Category: Management

The Case Against “Mindful Dishwashing”

(p. 9) I’m making a failed attempt at “mindful dishwashing,” the subject of a how-to article an acquaintance recently shared on Facebook. According to the practice’s thought leaders, in order to maximize our happiness, we should refuse to succumb to domestic autopilot and instead be fully “in” the present moment, engaging completely with every clump of oatmeal and decomposing particle of scrambled egg. Mindfulness is supposed to be a defense against the pressures of modern life, but it’s starting to feel suspiciously like it’s actually adding to them. It’s a special circle of self-improvement hell, striving not just for a Pinterest-worthy home, but a Pinterest-worthy mind.
Perhaps the single philosophical consensus of our time is that the key to contentment lies in living fully mentally in the present. The idea that we should be constantly policing our thoughts away from the past, the future, the imagination or the abstract and back to whatever is happening right now has gained traction with spiritual leaders and investment bankers, armchair philosophers and government bureaucrats and human resources departments.
. . .
So does the moment really deserve its many accolades? It is a philosophy likely to be more rewarding for those whose lives contain more privileged moments than grinding, humiliating or exhausting ones. Those for whom a given moment is more likely to be “sun-dappled yoga pose” than “hour 11 manning the deep-fat fryer.”
On the face of it, our lives are often much more fulfilling lived outside the present than in it.
. . .
Surely one of the most magnificent feats of the human brain is its ability to hold past, present, future and their imagined alternatives in constant parallel, . . .
. . .
What differentiates humans from animals is exactly this ability to step mentally outside of whatever is happening to us right now, and to assign it context and significance. Our happiness does not come so much from our experiences themselves, but from the stories we tell ourselves that make them matter.
. . .
So perhaps, rather than expending our energy struggling to stay in the Moment, we should simply be grateful that our brains allow us to be elsewhere.

For the full commentary, see:
RUTH WHIPPMAN. “Actually, Let’s Not Be in the Moment.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., NOV. 27, 2016): 9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date NOV. 26, 2016.)

Cloud-Computing Firms Run Key Services on Private Servers

(p. B8) For nearly a decade, Amazon Web Services, the giant retailer’s cloud computing division, has told prospective customers: Ditch your data center and trust us to run your applications, store your data and host your internal software development.
Yet Amazon.com Inc. itself doesn’t fully run in the cloud.
Amazon isn’t alone. The other top cloud providers– Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.–use their own cloud services for some purposes, but they continue to keep certain functions on private servers. Their struggles are a microcosm of the issues that dog their customers: Worries about reliability, security and risks inherent with change that have made it hard to move critical computing tasks to the public cloud.
“The vast majority of Amazon.com runs on AWS,” a company spokesperson said, and it intends to run everything there eventually.
The fact that Amazon still uses private servers is “ironic,” said Ed Anderson, an analyst with Gartner, which advises customers on both cloud services and data center servers. “That’s exactly why we tell people evaluating cloud services, ‘Do not buy into the hype. Do not buy into the myths. You have to be pragmatic, just like these vendors are,'” he said.

For the full story, see:
ROBERT MCMILLAN. “Companies Touting Cloud-Computing Don’t Always Use It.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Aug. 5, 2015): B8.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 4, 2015, and has the title “Cloud-Computing Kingpins Slow to Adapt to Own Movement.”)

Not All Secure Jobs Are Good Jobs

(p. C8) The village idiot of the shtetl of Frampol was given the job of waiting at the village gates for the arrival of the Messiah. The pay wasn’t great, he was told, but the work was steady.

For Epstein’s book recommendations, see:
Joseph Epstein. “12 Months of Reading.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 10, 2016): C8.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 7, 2016, and has the title “Books of The Times; Review: ‘A Truck Full of Money’ and a Thirst to Put It to Good Use.”)

Best Entrepreneurs, and Managers, Help Workers Lead Meaningful Lives

(p. C6) In “Payoff,” Dan Ariely makes the strong case that the best way to motivate people, including ourselves, is not through persuasive tactics, however subtle, but by providing the groundwork for meaning in people’s lives.

For Altucher’s full book recommendations, see:
James Altucher. “12 Months of Reading.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 10, 2016): C6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 7, 2016, and has the title “James Altucher on con artists.”)

