The more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected, says writer and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan. She shares why we need less tech and more messy human skills — imagination, humility, bravery — to solve problems in an unpredictable age. “We are brave enough to invent things we’ve never seen before,” she says. “We can make any future we choose.”
California just took a major step in rewriting the rules of the gig economy.
The state Assembly passed a bill Wednesday that would make it harder for companies to label workers as independent contractors instead of employees, a common practice that has allowed businesses to skirt state and federal labor laws. The bill will now go to the state Senate.
Hundreds of thousands of independent contractors in California, ranging from Uber and Amazon drivers to manicurists and exotic dancers, would likely become employees under the bill.
That small status change is huge. These workers would suddenly get labor protections and benefits that all employees get, such as unemployment insurance, health care subsidies, paid parental leave, overtime pay, workers’ compensation, and a guaranteed $12 minimum hourly wage. It also means companies are fuming about the added cost.
The California bill, known as AB5, expands a groundbreaking California Supreme Court decision last year known as Dynamex. The ruling and the bill instruct businesses to use the so-called “ABC test” to figure out whether a worker is an employee. To hire an independent contractor, businesses must prove that the worker (a) is free from the company’s control, (b) is doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business, and (c) has an independent business in that industry. If they don’t meet all three of those conditions, then they have to be classified as employees.
That is a much clearer — and stricter — standard of proof than the vague guidelines under federal law. And it’s one of the biggest challenges yet to the profit model of Uber, Instacart, Postmates, and other tech companies that rely on a small army of independent contractors. Uber would likely have to reclassify tens of thousands of drivers in California as employees — something Uber drivers have been fighting for in court, unsuccessfully, for years.
“Big businesses shouldn’t be able to pass their costs onto taxpayers while depriving workers of the labor law protections they are rightfully entitled to,” San Diego Assembly member Lorena González wrote on Twitter after members voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill she helped write.
California businesses have been panicking over the possibility of the bill passing. The state’s Chamber of Commerce and dozens of industry groups have been lobbying for exemptions, and a long list of professions were excluded from the bill: doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects, insurance agents, accountants, engineers, financial advisers, real estate agents, and hairstylists who rent booths at salons.
Industry groups argue that these professionals are true independent contractors, with their own businesses and power to negotiate work contracts. Lawmakers agreed. After all, the purpose of the bill is to shrink income inequality by helping workers who employers are most likely to exploit. Uber drivers are the loudest in that group.
Ride-sharing apps have done everything to keep drivers as contractors
When Uber drivers went on strike across the world earlier this month, much of their frustration had to do with their lack of power as independent contractors.
Uber’s profit model, like all others in the gig economy, depends on all the money saved from skirting US labor laws.
By classifying drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, Uber doesn’t need to pay certain taxes, benefits, overtime, or minimum wages to tens of thousands of drivers. As self-employed contractors, drivers don’t have a legal right to form labor unions and negotiate contracts either.
Uber drivers have spent more than six years fighting the company in court, saying they’ve been intentionally misclassified. They argue that drivers should be considered employees because the company has so much control over their workday, including strict rules on their vehicle conditions, what rides they can take, and which routes to take.
Uber has fought back, maintaining that drivers are not employees because they set their own schedules and provide their own cars.
So far, the issue has not been resolved, at least not at the national level.
Last month, Uber settled the main court case with 13,600 Uber drivers, agreeing to pay them $20 million, but without changing their status as independent contractors. The other 350,000 drivers who were part of the initial class-action lawsuit had signed mandatory arbitration agreements, so a federal judge is requiring them to pursue their cases in a private forum, where they are less likely to win their case.
But it would be hard for Uber to pass the ABC test if the California bill becomes law; driving people around in cars is a central part of the company’s business.
Any challenge to the drivers’ status as contractors threatens Uber’s bottom line, which is another reason the bill is so significant
Uber has been upfront with investors about the risk of a labor revolt. In a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Uber acknowledged that giving drivers the same legal rights as employees would “fundamentally change” the company’s financial model:
If, as a result of legislation or judicial decisions, we are required to classify Drivers as employees … we would incur significant additional expenses for compensating Drivers, potentially including expenses associated with the application of wage and hour laws (including minimum wage, overtime, and meal and rest period requirements), employee benefits, social security contributions, taxes, and penalties.
So it’s unsurprising that Uber is not happy about a law that would force the company to hire drivers as employees.
As employees, gig workers would have a safety net for the first time ever. The changes from the bill would also benefit the state of California, which estimates that it loses $7 billion in tax revenue each year from companies that misclassify employees.
