in the process.

First and Last Notebooks

Parting thought – second runner up: The idiot is the one who takes the oven to the bread for baking.

I can’t add much to this comment except a warning – there are equivalents that are less obvious than someone dragging a stove along the sidewalk.

Parting thought – first runner up: The collective is better than the individual in all domains – except for thought.

One of the delights of reading old books – Weil probably conceived of First and Last Notebooks throughout the Interwar Years and finalized it as the Nazis unleashed their full military potential across Europe – is how it brings past context to what many mistakenly identify as new, modern problems. Weil wasn’t on Twitter (I’m sure she would have been a delight) but the seductive pull of groupthink, the ever-present appeal of the herd mentality, and the voices crying out against these in all their outrage have been around for as long as people have come together.

Parting thought: There is profound value in suffering, given that one made every legitimate attempt to avoid it.

I liked this thought, or perhaps I should say its qualifier, for I think we sometimes needlessly glorify suffering as beneficial or even virtuous just because some have used their suffering to grow into stronger and more resilient people. This reality unfortunately does not account for those who have wilted under the great torment of suffering. Those of us in a support position must understand that it is not the act of suffering alone that matters.

Pachinko

Parting thought – second runner-up: Saying someone is a 'good' representative of a group is no different than discriminating against the group because the 'good' representative exists only when the rest of the group is comprised of the 'bad'.

The rip current underlying Pachinko is the well-meaning complicity of the perfectly kind, perfectly average person in an otherwise discriminatory environment. Groups, organizations, and even societies change through small steps that build up over time. The easiest of these small steps is changing the language, the way we describe ourselves and others, because words form the casual foundation of custom and tradition that enable the worst of our passive thinking to live on. When we incorporate a new vocabulary into public life, the patterns of thought and speech that encouraged simple comparisons slowly give way to words and sentences that allow us to engage with others on new terms that no longer reference our surface differences.

Parting thought – first runner-up: Insurance is a way to make money from fear, loneliness, and chance.

I would add poverty to this list, as well – how else could I convince you to pay me a total of $110 over the next ten years for the privilege of covering a single $100 charge that might come up during the decade?

Parting thought – It's important to have someone to share your life with – your experiences, your thoughts, even just what took place that day.

If the rip current underlying Pachinko is complicity, the vast ocean into which it pulls is erasure. Erasure starts by dismissing or ignoring another’s story and ends when stories stop being told. A life disappears in this way, when the stories of experiences and thinking are ignored, dismissed, or regarded as lies. A society’s complicity means systemically reducing, refuting, and rejecting the stories of the marginalized or the oppressed until those stories stop being told.

When someone shares a story, it reverses the current and brings back into sight what our predecessors allowed to drown. Those in a society that knows how to share lift each other up instead stepping on each other’s backs. Like any massive task, the only way to start is through small steps. It means sharing with those who have earned the right to listen and listening to those who have privileged you with their story. By sharing the daily or the trivial, we reinforce the importance of our stories and develop a society’s most important skill.

the hitler defense

One of the strangest afflictions know to modern society is the tendency of people to reinforce a counter-intuitive point through a bad metaphor instead of thorough explanation. One symptom of this currently unnamed illness that I find particularly aggravating is what I like to refer to as ‘The Hitler Defense’.

In the general manifestation of this illness, a person will be in the midst of making an argument about some quality or skill that is generally considered positive – leadership or charisma or whatever – and then point out that this quality is not proof of a good person. Then, instead of thinking through the point and building on it with an explanation, this person will make a comparison to the most extreme example on hand to 'make' the point.

I give the phenomenon its name because of a conversation I overheard one day when I was strolling the halls of a museum in DC. The person I overheard was explaining to his companion that since Hitler won elections and earned the loyalty of many millions of people in his time, he can at least safely be described as ‘a leader’ and could even be considered among the foremost examples of ‘leadership’ in world history, provided of course we first consider the context of Germany at the time of his election AND discount how he applied his leadership qualities once he came into power.

There is logic to these comments, to these ‘Hitler Defenses’, that I follow. I get it – a lot of people voted for him, he accumulated more votes in elections than just about every candidate in world history, and all that. He commanded armies and organized infrastructure and did all these other things we associate with leadership. But there is something I always feel is overlooked whenever someone wastes my time with the line of thinking that leads to The Hitler Defense: isn’t there a better f’ing example of leadership… than Hitler? Like, am I supposed to believe that in any discussion about leadership, we cannot think of one hundred THOUSAND other examples… than Hitler?

Give me a BREAK. To me, what ‘The Hitler Defense’ reveals is not some clever example of counter-intuitive thinking about leadership but rather an alarming indicator of intellectual sloth. If someone cannot discuss leadership without referencing Hitler, it tells me that this person has a lot more to learn about leadership (and maybe Hitler) before he or she is qualified to discuss leadership in public. Lazy thinking to this degree is dangerous because it can lead others into prioritizing being technically right over being human.

There is never a good enough excuse for saying something in a way that makes another person feel bad. If such methodology becomes the norm, it leads us all down a path toward a world where facts reign supreme ahead of other concerns such as kindness, empathy, and humanity. That world is, in short, the world Hitler envisioned. Thankfully, the Allied Powers who came together and fought against that vision understood something we should all remember today – what Hitler stood for and how he coerced his country to follow along meant his form of leadership really had nothing to do with leadership at all.

the business bro presents: good manager, bad manager

Longtime readers of TOA will recall my appreciation for Ben Horowitz’s ‘Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager’. He wrote the document to clarify his expectations for the Product Manager role in the organization he was leading at the time. This document, Horowitz said later in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, proved a valuable resource for increasing the productivity of these Product Managers.

As I recently reviewed my notes on Peopleware, I noticed that many of the managerial insights were stated in the same ‘good this, bad that’ sort of way. I worked with my notes until I came up with my own version of this expectations document for managers.

Signed,

The Business Bro

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

Good managers do not waste time. They recognize time as the only finite resource – once lost, time cannot be regained. Bad managers leverage the unlimited number of ways to waste time.

Good managers continuously teach others about the organization and its goals. They take the time to repeat themselves and are not beneath answering any question until everyone is on the same page. Bad managers naively assume everyone accepts the organization’s goals. They give away their authority by redirecting questions to different sources.

Bad managers worry about efficiency by default. They never stop to wonder if resources are scarce or abundant. Good managers first ask for context. They question if a given task should be done at all. They do not worry about efficiency until a given resource becomes scarce. They measure productivity by work achieved in a fixed time period. Bad managers measure productivity by work extracted from a given hour of pay.

Good managers expect their teams to work. They train and motivate their teams to perform and trust them to complete their assignments. Bad managers suspect employees will not work. They place their teams under duress and use phony deadlines as a motivational tool. A good manager uses schedule pressure only when the reasoning is obvious to all concerned.

Good managers cultivate uniqueness. They replace departing team members through process adjustment and adapt the work to fit the strengths of remaining team members. New hires are brought in to support star performers. Bad managers address turnover by reducing the importance of individual initiative until no single person is irreplaceable.

Good managers understand that a reputation for high quality is built slowly and crumbles quickly. They allow their teams to set high standards for quality and support the team in achieving it. Bad managers see quality as a variable attribute. They see quality like a pizza topping – it becomes available when the market demands it. Good managers recognize high quality as a leading indicator of high productivity.

Good managers use the medium of communication to set priority. If the issue is urgent, they communicate in person or over the phone. If the receiver sets the priority, they use email. Bad managers cannot conceive of the idea that the receiver sets the priority.

Good managers limit meetings only to those who must agree before finalizing a decision. They run meetings where all participants might need to speak to each other. Bad managers run ceremonies, not meetings. Their meetings end by the clock or are simply ‘FYI’. Good managers end meetings when the purpose of the meeting has been achieved.

Bad managers hoard talent instead of building teams. They measure themselves and their teams by aggregating the ability of the individuals. Good managers measure teams by how well the team serves the organization. If a person has outgrown a place on the team, a good manager works to realign the employee so the organization derives the maximum benefit.

tales of two cities – the truth of the liar

10/17/2018
Back Bay T Stop - Dartmouth St at Stuart St (5:13 PM)
Beacon St at Washington / Kirkland (5:52 PM)

I was biking through the intersection of Hampshire and Kirkland on this fine October afternoon when a sudden glint of light caught my eye – keys!

Normally, I stop and pick up any valuables I come across while biking, but in this case I was in a minor hurry and I initially kept going. The usual reasoning nagged at me, though, as I pedaled toward the next intersection – what if those were my keys, what if they belonged to someone famous, wasn’t it just the right thing to do, and so on – and eventually the guilt and curiosity of my inner monologue got the better of me. I turned the bike around, pedaled back toward Kirkland, and pulled to a stop at the light.