The book recommended, is:
Ariely, Dan. Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations, Ted Books. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2016.

GE Shifts Away from Six Sigma and Toward Innovation

(p. B1) One of the biggest engineering projects under way at General Electric Co. these days isn’t a turbine or locomotive. It is reinventing the way the company’s employees are assessed, reviewed and even paid.
For decades, an ideal GE worker was one adept at squeezing out product defects and almost allergic to admitting uncertainty.
Now, as the 124-year-old company refocuses itself on industrial businesses, executives say top performers are those willing to take risks, test new ideas with customers and even make mistakes.
Leaders say GE’s multiyear effort to remake itself into a leaner, innovation-driven company requires a nimble workforce that can develop products faster and more cheaply. The shift is significant for GE, whose corporate ethos had long been embodied by Six Sigma, a manufacturing system designed to eliminate error, enshrining certainty and consistency.
. . .
(p. B6) The new style of measuring employees has roots in FastWorks, a companywide initiative intended to hasten product development and ensure that customers want new products before GE spends millions building them. It is based on Lean Startup, a management system popularized by Eric Ries, a 37-year-old author and consultant GE brought in with the blessing of Chief Executive Jeff Immelt to help employees get comfortable with trial, error and experimentation.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN. “GE Tries to Reinvent the Employee Review, Encouraging Risks.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., June 8, 2016): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “GE Re-Engineers Performance Reviews, Pay Practices.”)

Ries’s Lean Startup management system is advocated in his book:
Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011.

Executive Job-Hopping Increases

(p. B8) Corey Heller often finds himself ordering fresh business cards. The human resources executive has switched employers nine times since 1996–and spent less than three years at six of those workplaces.
In any other era, the 51-year-old Mr. Heller would be viewed as an unstable job hopper. But today, that stigma is starting to fade amid greater pressure for rapid results and decreased workplace loyalty, according to executive recruiters and coaches. The change suggests that companies increasingly believe high-level hires with multiple recent employers bring fresh insights and a mix of experience.
. . .
Brief stints will spread “because of the explosion of online recruiting and opportunistic offers to candidates with strong profiles,” predicts Stefanie Smith, a New York executive coach.

For the full story, see:
JOANN S. LUBLIN. “Job-Hopping Is Losing Its Stigma.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 27, 2016): B8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 26, 2016, and has the title “Job-Hopping Executives No Longer Pay Penalty.”)

Sutter Headed BHAG Team that Created Boeing 747

Collins and Porras in Built to Last recommend the pursuit of Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs). A prime example is the Boeing 747.

(p. B9) Joe Sutter, whose team of 4,500 engineers took just 29 months to design and build the first jumbo Boeing 747 jetliner, creating a gleaming late-20th-century airborne answer to the luxury ocean liner, died on Tuesday [August 30, 2016] in Bremerton, Wash.
. . .
In less time than Magellan spent circumnavigating the globe, Boeing engineers transformed Mr. Sutter’s napkin doodles into the humpbacked, wide-bodied behemoth passenger and cargo plane known as the 747. The plane would transform commercial aviation and shrink the world for millions of passengers by traveling faster and farther than other, conventional jetliners, without having to refuel.
. . .
“If ever a program seemed set up for failure, it was mine,” Mr. Sutter said in his 2006 autobiography, “747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures From a Life in Aviation,” written with Jay Spenser.
. . .
Adam Bruckner of the University of Washington’s department of aeronautics and astronautics later described the 747 as “one of the great engineering wonders of the world, like the pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower or the Panama Canal.”
. . .
“Aviators were more than mere mortals to us,” Mr. Sutter recalled in his autobiography. “They were a different breed, intrepid demigods in silk scarves, puttees and leather flying helmets with goggles.”

For the full obituary, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “Joe Sutter, 95, Is Dead; Guided the Development of Boeing’s 747 Jetliner.” The New York Times (Fri., Sept. 2, 2016): B9.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Sept. 1, 2016, and has the title “Joe Sutter, Who Led an Army in Building Boeing’s Jumbo 747, Dies at 95.”)

Sutter’s autobiography, is:
Sutter, Joe, and Jay Spencer. 747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.