Misclassification happens more often than you think
Even though it’s impossible to get precise data on how often employers misclassify their workers, there’s no doubt that it’s a big problem. The IRS, the Government Accountability Office, and the Inspector General for Tax Administration have repeatedly raised concerns about how often employers do this.
The deputy inspector general for audit at the Treasury Department wrote in a 2009 memo to the agency’s head of enforcement:
There are employers who deliberately misclassify workers to cut costs and to gain a greater competitive edge. These employers avoid paying their share of employment taxes as well as other expenses such as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and other benefits. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors and not incurring the related costs can give these employers a competitive advantage over employers who treat their workers as employees.
In September 2011, the IRS and DOL agreed to work together to share information to prevent misclassification and report on their progress each year.
In 2017, a long-awaited report was published by the Government Accountability Office, analyzing government efforts to combat tax fraud. The report summarized findings from an IRS audit of 15.7 million tax returns from 2008 to 2010. It turns out that about 3 million of those returns involved misclassification, adding up to about $44.3 billion in unpaid federal taxes that were later adjusted.
Since then, little progress has been made. In December, the Treasury Department said misclassification is still a “nationwide problem” and that the IRS and Labor Department are not doing enough to address it.
California’s bill is the biggest effort yet to fix the problem.
A court ruling changed everything
A 10-year-old lawsuit in California paved the way for AB5. In April, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of workers in the case, called Dynamex Operations West v Superior Court.
Workers for a document delivery company called Dynamex Operations West were seeking employment status. The drivers for the delivery service first brought their case over a decade ago, arguing that they were required to wear the company’s uniform and display its logo, while providing their own vehicles and shouldering all the costs associated with the deliveries, and thus should be classified as employees, not independent contractors. (Amazon drivers recently sued the company for similar reasons).
In May 2018, the state’s highest court agreed with Dynamex drivers. The ruling essentially created the ABC test as precedent, but it only relates to workers seeking minimum wages and overtime pay. The case didn’t address workers’ compensation benefits. It didn’t clarify which workers are entitled to rest and meal breaks, or who has a right to paid parental leave and other guaranteed benefits.
Many states use some version of the ABC test, but usually just to determine whether someone is entitled to unemployment benefits. Only New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts use the standard to enforce all state labor laws.
Under federal law, there is no clear standard. The federal courts and the US Department of Labor decide who has been misclassified by weighing multiple factors, including how much control the company has over the worker and how central their work is to the company’s operations.
If passed, California’s AB5 bill would reflect a major turning point in the post-recession economic expansion. California has the largest state economy in the country and is home to the Silicon Valley tech industry — which means its lawmakers have outsized influence in national politics. The bill could lead other states to take similar action.
“Here we are in a great economy and yet most working people have no money saved,” Caitlin Vega, legislative director for the California Labor Federation, told me. “[Companies] are doing this because they can, they’ve gotten away with it.”
Democrats have a veto-proof super majority in California’s Senate and General Assembly, so there’s a good chance that AB5 will become law, making it harder for those companies to get away with misclassifying their workforce.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the wrong date for the California Supreme Court’s ruling in Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court. It was in May 2018.
The stigma of asking for or being assigned an executive coach is vanishing quickly. The growth of the industry tells us so. In the U.S. alone, $1 billion was spent on business, personal and relationship coaches last year, according to IbisWorld, up about 20% from five years earlier. And the number of business coaches worldwide has zoomed more than 60% since 2007, according to one coaching association. But while executive coaches have improved the performance of many already-good managers and sanded the rough edges off many less effective ones, they aren’t a miracle cure. In fact, we have seen many companies waste considerable sums by assigning coaches to managers who just aren’t ready to be coached, no matter how effective the coaches may be.
So how do those who control the coaching purse strings — HR, talent managers, and other buyers — avoid throwing money away on uncoachable executives? Considering that a year’s engagement with a top executive coach can cost more than $100,000, it’s an important question.
From nearly 35 years of coaching hundreds of executives, our firm has noticed a pattern of red flags that indicate when a coaching investment will be wasted. Here are four things to watch out for:
1. They blame external factors for their problems.
When things go wrong, does this person always have an excuse? Maybe they point a finger at the quality of their team, a lack of resources, or even their boss.
When leaders argue about the validity of your reasons for offering coaching, or offer excuses or defenses for poor results, it can be a sign that they lack self-awareness. Before any coaching can be effective, they need to wake up to the ways their actions affect others.
One CEO we worked with was known for his smart turnarounds of a large media company. But he was struggling to get along with his executive team. Finally, several board directors suggested he should seek out a coach. After multiple sessions, he had shared little information about himself, and we were no closer to figuring out the root of the problem. Stymied, we suggested that we observe the next executive team meeting.