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice – TIM??? I turned, and realized I’d somehow run into a former colleague, someone who I hadn’t seen in close to three years and, quite frankly, thought I would never see again. I’d hired her into my team but we’d only worked together for a few months because I’d been laid off soon after she started. We chatted for a few minutes and got caught up on how our lives had changed and grown over the past couple of years.

At one point in the conversation, I remembered that I’d wanted to apologize to her, and so I did, because when she was interviewing with us I’d described a vision for her career that I knew had not manifested after I was let go. She responded like most people I’ve apologized to in my life – that it was OK, that I didn’t need to apologize, and that it wasn’t really my fault, anyway. I guess there was truth to her response because I’d intended to follow through on everything I told her during the interview and had simply been prevented from doing so due to factors beyond my control. But it also was inarguable that she took the job because of what I said would happen if she did – and what I said would happen, didn’t happen.

When our conversation wrapped up, I remembered what had made me stop in the first place and I went back to look for the keys. I struggled to find them at first and after a couple of minutes I considered giving up. Finally, I saw the light and went over for a closer look. As I stood over the keys, I realized that I hadn’t seen keys at all but a piece of metal with multiple jagged edges. It was lucky that I hadn’t run over it on the bike because it might have shredded a tire and caused me to fall across the pavement. I picked up the metal, handling it carefully so I wouldn’t cut my fingers, and dropped it into a trash can along the side of the road.

The difference between a truth and a lie sounds so simple on the surface that we can’t help but oversimplify it. We think that if we say something that is true in the moment, it isn’t possible for us to have lied. But we also feel lied to anytime someone tells us something that turns out to be untrue even if there was no intent to lie. How can someone feel lied to if there isn’t a willing liar? I suppose good intentions are good but they aren’t good enough. We have to acknowledge the reality of what is wrong and, if possible, do what we must to fix it, even if all along our every intent was geared toward a different outcome.

the 2018 december rereading list

Hi folks,

As promised in my newsletter at the start of the month, here is a breakdown of why I chose the books I reread this month.

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

As I looked back on 2018 and thought about the year, the word that kept coming to mind was rebuilding. This felt especially true in the context of how my habits and routines evolved over the past twelve months. This work, a collection of the various ways creative minds have organized their time in order to be productive, seemed like the perfect book to cap off such a year.

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Another reflection led to the realization that I’m approaching the end of my fifth year of note taking from my reading. I thought it would be interesting to go back to this book, the first one I ever officially took notes on, and study how my process has changed over the past five years.

Threads by Kate Evans
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

These two books were among my six finalists for the 2017 TOA Book of the Year Award. Each boasts a slightly unusual style compared to my standard reading material – Threads is like a graphic novel (but nonfiction) while Pachinko is a sweeping multi-generational examination of a fictional Korean-Japanese family. I thought I would have another look at these works this month just to make sure my initial favorable response to these books was just as much about substance as it was about style.

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

And speaking of sweeping multi-generational examinations about a fictional family…

I’ll admit it, reader, I have no idea why I picked this one to read this again. However, I should note that I’ve made enough unprompted references to Melquidades and his damn parchments over the past year that I suppose a closer reread can’t hurt. This way, I’ll ensure I know what I’m talking about in case I continue this ridiculous habit next year. I’m also going to have a closer look at some of Marquez’s short fiction in 2019 so I think reestablishing familiarity with this work will be a good way to get that project started.

And by the way, how many references to Melquidades’s parchments do I consider ‘enough’? Less than one...

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tsuzuki and his Years of Pilgrimmage by Haruki Murakami

I think I’m going to read at least one of Haruki Murakami’s books every December for the rest of my life. Last year I read three - Sputnik Sweetheart, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Next year, I’ll read Kafka on the Shore and probably one of those from last year again (likely Hard-Boiled Wonderland, which I’ve liked more every time I’ve read it). Starting in 2020, I’ll setup a rotation and do just one per year.

There’s no good reason for this setup, I admit, but as I noted in the newsletter at the start of the month an important feature for my December rereading month is how it allows me to make comparisons against my past self. I think having consistent involvement from one author’s work to compare against will help me achieve this somewhat ambiguous goal by giving me a consistent reference point to see how I’ve changed over time.

leftovers: let's flip the script on entitlement - mass health

In this post, I spoke about my mostly positive experience with MassHealth, the state’s version of the Medicaid program. I think the program does a good job and must be expanded if anyone in the state believes in our rhetoric about being a liberal, democratic, and most importantly, open-minded state within the union. However, MassHealth wasn’t always the easiest program to work with from an administrative perspective and I had to spend several hours at the state insurance offices trying to work out various questions, problems, or concerns that came up during my time under their coverage.

My final interaction with the program summarizes my experience quite nicely. When my coverage expired, I received a letter from the state acknowledging that I was no longer covered. The letter suggested that I reach out if this determination was incorrect. The best part was the dating – although the coverage expired on March 11, the date on the letter was April 23. This is just my humble opinion but… I think we here in Massachusetts should aim to do a little better with our state healthcare option.

leftovers - the illustrated book of sayings (competition formats)

As I mentioned in the main post, The Illustrated Book of Sayings is a loosely related follow up to Lost In Translation. Longtime readers will recall how my fascination with Lost In Translation led to the infamous TOA ‘Word Bracket’, a mock tournament where I pitted my favorite sixteen words from the book in head-to-head comparisons until I determined my favorite word.

A hidden but important reason why I put the ‘tournament’ together is my long-running fascination with competition formats (yes, you read that correctly). I’ve always enjoyed reading up about the different structures used in various leagues, tournaments, and competitions around the world. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that the competition format has a far greater influence over the eventual popularity of the competition than the nature of the competition itself.

There is no better example of this than the NCAA Men’s Division I basketball tournament. I assume every reader is familiar with this tournament nicknamed ‘March Madness’ and those who follow sports even just casually will know the tournament for its wild finishes, crazy upsets, and Cinderella runs by underdog teams. But when I think about the reasons for the tournament’s popularity, it’s hard to get past the single-elimination bracket format. There are many reasons why this tournament structure tends to create the most popularity. Above all the factors, it infuses every game with the possibility of elimination – in other words, it means every game counts. I think this is why the bracket format reigns supreme over all the other options – there is nothing worse for a competition than an uncompetitive contest.

let’s flip the script on entitlement

I’m starting to come up with some half-baked ideas for my inevitable Presidential campaign. My most recent idea involves how I would incorporate my belief in the country’s need to implement certain safety net programs as quickly as possible – specifically, universal health care, free access to a four-year college or university, and a guaranteed basic income – without necessarily alienating one side or the other with my platform.

I think I’ve finally figured out how to do it – I would initially offer these programs on a trial basis to all veterans and their families. I don't think gathering the support for this would be too difficult. I assume the left would be willing to accept this compromise in order to finally see these programs get off the ground while the right would struggle to take up an opposition stance when such a position could easily be portrayed as anti-veteran (and anti-American, and maybe even anti-freedom).

However, there is a hidden element to my platform (that has nothing to do with right or left) that makes me confident these reforms will eventually be implemented at a nationwide level regardless of whether I run on the manipulative platform I outlined above: these reforms are already here. Disagree, reader? Well, allow me to provide my rebuttal strictly using my own experiences.

First, when I was unemployed for over two years, I was enrolled in MassHealth, the state’s version of universal health care. Now, it wasn’t ever clear to me how the plan worked and I’m certain I didn’t have access to all the same care I used to have under my former company’s luxury policy. But in terms of the basics, I had a card that gave me full access to the state’s approved healthcare resources with almost no out of pocket cost (beyond the portion of my own tax bill that funded the program). The way I see it, universal healthcare is already here (provided you meet certain conditions set by Medicaid, I suppose, or turn 65).

Second, when I was a senior in high school, I applied to a number of different schools. One school was UMass and its endearing feature was that it was essentially free. The key word there is obviously ‘essentially’ but for the most part going to a state university as a resident of the state meant the cost of a four-year degree was, if not nil, then at least affordable. The way I see it, free access to a four-year college or university is almost here, provided the high school graduate subordinates all other factors to the cost.

Finally, during that aforementioned period of unemployment, I found that my benefits almost entirely covered my expenses for nearly my entire first year. Although my benefits eventually expired, I learned in my second year that since my only earnings did not meet a certain minimum my tax liability was exactly zero. This was the first instance I was ever aware of where the great truism that life’s certainties are death and taxes did not apply. The way I see it, a form of universal basic income is already here - you just need to earn so little money that Uncle Sam skips over your name on the list he prints out every January.

