Author: ACEC

  • Productivity Is Not Working

    My generation learned that relentless self-optimization was a way to cope—but in this crisis, everything looks different.

    SOME QUESTIONS ARE infinitely more interesting than their answers. One such question started to echo around the internet in the early days of the Covid-19 lockdowns and has become increasingly frantic in the febrile weeks that have followed. The question was this: How shall we stay productive when the world is going to hell?

    Productivity, or the lack of it, has become the individual metric of choice for coping with the international econo-pathological clusterfuck of the Corona Crisis. How should we self-optimize when we’re suddenly having to meet our deadlines with our roommates, kids, and inner critics screaming in the background? If we’re lucky enough to be able to shelter in place and we’re not using that time to launch podcasts and personal projects and life-hack our way to some cargo-cult pastiche of normality, are we somehow letting the side down?

    These are not practical questions. They are moral and philosophical questions. Yes, there are plenty of practical reasons why so many people are panicking about work. If we’ve been furloughed or lost our jobs, we’re scrambling to make up the shortfall. If we’re still employed, we’re worried about the long term, and if we’re relatively secure, we’re wrestling with survivor’s guilt. But the drive to stay productive is about so much more than making rent. It is a moral discipline. When I check in with friends and family far away, I usually get an update on how productive they have or have not managed to be since we last spoke. “Productivity” is not a synonym for health, or for safety, or for sanity. But as a precarious millennial who for the past 10 years has answered every cautious inquiry about my well-being with a rundown of how much work I got done that day, I do understand the confusion.

    It’s hardly surprising that so many of us are processing this immense, unknowable collective catastrophe by escaping into smaller, everyday emergencies. A crisis you create for yourself, after all, is a crisis you might be able to control. Frantic productivity is a fear response. It’s a fear response for 21st-century humans in general and millennial humans in particular, as we’ve collectively awoken from the American dream with a strange headache and a stacks of bills to pay. My whole generation learned relentless work was the way to cope with the rolling crisis, with the mood of imminent collapse and economic insecurity that was the elevator music of our entire youth—the relentless tension between trying to save yourself and trying to save the world, between desperate aspiration and actual hope.

    Right through the white-knuckle ride of my twenties and beyond, I clung to work as a way of protecting myself when I was scared, when I was hurt, when the future seemed to collapse on itself like a stack of marked cards. No matter how many marches I go to, there is some part of me that believes that if I can only self-optimize a bit harder then the world will right itself, no one I love will suffer, and death will have no dominion. So when the coronavirus crisis began, I started writing myself ambitious to-do lists on giant sticky notes—because when every cultural certainty starts collapsing in my hands like wet cake, writing ambitious to-do lists is how I calm down.

    I would exercise in the mornings and write in the evenings. I would cook. I would sort out my finances. By week three, I would finally finish my book. I would organize my time so I had no time to feel any emotion other than manageable, everyday anxiety about my workload, with occasional breaks for feeling appropriately grateful that I still have a job I can do from home. Unfortunately, somewhere between writing those to-do lists and watching overpromoted incompetents invite their voters to kindly die to keep the economy going in the manner to which it has become accustomed, the entire concept of linear time seemed to disintegrate, which really played havoc with my calendar.Most Popular

    These days, I have a new, surprisingly packed schedule of cooking, washing up, video-conferencing with everyone I’ve ever met, and hiding in bed hoping that history can’t hear me breathing. The giant sticky notes are proliferating around the house, and my roommates tolerate them so long as I don’t start linking them together with red thread and pictures of my enemies. Despite being various flavors of neurotic workaholic, my roommates and I have discovered that right now, while our personal productivity matters, what matters more immediately is that we all manage to live in the same house without killing each other. The human race as a whole seems to be coming to a similar realization.

    There has always been something a little obscene about the cult of the hustle, the treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that if you stop running for even an instant, you’ll be flung flat on your face—but the treadmill is familiar. The treadmill feels normal. And right now, when the world economy has jerked to a sudden, shuddering stop, most of us are desperate to feel normal. This column is happening because I lost one of my three jobs to the Covid-19 crisis right around the time when I realized I had no idea when I was going to see my mum again, and after a few hours of crying and tidying, I emailed my kind editor in a panic and told him to please give me deadlines, I don’t know who I am without them. Why don’t I know?

    The way most of us have been conditioned to think about work in the modern economy has all the hallmarks of hypervigilance. It’s what happens to people when they are trapped in abusive circumstances they cannot escape. Psychologist Judith Herman observed that “the ultimate effect of [psychological domination] is to convince the victim that the perpetrator is omnipotent, that resistance is futile, and that her life depends upon winning his indulgence through absolute compliance.” The body responds to relentless insecurity and threat with agitated alertness, looking for ways to protect itself from harm. This is how most of my peers have experienced the modern economy. We were told that if we worked hard, we would be safe, and well, and looked after, and the less this was true, the harder we worked.

    The idea that hustling can save you from calamity is an article of faith, not fact—and the Covid-19 pandemic is starting to shake the collective faith in individual striving. The doctrine of “workism” places the blame for global catastrophe squarely on the individual: If you can’t get a job because jobs aren’t there, you must be lazy, or not hustling hard enough. That’s the story that young and young-ish people tell themselves, even as we’ve spent the whole of our brief, broke working lives paying for the mistakes of the old, rich, and stupid. We internalized the collective failures of the ruling class as personal failings that could be fixed by working smarter, or harder, or both—because that, at least, meant that we might be able to fix them ourselves.