Suddenly, all was clear. We were shocked by how he controlled the conversation in the room. He simply spoke over other people with a volume of words that was unfathomable. When he left the room to take a call, his team members erupted with frustration. It was obvious that this CEO was completely out of touch — something that became even more apparent later on, when he asked us to tell the board how positively he was responding to coaching.
Leaders like this often ignore criticism if it doesn’t jibe with their view of themselves — and such feedback is easy to ignore if it’s buried in a performance review or mentioned briefly in a larger conversation. Conducting a non-judgmental, just-the-facts 360-degree review could help them see the reality of their situation. Until they can see what others see and why it matters, they won’t examine their behavior, and coaching will be useless.
2. You can’t get on their calendar.
Some leaders claim to be receptive to coaching but just can’t find the time. They may cancel sessions at the last minute, constantly reschedule, or, when they do show up, be visibly distracted. They lack space for coaching both in their calendar, and in their mind.
Unlike the oblivious leader, the too-busy leader is often quite likable. They will apologize for being hard to pin down, and be very direct about how busy they are. Don’t be surprised if they’re flattered to be offered coaching. But coaching can’t be crammed into the schedule of a leader who wears their busy-ness as a badge of honor. Their inability to prioritize is a sign they need coaching, but their unwillingness to make room for it suggests they won’t be a good coaching investment.
A brilliant engineer we know had been promoted three times in four years, and by the time he was nearly 30 he was a group president at a U.S. manufacturing company. Diligent, humble, and smart, he could hold a room spellbound with only a marker and a whiteboard as he worked out solutions to highly technical problems. However, as adept as he was at the technical aspects of his job, he now had 20 people reporting to him whom he had no idea how to manage.
After three months of coaching, his superiors could see it was going nowhere. The executive often rescheduled his sessions, telling his coach he didn’t have the time. He believed he couldn’t set aside the time to improve himself. That made him uncoachable.
HR managers should do some reality testing to ensure the too-busy leader is willing to make room for coaching. To benefit from coaching, too-busy leaders must make the space to be fully present, both during the coaching sessions and after, doing the difficult work of developing new mindsets, skills, and habits. Ask this person what tasks or responsibilities they’d be willing to give up or delegate, even temporarily, to make time for coaching. If they struggle to think of any, give them a gentle but firm ultimatum as part of a career planning conversation: that they have plateaued at the company and won’t go to the next level until they make time for self-development.
3. They focus too much on tips and tactics.
Some leaders eagerly agree to coaching, but then avoid the deeper inquiries required for meaningful transformation. They’re willing to modify behaviors, but not beliefs. They view coaching as medicine that, if taken regularly, will help them get ahead.
The quick-fix leader becomes frustrated when their coach asks questions that require self-reflection. They want answers, not questions. “You’re the expert, you tell me,” they’ll say in response to questions from the coach, or “What if I did this?” Everything comes back to tactics. (A related warning sign is if a leader asks how quickly the coaching can be finished — especially if they demand that the cycle be compressed.)
Although coaches sometimes offer suggestions, their real job is to help executives uncover the assumptions driving their behavior. Only then can a coach help them challenge self-limiting beliefs that block their development. However, the quick-fix leader has little interest in this process.
One CEO we worked with was leading a family business that had recently been sold to a large company. He was told by a leader in the new parent company (who himself had benefitted from coaching) that coaching would help him make the transition. The CEO gladly accepted, wanting to be seen as a peer.
However, it wasn’t long into the first coaching session that he showed his entire focus was on “doing whatever other successful people did.” The coach worked tirelessly to shift the conversation to the CEO’s purpose and goals. Each time, however, he shifted the discussion back to the “secrets of success” of other organizational leaders he wanted to emulate. Ultimately, he was passed over for a permanent role on the parent company’s leadership team, and left the organization.
To prompt this kind of leader to be open to self-reflection, remind them of all the other times they vowed to change but were unsuccessful. They then might realize they need to work on more than just changing their game plan. Or, introduce them into a preliminary mentoring conversation with one of the leaders they admire. Tell the mentor to share their experience of struggling to develop.
4. They delay getting started with a coach to “do more research” or “find the right person.”
To be sure, it’s important to have a good fit between a leader and his coach. But a continual rejection of qualified coaches should give you pause. A related red flag is if the person is acting confused, and asking repeatedly why coaching has been suggested. Assuming you’ve clearly explained why coaching is necessary, this could be a defense mechanism and a signal that the person is not ready to confront their shortcomings. It usually stems from insecurity.