Lack of Control at Job Causes Stress, Leading to Cardiovascular Disease

(p. 6) Allostasis is not about preserving constancy; it is about calibrating the body’s functions in response to external as well as internal conditions. The body doesn’t so much defend a particular set point as allow it to fluctuate in response to changing demands, including those of one’s social circumstances. Allostasis is, in that sense, a politically sophisticated theory of human physiology. Indeed, because of its sensitivity to social circumstances, allostasis is in many ways better than homeostasis for explaining modern chronic diseases.
Consider hypertension. Seventy million adults in the United States have it. For more than 90 percent of them, we don’t know the cause. However, we do have some clues. Hypertension disproportionately affects blacks, especially in poor communities.
. . .
Peter Sterling, a neurobiologist and a proponent of allostasis, has written that hypertension in these communities is a normal response to “chronic arousal” (or stress).
. . .
Allostasis is attractive because it puts psychosocial factors front and center in how we think about health problems. In one of his papers, Dr. Sterling talks about how, while canvassing in poor neighborhoods in Cleveland in the 1960s, he would frequently come across black men with limps and drooping faces, results of stroke. He was shocked, but today it is well established that poverty and racism are associated with stroke and poor cardiovascular health.
These associations also hold true in white communities. One example comes from the Whitehall study of almost 30,000 Civil Service workers in Britain over the past several decades. Mortality and poor health were found to increase stepwise from the highest to the lowest levels in the occupational hierarchy: Messengers and porters, for example, had nearly twice the death rate of administrators, even after accounting for differences in smoking and alcohol consumption. Researchers concluded that stress — from financial instability, time pressures or a general lack of job control — was driving much of the difference in survival.

For the full commentary, see:
SANDEEP JAUHAR. “When Blood Pressure Is Political.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., AUG. 7, 2016): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date AUG. 6, 2016.)

The commentary quoted above is distantly related to Jauhar’s book:
Jauhar, Sandeep. Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

GE Replaces Annual Performance Review with Frequent Feedback

(p. B8) General Electric Co. is getting rid of ratings.
The industrial giant’s salaried employees will no longer be given one of five labels–ranging from “role model” to “unsatisfactory”–as part of their annual performance review. The changes, to be announced to employees Tuesday, breaks with a system GE has used in some form or another for the last 40 years.
Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt is undertaking a bid to refocus on the company’s core industrial business. To spur these efforts, GE has spent the past few years reimagining the way its 310,000 employees work, placing new emphasis on experimentation and risk-taking. A new performance-management system asks employees and managers to exchange frequent feedback via a mobile app called PD@GE, in person or by phone. The messages are compiled into a performance summary at the end of the year.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN. “GE Scraps Staff Ratings to Spur Feedback.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 27, 2016): B8.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 26, 2016, and has the title “GE Does Away With Employee Ratings.”)

Letter to a Crony Capitalist

(p. B4) . . . , an excellent read is “Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism,” by Jeff Gramm, owner and manager of the Bandera Partners hedge fund and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. This book explores the rise of activist investors like Carl C. Icahn and Daniel S. Loeb.
Mr. Gramm has collected a series of deliciously rich letters, many of which were never before published, sent to chief executives by investors by everyone from Warren Buffett to Ross Perot. They are eye-opening, often chilling and include fascinating lessons about business.
My personal favorite is this letter from Mr. Loeb to the chief executive of Star Gas Partners: “It seems that Star Gas can only serve as your personal ‘honey pot’ from which to extract salary for yourself and family members, fees for your cronies and to insulate you from the numerous lawsuits that you personally face due to your prior alleged fabrications, misstatements and broken promises. I have known you personally for many years and thus what I am about to say may seem harsh, but is said with some authority. It is time for you to step down from your role as C.E.O. and director so that you can do what you do best: retreat to your waterfront mansion in the Hamptons where you can play tennis and hobnob with your fellow socialites. The matter of repairing the mess you have created should be left to professional management and those that have an economic stake in the outcome.”

For the full commentary, see:
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “DEALBOOK; Tell-Alls, Strategic Plans and Cautionary Tales.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 5, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JULY 4, 2016, and has the title “DEALBOOK; A Reading List of Tell-Alls, Strategic Plans and Cautionary Tales in Finance.”)

The book praised by Sorkin in the passage quoted above, is:
Gramm, Jeff. Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism. New York: HarperBusiness, 2016.