    The cult of productivity doesn’t have an answer for this crisis. Self-optimizing will not save us this time, although saying so feels surprisingly blasphemous. This isn’t happening because you didn’t work hard enough, and it won’t be fixed by optimizing your morning routines and adopting a can-do attitude. After the quarantine, after we count the lives lost or ruined, recession is coming. A big one. For millennials, it’s the second devastating economic calamity in our short working lives, and we’re still carrying the trauma of the first. This time, though, we know it’s not our fault. This time it’s abundantly clear that we didn’t deserve it. And this is exactly the sort of crisis that gives people ideas about overturning the social order.Most Popular

    The Great Plagues of the 14th century famously shattered the feudal system by wiping out half of Europe and giving the few remaining workers a lot more bargaining power—but the Black Death also undermined the power of religion. As broken communities surveyed the mounds of corpses, wondering what sins could possibly be proportional to this sort of punishment, they started to lose faith in God—and the Medieval Church began to lose power as an organizing force in everyday life. If the economic dogma of work under modern capitalism fulfills the same functions as the church of the 1400s—defining human value and justifying our place in society—the emotions of watching that dogma fail are akin to a loss of faith. If frantic productivity is a fear response, the opposite urge—to tear it all up and declare deadline bankruptcy—feels like blasphemy. Laziness is the only sin out of the seven big ones that seems to count in the moral metric of the modern economy, and what other word is there for that edge-panic impulse to simply delete your email address and spend time doing small, gentle things that make being alive hurt a little less?

    “When we have no memory or little imagination of an alternative to a life centered on work,” writes theorist Kathi Weeks, “there are few incentives to reflect on why we work as we do and what we might wish to do instead.” In fact, as Europe and America remain in enforced lockdown, many people are working harder than ever—but the work they’re doing more of is not “productive” in the traditional sense. That does not mean it isn’t work. Childcare is work, as anyone who is suddenly having to do twice as much of it on top of their normal job can tell you. Cooking, cleaning, emotional and community management, all of which most of us are doing more intensely as we’re living together in lockdown, are work—they just don’t count on the ledger of human worth because the economy refuses to value them in its reckoning of what does, because most of it has been done in private, by women, for free. Making breakfast, making the beds, making sure your friends and family aren’t losing their absolute minds is work that matters more than ever and will continue to matter in the coming decades as crisis follows crisis. It is not “productive,” in the way that most of us have learned to understand what that word means, but it is work, and it is worthwhile.

    There is nothing counterrevolutionary about keeping busy. But right now, we have a finite opportunity to rethink how we value ourselves, to re-examine our metric for measuring the worth of human lives. Right now, the entire species is trying to work out how to live in the same house without killing each other—and that may well turn out to be the work that matters most.

  • Managerial Competencies and Organizational Levels

    I was talking recently with a very smart psychologist about IBM; I noted that IBM’s stock has gone down steadily for the past six years, and he said: “IBM is well managed but poorly led.” This perceptive observation assumes that managers’ jobs change as they move from supervisor to manager to executive. I have always thought that leadership is the same at any level, but many people believe that the roles of managers, and the competencies needed to perform in those roles, change as they advance in organizations. I know little about this, so I asked Rob Kaiser and, as usual, he was helpful—in part because he organized an entire issue of The Psychologist-Manager Journal (2011, Volume 14) on this subject.

    The particular strength of the articles in Kaiser’s issue of the journal is that they present real data, based on good measures and a comprehensive set of competencies, data that show clearly how the requirements of management jobs change with changes in organizational status. The published literature on this topic is quite large and somewhat complex. I believe I can summarize the major lessons of the literature in terms of four points.

    The first point is that management levels can be usefully conceptualized in terms of three categories:  (1) Supervisors, who are responsible for organizing employees’ work, assigning tasks, and holding people accountable for their performance; (2) Managers, who coordinate the efforts of work teams with the requests of top management; (3) Executives, who set the direction for the organization. Even with these simple definitions it is apparent that people do different things at different levels of management.

    The second point is that De Meuse, et al. (2011) show that certain prominent competencies (e.g., Humor, Personal Disclosure, and Compassion), are irrelevant. Specifically, ratings for sense of humor, willingness to disclose, and showing compassion are uncorrelated with managerial performance at any level. Consider Personal Disclosure. It is defined as “…willing to share thoughts about personal strengths, weaknesses, and limitations; admits mistakes and shortcomings; is open about personal beliefs and feelings; is easy to get to know for those who interact with him/her regularly.” Personal Disclosure is the core of Authentic Leadership theory and these data indicate that it is irrelevant for managerial performance.

    The third point is that certain competencies are in fact important at any level. These include Customer Focus, Functional/Technical Skills, Decision Quality, and Ethics and Values. I can’t resist noting that these competencies are at the core of the “Hogan Leadership Model.” The data provided by Kaiser, et al. (2011) contain two interesting findings. The first concerns the importance of being decisive versus being participative when making decisions. Effective Managers are rated as high decisive, low participative, whereas effective Executives are rated as low decisive, high participative. Second, Kaiser’s data indicate that “learning agility” is needed at every managerial level, and that “abrasiveness” is undesirable at any level. These data are consistent with Kaiser’s claim that adaptability (i.e., learning agility) is the “g” factor in managerial performance.

    The last point is that certain competencies are important for Supervisors, even more important for Managers, and crucial for Executives. These competencies are Managerial Courage, Command Skills, Business Acumen, and Perspective. This is also consistent with our leadership model.

    These four points summarize what we know in a data-based way about how managers’ jobs change as they move up organizational hierarchies. I would like to close with two observations, the first concerns the practical consequences of these data, the second concerns a shortcoming in these analyses. Regarding the practical consequences, executive coaches all know that many managers fail after being promoted. A common cause of failure concerns being unable to adapt to the promotion. We distinguish between working in the business and working on the business. Working in the business involves assigning tasks, giving clear instructions, and holding people accountable. Working on the business means putting problems in perspective, evaluating past decisions based on present evidence, and anticipating problems based on potential changes in customer demands. This involves the distinction between tactical and strategic thinking. Tactical thinking concerns implementation issues, budget allocation, and short-term deadlines; strategic thinking concerns innovation, profit generation, and longer-term opportunities. Smart, hardworking, honest executives often fail because they focus on tactical issues at the expense of strategic opportunities.

