Do you ever feel a responsibility to act happier than you are?
Our attitudes affect the people around us. When we're sad it makes the people who care about us sad too. And when we smile it makes others smile. All moods are shared moods. Even total strangers can pick up your vibes.
So, do you have an obligation to fake happiness if there is nothing to be gained by complaining? Suppose you have a bad day at work - nothing horrible, just a lot of little things going wrong. Sharing your woes might make you feel better, but it will be at the expense of a friend, loved one or coworker who has to listen to it. And dwelling on problems that can't be fixed just gives the problems more power than they deserve.
It usually feels good to complain, which is why we do it. And of course the situation is reciprocal in the sense that you have to listen to the woes of others just as they listen to yours. So it's a fair arrangement in that sense. But wouldn't we all be better off if everyone just faked it and said they were having a terrific day even if they weren't?
Scientists know that pretending to be happy - specifically by smiling - can make you happier in actuality. And when you have a bad day, what you really want is to feel good again. So for your own good, and for the sake of your loved ones, shouldn't you be a huge phony and say your day went great? From a practical standpoint, that would seem to be your best strategy.
every time someone asks "How are you?" I always answer "Good" or "sawa" no matter how my day is really going. I do that partly because it helps manipulate me into a good mood and partly because I know it gives the person who asked a little boost. That's how we roll.
In the course of a normal day, folks might ask how you are feeling several times. Imagine saying you are ok a thousand times a year. That much reinforcement of a message has to have an impact on your brain over time. If instead you say you are merely "not okay" a thousand times a year, will that lock you into mediocrity? I think it might.
We humans leave a lot of happiness on the table by believing our moods are caused entirely by our luck on any given day. But I think moods are 80% controllable by lifestyle. If you exercise, get enough sleep, eat well, and project a positive attitude you can generally have a good day even if the facts of the day argue otherwise.
Obviously no one can act happy in the face of genuine disasters or bad news. And injury probably isn't much helped by fake smiling. But for the everyday ups and downs of mood, I think you control those if you want to. You just have to decide if you're in charge of your own mood or you want to delegate that decision to chance. In my experience, at least half of the population delegates their moods to chance. That's a lot of lost opportunity for happiness.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
ON SECOND THOUGHT ... MANAGEMENT IS NOT ENTIRELY USELESS
Recently I heard that Valve, a highly successful video game company, has four hundred employees and no management structure. According to all reports, they make that model work.
I spent a lot of time trying to imagine working for a company with no management. How do they resolve conflicts, set priorities, measure performance, fire idiots, and all the rest? I couldn't picture it working. Keep in mind that I shout a lot that management is mostly worthless, yet even I couldn't accept the idea that management is 100% unnecessary. I was skeptical.
My best guess was that the founders of Valve do plenty of managing, but perhaps it sounds cooler to say they don't. Or perhaps the founders are bad managers and it just feels more comfortable to say they don't even try. In any case, I was ready to pass judgment: The management-free company is bullshit.
But before I passed judgment, an inconvenient realization entered my brain: I've been working on a new company for over a year and we have no management whatsoever. I'll tell you more about the company in coming days. For now, the interesting part is that I never once - in the course of an entire year - noticed that we have no management until after I heard the story about Valve.
In our case, we have a group of people who have different skills and that seems to be enough. Our decision-making so far seems to follow a rational model that goes like this:
1. We discuss the question (by email or conf. call).
2. Everyone gives an opinion or adds information.
3. The smartest choice becomes obvious to all.
4. The end.
That decision-making model might not work in your company if some of your coworkers are worthless. There's always the one person in every meeting who keeps changing the topic, or doesn't understand the issue, or insists he knows more than he does, or is bluffing to cover his ass, or is jockeying for a promotion, and so on. To put it in clearer terms: Management exists to minimize the problems created by its own hiring mistakes.
Valve says the secret of their management-free environment is hiring good people. That sounds right to me. We don't have any weak contributors in our new company so we have never felt a need for management.
One of the interesting aspects of better global communications, better access to information, and better mobility is that collectively it reduces the risk of making hiring mistakes. When employers were limited to hiring people who lived nearby, and the only information at their disposal was lie-filled resumes, every growing company would necessarily absorb a lot of losers. But now that entrepreneurs can hire the best people from anywhere in the world, we have for the first time in human history the ability to create teams so capable they require no management structure. That's new.
I think the manager-free model only works for a business that has high margins and depends more on creating hits than cutting costs. The videogame business fits that model, as do many Internet businesses. And in both cases entrepreneurs can hire from anywhere in the world.
So here's my summary: Management only exists to compensate for its own poor hiring decisions. The Internet makes it easier to locate and then work with capable partners. Therefore, the need for management will shrink - at least for some types of businesses - because entrepreneurs have the tools to make fewer hiring mistakes in the first place.
Management won't entirely go away, but as technology makes it easier to form competent teams without at least one disruptive or worthless worker in the group, the need for management will continue to decline.