Now, I recognize my argument isn’t perfect. In fact, it isn’t even good, not even close. I’m sure many readers disagreed with one, two, or even all three of my examples. But if these programs are boiled down to basic premise of their existence, I think it’s hard to suggest that this country isn’t already providing free healthcare, affordable education, or income redistribution to a certain number of people who meet carefully defined requirements.

I guess the problem I’m circling here is that the issue isn’t implementation – it’s scope. Our free healthcare program is crucial for the many who rely on it but it leaves out an unacceptable number of people who should qualify. The state universities, though not free, are generally affordable but the financial strain it can create for students is still significant (especially when certain four-year degrees are not always enough to land a job). As for my favorite futuristic policy, 'the universal income', the current mechanism of 0% tax rates only applies to those whose incomes are so low that their tax-free incomes are still thousands of dollars below the poverty line. We might be taking the right steps forward as a country but I think we are still at the point where we are equating ‘lifting people up’ with ‘not pushing them down’. It’s a start, but I feel like we remain very much at the beginning of a long and arduous journey to helping everyone who needs it. In short, there remains a ton of work to do.

I think one thing that can help move the work forward is to start talking about these policies in the context of scope rather than implementation. For many, starting something new takes up so much time and energy that the prospect itself is daunting. However, putting in a little extra effort into an existing process is often seen as far more feasible. Policymakers who are interested in bringing these programs forward should worry less about the big fish like disbanding major insurers, punishing private colleges that discriminate during admissions, or suggesting we send everyone a big check every month for doing nothing. Instead, they should worry more about taking small, achievable steps that help those who need it the most by expanding the scope of Medicaid, reallocating state education money away from helmet football and toward academic scholarships, and refusing to tax anyone who lives below the poverty line. Although we are all easily seduced by The Big Ideas that move society forward in one giant leap, the reality is that most societies move forward when everyone takes a small step forward in unison toward a common goal.

here comes the tax man!

I’m confused by the attitude people have towards taxes. It seems like taxes are the one area where the otherwise intelligent people completely lose their minds. Specifically, I've noticed that people always want to pay less tax no matter how low taxes actually go. However, it seems people also want to get more in terms of government services. Pay less AND get more – this isn’t the business plan I would expect my government to come up with, reader. And yet, most of the electorate seems to expect our government to run itself with this exact plan.

What accounts for this? Why do people seem to have a different thought process for taxes than they do for other things? When it comes to taxes, there seem to be no breaks. Someone like Bono can go on stage, talk about huge ideas like ending AIDS, actually do things with his time and money to bring the world closer to this goal, and… well, not good enough, because taxes. How is it possible?

These kinds of stories seem to pop up all the time. People say one thing and back it up with their time and money – unless the money is tied back to taxes. When Trump announced his big tax cut earlier this year, one line of thinking led me to wonder if his most vocal opponents – resist, resist! – would stick it to the big man himself by donating every nickel of the tax break to his political opponents. But even as my logical brain led me to this very reasonable conclusion, the other half of my mind was taunting me in the background… fat chance of that, amigo, the money’s going to beer or iPhones or a car…

Another strange thing about taxes is how people tend to mean federal taxes when they talk about taxes. This doesn’t mean I think people are unaware of state and local taxes, quite the contrary, it’s just that these taxes never really seem to come up in the general chatter about taxes. Whenever people talk tax, it’s about the federal variety. I suppose this is related to how the federal tax bill is the largest. But it’s also the most indirect in terms of how it benefits the average American. Most people struggle to talk intelligently about things with such an indirect impact. Perhaps a more-state oriented tax setup would help the average Joe like me understand taxes a little better?

this business bro identifies future managers

I was deleting my unread TOA emails en masse the other day when a little blurb caught my attention. In spite of my better instincts, I clicked open the note and read it. It was a post was about Peopleware, a book I thought would go right over TOA’s head about building strong work teams (and for the most part, it did). However, he did make a rare insightful comment into how most firms struggle to promote new managers based on their aptitude for management.

This is a common refrain among the many business bro books I read. They point out that most firms simply promote their top performers into manager roles and hope for the best. Is this a good strategy? The authors of these books – and I suppose TOA – would probably say no, and say so with the same smarmy, eye-rolling, know-it-all exasperation of a regular Dilbert reader.

However, the only way for a firm to value performance is to reward performance. If employees are never promoted despite strong performance, it sends a very clear message to employees that performance does not matter. This raises another question – is it better to work in a firm with some unfit managers or in a firm that does not care one iota about performance? I’d go with the former here, reader. A bad manager might be tough to work for but a firm that does not care about performance probably isn’t going to stay in business very long.

I think the solution is pretty simple. First, create a promotion track entirely devoid of management responsibilities. This will allow a firm to promote based on performance without forcing top employees into manager roles they are unfit for. And if a top performer wants to ‘try’ managing but it becomes clear after some time that they are not a good fit for the role, the parallel track allows for easy reassignment.

Then, make sure to look for the right skills when promoting new managers. The single biggest skill is probably time management for two reasons. First, a manager’s main function is to make the most out of available resources. Second, time is generally the only resource an individual performer is fully in charge of. So, if an individual performer is good at managing time, it is a strong signal of managerial capability (1).

Finally, if a firm is going to promote non-managers into management, then it must take the time to train them. The specific skills a new manager needs to learn will vary by the size of the organization and the scope of the work. The firm must take responsibility for identifying these skills and teaching them to the new manager.

Signed,

The Business Bro

Footnotes / rampant speculation

1. Editorial comment here… but I feel right about this…

I think this ‘time management’ aspect gets lost in the assessment when top performers are misidentified as manager material. From my experience, the top performers in any individual role are those who tend to work longer hours and take on more assignments than their peers. It would be accurate to say these employees produce more than their peers.

However, this volume-based measure of production does not account at all for how well someone uses time. A good rule of thumb for this skill is to ask – does the top performer get things done on-time? If yes, make sure to follow up by asking whether the work completed on-time required a Herculean effort in terms of late nights or early mornings.

A new manager with poor time management skills is going to really struggle to do some of the role’s most important tasks – such as implementing process improvements, training employees, or gathering information – because all of these tasks are best completed within standard business hours. If the manager needs more time to complete these tasks, the skill required is knowing how to make better use of time, not the willingness to stay late or come in early.

2018 toa book of the year - the final

Hi all,

Finally, the big day! Last time, we narrowed down the four finalists for the 2017 TOA Book of the Year down to just two, eliminating Threads by Kate Evans and M Train by Patti Smith. This left First and Last Notebooks by Simone Weil and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee as our two finalists. Let’s briefly deliberate before I reveal the big winner.

Weil’s entrant makes its case by being what I’m starting to consider a classic TOA-style book – chock full of the deep insights and sharp observations that catch my eye immediately and help me understand my life a little better after my extended reflection. When Weil notes, for example, that an equal is someone you can both obey and command, it gives me a clearer way to think about the concept of equality than I get from my interactions with the everyday world around me.

First and Last Notebooks is also undeniably a classic work, one that I’m sure people will continue to pull off the shelves so long as people continue to read. Weil’s wisdom is both immediate and eternal, a combination seen in no better example than her characterization of God as having an unattainable infinity of patience and humility yet being entirely incapable of sending one hungry man a piece of bread. In other words, though God is forever out of reach, we can briefly exceed God by taking on the simple compassionate work He is unable to do.

I don’t have the same confidence in the longevity, so to speak, of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. Fifty years from now, I don’t think a hypothetical reader like me is going to seek out this book in the same way he or she might hunt down First and Last Notebooks. Pachinko doesn’t have the same vision – if Weil’s representation of infinity is based on the limitless expansion of the human spirit, Lee’s concept is perpetually cyclical, a spinning wheel powered by the universal preferences for habit, custom, and comfort.

However, when I think about my experience in 2017 and the way these books influenced it, I can’t help but think about Pachinko. Weil’s book may have reflected her endless vision to the horizon and back but Lee’s sweeping narrative gave me visibility of the unseen and unsighted that had always remained in the darkness nearest me. If Weil helped me understand my life a little better, Lee helped me live it, her words serving as blueprint at times for interpreting, navigating, and, yes, even writing through 2017.

So, it is with great delight that I crown Pachinko the 2017 TOA Book of the Year. Congratulations (maybe?) to the author, her loyal fans, and the book’s many admirers for this most pointless of literary honors.

We’ll be back – hopefully much sooner than in twelve months – to review the nominees for 2018 and kick this entire pointless process off again.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Tim

leftovers - jerry jones, nigerian prince (math lesson)

There were a couple of mathematical properties from the formula I used in this post that I want to cover in a little more detail today. As you may recall, the foundation for my idea in this post was the following:

Prize money for the ‘big winner’ = 100 * 2^x ( while n >= 2^x )

In the above, n is the initial number of risk-takers, x is the number of betting rounds, 100 is a constant that represents the size of the initial wager, and 2 is a constant that roughly represents the available number of betting options in a given round.