    The second problem with discussions of leadership based on competency models concerns the problem of derailment. The data show that 65% to 75% of existing managers struggle to perform well at any level. Competency models focus on strengths, but as Rob Kaiser tells us, strengths become problems when they are overused; thus, more of any competency is not always better. Conversely, more versatility (or learning agility) is always better. In addition, Kaiser’s data also show that unpleasant tendencies (e.g., abrasiveness) can co-exist with important strengths, and the unpleasant tendencies can cancel the benefits of important strengths. All of this suggests that competency-based analyses of leadership need to be qualified by considerations of versatility and the dark side of personality.

    Author: Robert Hogan

  • How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood

    One researcher who has interviewed hundreds of adults who were bullied as teens posits an interesting theory.

    In American schools, bullying is like the dark cousin to prom, student elections, or football practice: Maybe you weren’t involved, but you knew that someone, somewhere was. Five years ago, President Obama spoke against this inevitability at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. “With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune. I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he said. “But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.”

    We know that we shouldn’t turn a blind eye: Research shows that bullying is corrosive to children’s mental health and well-being, with consequences ranging from trouble sleeping and skipping school to psychiatric problems, such as depression or psychosis, self-harm, and suicide.

    But the damage doesn’t stop there. You can’t just close the door on these experiences, says Ellen Walser deLara, a family therapist and professor of social work at Syracuse University, who has interviewed more than 800 people age 18 to 65 about the lasting effects of bullying. Over the years, deLara has seen a distinctive pattern emerge in adults who were intensely bullied. In her new book, Bullying Scars, she introduces a name for the set of symptoms she often encounters: adult post-bullying syndrome, or APBS.

    DeLara estimates that more than a third of the adults she’s spoken to who were bullied have this syndrome. She stresses that APBS is a description, not a diagnosis—she isn’t seeking to have APBS classified as a psychiatric disorder. “It needs considerably more research and other researchers to look at it to make sure that this is what we’re seeing,” deLara says.

    Roughly 1 in 3 students in the United States are bullied at school (figures on cyberbullying are less certain, because it is newer than other forms of bullying and the technology kids use to carry it out is constantly in flux). This abuse can span exclusion, rumors, name-calling, or physical harm. Some victims are isolated loners while others are bedeviled by their own friends or social rivals.

    Years after being mistreated, people with adult post-bullying syndrome commonly struggle with trust and self-esteem, and develop psychiatric problems, deLara’s research found. Some become people-pleasers, or rely on food, alcohol, or drugs to cope.

    In some respects, APBS is similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in which people who have had terrifying experiences develop an impaired fight-or-flight response. Both APBS and PTSD can lead to lasting anger or anxiety, substance abuse, battered self-esteem, and relationship problems. One difference, though, is that people with APBS seem less prone to sudden flares of rage.

    “Those with PTSD have internalized their trauma such that it has affected their nervous system,” deLara says. “People with PTSD react immediately because their triggers are basically telling them they need to protect themselves against harm.” Those with APBS seem to have a longer fuse; the damage comes not in an outsized reaction but instead because they ruminate on what happened.

    DeLara observed another distinction between sufferers of PTSD and those with APBS: Sometimes, having been bullied seems to have positive outcomes.

    About 47 percent of deLara’s interviewees said they had mined something beneficial, like a sense of inner strength or self-reliance, from the experience. Others cultivated empathy or consciously decided to treat others well or make something of their lives. Everyone with APBS had at least one or more of these boons, deLara says.

    It’s unclear how much of this silver lining can be traced to genetics, and how much to a supportive family or community. “We don’t know the answer as to why some people who are bullied as children have what they consider to be a beneficial outcome as adults,” deLara says.

    She is planning to compare the recovery rates for people with PTSD and with APBS. One difference she saw in people with APBS is that they don’t see the world as a menacing place, as people with PTSD often do.

    Some people have an inborn sense of optimism, or ability to focus on how lucky they are to have left bullying behind them. These people might have a head start in bouncing back, but resilience can also be learned. For people with APBS, deLara recommends family and cognitive behavioral therapies, particularly those focused on trauma.

    Of course, the damage wrought by bullying handily outweighs any benefits. “Because people can make lemonade out of lemons, it doesn’t mean that bullying is a good thing,” deLara says. Even those who are able to see the positive side of having been bullied often had other negative ramifications.

    DeLara hopes that giving a name to these experiences will make it easier for people to find effective treatment. “In order to help someone you have to be able to clearly name what’s going on,” she says. Moreover, people who live with the symptoms of adult post-bullying syndrome don’t realize that they’re not the only ones to respond this way. One man told deLara that the idea of APBS helped him realize his reaction was normal and not another personality flaw.

    DeLara plans to continue studying the long-term consequences of bullying and which therapies can help people overcome them.

    Dieter Wolke, who has studied the psychiatric impacts of bullying in adults at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, agrees that bullying can leave devastating, long-lasting psychological damage. He’s hesitant, however, about using a new term for these symptoms based on their cause. “I see not much value in inventing a new name,” he says. It’s more important, he says, for doctors to be trained to broach the subject of bullying with their patients.

    What is clear is that while some adults have overcome the bullying they endured as kids, others continue to suffer. The research on what forms this suffering takes is still preliminary. Whether or not the label of APBS sticks around, people who live with its symptoms will benefit from any research into how to resolve them.

    Author: Kate Baggaley

  • The Best Alternatives to Zoom for Remote Meetings

    Zoom is getting a lot more use these days now that people need to hold meetings remotely and carry on other events that require face-to-face interaction without the current risks posed by physical proximity. Zoom lets you create and host meetings, but it isn’t the only online video conferencing solution out there. With anecdotal reports of slow connections and dropped calls, some might be looking for a secondary option. Thankfully, there are plenty of paid and free options to pick from, depending on your needs.