Being coached can be daunting, and not everyone is ready to take it on. We remember a physician leader who was hired to turn around a business unit of a large medical center. When his staff challenged him, he became emotional. Told by his boss that he needed a coach to help him control his emotions, he was hurt and angrily asked “Why?” — failing again to control his emotions. He was too full of hidden fears for the coaching to be useful. His boss eventually reassigned him, and ultimately he left the organization.
Reframe coaching as an investment the organization is making in their development rather than a personal fix. Tell them your firm provides this resource for high-potential, top performers to accelerate their success. If this leader can view coaching as something positive to help them achieve their goals, they may warm up to the process.
When Going Coach-Less Is Not Viable
After hearing us say that a certain leader is not a good candidate for coaching, an executive who brought us in will often say a variant of this: “Well, he must be coached. We can’t let him continue to manage others the way he has, but we can’t fire him easily either because we need his skills badly.” But imposing coaching on someone who just can’t handle it at the moment isn’t going to help anyone. Companies are better off directing their people development investments elsewhere — skills training or academic programs are often better options.
Invest your coaching budget in people who have shown the willingness and the capacity to change, and you’ll get a much better return on your investment.
It’s often said that we should put ourselves in another person’s shoes in order to better understand their point of view. But psychological research suggests this directive leaves something to be desired: When we imagine the inner lives of others, we don’t necessarily gain real insight into other people’s minds.
Instead of imagining ourselves in another person’s position, we need to actually get their perspective, according to a recent study (pdf) in the Journal of Personality and Psychology. Researchers from the University of Chicago and Northeastern University in the US and Ben Gurion University in Israel conducted 25 different experiments with strangers, friends, couples, and spouses to assess the accuracy of insights onto other’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and mental states.
Their conclusion, as psychologist Tal Eyal tells Quartz: “We assume that another person thinks or feels about things as we do, when in fact they often do not. So we often use our own perspective to understand other people, but our perspective is often very different from the other person’s perspective.” This “egocentric bias” leads to inaccurate predictions about other people’s feelings and preferences. When we imagine how a friend feels after getting fired, or how they’ll react to an off-color joke or political position, we’re really just thinking of how we would feel in their situation, according to the study.
In 15 computer-based experiments, each with a minimum of 30 participants, the psychologists asked subjects to guess people’s emotions based on an image, their posture, or a facial expression, for example. Some subjects were instructed to “consult their own feelings,” while others were given no instructions, and some were told to “think hard” or mimic the expressions to better understand. People told to rely on their own feelings as a guide most often provided inaccurate responses. They were unable to guess the correct emotion being displayed.
The second set of experiments asked subjects to make predictions about the feelings of strangers, friends, and partners. (Strangers interacted briefly to get to know one another before hazarding guesses about the preferences of they had just person they met.) The researchers wanted to see if people who had some meaningful information about each other—like spouses—could make accurate judgments about the other’s reactions to jokes, opinions, videos, and more. It turned out that neither spouses nor strangers nor friends tended to make accurate judgments when “taking another’s perspective.”
Imagining another person’s perspective doesn’t actually improve our ability to judge how another person thinks or feels.“Our experiments found no evidence that the cognitive effort of imagining oneself in another person’s shoes, studied so widely in the psychological literature, increases a person’s ability to accurately understand another’s mind,” the researchers write. “If anything, perspective taking decreased accuracy overall while occasionally increasing confidence in judgment.” Basically, imagining another person’s perspective may give us the impression that we’re making more accurate judgments. But it doesn’t actually improve our ability to judge how another person thinks or feels.
There were no gender differences in the results. Across the board, men and women tended not to guess another’s perspective very accurately when putting themselves in the other’s position. But this did increase self-confidence in the accuracy of their predictions—even when their insights were off.
The good news, however, is that researchers found a simple, concrete way we can all confidently and correctly improve the accuracy of our insights into others’ lives. When people are given a chance to talk to the other person about their opinions before making predictions about them—Eyal calls this “perspective getting” as opposed to perspective taking—they are much more accurate in predicting how others might feel than those instructed to take another’s perspective or given no instructions.
In the final test, researchers asked subjects both to try putting themselves in another’s shoes, on the one hand, and to talk directly with test partners about their positions on a given topic. The final experiment confirmed that getting another person’s perspective directly, through conversation, increased the accuracy of subjects’ predictions, while simply “taking” another’s perspective did not. This was true for partners, friends, and strangers alike.
“Increasing interpersonal accuracy seems to require gaining new information rather than utilizing existing knowledge about another person,” the study concludes. “Understanding the mind of another person,” as the researchers put it, is only possible when we actually probe them about what they think, rather than assuming we already know.