The first important property above is the relationship between n and x within the constraint. In the above construction, the number of betting rounds x is proportional to the initial number of risk takers n. Therefore, as the number of risk takers rises, the number of betting rounds increases.

This means that over time societal changes that make it easier to take risks will increase the number of betting rounds available to risk takers. This, in turn, will increase the ‘prize money’ for the biggest winners. Therefore, over time I would expect an increasing number of the mega-rich to derive their wealth from being risk takers. I can’t say for sure if this is happening (or has happened, or will happen) but at the very least I’m pretty confident in my math.

This also suggests that there will be more big losers. If we assume risk taking is a function of appetite for risk (r) and potential reward (p) we could setup a general risk function as follows:

y = r * p

where y is a binary variable that determines if someone takes a risk or not.

If we track the math all the way through, we can argue that an initial change that makes it easier to take risk (such as the invention of the internet, which makes it easier to start a business) will lead to a rise in n, the total number of risk takers. Since n is related to x (the number of betting rounds) and an increase in x leads to an increase in p (the potential reward), we conclude that as more people decide to take risk, more people who were not interested in risk at a lower prize level p will be tempted to join the game as p rises. This, in turn, feeds back into the formula by increasing n, and the whole cycle repeats again…

The other important property is how increases in the size of the initial wager or a rise in the number of betting options available can accelerate this process by increasing the size of the payout. This is yet again simple casino math – the more money wagered or the less likely a given outcome, the higher the payout. As with above, the feedback loop of societal changes influencing risk taking decisions takes a number of steps but is unambiguous – changes that increase either constant in the original formula increase the potential prize pool which influences more risk takers into the initial pool n.

reading review - the illustrated book of sayings

The Illustrated Book of Sayings by Ella Frances Sanders (August 2018)

As I mentioned in my post earlier this week, below are some of my favorite expressions from Ella Frances Sanders’s newest book. Are there any expressions I liked so much that I might incorporate them into my vocabulary? I figured I should try at least one, so below are the expressions I considered along with reasons for why I've chosen to (or not) incorporate it into my vocabulary.

NO - Not a good fit with my conversation style…

'Oh! Pregnant horse!' – Filipino – used to express surprise.

'In a river full of piranhas, caiman swim on their backs' – Brazilian Portuguese – take extra precautions in an unsafe environment.

These likable expressions are not very similar to each other but I’ve lumped them together because I don’t think my conversation style fits the way these expressions are used. Specifically, when I notice something surprising I don’t shout out in surprise and when I’m moved to dispense wisdom I rarely resort to reciting proverbs that are 85% applicable to the situation at hand.

These expressions also have some minor technical problems that would make it hard for me to regularly incorporate them in my speech. First, I suspect that if I saw a pregnant horse around town, she would clip-clop by without my realizing she was expecting. How would I know? Do pregnant horses have huge bellies? Or perhaps they wear stretchy saddles? I guess if I ever visit the Philippines, I’ll try to find out.

As for the Brazilian expression, I think it would eventually bother me that the caiman swimming technique referenced in the saying has never actually been observed in wildlife. A proverb-like substance should have some truth in it, right? I’m also unsure if swimming scales-down would protect this crocodile species from the piranhas – what if the piranhas were really determined, or if the caiman’s underbelly sagged a little as it swam?

NO - The future will make these expressions incomprehensible...

'The one who fetches the water is the one who is likely to break the pot' – Ga (Ghana) – suggests that those who try are the most likely to make mistakes.

'Drop by drop, a whole lake becomes' – Bulgarian – great things happen slowly.

Like the Brazilian thought above, these expressions contain a proverb-like element that makes it unlikely I’ll use them. As a general rule, I tend not to speak in proverbs.

I also worry that the concepts these expressions reference might be under the threat of extinction in the remainder of my lifetime. It’s possible that climate change might cause certain water sources to dry up, for instance, and I wonder how this would change how the Bulgarians use their expression. I suppose they could make a similar point by saying ‘drop by drop, a whole lake evaporates’. This would admittedly be a more negative emphasis in comparison to the original but the main idea that some things take a very long time would remain in place.

The Ghanaian saying might come under threat from improved infrastructure. Surely, anyone with easy access to clean water would stop fetching water in giant, brittle pots. I guess this practice could end even more quickly if they starting using more durable pots. In both of these possibilities, the knowing wisdom of the expression would be lost – maybe they could alter the expression to “there’s no use crying over spilled water”.

NO - The concept is good, but I'll need to think of my own words…

'To feed a donkey sponge cake' – Portuguese – the senselessness of giving something wonderful to someone who cannot appreciate it.

'Not my circus, not my monkeys' – Polish – used to give up in a discussion.

I liked both of these animal-centric expressions on first glance and could see myself using these on an infrequent basis in 2019. But these expressions also share a certain mad-lib quality that I think will ultimately prevent them from becoming permanent fixtures in my vocabulary.

What do I mean by ‘mad-lib quality’? Well, to me it seems like the noun choices built into the expressions are a little arbitrary and could work just as well with different options. Why not feed a moose a soufflé, for example? And if it isn’t my deli, surely it isn’t my pastrami, either. My guess is that I’m likely to use these expressions as frameworks for my own pointless comparisons before I start confusing those around me with references to sponge cakes and circuses.

NO - What happens in Spain, stays in Japan…

'You are my orange half' – Spanish – an informal way to describe someone as a soul mate. It possibly originates from how no two oranges are alike and therefore each half can only have one other perfect match.

'To wear a cat on your head' – Japanese – to feign innocence or trick others with sweetness when you are actually up to no good.

These are pretty delightful little phrases but I fear that they would make very little sense outside their respective cultures. I’m all for trying new things, no doubt about it, but unless my next job is as The Vice-President, referring to someone as ‘my orange half’ feels more likely to come off as an insult than as a term of endearment (and even then... never mind).

As for wearing a cat, I worry that this expression suggests some kind of obsession with animal furs. Why possibly provoke an animal lover just for the reward of using some weird expression? I think our language has more than enough ways to say ‘pulling a fast one’ without invoking unneeded associations to Cruella de Ville.

The big winner…

'To give a green answer to a blue question' – Tibetan – to give an answer completely unrelated to the question asked.

This one felt like a winner as soon as I saw it. Longtime readers will surely agree – if TOA does anything, it consistently provides green answers to blue questions. I’m looking forward to more of the same in 2019.

2018 toa book of the year - final four

Hello reader,

Today, we take our final four down to a last two…

December - M Train by Patti Smith

My experience reading and rereading this book was fairly unusual in the context of the rest of my book list because of how much more I appreciated this work on the second pass than I did on my initial attempt. As I noted in my reading review, on the surface this is the story of some recent times in Smith’s life, a period she describes wonderfully throughout this memoir, and then there are the rails on which M Train runs, the twin foundations of loss and grief, which infuse the narrative so subtly that it took me a second trip to realize how these underlie everything that happens in M Train.

Parting thought: There is no price too high for peace of mind.

As I look back on the recent past, I notice the many ways I’ve put in a little more time, money, or effort to guard against the unlikely and settle the ever-growing influence of what if that jumps uninvited these days into my thinking. It's too bad, I think, and maybe a problem that I worry so much these days about what could go wrong that I sometimes can't enjoy what I should be looking forward to, but at least I have some good techniques in place to work with my anxiety.

Like most things, the more I notice a fact about myself, the more I tend to find the same detail mirrored in others. I see these reflected in both the collective reactions to existential fears and in the individual responses to far simpler concerns.

November - Threads by Kate Evans

Evans uses the comic book form in Threads to fuse art and writing in a way that delivers her message more powerfully than the more common mediums to which we are all accustomed. The best example is how she draws Marine Le Pen in a way that made her look to me like Donald Trump – a visceral link of their politics in one panel that would be an impossible feat with pictures or film (and might take thousands of words to describe in print).

Parting thought: Open borders is a matter of when, not if.

There are many explanations for migration in Threads and this thought felt to me like the summary of the many broad arguments Evans makes for it. We in the USA take open borders for granted because of the ease of interstate travel within our federation – those in certain countries risk their lives for what we can do with a U-Haul and a realtor. And the power backing our passports allows us to pass fluidly through what for others are solid barriers. In short, what the future is around the world has been past and present in this country, perhaps since its inception.