    Paid alternatives

    Google Hangouts (Enterprise)

    This is probably the most obvious pick, especially since you can use Hangouts on a vast array of devices and web browsers. However, Google’s enterprise-level G-Suite service includes a version of Hangouts that is perfect for companies that need to find a new video conferencing app. It can be used for text, voice, and video chats, it lets you connect with up to 250 other users per call, and it has robust moderation and presentation features. You can even record meetings.

    The free version of Hangouts is a viable choice, too, supporting up to 150 users, but it requires users to connect using their personal Google accounts, which may exclude those who don’t have one. The free version also lacks the presentation options, nor can you record calls, but that 150-user limit is hard to beat compared to other freebies out there. (Android, iOS, web)

    Zoho Meetings

    If you don’t want to go with Google’s G-Suite service, the open-source alternative Zoho One includes online conferencing software that should appeal to anyone familiar with Zoom or Hangouts.

    Zoho Meetings lets you host end-to-end encrypted video meetings, conference calls, and webinars, all of which can be accessed through dial-ins and email links—you don’t need to force anyone to sign up or download an app in order to join in. There are also desktop, web, and mobile versions of the app.

    You can record your meetings, and the hosting options include moderation and organization tools. The software also integrates with Zoho’s Office app suite, so you can pull in spreadsheets, text documents, and other files easily during your presentation. Zoho even has a handy comparison sheet showing how it compares to Zoom.

    Zencastr

    Zencastr is technically a web-based podcasting service and doesn’t do video calls, but it’s excellent for conference calls. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Zencastr is lifting its restrictions on group size and recording limits. Free users can now host calls with unlimited users and unlimited recording time (normally only three users per call and 8 hours of recording time per month, though unrecorded calls don’t count).

    Paid users ($20/month) get a special live editing dashboard and post-production tools. Only the host needs to have a Zencastr account, as they can invite users through simple shareable links (like you can with Zoom). There’s also a “hand raise” button that can help keep things running smoothly when you’re hosting a large conference call and want to make sure everyone can chime in.

    Free alternatives

    Discord

    Discord is a gaming-focused app, but it has a broader appeal than just gaming thanks to its encrypted chats and flexible organization features. Discord chats take place on dedicated “servers” that users can set up and organize themselves, each chat rooms—think Slack, but with video and voice calls in addition to text chat.

    Video calls only support nine users in total, but the app includes simple screen-sharing tools and other handy features if you’re using it to hold meetings. Considering it’s a free app, there’s a lot of flexibility here and it’s a great option if you want a permanent conferencing solution, but the other free options on this list will be easier to get up and running. Discord is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and most web browsers.

    WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

    While Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are separate apps (for now), Facebook owns both and each one runs on the same backend technology—and will eventually fuse into the same cross-platform service along with Instagram DMs—just in case you were wondering why we grouped them here.

    Both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger support group voice/video calls, but since these are tailored more for basic calls over mobile or the web, you won’t find enterprise-level conferencing features here. If all you need to do is hold a quick check-in with a few colleagues, both apps will work well.

    FaceTime

    Facetime is iOS-only, which limits its use as a universal solution, but since it’s included on just about every Apple device many folks will likely have access to it. The app supports up to 32 people in a single call, so as long as everyone’s got an iPhone, iPad, or Mac handy, it can be a solid way to hold remote meetings.

    Skype

    Skype is another video chat service most people are likely familiar with. It supports up to 50 users on a single video call and is available on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and as a web app, but like most of the other free apps here, all participants will need to have an account—in this case, you’ll need a Microsoft account. That said, if everyone in your group is already signed up and using the service, it’ll do the job just fine.

    Author: Brendan Hesse

  • AI Is Changing Work — and Leaders Need to Adapt

    As AI is increasingly incorporated into our workplaces and daily lives, it is poised to fundamentally upend the way we live and work. Concern over this looming shift is widespread. A recent survey of 5,700 Harvard Business School alumni found that 52% of even this elite group believe the typical company will employ fewer workers three years from now.

    The advent of AI poses new and unique challenges for business leaders. They must continue to deliver financial performance, while simultaneously making significant investments in hiring, workforce training, and new technologies that support productivity and growth. These seemingly competing business objectives can make for difficult, often agonizing, leadership decisions.

    Against this backdrop, recent empirical research by our team at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab provides new insight into how work is changing in the face of AI. By examining these findings, we can create a roadmap for leaders intent on adapting their workforces and reallocating capital, while also delivering profitability.

    The stakes are high. AI is an entirely new kind of technology, one that has the ability to anticipate future needs and provide recommendations to its users. For business leaders, that unique capability has the potential to increase employee productivity — by taking on administrative tasks, providing better pricing recommendations to sellers, and streamlining recruitment, to name a few examples.

    For business leaders navigating the AI workforce transition, the key to unlocking the productivity potential while delivering on business objectives lies in three key strategies: rebalancing resources, investing in workforce reskilling and, on a larger scale, advancing new models of education and lifelong learning.

    Solution #1: Reallocate Capital Resources

    Our research report, offers a window into how AI will change workplaces through the rebalancing and restructuring of occupations. Using AI and machine learning techniques, our MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab team analyzed 170 million online job posts between 2010 and 2017. The study’s first implication: While occupations change slowly — over years and even decades — tasks become reorganized at a much faster pace.

    Jobs are a collection of tasks. As workers take on jobs in various professions and industries, it is the tasks they perform that create value. With the advancement of technology, some existing tasks will be replaced by AI and machine learning. But our research shows that only 2.5% of jobs include a high proportion of tasks suitable for machine learning. These include positions like usher, lobby attendant, and ticket taker, where the main tasks involve verifying credentials and allowing only authorized people to enter a restricted space.

    Most tasks will still be best performed by humans — whether craft workers like plumbers, electricians and carpenters, or those who do design or analysis requiring industry knowledge. And new tasks will emerge that require workers to exercise new skills.