The psychologists believe their study has applications in legal mediation, diplomacy, psychology, and our everyday lives. Whether we’re negotiating at a conference table, fighting with a spouse, or debating the political motivations of voters, we simply can’t rely on intuition for insight, according to Eyal. Only listening will do the trick.
“Perspective getting allows gaining new information rather than utilizing existing, sometimes biased, information about another person,” Eyal explains to Quartz. “In order to understand what your spouse prefers—don’t try to guess, ask.”
Some of the saddest words that a human being can utter are these: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Yet, according to Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse, this is precisely the sentiment that, more than any other, sums up the main regret of people nearing the end of their lives.
Confidence is the antidote to this kind of regret; it is the surest defence against the abdication of our sense of our own agency. When we give up authorship of our own lives, or resign ourselves to living through the eyes of others, we are effectively surrendering our personhood. It is a reflection of the notion that people are the product of their circumstances rather than the decisions they make.
Avoid becoming a slave
There are many forces in today’s world that are encouraging this kind of “second-hand living” to which Nietzsche gave the name “slave mentality”. For example, ideologues, whether of the left or right, have tended to view people as means to a utopian end and have therefore had a vested interest in encouraging people to think of themselves as subjects or victims, and to place their fate in the hands of others. A confident society is one that is immune to these dangers. Indeed, the late Lord (Kenneth)Clark, the art historian, defined civilization in a single word: confidence.
“The most beautiful thing you can wear is confidence”
David Bowie
Confidence is more than self-assurance. It is a form of licence. It is the right that we grant ourselves to become the person of our own choosing. At root, confidence is the conviction that we are of most value to the world when we are true to ourselves.
Confidence is the right that we grant ourselves to become the person of our own choosing
David Bowie was the archetype of a confident person. In his 69 years, he exemplified what it is to be a truly autonomous individual. His versatility was prodigious. He excelled as a singer, composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, painter and actor. “I feel confident imposing change on myself,” he said. He didn’t believe there was a self to discover, only a persona to be endlessly re-invented. It was as though he imagined himself to be a work of art on which he never ceased working.
But Bowie’s confidence did not come easily: “As an adolescent, I was painfully shy and withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.” Ziggy Stardust was perhaps his most famous disguise, but it was only one of many. He learned the art of confidence by treating it – at least to start with – as a façade behind which he could play at being confident.
But Bowie’s confidence did not come easily: “As an adolescent, I was painfully shy and withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.” Ziggy Stardust was perhaps his most famous disguise, but it was only one of many. He learned the art of confidence by treating it – at least to start with – as a façade behind which he could play at being confident.
Imagine yourself courageous
This recalls Aristotle’s theory that if a particular virtue such as courage or confidence does not come naturally, then the solution may be to stop worrying about how it might be acquired. Instead, the individual should imagine what a courageous or confident person would actually do in the circumstances – and then do exactly that. In other words, act your way into becoming confident. No one is born confident. We acquire confidence as we mimic those whom we observe to be exemplars of this particular trait.
This mimetic theory of learning – becoming a person we are not by imitating a person who is – was brilliantly applied by Bowie. He did not believe his mastery of artistic skills was an expression of innate talent; he preferred to believe that it was an act of will, a kind of continuously imaginative self-reinvention: “Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life”
Bowie chose to see himself as the sole author of his own life. He recognized early on the dangers of living his life through the eyes and expectations of others: “I’m just an individual who doesn’t feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I’m working for me.”
Act your way into becoming confident
He said: “All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get selfish about it”. This chimes with one of Bronnie Ware’s epithets: “Self-love is essential to truly serve others well.” This is a powerful (and provocative) version of the oblique principle: namely, that society is stronger when individuals feel free to put their own needs first. It is a message that sits uncomfortably in today’s world of ideological posturing, virtue signaling, and other forms of what Barbara Oakley has called “pathological altruism”. Bowie was his own person: “Being cool is being your own self, not doing something that someone else is telling you to do.”
Leaders liberate
Leadership, a close ally of confidence, is not about creating followership or compliance or passivity. Quite the contrary. The leader liberates others to invent or re-invent themselves. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the only person you are destined to be is the person you decide to be”. Leaders encourage those they work with to make self-defining decisions.
Thoughts on the life and personality of David Bowie – and the lessons that flow from them – sit uncomfortably alongside theories of confidence found in much social science research literature. Here are some of those findings, expressed as key factors in building self-confidence:
The company we keep: we are creatures of the expectations that others place upon us; therefore, we should surround ourselves with people who believe in us, and keep our distance from those who undermine our self-belief.