The countries today that see this global future – like Germany – are doing what we’ve always been doing in the USA – allowing people in and figuring the rest out on the fly. If we aren’t diligent, these countries are going to become the places to where our future generations dream of emigrating.

i read border districts so you don't have to

Border Districts by Gerald Murnane (September 2018)

Though Murnane’s Border Districts is not likely to appear on my 2018 ‘book of the year list’, I did appreciate it for an observation that’s remained on my mind – people read fiction hoping to learn something they would be unable to learn from any other kind of book. In the weeks and months since I finished reading, I’ve considered this idea anytime I’ve started reading a new work of fiction. I’m looking forward to updating you, reader, if these ponderings lead me to anywhere interesting (1).

Technically, the thought highlighted above doesn’t really apply to me for Border Districts since it came my way via recommendation (I suppose I was learning what I thought about the book but that’s probably not what Murnane meant). I did take a couple of other thoughts down, though, that I probably would not have learned from my recent nonfiction choices.

Murnane echoes Proust in one passage and suggests that readers sometimes feel closer to fictional characters than they do to those in their everyday lives because authors are able to fully report a fictional character’s feelings. I suppose this is a good explanation for the specific phenomenon but I would expand the observation and suggest that closeness is often directly related to how feelings are reported among people.

I also liked the thought that people can feel pangs for musical notes after even fifty years have passed. I suppose this speaks to a larger point from the book – things can stay with us for a long time, possibly forever, and even if things do fragment over time the little pieces can remind us of the long-lost whole in the same way a single note can remind us of a once cherished song.

Footnotes / lingering thoughts…

1. Another year…

At the very least, it’ll give me another angle to write about Maniac Magee, a book I’m (unsurprisingly) running out of ways to analyze after reading it every April for seven consecutive years.

reading review - peopleware

Last time, I wrote about this book’s insights into how a manager should approach team building. Today, I’ll take a closer look at how Peopleware approached the manager’s larger task of making it possible for people to work.

For authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, the importance of this managerial function could not be overstated. They felt that the strongest organizations always learned from the middle and that the manager’s primary responsibility was to serve as the knowledge center for the organization. The more importance a given organization placed on learning, the more important the manager was within that organization. The manager could serve this function by sharing knowledge in both directions on the organizational chart.

The primary method to help the rank and file learn is through training. A manager might train employees on the basics of job relevant tasks or impart knowledge to colleagues about the organization’s mission, history, and culture. Managers might also create resources such as FAQs and process documentation to help reduce the complexity of the work or eliminate the need for time-consuming ‘FYI’ meetings (1).

A manager helps leadership learn through performance measurement. A strong manager informs superiors while also motivating employees. However, when mishandled, measurements become threatening or burdensome. A good rule of thumb is to measure performance in a way that aggregates data as it is reported upward. This way, employees are not singled out any time a team falls short of an objective.

One up: Peopleware occasionally twists expressions or phrases to help bring new light to old thinking. One example is workaholism – the authors note how the analogy is to the wrong illness. They think a better comparison is to a cold and suggest the manager’s role is to help guide employees through these brief bouts of madness that any employee is susceptible to come down with from time to time.

The other thought covers Parkinson’s Law – work expands to fill the allotted time (2). They note that in these situations, managers should determine if the employee in question is truly procrastinating or if they are overwhelmed by the difficulty of their other work. It could also be the case that the employee needs better connection with colleagues to help complete certain tasks. Lacking these things may be why the worker is trying to hide behind the perception of busyness. Since it is the manager's job to reduce the difficulty of the work and help employees connect with each other, it is also the manager's job to know when these needs are not being met (3).

One down: Sometimes, good managerial advice reveals how poorly most managers handle a task. A good example from Peopleware is their insight into how an organization builds chemistry:

-They make a cult of quality and build a sense of eliteness.
-They provide satisfying closure.
-They encourage heterogeneity.
-They preserve strong teams.
-They provide strategy without detailing tactics.

What this told me was that most unhealthy organizations must regularly do the following things:

-They have no sense of quality and make everyone feel mediocre.
-They never provide satisfying closure.
-They epitomize uniformity.
-They regularly dismantle strong teams.
-They provide detailed tactical overviews without linking it to strategy

Just saying: This is not the first book I’ve ever read that pointed out how most firms do not promote managers based on their aptitude for management. So, what to do?

Peopleware does not offer any suggestions. However, they do make a couple of helpful observations. They note that leadership without formal authority means providing leadership as a service. It requires being well-prepared, finding ways to bring out the best in others, and interacting with humor and goodwill no matter what the nature of the task.

A firm struggling to identify future managers could probably do worse than assess non-managers with those qualities in mind. Does the employee prepare? Does the employee help lift the performance of colleagues? And most importantly, does the employee conduct business with humor and goodwill?

Footnotes / other management concepts

0. The theme...?

In one sentence - managers make it possible for people to work.

1. When to meet?

Meetings are often justified by the ‘monumental complexity’ of the organization (or even the given project). This observation makes everyone feel important. But most work is not so complex. A good manager should be able to spot the difference between a task that requires a meeting and one that does not.

A good rule of thumb for calling a meeting – do the employees know how to do the work? If not, meet. But if everyone knows what to do already… then why meet?

2. While on the topic…

So, what is subject to Parkinson’s Law? According to Peopleware, any busywork. It is possible that Parkinson’s Law, often framed as some kind of insidious truth about large organizations, is actually just exposing how little work actually needs to get done in a large organization.

3. Again, a reference to Andy Grove…

If the whole ‘train or connect with colleagues’ concept sounds familiar, it is because it echoes Grove’s thoughts from High Output Management about what a manager’s job is – train or motivate. It’s a thought I highlighted elsewhere in this post.

When someone cannot do the job, Grove thought it meant that the person either did not know how or was not motivated to do the work – thus, train or motivate. I like Grove’s answer a little better than the one I noted from Peopleware but I think the spirit of the two approaches is the same.

2018 toa book of the year - final six

Hi folks,

Welcome back to another elimination round for the 2018 TOA Book Of The Year Award. Today, we’ll knock out two books from contention to bring the shortlist down to four.

February - Tenth of December by George Saunders

First, we tip our cap to George Saunders’s short story collection, Tenth of December. Though I’m sure the man has plenty more writing left in him, it does feel likely that I will someday look back on this collection as his best work. I enjoyed every story in this book (a rare response for me to a collection) and I still find myself, occasionally, thinking back to the title story whenever I find myself near a frozen body of water.

Parting thought: Take notes for fiction.

I went back into my reading notes in preparation for this post and was surprised to find that I had written down nothing at all for these stories. The revelation served as a grim reminder of my misguided past, a dark time when I treated fiction differently from nonfiction (at least in terms of how I took notes). In a broader sense, this also reinforces my thought that every book or story I read will have something I can learn from it as long as I put in the work.

June - The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit

We here at the TOA Book of the Year selection committee also bid adieu to Rebecca Solnit’s Mother of All Questions. I’ve enjoyed reading a number of her works over the past couple of years and I’m probably gearing up for a fully focused reading of all her work sometime in the next year or two. I suppose in some ways, this book’s inclusion on this list is a reflection of what I think about the author rather than this specific book.

However, as I reviewed my reading notes for this book, I noticed a number of thoughts that echoed my own thinking and writing over the past year. Solnit notes, for example, the importance of telling the truth about things and specifically cites calling things by their names as a critical application of this principle. She also writes that the powerful are served whenever a witness cannot speak up and that the failure to listen to or give voice to the stories of our lives is the silence that breaks down our shared humanity. Finally, she points out the danger of categories and explains that a world comprised of neat little groups is the breeding ground for more serious problems like racism.

Parting thought: Great books lift people out of their own categories and challenge them to extend identity out into the world.

Not that we lack good reasons to read, of course…

i read the illustrated book of sayings so you don't have to

Morning all,

The Illustrated Book of Sayings is Ella Frances Sanders’s follow up to Lost In Translation, a book that searched every corner of the planet for fascinating words with no literal English translation. The review I’ll post later this week is very simple – I’ve highlighted a few expressions I liked, grouped them into some basic categories, and picked out a winner at the end.

Before I start, however, I want to highlight a comment from the book’s introduction. Sanders suggests that words have the power to plant themselves in people and grow into something new. As I reflected on this comment, I thought back to her previous book and realized how the idea applied to the way some of the non-English words I learned from it changed my life. The change could be as simple as observing instances of the Japanese word komorebi (the sunlight filtering through a leafy tree). The book also changed the way I notice emotions that may once have passed by unacknowledged (like saudade, the Portuguese word for nostalgia about something that never existed).

