Enshrining business stupidity

A book by two London academics looks at how organisations enshrine stupidity

“In a world where stupidity dominates, looking good is more important than being right,” writes Professor André Spicer of London’s City University in Aeon Magazine.

Spicer and his fellow author Mats Alvesson described their results of studying dozens of organisations for their book The Stupidity Paradox.

What they found is the smartest don’t get ahead in most organisations, but those who conform with the prevailing culture which usually sets a low bar.

We started out thinking it is likely to be the smartest who got ahead. But we discovered this wasn’t the case.

Organisations hire smart people, but then positively encourage them not to use their intelligence. Asking difficult questions or thinking in greater depth is seen as a dangerous waste. Talented employees quickly learn to use their significant intellectual gifts only in the most narrow and myopic ways.

The tragedy is these organisations squander the talent of those working for them. In many respects management is destroying value rather than adding to it.

Probably the most dangerous type of organisation though are those run by managers who want to be leaders.

They see their role as not just running their business but also transforming their followers. They talk about ‘vision’, ‘belief’ and ‘authenticity’ with great verve. All this sounds like our office buildings are brimming with would-be Nelson Mandelas. However, when you take a closer look at what these self-declared leaders spend their days doing, the story is quite different.

Spicer’s article is well worth a read, if only to nod in agreement with many of the organisations and managers you’ve had to deal with in the past.

It’s worth reflecting how organisations are changing in an information rich age. While it’s tempting to think better access to data will improve their collective intelligence, it may be that algorithms only further entrench poor management practices.

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Burning the boxes

Employing technology staff may be a matter of burning, not ticking, the boxes.

“I cater to their crazy and the results are tremendous. Hire the crazy, because you need them. Those are the ones that don’t think outside the box, they burn the box and stomp on the ashes,” says Chris Pogue, Chief Information Security Officer at Nuix who I interviewed at the Black Hat conference at Las Vegas last week.

Chris was talking about hiring information security people and, as the attendees at the Black Hat and DefCon conferences show, show that philosophy is important in hiring good technology people who tend to be people who don’t recognise the boxes, let alone tick them.

That point though could be made for many occupations, many businesses that claim they value ‘creative thinking” should be thinking about burning the boxes.

In a much more competitive environment having management ‘thinking within the box’ may be one of the greatest disadvantages facing an organisation, not just in recruitment but also in identifying threats and opportunities.

Burning the boxes may well be one of the best things business leaders could do for their organisation in finding and cultivating the talent to compete in tomorrow’s economy.

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Digital natives and iPads

Is tech necessary for attracting younger workers or volunteers?

I’m writing up a review of  the Emergency Services Integrated Communications Vehicle that was showcased at the Melbourne Cisco Live event a few weeks back.

An comment by one of the National Safety Agency people during the tour was notable; “we need to have modern technology if we want to attract young people.”

The spokesperson was talking about offering iPad and Android apps for the emergency services workers, particularly in the context of firefighting volunteers having an average age approaching 50.

Needing the latest technology to attract younger volunteers or workers is an interesting view which I’m not wholly convinced about.

Do we really need the latest technology do attract younger workers and volunteers or are is this another example of trying to apply tech to a more fundamental problem?

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Do business awards help companies?

Winning business awards are great for helping a company focus on its operations, but they aren’t necessarily great for growing an organisation.

The latest clip on The Decoding the New Economy YouTube channel is an interview of Cameron Wall of Melbourne’s C3 Business Solutions about business intelligence, data analytics and whether winning awards helps a company.

Cameron’s business has been a successful enterprise having grown to over a hundred employees since being founded seven years ago.

As a high growth business, the company was listed in the 2010 BRW Fast Starters list, interestingly though Cameron didn’t see a great deal of benefit from winning the accolade.

“I look at it as being a credential, just because you get the credentials it doesn’t necessarily mean you can charge a premium in the marketplace,” Cameron says. “It all helps in terms of recognition, but we haven’t been thrown anything as a result of the award.”

On the other hand the company has won the BRW Best Australian workplace three years in a row and Cameron has found this improved the business’ recruitment.

“Being in a service company you often hear ‘people are our greatest asset’, basically they are our only asset.” Cameron says, “Having a great place to work is really important for us.”

Cameron found that after winning the great place to work that the flow of resumes increased. “Some of the benefits of that were a lot of people applied to join C3 and it makes the recruitment process a lot easier.”

How business awards do help companies is in reviewing their operations and practices as Cameron explained, “using the great place to work process is a great way to understand if we’re trending upward, downward and where we’re going.”

“It was a difficult award to win, as you get probed by every angle.”

With the growth in data science, business analytics and Big Data companies like C3 are going to need good employees in the global race for talent. Having a reputation as fine place to work is a good way of winning the global race for talent.

Trophy image by RoyM through sxc.hu

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Google and the workplace

Google’s evolution in hiring practices and HR policies describes the risks of relying on gut feelings and the importance of workplace accountability.

Over the years Google has attracted attention for its employment practices, particularly for its quirky interview questions which challenged many a genius.