The effort we exert: in the pursuit of mastery, effort counts for more than innate talent; therefore, to strengthen self-confidence, we should measure ourselves by effort invested rather than result achieved.
The placebo we trust: lucky charms work. We ought not be so rational as to dismiss all sources of irrational assistance.
The wave we surf: success is rarely a solo achievement. It depends, at least in part, on being with the right people in the right place at the right time. Quoting Shakespeare, “there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” We should take note of the tide.
The rituals we adopt: certain things “get us into the zone” and boost our confidence before, for example, giving a speech or taking an exam. So we need to invent habits that settle our nerves and enhance our performance.
The opportunities we seize: business is a numbers game, as Tom Peters used to say. The “more times at bat”, the greater the chance of getting lucky and stumbling into success.
The setbacks we experience: if we see mistakes as lessons in life, our confidence will be benefit. We should think of failure as intrinsic to a life of achievement.
The emotions we draw upon: to overcome fear when faced by a threatening challenge, getting excited works better than trying to calm ourselves down.
The expectations we form: we can adopt one of two quite distinct strategies for managing our anxieties once we’ve settled on a risky course of action: “strategic optimism” or “defensive pessimism”; strategic optimists allay their fears by hoping for the best and setting aside negative thoughts; defensive pessimists choose instead to confront their fears by envisaging worst-case scenarios and thinking through the ramifications.
Research suggests that when we’re fearful, the unknown is more frightening than the negative. Therefore we should adopt the strategy of the defensive pessimist.
The trouble with rules of success – and all self-help manuals – is that they invite us to treat our own life instrumentally. We objectify ourselves, reducing our own behaviour to a set of responses to a mix of self-imposed conditions. In effect, we become the victims of the science we choose to believe in. For example, we may manage our level of confidence by purposefully associating with different kinds of people, wearing a lucky charm, cultivating a pessimistic philosophy and so on. In this way, we cast ourselves in the role of inert material on which different causes will have different effects. Life becomes a process of choosing those inputs whose effects we most desire.
Take control
The anthropologist Mary Douglas has made a distinction between passive and active voice theories of human behaviour . As an illustration of this distinction, she draws upon Roy Schafer’s interpretation of Freudian theory to imagine an exchange between a psychoanalyst and his patient. The analyst may say to the patient, “Your chronic sense of worthlessness comes from the condemning voice of your mother”. This is a quintessential case of passive voice theorising. The patient is seen not as an active agent with beliefs, intentions and will, but as a passive canvas on which external forces make their imprint. An active voice reconstruction of this diagnosis could be: “You regularly imagine your mother’s voice condemning you, and you, agreeing with it, regard yourself as being essentially worthless.” This approach uses the less deterministic, more explanatory concepts of agency, meaning, and purpose. Active voice theorising places individual responsibility where it truly belongs – in this case, with the patient.
Society is stronger when individuals feel free to put their own needs first
Whenever psychology reverts to the language of physics and explains human behaviour in terms of causes, determinants and effects, it risks erasing the subject matter of its own inquiry: the human agent. The practice of management should not allow social sciences to dehumanize the true object of its interest: individual human beings.
Bowie had no need for self-help manuals or textbooks on creativity. He experimented. He didn’t try to predict outcomes or worry about possible reactions. He acted on the world and, noticing the result, he formed a theory. To borrow an insight from Matthew Parris: “How little we know of ourselves until we notice what we do.”
In business practice, we typically operate the other way round. Before actually doing anything, we feel we first need a theory from which to act, or a goal around which to organize, or a plan on which to deliver, or some rules by which to conform. The social science of confidence, by adopting an essentially passive voice approach, provides us with many rules of success but in so doing subtly undermines the Bowie-like confidence that we need to become the invention of our own imagination and courage.
Managers are often so driven to recruit talented workers that they neglect to think about what will happen once the new hire arrives ready to work. Big mistake.
With the economy on the upswing, many growing companies are starting to go after talented new employees. That means a lot of first days on the jobs, and lot of time and money to spend while new staffers get up to speed. What if you could shrink the time it takes for an employee to reach his or her full potential?
That’s the promise of a growing trend in human-resources management called onboarding; its advocates describe it as a comprehensive approach to bringing on new hires that goes beyond simple orientation. Onboarding plans are intended to make new employees familiar with the overall goals of a company and support them as they embark on early projects all in an effort to achieve the perception of success (and productivity) quickly. The ultimate payoff is to reduce turnover and encourage workers to stay with an organization for a longer tenure.
‘It’s really about calculating the cost of hiring new workers to the business,’ says John Sullivan, former chief talent officer for Agilent Technologies and a professor of management at San Francisco State University. ‘Companies need new hires to be productive and, at a small company especially, every employee counts.’