I spent a lot of time trying to imagine working for a company with no management. How do they resolve conflicts, set priorities, measure performance, fire idiots, and all the rest? I couldn't picture it working. Keep in mind that I shout a lot that management is mostly worthless, yet even I couldn't accept the idea that management is 100% unnecessary. I was skeptical.
My best guess was that the founders of Valve do plenty of managing, but perhaps it sounds cooler to say they don't. Or perhaps the founders are bad managers and it just feels more comfortable to say they don't even try. In any case, I was ready to pass judgment: The management-free company is bullshit.
But before I passed judgment, an inconvenient realization entered my brain: I've been working on a new company for over a year and we have no management whatsoever. I'll tell you more about the company in coming days. For now, the interesting part is that I never once - in the course of an entire year - noticed that we have no management until after I heard the story about Valve.
In our case, we have a group of people who have different skills and that seems to be enough. Our decision-making so far seems to follow a rational model that goes like this:
1. We discuss the question (by email or conf. call).
2. Everyone gives an opinion or adds information.
3. The smartest choice becomes obvious to all.
4. The end.
That decision-making model might not work in your company if some of your coworkers are worthless. There's always the one person in every meeting who keeps changing the topic, or doesn't understand the issue, or insists he knows more than he does, or is bluffing to cover his ass, or is jockeying for a promotion, and so on. To put it in clearer terms: Management exists to minimize the problems created by its own hiring mistakes.
Valve says the secret of their management-free environment is hiring good people. That sounds right to me. We don't have any weak contributors in our new company so we have never felt a need for management.
One of the interesting aspects of better global communications, better access to information, and better mobility is that collectively it reduces the risk of making hiring mistakes. When employers were limited to hiring people who lived nearby, and the only information at their disposal was lie-filled resumes, every growing company would necessarily absorb a lot of losers. But now that entrepreneurs can hire the best people from anywhere in the world, we have for the first time in human history the ability to create teams so capable they require no management structure. That's new.
I think the manager-free model only works for a business that has high margins and depends more on creating hits than cutting costs. The videogame business fits that model, as do many Internet businesses. And in both cases entrepreneurs can hire from anywhere in the world.
So here's my summary: Management only exists to compensate for its own poor hiring decisions. The Internet makes it easier to locate and then work with capable partners. Therefore, the need for management will shrink - at least for some types of businesses - because entrepreneurs have the tools to make fewer hiring mistakes in the first place.
Management won't entirely go away, but as technology makes it easier to form competent teams without at least one disruptive or worthless worker in the group, the need for management will continue to decline.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
HIRE OR FIRE?
Imagine a manager who is excellent at identifying and hiring talent but not so good at firing the people who need it. Compare that situation to a manager who does an average job of hiring but is spectacular at weeding out the bad apples in the group. All other things being equal, which manager will do better?
Here's the summary:
Manager 1: Great at hiring, average at firing
Manager 2: Great at firing, average at hiring
I'm going to cast my vote for the manager who does a better job of firing than hiring. My reasoning is that one can never know for sure who will be a good hire because people are skilled at concealing their personality flaws during interviews. Once hired, people feel free to let their inner assholes out. So hiring is an extraordinarily imprecise process.
Firing, on the other hand, is far more objective. Ask any group of employees who among them needs to be fired and most people will turn and point to the same guy. While it's hard to know who you should hire, it can be easy to know who to fire. The manager who is good at firing only needs the cold-hearted resolve to do it in a timely manner. There generally isn't much doubt about who should be fired.
I also wonder if one person can have the skill to be good at hiring and also good at firing. I would think that knowing who to hire requires a high degree of social empathy. The skilled interviewer makes a connection through conversation and eye contact and "feels" the other person. A manager who is socially talented might pick up little clues from an applicant that others would miss, such as arrogance or deceptiveness or moral flexibility.
On the other hand, a manager who is good at firing might be high on the sociopath scale. Where the socially talented manager would find it intolerably painful to look someone in the eye and fire them, the sociopath sees it as just another Tuesday. Common sense tells us the sociopath would pull the trigger sooner and get rid of the bad apples.
In my corporate experience, which includes perhaps a dozen or more work groups, I've never thought to myself that we could do better if only we could hire some superstars. Instead, I always think we need to get rid of a few obvious duds and trouble-makers and everything will flow smoothly after that.
Keep in mind that I don't work in a group that invents smartphones or does anything sexy. We don't need geniuses. We just need to get the work done.
Over time, the manager who fires best will end up with top talent through a survival-of-the-fittest process.
Obviously I've oversimplified things. But if you accept that firing is more critical than hiring, I will move on to my point.
Given that firing might be more important than hiring, and given that employees are well-aware of who among them needs to be fired, it suggests a better system. As with most of my ideas, it is entirely impractical but fun to think about.
Imagine that instead of managers making firing decisions, only the employees themselves make those decisions as a group. And let's say the job of managers is to set targets for the number of people in the group who need to be fired by what deadline. For example, if you have a hundred employees in a group, and the group hasn't performed well, the manager might say 10% have to be voted out of the group by year end. If the group is performing well, the manager might set the target at 5%.