I’m looking forward to returning to Lost In Translation soon and taking note of any other words that, in hindsight, were seeds for what have grown into the leafy trees through which I filter the sunlight of the world. I’m expecting a similar result from some of the expressions I learned from Sanders’s newest book. Sometime in the future, reader, I’ll be back with more details on exactly how this aspect of my growth played out.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

jerry jones, nigerian prince

A friend once went on a memorable rant about how objectively stupid people can amass incredible fortunes and become the most powerful people in their particular fields. It seems almost like a scam on society, he said. I thought about the question implied by his rant – how can this be??? – for a few days before coming up with a math-based answer that I think explains the phenomenon.

The key to my insight was my friend's reference to a scam. Once personal feelings about scams are set aside, I think studying how scams work can be pretty interesting (and in this case, instructive). One scam I’ve always been fascinated by is the ‘hot stock tip’ scam. In this scam, a scammer collects a huge list of recipients and sends them information about a hot stock tip. The goal is to convince a recipient that the scammer actually has inside information about a stock. Once convinced, the scammer will then ask the victim for money to invest on their behalf. The scam is that instead of investing it, the scammer just keeps the money (and presumably, runs).

Now, how could this ever work if the scammer has no inside information? The catch is the way the list is split up – half the list gets a tip that the stock is going up while the other half gets the opposite information. After this information gets sent out, the scammer waits for the market to move. Once the stock has clearly moved up or down, the scammer sends another tip about a different stock. But the new tip only goes out to those who originally got the tip that correctly predicted what happened in the market. The people who got the incorrect tip are never contacted again.

Do you see what is happening, reader? Over time, the scammer is sending out less and less mail. However, the mail is increasingly convincing because the recipients have been receiving correct predictions about the market for a long time. The likelihood the scam succeeds is based almost entirely on the size of the initial pool – the larger the pool, the more mail that can be sent and the more convincing each subsequent stock tip becomes.

The reason why I thought this scam applied to my friend’s rant is because it uses math to explain how a large enough sample size is a sufficient explanation for how objectively stupid people can amass incredible fortunes. If we have enough stupid (or willing) people, all we need to allow one lucky person a massive streak of good fortune are the laws of basic probability. Let’s use a carefully constructed hypothetical example to illustrate the point.

Suppose you have a sample size of 'n' people at the start of a year. This group has no business acumen and no particular edge in intelligence on others in their society. They live, in other words, almost completely normal lives. However, this group does have a high appetite for risk. Once a year, this entire group goes to a casino and bets their entire savings from the year – let’s call it $100 – on the roulette wheel. Half of these fools bet ‘black’ and the other bet ‘red’ (editor's note for degenerate gamblers: in this hypothetical example, we’ll have to ignore the ‘green’ spaces).

Next year, the same thing happens, but only those who won the prior year come back (the other half swear off gambling for good after losing it all and become highly respected pillars of their respective communities, or bloggers, or whatever). They again bet in a perfect split – half red, half black. The catch is that this time they bet all the money they won last year - $200. As it was the year before, half win and half lose. This cycle repeats itself next year, and the year after, and the year after that…

Do you see what is happening, reader? What this hypothetical demonstrates is that for a given combination of a sample size ‘n’ and the number of years ‘x’, there will always be at least one person who has won every single annual bet. I tried to work out the math and came up with the following formula:

Prize money for the ‘big winner’ = 100 * 2^x

This formula is bound by a restriction because the math only works if n is large enough to guarantee at least one bettor on each color in every year of the scenario:

Prize money for the ‘big winner’ = 100 * 2^x ( while n >= 2^x )

(Please note that ‘>=’ means ‘greater than or equal to’.)

(For those still unsure of the math, please see the endnote for a breakdown of how n and x interact in the above scenario.)

If we continue on with this example, we can see how certain combinations of n and x can lead to immense quantities of wealth for the big winner:

n = 100 and x = 6 : $6,400
n = 1,000 and x = 9: $51,200
n = 10,000 and x =13: $819,200

One way to read the last line of the above is to say:

‘For a given initial bet of $100, at least one person out of a group of 10,000 will amass almost a million dollars so long as the group’s distribution of all or nothing wagers over a thirteen year period is evenly distributed among two distinct and independent outcomes where each outcome has a 50% chance of occurring.’

This outcome is wordy but I encourage you to try and fully understand it, reader, for its consequences are significant in all manners of applications. First and foremost, it challenges a commonly accepted perception about wealth. Although it is certainly true that an exceptionally intelligent or hard-working individual can amass a great deal of wealth over a lifetime, it also seems to be the case that if the sample size of crazy risk takers is large enough then at least one out of the group will amass his or her own fortune over a prolonged period of risk taking.

Footnotes / endnote

0. OK, so I get all of it… except n and x… so, uh, I guess I DON’T get it…

Let’s build the intuition here by using a simplified example. Suppose you and seven of your college friends decided to do some version of this exercise (n = 8). In year one (x = 1) you all bring your $100 to the casino and bet as stipulated above – half win, half lose.

The next year (x = 2) the four winners return with $200 to try again. Same result…

In year three (x = 3), two winners return with $400 and try again. This time, only one winner will remain. After this third year, the scenario is officially over because there are not enough people remaining to cover both red and black. Thus, it is 50/50 whether any person in the original sample ‘n’ will win big or lose and return to $0.

The formula above for the example of n = 8:

Prize money for the ‘big winner’ = 100 * 2^x ( while n >= 2^x )

By year:

x = 1: 100 * 2^1 = 100 * 2 = 200 (while 8 >= 2)
x = 2: 100 * 2^2 = 100 * 4 = 400 (while 8 >= 4)
x = 3: 100 * 2^3 = 100 * 8 = 800 (while 8 >= 8)

As seen above, this example breaks down in year four:

x = 4: 100 * 2^4 = 100 * 16 = 1600 (but the condition 8 >= 16 fails)

Granted, the condition n >= 2^x does not need to hold for someone to win big. However, since it is impossible to have at least one person from the group wagering on each color, there is always a 50/50 chance of having no winners. I don’t dig too far into this aspect of the scenario because the point of this exercise is to demonstrate how a large enough sample size of risk takers betting arbitrarily guarantees at least one risk taker will emerge with a level of wealth unimaginably greater than the starting amount.

2018 toa book of the year award - refresher

Hi folks,

Welcome back to my deliberations for the 2018 TOA Book Of The Year Award, or as it is more commonly known, 'The Most Irrelevant Prize in World Literature'. There have been a lot of questions and complaints about the process so far – why is it so looooong, shouldn’t it be called the 2017 award, is Kanye West going to interrupt, did ya forget about Maniac Magee, and so on. But disgruntled reader, today you can finally put those questions away because I’m personally guaranteeing, RIGHT NOW, that we’ll have this all wrapped up by the end of the month… er, year.

Since it’s been so long since our last check in, let’s take a moment today to take stock of where we are with the process before returning in the coming days to pick out a winner. After eliminating twelve contenders from my official shortlist in May, we were left with these six final nominees:

January - First and Last Notebooks by Simone Weil
February - Tenth of December by George Saunders
February - Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
June - The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
November - Threads by Kate Evans
December - M Train by Patti Smith

Who will be removed from contention next? Place your bets now, reader.

In the meantime, let’s close out today with a couple of leftover thoughts from two books I eliminated back in the spring.

From Impro... keep your head still while you speak...

This thought from Impro suggested that those who hold their head still while speaking exert more natural authority than those whose heads bob, weave, and jiggle while they speak. I’ve paid close attention to this idea since reading Impro and I’ve noted many instances of Johnstone’s observation in the past few months.

The most surprising time I’ve noticed this is when I watch the local news. I would think this whole idea of ‘keeping still’ would be the first order of business at Newscaster University but there are still plenty of on-air reporters out there whose heads bounce back and forth across my screen – sometimes, their movements are so frenzied that I wonder if I’ll need a wider TV just to keep them in the frame long enough to find out what irrelevant event happened in some nearby suburb.

From The Hard Thing About Hard Things... managerial tactics are often substitutes for being able to tell the truth...

This is perhaps the best observation I took from last year’s reading. Like with any other job, the manager role demands a person blend natural ability with a set of acquired skills. For those who are naturally good at telling the truth, the number of skills to learn is greatly diminished in comparison to those who are uncomfortable with having to tell someone about the way things really are.

OK folks, that’ll be it for today. Thank you for your patience with this process! Back again soon to resume knocking out nominees.

Tim

i read peopleware so you don't have to

Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (November 2017)

Authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister address the modern organization’s most important function – building strong teams – in this thorough yet easily digestible management book. Without strong teams, organizations almost always struggle to achieve any long-term success. Weak teams with high turnover and immediate short-term costs define these organizations. The workload is significant and yet no one expects to be around when the effort finally pays off, creating a cycle that constantly reinforces short-term thinking. By contrast, organizations comprised of strong teams with low turnover naturally adopt the long view because their teams expect to benefit from the eventual gains of their group efforts.