    As this shift occurs, business leaders will need to reallocate capital accordingly. Broad adoption of AI may require additional research and development spending. Training and reskilling employees will very likely require temporarily removing workers from revenue-generating activities.

    More broadly, salaries and other forms of employee compensation will need to reflect the shifting value of tasks all along the organization chart. Our research shows that as technology reduces the cost of some tasks because they can be done in part by AI, the value workers bring to the remaining tasks increases. Those tasks tend to require grounding in intellectual skill and insight—something AI isn’t as good at as people.

    In high-wage business and finance occupations, for example, compensation for tasks requiring industry knowledge increased by more than $6,000, on average, between 2010 and 2017. By contrast, average compensation for manufacturing and production tasks fell by more than $5,000 during that period. As AI continues to reshape the workplace, business leaders who are mindful of this shifting calculus will come out ahead.

    Solution # 2: Invest in Workforce Training

    Companies today are held accountable not only for delivering shareholder value, but for positively impacting stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, communities and employees. Moreover, investment in talent and other stakeholders is increasingly considered essential to delivering long-term financial results. These new expectations are reflected in the Business Roundtable’s recently revised statement on corporate governance, which underscores corporations’ obligation to support employees through training and education “that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world.”

    Millions of workers will need to be retrained or reskilled as a result of AI over the next three years, according to a recent IBM Institute for Business Value study. Technical training will certainly be a necessary component. As tasks requiring intellectual skill, insight and other uniquely human attributes rise in value, executives and managers will also need to focus on preparing workers for the future by fostering and growing “people skills” such as judgement, creativity and the ability to communicate effectively. Through such efforts, leaders can help their employees make the shift to partnering with intelligent machines as tasks transform and change in value.

    Solution #3: Educate for the Future Today

    As AI continues to scale within businesses and across industries, it is incumbent upon innovators and business leaders to understand not only the business process implications, but also the societal impact. Beyond the need for investment in reskilling within organizations today, executives should work alongside policymakers and other public and private stakeholders to provide support for education and job training, encouraging investment in training and reskilling programs for all workers.

    Our research shows that technology can disproportionately impact the demand and earning potential for mid-wage workers, causing a squeeze on the middle class. For every five tasks that shifted out of mid-wage jobs, we found, four tasks moved to low-wage jobs and one moved to a high-wage job. As a result, wages are rising faster in the low- and high-wage tiers than in the mid-wage tier.

    New models of education and pathways to continuous learning can help address the growing skills gap, providing members of the middle class, as well as students and a broad array of mid-career professionals, with opportunities to build in-demand skills. Investment in all forms of education is key: community college, online learning, apprenticeships, or programs like P-TECH, a public-private partnership designed to prepare high school students for “new collar” technical jobs like cloud computing and cybersecurity.

    Whether it is workers who are asked to transform their skills and ways of working, or leaders who must rethink everything from resource allocation to workforce training, fundamental economic shifts are never easy. But if AI is to fulfill its promise of improving our work lives and raising living standards, senior leaders must be ready to embrace the challenges ahead.

    Article appears in Harvard Business Review

    Author: Martin Fleming, who is IBM’s Chief Economist and Vice-President.

  • Business as “Unusual”

    “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” [Alice asked.]
    “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
    “I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
    “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
    – from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

    Nobody signed up for this. On New Year’s Eve, no one held up a glass and sang “Auld Lang Syne,” accompanied by resolutions around pay cuts, furloughs, airplanes without passengers, and hotels without guests…

    But these are the times we find ourselves in. It’s natural to reminisce about history, even if that’s five months ago, but we can’t stay there. The world has changed.

    We’re here now and, unlike Alice lost in Wonderland, we must decide where we are going to go. And it does matter what we choose: We can get up—or give up. 

    What was business as usual just a couple of months ago has radically changed—now it’s business as “unusual.” Leaders around the globe and in every industry are facing gut-wrenching decisions. As one executive confided in me recently, “They’re all bad decisions. I’m just trying to pick the least worst decisions.”

    Yes, ambiguity abounds, but we can’t wait for the clouds to clear. Here are a few thoughts:

    • Take control: Here’s a cautionary tale for leaders at this time. A group of settlers in a remote location were gathering firewood to prepare for winter. The group’s leader thought it was going to be a cold winter but wanted to check with the experts. He went to the next town and called the National Weather Service (NWS), which confirmed his thinking. So, more firewood was collected. A week later, the leader checked in with NWS again, and the forecast had changed: a very cold winter. That meant even more firewood. This went on three or four times, with increasingly dire forecasts from NWS that meant getting even more firewood. Finally, the leader asked NWS: “Why do you think the winter is going to be so very, very cold?” The answer: “Because those settlers are gathering a boatload of firewood.” The moral of this story: Don’t let herd mentality take you down. Take control.
    • Get up or give up: I’m reminded of the late John McKissick, America’s “winningest” coach in football, who guided high school players for more than 60 years. He motivated them with his own father’s advice: “As my daddy used to say, ‘Son, if you don’t put something in the bucket, how are you going to get anything out of it?’ Winning takes hard work, particularly when the opponent is a virus—invisible but, we have to believe, not invincible. In these times of business as unusual, people have to believe to achieve. You can’t teach hustle, but you can motivate it!
    • Failing to fail: The mantra these days is “we will get through this.” Of course we will—the alternative is impossible and unthinkable. The way back to normal will come in waves, with victories and setbacks. But it will be hard, and there will be failures along the way. In times like these, though, the only real failure is failing to fail. As Michael Jordan said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Fail fast, learn faster.
    • It’s one day at a time: Cash, biology, or psychology? Which one is the real secret weapon for getting through this crisis? Cash helps, but not everybody has this luxury; and, besides, it’s not a durable commodity. Fiscal stimulus will only get us so far. Biology will eventually prevail, with the science to produce a treatment and a vaccine. But even with the best minds on the task, it will take time. Psychology, along with sociology, will get us through this crisis. We can’t let ourselves get lulled into paralysis. If we’re not careful, tomorrow can look like today. To break this pattern, the other day I intentionally got dressed up as if I were going to a meeting, even though I didn’t leave my driveway. My wife and my daughter even cut my hair—it took three tries, but I wanted to break the monotony. All of us must go out of our way to make tomorrow different than today.
    • Remember empathy: Although we’re isolated, we don’t walk alone. This is not the time to feel sorry for ourselves. More empowering is to empathize with others. And that’s what I’m finding everywhere. One colleague shared his stresses of overcoming a heart attack and cancer, which left him “severely immune compromised,” and worrying about his aging parents who are thousands of miles away. “Hard times,” he told me. “But still grateful that they are not as hard…as for so many others. I am actually fortunate, grateful, and blessed.”
    • To the real heroes: In this crisis, one group more than any embodies the spirit of taking control in the most challenging circumstances: our healthcare professionals. Every day, these warriors put their own health and well-being on the line in service of others. As a chief nursing officer told me, “I can’t tell you how many times, both personally and professionally, I’ve assured someone, ‘It’s going to be OK.’” Indeed, everything will be OK.