Here’s a look at how your company can set up an onboarding process to shorten the learning curve for new hires.
Onboarding a New Hire: Plan Ahead
Think onboarding begins on an employee’s first day? Wrong. A successful onboarding program actually begins during the recruitment and hiring process, says Erin Perry, director of client solutions at Pinstripe, a recruiting company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin. An onboarding process is linked to and in some ways starts with the employer brand that you create to attract people who are the right fit for your company’s overall goals. ‘If you’re a high tech organization that has a cool brand and that uses social media and talks about innovation when you’re advertising to attract new associates, that’s great,” Perry says. “But if on a new hire’s first day you hand them 15 different forms to fill out, your employment brand message has just died.”
Experts suggest you begin the orientation process before a candidate is formally hired by including ample information about your workplace and your culture in the Careers section on your website. ‘The orientation should begin at the first click of the mouse when someone first goes on the company’s website, so by the time the person comes in for the interview, they already know quite a lot about the organization,’ says Richard Jordan, a business coach who has been responsible for reshaping the recruiting and orientation process at a number of technology firms. That way, you are more likely to attract candidates who are more engaged with your company’s goals and culture and are more likely to become highly productive employees.
A new hire will surely be required to fill out a lot of new paperwork, so why not get a head start? Many companies choose to send necessary legal forms along with a formal offer letter. You can also send an employee handbook ahead of time, so that new staff members aren’t overwhelmed with information on the first day.
HR software and other related applications can also be deployed ahead of time. Automated systems are especially useful because onboarding requires the involvement of multiple departments within a company, all working together to welcome and engage a new employee, to make him or her feel as comfortable as possible from Day One. The right technology can help coordinate various individuals and tasks by taking care of paperwork electronically, or sending notifications alerting IT support staff to configure a new hire’s laptop and BlackBerry.
Technology can also be an effective way to socialize your new hire into your company’s organizational culture, Perry says. On a company Intranet, you can make available to a new hire multimedia such as video and podcasts that state your company’s overall strategic goals, talk about your company’s values, and provide employee testimonials. As a bonus, these videos can feature company leaders, which will help introduce key players, cutting down on the endless name game that typically happens on an employee’s first day.
Onboarding a New Hire: On the First Day, Nail the Details
The prospect of the first day on the job is nerve-wracking. New hires are eager to impress their new bosses. So, if they don’t know where the photocopier is or how to use it, chances are they aren’t going to ask, and will waste time trying to figure the little things out for themselves. And if you throw a bunch of information at them, chances are they’re not going to remember most of it. With an effective onboarding program, you should aim to present basic information in an easy-to-digest fashion, so that a rookie can turn to the more demanding aspects of his or her job.
The way to do that is to consider the small, logistical details that add up to a sense of comfort and familiarity one has in a workplace. This is good not just for a new hire’s peace of mind, but also for the overall health and well-being of your business. ‘If a person is new and doesn’t know how to use the phone system and accidentally hangs up on a potential client, that client is not going to care that they were new,’ says John Sullivan. ‘They’re just going to be angry.’
Here’s a list of things you should have ready by the time your new hires walk in the door:
Send out an e-mail to everyone in the office so they’re prepared to welcome a new employee.
Get the new worker a security badge if he or she needs one.
Provide a name plate on his or her desk or office door as a tangible sign that you’ve prepared the space.
Set up the computer.
Configure the new employee’s e-mail accounts.
Provide guides for any necessary software he or she will be using.
Set up his or her phone system, and provide instructions for using voicemail.
Have a stack of business cards waiting.
And here’s a list of questions you should answer for the new employee voluntarily:
What should he or she bring? (Telling them to bring two forms of ID to verify paperwork is a good idea.)
Where should he or she park?
Who should he or she ask for in the lobby?
Where are the restrooms?
Where is the copy machine? (And how does it work?)
Where is the cafeteria?
Who should the employee talk to if he or she has additional questions? (It’s a good idea to assign a co-worker or a hiring manager as a mentor to check-in with the new hire throughout at least the first week.)
A new employee’s immediate supervisor should also be present on the first day. ‘The worst thing you can do is have new hires show up when their immediate supervisor isn’t there for three or four days,’ Sullivan says. ‘It’s like getting married and not having your spouse on your honeymoon.’
Onboarding a New Hire: Individualizing the Process
Unlike a traditional first-day orientation, where an employee generally spends a good chunk of time signing forms for Human Resources and reviewing the policies of the organization, onboarding is intended to be a multi-faceted approach. And while the list of things to consider for a new hire’s first day applies to pretty much any employee, that doesn’t mean you should forget about the unique needs of each individual. Quite the opposite, in fact.