It turns out those brainteasers have proved to be less than effective, as has the interminable interview process that saw job candidates endure dozens of meetings before being offered a role at the company.

A recent New York Times interview with Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, discusses some of the company’s employment experiences along with some of the ways the organisation manages staff.

What’s notable is Bock’s findings on Google’s gruelling interview process with its brain teaser questions;

We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship.

The New York Times interview is particularly interesting as it reveals much of Google’s legendary employment criteria – particularly that of hiring only graduates with high university marks – turned out to be effectively useless.

Most telling though is what Bock found about managers and leadership;

We’ve actually made it harder to be a bad manager. If you go back to somebody and say, “Look, you’re an eighth-percentile people manager at Google. This is what people say.” They might say, “Well, you know, I’m actually better than that.” And then I’ll say, “That’s how you feel. But these are the facts that people are reporting about how they experience you.”

You don’t actually have to do that much more. Because for most people, just knowing that information causes them to change their conduct.

Who would have thought that accountability would make people behave better and more effectively?

Despite Google’s learning on hiring and management, things still go wrong. Business Insider’s Nicholas Carson has a wonderful story on the difficulties at restaurant review site Zagats which was taken over by the search engine giant and absorbed into their maps and geolocation divison.

The problems at Zagats though owe more to a cultural mismatch, as Carson writes;

It’s about the collision between the wealthy dream world of the technology industry and the scratch-and-claw meager existence of freelance writers.

One of the notable things about the current dot com boom is the contempt technologists and entrepreneurs have for content creators.
In the Silicon Valley view of the world founders and coders deserve to be generously paid but artists, musicians and writers should be thankful for the exposure they get and the odd dime thrown their way.
Google’s struggles with Zagats also exposes another problem with the tech industry’s hiring practices – that of ‘permatemps’ who never get on the payroll and have few benefits and no security. For years this was a problem at Microsoft and it remains a common practice today.
The story of Google’s evolution in hiring practices and HR policies is something all managers should read as it describes the risks of relying on gut feelings and the importance of workplace accountability.

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Walmart pays for cutting staff

Cutting staff numbers is costing Walmart dearly as customers desert the retailer for better stocked competitors.

Along with the carpark test, a lack of customer service is one of the best indicators that a company has lost its way.

Unattended reception desks, closed cash registers and deserted delivery docks are reliable indicators management has focused on short term staff savings which will ultimately cost the business dearly.

Walmart is the latest example of this with Bloomberg Businessweek reporting that US shoppers are deserting the chain because shelves are empty and stores don’t have enough staff.

The claim stock is piling up out the back of stores is particularly concerning, the just in time inventory management of modern retail chains means there’s little room for error as outlets don’t have a lot of space whil the cash flow of the business and its suppliers is based on getting goods quickly into the hands of eager consumers.

Some of Walmart’s pain will be spread among suppliers as the store’s contracts will push undoubtedly some of the costs of rejected deliveries back onto logistics companies, effectively creating problems through the entire supply chain.

No doubt there’s plenty of angry suppliers and truck drivers who are grumbling about lost time and payments on Walmart contracts. That won’t be good news for the company’s buyers when contracts come up for negotiation.

Even though Walmart’s management can throw some of their problems over the fence, the fundamental issue of losing customers can’t be missed.

Walmart’s isn’t the only retailer who’s fallen for the short term fix of cutting store staff to give a quick profit boost as department stores and big box outlets around the world struggle with the damaging effects of not being able to serve customers.

That Walmart, one of the industry’s global leaders, would make such a mis-step shows the pressures on managements as economies deleverage and credit wary consumers decide that don’t need more junk in their homes.

Cutting costs isn’t going to address those bigger trends, it’s going to take original thinking and management commitment to adding real value to customers.

Service is just the start of a long process of refocusing the retail empires.

Image of Albany Walmart courtesy of UpstateNYer through Wikimedia

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Recruiting big data

Software company Evolv is an example of how businesses can use big data

One of the predictions for 2020 is that decade’s business successes will be those who use big data well.

A good example of a big data tool is recruitment software Evolv that helps businesses predict not only the best person to hire but also who is likely to leave the organisation.

For employee retention, Evolv looks at a range of variables which can include anything from gas prices and social media usage to local unemployment rates then pulls these together to predict which staff are most likely to leave.

“It’s hard to understand why it’s radically predictive, but it’s radically predictive,” Venture Beat quotes Jim Meyerle, Evolv’s cofounder.

There are some downsides in such software though – as some of the comments to the VentureBeat story point out – a blind faith in an alogrithm can destroy company morale and much more.

Recruiters as an industry haven’t a good track record in using data well, while they’ve had candidate databases for two decades and stories abound of poor use of keyword searches carried out by lazy or incompetent headhunters. The same is now happening with agencies trawling LinkedIn for candidates.

Using these tools and data correctly going to separate successful recruitment agencies and HR departments from the also-rans.

It’s the same in most businesses – the tools are available and knowing them how to use them properly will be a key skill for this decade.

Job classifieds image courtesy of Markinpool through SXC.HU

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