    As the week comes to an end, I have been reflecting, which brought my thoughts back to Kansas where I grew up. I can remember being in my grandmother’s house on a cold day, and trying to get warm by standing with one foot on either side of the floor register that blew hot air from the furnace. My grandmother was singing her favorite song: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

    So appropriate and so timeless:

    When you walk through a storm
    Hold your head up high
    And don’t be afraid of the dark

    At the end of a storm
    There’s a golden sky
    And the sweet silver song of a lark

    Walk on through the wind
    Walk on through the rain
    Though your dreams be tossed and blown

    Walk on, walk on
    With hope in your heart
    And you’ll never walk alone… 

    Author Gary Burnison
    Korn Ferry CEO

  • How To Get Access to Your COVID Stimulus Money


    It’s the beginning of the month and bills are coming due. If you are stressed out, it’s important that you know where and how to get access to financial relief. Please consider this not only for yourself, but for your adult children and elderly parents, too, even if you do not need it for yourself.

    On March 27, President Trump signed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill into law that will hopefully provide some relief for many, perhaps including you. The CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) sends money directly to Americans, expands unemployment coverage, and funds loans and grants for small businesses. So let’s look at how you can access these funds.

    Who gets direct stimulus money and how much do they get?

    All eligible adults who have a Social Security Number, filed tax returns in 2018 and/or 2019 will automatically get a $1,200 direct stimulus deposit from the government within a particular income bracket. This is true whether you have been laid off, are currently employed, or are currently self-employed or an independent contractor.

    To get the full amount:
    A single adult must have an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less.Married couples with no children must earn $150,000 or less for a combined total stimulus of $2,400.Every qualifying child 16 or under adds $500 to a family’s direct stimulus.If you have filed as head of household, have dependents, and earned $112,500 when you last filed, you will get the full payment.
    This payment is not considered income—it’s essentially free money from the government. Therefore, it will not be taxed. It also is not a loan, so if you are eligible, you will not be charged interest or expected to pay it back. As of right now, the stimulus is a one-time payment.

    Are there exceptions?

    Payment decreases and eventually stops for single people earning $99,000 or more or married people who have no children and earn $198,000 annually. Additionally, a family with two children will no longer be eligible for payments if their income is over $218,000.

    If you are an adult claimed on your parent’s tax return, you do not get the $1,200.

    What do I need to do to get my stimulus money?

    For most people, no action is necessary. If the IRS has your bank account information already, it will transfer the money to you via direct deposit. If, however, you need to update your bank account information, the IRS has posted on their website that they are in the process of building an online portal where you can do so.

    An important note: if you have not filed a tax return in the past couple of years, or you don’t usually need to file one, you should file a “simple tax return” showing whatever income you did have, so you can qualify for these benefits.

    You can continue to check for updates on how to make sure you get your payment by regularly checking for updates on their Coronavirus Tax Relief page.  https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus
    When will that money come through?

    Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin says that he expects most people will get their payments by Friday, April 17th, though other sources say that it could take up to 4–8 weeks.

    Loans (and Grant Money) for Independent Contractors

    If you have a business, are an independent contractor or are self-employed, you can apply for loans, and get a $10,000 grant from the government via the CARES Act.
    These are Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. Please note that there are still elements of these loans that are not fully understood, and we are giving our best legal interpretation based on information from the Small Business Administration and the US Chamber of Commerce.

    VERY IMPORTANT: If you apply for EIDL right now, you can claim a $10,000 advance that does not need to be repaid. It’s essentially a grant that can be used to keep your business alive. You can apply for it right here: https://covid19relief.sba.gov/ Do it, now.  This is applicable if you are an independent contractor, or a self-employed business owner. Basically, if you file a separate tax return for your business or a Schedule C on your personal tax return, you SHOULD qualify. But please see note above that we don’t really know how all of this will be implemented. What we do believe is that you should get your application in for the EIDL grant money.

    The PPP applications will be made through your bank, so contact your banker, if you believe you will need the PPP loan, which will be forgiven if used for payroll specifically in the weeks after receiving the loan funds.

    You should have the following information on hand to fill out either of the two loan applications:
    IRS Form 4506T—Tax Information Authorization—completed and signed by each principal or owner,Recent federal income tax returns,SBA Form 413—Personal Financial Statement,SBA Form 2202—Schedule of Liabilities listing all fixed debts,Any profit and loss statements, recent tax returns, and balance sheets.
    Here’s a bit more information about both loan programs.

    Economic Injury Disaster Loans (Above and Beyond the $10,000 Grant)

    Every state has been declared a disaster area due to COVID-19, and therefore your business may be eligible for an SBA economic injury disaster loan (EIDL). This is a low-interest loan that has terms that can last as long as 30 years, and can provide you with capital loans of up to $2 million and an advance of up to $10,000.

    Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) can be used to cover:
    Paid sick leave to employees unable to work due to the direct effects of COVID-19,Rent or mortgage payments,Maintaining payroll (to help prevent layoffs and pay cuts),Increased costs due to supply chain disruption,Payment obligations that could not be met due to revenue loss.
    Whereas the application used to take hours, it now only takes about 10 minutes to fill out. A couple of important notes, however:
    SBA loan reps have said that they are focusing on processing applications filed after March 30th, so if you have a confirmation number starting with 2000, you should probably reapply.Be sure to check the box toward the end of the application if you want to be considered for an advance up to $10,000 (as I mentioned at the top of the article, this amount does not need to be repaid and so is essentially a grant!).
    You can apply for disaster loan assistance here: https://covid19relief.sba.gov/
    Coronavirus Emergency Paycheck Protection Loan

    The CARES Act’s $350 billion allocation to small businesses is specifically called the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). It specifically incentivizes borrowers who maintain their payrolls, i.e., don’t lay off their employees. This program will fully forgive loans where at least 75% of the forgiven amount is used to pay employees for the eight weeks following the loan. If you lay off employees or cut salaries and wages, your loan forgiveness will also be reduced.

    PPP loans can be used to cover:
    Payroll costs,Group health care benefits during periods of paid, sick, medical, or family leave, and insurance premiums;Interest on a mortgage obligation,Rent, under lease agreements in force before February 15, 2020,Utilities, for which service began before February 15, 2020,Interest on any debt incurred before February 15, 2020.
    Small businesses with less than 500 employees (including sole proprietorships, independent contractors, and those who are self employed) are eligible. You can apply through SBA 7(a) lenders, federally insured credit unions, or participating Farm Credit Systems (ie your bank). Other lenders might be on the scene soon as well, but a lot of them are currently being reviewed for approval to the program.

    Full details are available here: https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/paycheck-protection-program-ppp
    We are here to support you making educated, informed, empowered decisions for yourself and the people you love, in all areas of your wealth, health, and happiness. In my blog last week, we discussed the most important legal and financial actions to take right now in light of this COVID pandemic.  In case you missed it, you can read that here.

    I look forward to serving you during these unprecedented times.  If there is anything I can do for you and your family, for matters concerning the law or anything at all, please contact me at (858) 432-3923 or at tara@cheeverlaw.com.  I look forward to connecting (virtually) and serving you during these unprecedented times.  Please stay healthy and safe!

    Sincerely,


    Tara Cheever, Principal/Owner of Cheever Law, APC

    I hope you found this e-Newsletter valuable.  Interested in sharing this information with others?  Please use the Social Share links here:
         
     
    Tara H. Cheever
    Attorney at Law at Cheever Law, APC A  5205 Avenida Encinas, Suite A, Carlsbad, CA 92008 P  (858) 432-3923  E  tara@cheeverlaw.com W  www.cheeverlaw.com
    **PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF NEW ADDRESS** IMPORTANT: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential. They are intended for the named recipient(s) only. If you have received this email by mistake, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to anyone or make copies thereof.       
    Information courtesy of Cynthia Burnham, MCEC

  • Why Do Smart People Do Foolish Things?

    Intelligence is not the same as critical thinking—and the difference matters.

    Scientific American |

    By: Heather A. Butler

    We all probably know someone who is intelligent but does surprisingly stupid things. My family delights in pointing out times when I (a professor) make really dumb mistakes. What does it mean to be smart or intelligent? Our everyday use of the term is meant to describe someone who is knowledgeable and makes wise decisions, but this definition is at odds with how intelligence is traditionally measured. The most widely known measure of intelligence is the intelligence quotient, more commonly known as the IQ test, which includes visuospatial puzzles, math problems, pattern recognition, vocabulary questions and visual searches.

    The advantages of being intelligent are undeniable. Intelligent people are more likely to get better grades and go farther in school. They are more likely to be successful at work. And they are less likely to get into trouble (for example, commit crimes) as adolescents. Given all the advantages of intelligence, though, you may be surprised to learn that it does not predict other life outcomes, such as well-being. You might imagine that doing well in school or at work might lead to greater life satisfaction, but several large-scale studies have failed to find evidence that IQ impacts life satisfaction or longevity. University of Waterloo psychologist Igor Grossmann and his colleagues argue that most intelligence tests fail to capture real-world decision-making and our ability to interact well with others. This is, in other words, perhaps why “smart” people do “dumb” things.

    The ability to think critically, on the other hand, has been associated with wellness and longevity. Though often confused with intelligence, critical thinking is not intelligence. Critical thinking is a collection of cognitive skills that allow us to think rationally in a goal-orientated fashion and a disposition to use those skills when appropriate. Critical thinkers are amiable skeptics. They are flexible thinkers who require evidence to support their beliefs and recognize fallacious attempts to persuade them. Critical thinking means overcoming all kinds of cognitive biases (for instance, hindsight bias or confirmation bias).

    Critical thinking predicts a wide range of life events. In a series of studies, conducted in the U.S. and abroad, my colleagues and I have found that critical thinkers experience fewer bad things in life. We asked people to complete an inventory of life events and take a critical thinking assessment (the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment). The critical thinking assessment measures five components of critical thinking skills, including verbal reasoning, argument analysis, hypothesis testing, probability and uncertainty, decision-making and problem-solving.

    The inventory of negative life events captures different domains of life such as academic (for example, “I forgot about an exam”), health (“I contracted a sexually transmitted infection because I did not wear a condom”), legal (“I was arrested for driving under the influence”), interpersonal (“I cheated on my romantic partner who I had been with for more than a year”), financial (“I have over $5,000 of credit-card debt”), and so on. Repeatedly, we found that critical thinkers experience fewer negative life events. This is an important finding because there is plenty of evidence that critical thinking can be taught and improved.