For example, different people prefer different management styles, so why not ask a new employee from the start how he or she wants to be managed? ‘Onboarding is a performance-based, customized approach,’ Sullivan says. ‘Why don’t ask you upfront what is the best way to manage you?’
A more personal element to the process can engage new employees, giving them the ability to identify their personal goals with the overall success of the organization. Ari Weinzweig, CEO of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, a group of food specialty businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan, still personally teaches an orientation class to new staffers. ‘By taking the time to teach the orientation, the clear message that comes across is that we value them and their work so highly that the head of the company is willing to sit with them to go over things,’ he says.
Make sure a new staff member understands how he or she can individually contribute to the company. Explain to the employee how your performance appraisal system works, so he or she won’t waste time on things that don’t matter, and can quickly begin to work on key objectives. If you make a custom onboarding plan, ‘you’re leaving the individual with the impression that employees are very important assets to the organization, chosen from among many candidates, and that their talent and potential is recognized,’ Jordan says. ‘You want to make sure you develop their career path within the organization.’
How vested an employee feels to a company also has to do with the social relationships he or she makes with co-workers. An onboarding process should consider those relationships and facilitate them from the very beginning. Organize a lunch on the first day with the new employee’s team or department the new employee. Or try giving your new employee a week’s worth of gift certificates for lunch, so he or she can take a colleague to lunch each day.
Onboarding a New Hire: Following Through on Your Plan
On-boarding doesn’t end on the Friday of a new employee’s first week on the job. The process should continue over the span of several months and, during that time, it is essential to solicit feedback from all constituents. A good way to do that is to assign a recruiting manager to keep track of the new hire’s first few months on the job, Jordan says, because that individual will already have developed a relationship with the employee.
‘I’m a big believer of surveying at every step of the process,’ Perry says. She suggests surveying at the end of the first week and at the close of each of the employee’s first three months, asking different questions at each stage. Begin with questions about the recruiting process, how the first day met the employee’s expectations, and whether they are struggling with any issues related to technology. Then, start asking whether the employee has the necessary tools to complete his or her job and, finally, begin asking about an employee’s strategic goals. You want to learn how engaged or connected the new hire feels to the organization.
You also want to make sure someone is accountable, preferably a line manager who realizes the cost savings to the business if a new employee gets up to speed quicker. You want managers to be very aware that you are measuring productivity through metrics. Make sure employees actually are becoming productive and, if they are not, figure out what is going wrong. Continually fine-tune how you onboard employees to make sure you can maximize the benefits of the process.
Once you’ve done that, you can begin to establish a general checklist of what you want to cover when you’re onboarding. Even within that structured plan or process, make sure you leave room for those personal touches. ‘Your employees are going to get orientated whether you plan for it or not,” Perry observes. “But if you do plan it, it’s a lot more likely to be successful.”
inc.com Please Steal One of These Fantastic Job Titles for Your Business Card. Your job title says a lot about you.
Sadly, many of us use titles that sound like we’re boring or not that creative. HR manager? Really? There must be a better way. Here are a few creative options.
1. Chief people officer
What does this job entail? Who cares? It sounds awesome. It’s the name for the HR officer at Opportunity Network, a company that links CEOs to financial institutions.
2. Culture operations manager
Here’s another HR-related title, this one from When I Work. The scheduling app helps managers know when employees are at work.
3. Chief robot whisperer
This is a title from the startup Savioke, a company that provides robots to the service industry. It’s an apt description because it relays a sense of wonder and excitement.
4. Director of bean-counting
The creative agency Bidlack in Ann Arbor, Michigan, uses this title for the main accountant. It’s a nod to the fact that the role tends to be meticulous (in a good way).
5. Software ninjaneer
At a startup called TSheets, they don’t mess around with boring titles. This one nails it because, in many ways, software development is a mysterious and ancient art form.
6. Director of first impressions
At publishing house Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the receptionist has this title. It’s perfect because it is exactly this person’s role at the company.
7. Digital overlord
If you have ever worked on a website, you know this term is fitting for the role. They use it at Composites Media, a company that works in the engineering field.
8. Director of storytelling
This role creates social media campaigns and strategies for companies. They use it at Eyespeak, a website development company.
9. Money maestro
At Delivering Happiness, this is the title for the accounting manager. It is definitely a role of orchestration, especially with pay scales, budgets, and expenses.
10. Wizard of light bulb moments
This title, popular on LinkedIn, describes the role of a marketing director. It works because, in a pure sense, marketing is the act of inspiring people to action.