In my corporate days Ive learned that coworkers don't have much reason to be nice to one another. But you would be nice to anyone who had a vote on your future. You might even be proactive in doing well by your coworkers because that's the sort of thing that gets remembered at voting time.
I realize that managers already take input from employees on what they think of coworkers, but that turns into a lot of he-said, she-said. And coworkers generally don't say a coworker is toxic even if that is the only word that describes it. Instead, you tell your manager that Wilson is spreading rumors, or not returning phone calls, or whatever is the specific crime, and your boss treats it as isolated cases that can surely be managed. A manager will usually give both sides the benefit of the doubt. But if employees make their own collective firing decisions, no manager would be involved to water-down, distort, or delay the process. You simply vote the toxic guy out.
There are already a number of companies who set firing targets. But managers are still in charge of execution. And those systems tend to be draconian because the level of firing is independent of the group's performance.
Under my proposed system, in which the manager sets firing targets based on performance, and employees make firing decisions, you create an interesting new dynamic. Under the old system, if my coworker does bad work it is mostly his problem so long as my manager sees me as a good worker. I'll get my raise even if the other guy doesn't. Under my system, the group has a collective goal of convincing the manager that the firing level should be set as zero. Employees have a common enemy of sorts in the manager. I would think that would be good for teamwork.
What do you think of a system in which managers set firing targets and employees decide who goes?
Here's the summary:
Manager 1: Great at hiring, average at firing
Manager 2: Great at firing, average at hiring
I'm going to cast my vote for the manager who does a better job of firing than hiring. My reasoning is that one can never know for sure who will be a good hire because people are skilled at concealing their personality flaws during interviews. Once hired, people feel free to let their inner assholes out. So hiring is an extraordinarily imprecise process.
Firing, on the other hand, is far more objective. Ask any group of employees who among them needs to be fired and most people will turn and point to the same guy. While it's hard to know who you should hire, it can be easy to know who to fire. The manager who is good at firing only needs the cold-hearted resolve to do it in a timely manner. There generally isn't much doubt about who should be fired.
I also wonder if one person can have the skill to be good at hiring and also good at firing. I would think that knowing who to hire requires a high degree of social empathy. The skilled interviewer makes a connection through conversation and eye contact and "feels" the other person. A manager who is socially talented might pick up little clues from an applicant that others would miss, such as arrogance or deceptiveness or moral flexibility.
On the other hand, a manager who is good at firing might be high on the sociopath scale. Where the socially talented manager would find it intolerably painful to look someone in the eye and fire them, the sociopath sees it as just another Tuesday. Common sense tells us the sociopath would pull the trigger sooner and get rid of the bad apples.
In my corporate experience, which includes perhaps a dozen or more work groups, I've never thought to myself that we could do better if only we could hire some superstars. Instead, I always think we need to get rid of a few obvious duds and trouble-makers and everything will flow smoothly after that.
Keep in mind that I don't work in a group that invents smartphones or does anything sexy. We don't need geniuses. We just need to get the work done.
Over time, the manager who fires best will end up with top talent through a survival-of-the-fittest process.
Obviously I've oversimplified things. But if you accept that firing is more critical than hiring, I will move on to my point.
Given that firing might be more important than hiring, and given that employees are well-aware of who among them needs to be fired, it suggests a better system. As with most of my ideas, it is entirely impractical but fun to think about.
Imagine that instead of managers making firing decisions, only the employees themselves make those decisions as a group. And let's say the job of managers is to set targets for the number of people in the group who need to be fired by what deadline. For example, if you have a hundred employees in a group, and the group hasn't performed well, the manager might say 10% have to be voted out of the group by year end. If the group is performing well, the manager might set the target at 5%.
In my corporate days Ive learned that coworkers don't have much reason to be nice to one another. But you would be nice to anyone who had a vote on your future. You might even be proactive in doing well by your coworkers because that's the sort of thing that gets remembered at voting time.
I realize that managers already take input from employees on what they think of coworkers, but that turns into a lot of he-said, she-said. And coworkers generally don't say a coworker is toxic even if that is the only word that describes it. Instead, you tell your manager that Wilson is spreading rumors, or not returning phone calls, or whatever is the specific crime, and your boss treats it as isolated cases that can surely be managed. A manager will usually give both sides the benefit of the doubt. But if employees make their own collective firing decisions, no manager would be involved to water-down, distort, or delay the process. You simply vote the toxic guy out.
There are already a number of companies who set firing targets. But managers are still in charge of execution. And those systems tend to be draconian because the level of firing is independent of the group's performance.
Under my proposed system, in which the manager sets firing targets based on performance, and employees make firing decisions, you create an interesting new dynamic. Under the old system, if my coworker does bad work it is mostly his problem so long as my manager sees me as a good worker. I'll get my raise even if the other guy doesn't. Under my system, the group has a collective goal of convincing the manager that the firing level should be set as zero. Employees have a common enemy of sorts in the manager. I would think that would be good for teamwork.
What do you think of a system in which managers set firing targets and employees decide who goes?
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