Managers who understand the factors that strengthen a team can meet this challenge. One factor is how a team gels whenever it succeeds together. Since most organizations have a continuous nature – they produced widgets yesterday, will produce widgets today, and will probably produce widgets tomorrow – the skilled manager must know how to create the arbitrary closure needed to help the team achieve regular, shared success. A manager can do this by subdividing work to create easily defined milestones or measuring performance against consistent time references.

Another approach is to focus on high quality. Most markets do not care for quality in the context of the production process but this should not stop a manager from encouraging a focus on process details from the team. A focus on quality can differentiate a team from its peers and help it become accustomed to caring about every detail in the process. A good approach for fostering this mentality is to frame every aspect of the product as a quality measure – lower price is higher quality cost control, better lead time is higher quality fulfillment process, high responsiveness is higher quality customer service, and so on. This way, teams become used to thinking of their work in terms improvement rather than on meeting objectives and learn how to frame their efforts in the context of what a customer values in the product.

A manager must also avoid making the common errors that weaken teams. Peopleware has plenty of insight into what to avoid doing rather than on what to do (perhaps a subtle comment that a manager is more capable of weakening rather than strengthening a team). A surefire way to divide a team is to allow members to take on multiple projects or work groups. A person with too many colleagues to keep track of and too many assignment details to organize will spend all day changing gears rather than working effectively.

Another example of a commonly misused tactic is compensation. If team members are rewarded unequally, competition for rewards will turn individuals against each other. Leadership by objectives is a closely related tactic that encourages a similar selfish competitiveness. Well-structured teams led through strong motivation and supported by regular investment will always work together better than teams constantly reminded by their leaders of individual goals, targets, or objectives.

The final obstacle I’d like to highlight today is the sport analogy. Though useful in the way it helps us all envision a group coming together to achieve a common goal, the analogy is dangerous in how it enables us to think of teams as groups comprised of similar people. Teams require a diversity of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives so that members can complement each other’s strengths and help bolster each other’s weaknesses. When teams lack variety or diversity, the group becomes more like a collection of contractors instead of a gelled unit.

The overall point Peopleware drives home is that teams usually achieve their destiny. A manager can influence this destiny with a combination of foresight and hard work. The key is understanding what results in strong teams, doing everything possible to keep the team on track for that outcome, and making sure to avoid anything that will definitely weaken the team along the way.

Footnotes / the obligatory bad pun reference

0. A final note before I go…

The title of the book is a play on the word software. When I roll my eyes at a pun, reader, we know it isn’t good, but it’ll have to do. For what it’s worth, the book is written in a logical, orderly structure – not all that much different than how software might be programmed.

leftover #3 – is materialism the only chess sin?

In ‘Leftover #2’ for this post, I talked a little more about comparisons and how relying on these often leads to ‘bizarre forms of assessment’. As I wrote that post, I was reminded of a story about former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith.

When teams were considering Smith as a potential draft choice, many downgraded him because his foot speed was considered a little slow among the running backs available that season. Jimmie Johnson, the coach who eventually chose him in the first round, had a slightly different take. Johnson simply noted that Smith ‘never got caught from behind’ and stopped worrying about Smith’s speed. Smith is, of course, now in the Hall of Fame and widely counted among the great helmet football players of all time.

Of course, this is where the rebuttal comes in. You may be saying it yourself, reader – but isn’t saying a player never gets caught from behind its own form of comparison? What if professional defenders are simply faster than the college players? Why would all the running backs faster than Smith get caught from behind?

True, true, I acknowledge, these are all factually accurate comments. But remember, the comparison Johnson made was derived directly from assessing the question at hand. A coach concerned about foot speed who watches games and determines if the player is fast enough in a game situation gets very different information than a coach who lines everyone up at a track and has them race. The former gets direct task-relevant feedback in the context of the sport while the latter gets indirect task-related feedback that must then be translated into the context of the sport.

The most common valuation systems seem to have two properties – they are aggregated and they are external. These systems generalize a group through a mechanism unrelated to the direct question at hand and tempt decision makers to resort to easily derived comparisons within the system to determine value. The helmet football teams that determine foot speed with a stopwatch aren’t necessarily wrong but I do think by answering the semi-relevant question of – is he the fastest? allows those teams to ignore the more relevant question of – is he fast enough?

The better valuation systems seem to have opposite properties – they are individualized and they are internal. This style of system demands more work to properly determine value. But I think the benefits are fairly straightforward – such systems will account for nuance, variation, and relevance far better than an external system built on aggregates. If the decisions makers then want to use these determinations to demonstrate value in terms of a score, they should do so – but this should be an active step and, perhaps more importantly, the final step.

The overall point is perhaps far simpler than anything I’ve written thus far on the topic – a comparison should be an active, final step. If anything automated like a computer, a scantron, or a stopwatch can do the comparison, then I would recommend throwing out the comparison. If the question of deriving value were so obvious, it wouldn’t require deriving.

fast food is too chicken to try harder

The other day, I walked past a fast food restaurant. There was a poster in the front window advertising a new chicken sandwich – made with 100% real chicken.

I stopped and took a closer look. Was this a serious sign? I glanced around me at all the people who were streaming past, seemingly uninterested in this announcement. Apparently, the sign was real and its news inconsequential.

I was bothered. Is 100% real chicken now such an accomplishment that it can be placed boastfully on a colorful poster? What the cluck? Are there no standards anymore?

Apparently not.

per-capita failure (a pre-theory)

Hi all,

I recently posted a short piece describing my thinking about how statistics and science relate to each other. While writing the post, I struggled with whether today's topic fit into the larger 'science/statistics' idea. I eventually decided the best way was to separate the idea into its own post, call it a 'pre-theory', and explore it further today.

Before I begin, I should clarify for the reader what I mean with these 'pre-theory' blogs. 'Pre-theory' is the best phrase I came up with to generally describe my many half-formed ideas. In other words, a 'pre-theory' is like a guess about the rustle you just heard in the bushes. It is obvious something is there and it might even be possible that the guess is completely accurate. But because the truth remains just beyond my field of vision, it is impossible to be entirely sure of just exactly what it is making all noise.

Let's hope it isn't a skunk.

Tim

*********

I once addressed the crucial difference in how statistics and science approached the challenge of aggregation. For statistics, aggregation is like air. Without it, the field would cease to exist. But because of this dependence, statistics is very poor at recognizing the critical nature of certain individual observations. As a field, statistics struggles to reconcile these outliers with the theories or practices established as part of its status quo.

In science, aggregation also plays a vital role. But the right observation made under strictly defined conditions is sufficient to undo thousands of years of knowledge. In science, the right single observation is given veto power to reject centuries of convention. Truth is the final arbiter ahead of others concerns such as consensus or convention and there are no convenient hiding places to conceal the inconvenient fact (such as The 95% Confidence Interval).

I have no illusions that my post about science and statistics broke any new ground (longtime readers will know most of what I post here fails to break new ground). But like the case of the unhealthy eater who regularly clears out the fridge of rotting vegetables or the couch potato who pays each month for the yet-unused gym membership, knowing what to do and actually doing it remain unconnected concepts for many. The end result is aggregation applied to tiny sample sizes or a 95% probability becoming synonymous with absolute certainty. What are the obstacles preventing us all, especially those educated in one field or the other, from throwing our hands up and demanding the methods of science or the tactics of statistics be applied to the right problems?

One possible obstacle I worry about is the regularity with which aggregated statistics are used to uniformly describe its varied component parts. We describe 'the average American' so frequently that we never bother to question if using the collected information about hundreds of millions to describe individuals represents clear thinking. Every time the numbers are added up so that individuals become families, communities become states, and states become US, we lose the critical details required to break the data back down to the individual level. And yet, we still divide the numbers back down, perhaps in one fell swoop with the national population serving as the denominator, to produce neat 'per-capita' representations about the American you will most likely run into next, on average, most of the time.

I remember the first time I thought about this. It was during a high school statistics class. I read aloud the following basic detail about the 'average' American family - it owns two and a half cars! The statistic simultaneously applied to everyone and described no one. But instead of talking about why people seek out such figures in the first place or why no one with any power bothered to challenge a system mass-producing such inane metrics, the finding was laughed away as a quirk of statistics.

Silly stats!

They can lie about anything...

How much cuter can statistics get?

It was a tiny, irrelevant lie, and we all accepted it. Unfortunately, accepting a tiny little lie doesn't make it true. But each time it happens, the slightly bigger fib applauds. Students forced to describe the mythical garage of two and a half cars will be forced to inhabit two worlds. In the first world, they go to mom or dad and ask to borrow the keys for the WHOLE CAR they want to drive. In the second world, they sit in class and describe a world of half-windshields to the fourth decimal place in the name of greater 'precision'.