    Is it better to be a critical thinker or to be intelligent? My latest research pitted critical thinking and intelligence against each other to see which was associated with fewer negative life events. People who were strong on either intelligence or critical thinking experienced fewer negative events, but critical thinkers did better.

    Intelligence and improving intelligence are hot topics that receive a lot of attention. It is time for critical thinking to receive a little more of that attention. Keith E. Stanovich wrote an entire book in 2009 about What Intelligence Tests Miss. Reasoning and rationality more closely resemble what we mean when we say a person is smart rather than spatial skills and math ability. Furthermore, improving intelligence is difficult. Intelligence is largely determined by genetics. Critical thinking, though, can improve with training, and the benefits have been shown to persist over time. Anyone can improve their critical thinking skills. Doing so, we can say with certainty, is a smart thing to do.

    Heather A. Butler is an assistant professor in the psychology department at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her numerous research interests include critical thinking, advanced learning technologies, and the use of psychological science to prevent wrongful convictions.

    This article was originally published on October 3, 2017, by Scientific American, and is republished here with permission.

  • How To Remove Fear From Your Work Culture

    by Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick

    We all know that fear can get stuff done. If stress levels are amped up sufficiently, people can do some crazy things for short periods of time. We’ve all heard the story of the mom who lifts a Pontiac off a trapped family member. Marketers have long known the power of fear, using it to sell everything from life insurance to alarm systems to fiber cereals that taste like tree bark and feet.

    A degree of fear in our workplaces is unavoidable with this pandemic and economic downturn. But it’s important for leaders to recognize that fear at work can cause a host of ill effects that undermine the quality of people’s output as well as overall team performance. At the heart of fear is doubt, and uncertainty can kill motivation, not to mention innovation.

    When faced with a threat—real or imagined—the brain’s amygdala sends out a distress signal, prompting the release of stress hormones, which cause a number of physiological changes, such as increased heartbeat, quickened breathing, and muscle tensing. This reaction is designed as a boon in response to immediate threats, giving us a surge of energy and enhancing our strength. Shazam! But all that is intended as a temporary response to danger, not as a prolonged state of being. If this pandemic worry stretches into weeks and months, it will sap energy. Chronic stress like that can also seriously undermine the quality of people’s sleep, further undercutting their energy. Fear-induced stress is a major factor in burnout.

    Getting people into a fight mode during a crisis might sound okay to some leaders—“They’ll be charged up to tackle this challenge!” What they need to understand is a fighting spirit, when evoked by fear rather than inspiration and a sense of purpose, actually can end up aimed right back against their managers instead of the challenges to be tackled. Never underestimate the degree of bald-faced contempt that people let brew in response to the perception that a manager isn’t doing all he/she can to solve the problems that are causing them to freak out (even if the manager has little to no control over them).

    In short, few things in a crisis are worse than key stakeholders perceiving leadership to be in disarray, indecisive, or indifferent. It is the very moment of crisis when the organization needs its people to believe the most, yet their faith is often challenged.

    What to do as leaders? Here are just a few tactics that can help.

    Create a Safe Place: One sure-fire way to help reduce fear starts with frequently and honestly framing the market situation in real terms that people can relate to. Leaders must explain in clear terms what behaviors employees must focus their efforts on, all while creating a reassuringly safe environment to keep delivering to clients. During our interviews with leaders who successfully led their teams through the last global crisis, they displayed a dogged commitment to their mission and core values. Employees we interviewed after told us things such as, “He forced us to keep thinking about our mission, and how we were helping make the world a better place,” or “She reminded us that real people were using our products; they had to be perfect every time.”

    Leave the Pillows at Home. During tough times, it’s more important than ever to be more honest and more transparent. In other words: Don’t soften the blow. Let people know what’s up with the business in clear ways and communicate with them every day, even if there’s not much to share. Part of this concept means you’ll need to admit you need employee help and ideas to get through this. After all, you don’t have all the ingenuity or improvement ideas in your head, so let your people know you want to hear their input. Encourage debate on ways to improve service or find new business or enhance processes, even if it rattles established harmony. When employees know their managers are seeking better ways during tough times, and are encouraging them to practice the same, it builds trust and a larger culture of optimism.

    Amp up Gratitude. It is in the worst of times that leaders must amp up praise and recognition of every step forward. In the organizations we studied that made it through the Great Recession in the best shape, there was a statistically significantly higher preponderance of gratitude of employee efforts than in those organizations that achieved average or poor returns. The seemingly warm and fuzzy skill of thanking people for the value they bring creates tangible feelings of hope and points people toward the right behaviors.

    Manage to Motivators. Every person on this planet has a thumbprint-like makeup of what makes him or her most engaged at work and those prints vary considerably. During this stressful time, one of the most powerful ways to engage people is to align (as much as possible) assignments with a person’s specific motivations and uncover subtle changes that can lead to increases in team morale, engagement, and results. The problem is, very few managers know what’s really motivating to their people or, if they do, how to apply that information to day-to-day work. The best leaders have discovered that the surest way to help their employees be more productive in challenging times is to do some sculpting of the nature of jobs or tasks to better match duties with passions.

    Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton are the New York Times bestselling authors of Leading with Gratitude, The Carrot Principle and All In. They own the global training company The Culture Works and work with organizations around the world to address employee engagement issues. Learn more at TheCultureWorks.com.

    Original article appears here: https://www.thecultureworks.com/how-to-remove-fear-from-your-work-culture/

  • You’re Invited! Live April 2nd!

    A coaching contract is a useful tool in helping clients understand what to expect from you as their coach and outline what they are committing to you as your client.

    Most of the time, everything goes well. The client receives the benefit expected and you can deliver the valued promised to your client. Both parties conclude feeling good about the relationship.


    But every now and then something goes awry.


    Continue reading and register….https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=0ae69c4b6ff8d8c76dbc34f6d&id=3ec736f0ff