Like any skill, practice today improves performance tomorrow. Is statistics an exception? No chance, I think, so to me teaching students how to blubber convincingly about misleading metrics in the present prepares students to blubber convincingly about misleading metrics in the future. The truly creative types might even come up with some of their own such metrics!

Since schools tend to follow a certain progression, generally most students learn about increasingly important matters with each new grade. Over time, a properly trained 'statistician' emerges, armed with the tools to describe individuals using 'per capita' characteristics gleaned from averaging the larger groups these people belong to. What else explains the stories of banks just a decade ago, despite having access to all the statistical know-how needed to make good decisions, approving mortgages for prospective home owners without asking for documentation of sufficient income, a good credit score, or substantial savings? I mean, even just one bit of evidence? Well, you see, as a group everyone was good, so individually everyone must be good...

I suspect these sorts of things happen because of how casually... the accordion rhythm... of individual... to aggregate... to per-capita... is pounded... into our heads... from the earliest age. Most people are not statisticians and just go along with the methods they see used by the experts every day.

I understood, sort of, how this worked from an early age based on a simple mistake people made about me. Many referenced my Japanese mother as an explanation for my math skills while others pointed to my active father as the source of my own athletic ability. Those comparisons were perfectly fine. My dad still runs today and I'm sure if I'd asked my mom would have revealed that she did long division in her head fun.

But my mom was all-Japan in high school tennis and my dad's math skills put him into the top percentile among his high school peers. You'd think basic facts about my background available to anyone with the time to ask two questions might be more commonly known. But the per-capita 'statistics' about Asian basketball players were, like the per-capita 'statistics' about Asian math students, more easily obtained. Jeremy Lin didn't become 'LINSANITY' by getting into Harvard.

But even though these little miscues are difficult to understand, they are pretty easy to explain. Most people prefer to make a bad assumption rather than ask an open question. It is certainly true of me and its a habit I'm trying to change. But it has been hard work, no doubt. Making assumptions is easy if only because it excuses asking open questions. Or maybe the hard thing about it is asking the open questions.

A person who becomes accustomed to making assumptions will become good at making assumptions. After some time, this person will have a tough time even coming up with an open question. Curiosity, like many skills, atrophies if left unused over time. And in a world which seems to encourage per-capita thinking, the first casualty is curiosity about individuals.

I worry this is the cause of the many problems created by statistics. Many successful applications of aggregation are tempting its proponents to step outside the field's area of expertise. It's not automatically a bad thing because per-capita metrics are useful for explaining or describing the characteristics of a group in a way accessible to individuals. Per-capita measurements can put huge numbers into context and can be a powerful way to explain otherwise difficult concepts. But as a tool for understanding others, the science of putting everything on a curve often falls flat.

i’m going to go listen with a friend

I’ve noticed that a lot of people around me seem to feel that they are better at talking than they are at listening. The other day, I was thinking about why this seemed to be the case.

Eventually, I came up with one of my traditional theories (this meaning it was intriguing, technically true, and useless to just about everyone). My theory is simple – we encourage people to become better at talking through the very way we describe conversation (let's talk, I talked with Joe, etc). In fact, I can’t remember a single instance of a time someone went to have a conversation without first describing it as ‘going to talk with’ the conversation partner.

Is this just a case of an empty phrase being used solely to describe what is going on in a way we all can understand? On one level, of course that’s what this is. But I think the word also primes (1) us to think about what is coming next – by saying ‘talk with’, we set an expectation that we are indeed going to talk, talk, talk with occasional breaks to catch our breath (or, as some weirdos call it, ‘listen’).

I wonder what would change if we instead called it ‘listen with’ – sorry guys, but I have to go listen with my friend X. Would this lead to better listening? I can’t say for sure it would, but it definitely wouldn’t lead to people talking more, right? So how could it hurt?

I bet talking/listening isn’t the only activity that might change with a slightly altered phrasing or wording. Reader, the next time you are struggling to break a bad habit, try this thought exercise: would referring to the same activity by a different name change the behavior? Some possible ideas I have:

-If you struggle to buy only healthy food at the grocery store, call it ‘going to buy vegetables’ instead of ‘going grocery shopping’

-If you struggle to get off the couch once you start watching TV, call it ‘going to watch the specific TV show ___ for ___ minutes’ instead of ‘going to watch TV’

-If you never feel like going to work out, call it ‘doing what I can today to prevent a heart attack tomorrow’ rather than ‘going to the gym’

Let me know if you have any success, reader – I’m ready to listen with anyone who has feedback to share.

Until then, I’ll be watching TV.

Thanks for reading,

Tim

Footnotes / an academic citation?

1. Priming…

I’m using ‘prime’ here in the sense I occasionally come across in an academic context. This use of ‘prime’ means that encountering something changes the way we think about something else. I think a well-known version is a subset of priming known as ‘anchoring’ and it refers to how recent exposures to a number influences a person’s perceptions about unrelated numbers. A good example is sale psychology – a $100 item sells better if it is marked down 50% from an initial $200 list price than it would sell if it were simply priced at $100 all along.

leftover #2: is materialism the only chess sin?

In the final paragraph of this post, I made a comment about the danger of using comparisons as a means of understanding. I feel this is a far easier point to state than to put into practice so I thought I would commit a few more sentences to the idea today.

The comparison problem I reference in the chess context has to do with the point value system. This assigns pieces a value based on the number of pawns a piece is ‘worth’ – since a rook is worth five points, it can be safely exchanged for five pawns. This is all well and good in the abstract and gives players and onlookers a simple way to understand which side has the better set of pieces in a given position.

However, the system never accounts for how position, time, or a host of other factors might change the relative value between a rook and a set of five pawns. It also fails to acknowledge how one set of five pawns will almost always have a different worth than another set of five pawns even though the point value system assigns them equal worth. To borrow an expression I believe I’ve used around here before, the point value system applies to every situation yet describes no situation.

The danger of relying on comparisons is how it enables generalizations to stand in for specifications. A person prone to making too many comparisons will eventually stop thinking about the nuances of a situation and instead rely on blanket terms, clichés, or easily derived measurements to make a value determination. This often leads to bizarre forms of assessment that account for every quality except those most relevant to determining the value of what is being measured.

The way around this problem is to first determine what the most relevant qualities are and then measure those qualities in absolute rather than relative terms. It sounds really simple but I see people make such mistakes all the time. I have a common example of this mistake that I observe every year in Boston.

When the winter rolls around, I see a lot of new winter coats. And yet, inevitably, I find myself among people who become too cold when we spend more than a few minutes outside. These people, reader, should know better – they are usually lifelong New Englanders. So, how does this happen?

I think ‘comparison shopping’ is one possible culprit. A person who buys a coat thinking this is warmer than my last coat without every really asking is this coat warm enough? will end up with a warmer coat but not necessarily a warm enough coat. When a cold day rolls around, this person will complain to me and then resolve to solve the problem next year by purchasing a coat that is even warmer than the current coat. The following winter, the same incident replays itself and they resolve to buy another new coat. It’s like the logic of building an even bigger wall in order to keep out what the previous wall… ah, never mind.

Another possible culprit is ‘comparison dressing’. This is like the above example with a twist – instead of comparing possible purchases, the comparisons are made within the wardrobe. This is kind of like the ‘Sunday best’ logic – since it’s cold, wear the warmest coat. But again… is the warmest coat warm enough?

The comparison habit is going to be a tough one to break because the default setting at all stages of life is to think in terms of comparisons. The idea is drilled into a little kid’s head from the earliest possible age with things like spelling bees and yearbook superlatives. As kids become adults, they get accepted into colleges and offered jobs when they are better than the other candidates, not when they are simply better than the required standard. I can confirm for you, reader, that early adulthood can easily be a series of comparisons – by all accounts, this holds true for the later years, as well.

Perhaps, reader, you are wondering – do I think too much in terms of comparisons? I’ll pose a simple question to you – how often do you use the word best? In a lot of ways, best is the most corrosive word we use. Best means a comparison against everything. It is a powerful word because ‘best’ has the ability to turn anything cooperative into a matter of competition.

The first step to stop thinking in terms of comparisons is to expel the word ‘best’ from the vocabulary. I would recommend using a word like ‘enough’ instead. Of course, there is no… best... word to use in order to alter an ingrained thought pattern with vocabulary. But I think ‘enough’ is a good start. Not only does it encourage thinking in absolute rather than relative terms, it also reframes the competitive into the cooperative because what I decide I have enough of can be leftover for someone else who might need it later.