I was doing some reading on cultural differences in management styles and, once again, BPS Research has a cool study.  There is a stream of research on negotiation that shows the strategic expression of anger is effective, apparently because it is taken as a sign you are "tough" and thus leads your intimidated opponent to make concessions.  A new study by Hajo Adam and his colleagues suggests that this may be a culturally specific finding, which applies to people of Western descent but not necessarily others.  In a pair of studies that compared people of European descent to people of East Asian descent they found, in both a hypothetical and a more realistic negotiation, that people in the two groups had opposite reactions to negotiating with an angry opponent:

"Western-ancestry students were more likely to make a concession to their negotiation partner whereas the East-Asian ancestry students were less likely to do so."

This study is quite fascinating for at least three reasons.  The first is that these are pronounced cultural effects.  The second is they aren't simply pronounced in magnitude -- rather they demonstrate a reversal depending on the cultural background. So although many of us may claim that people are the same no matter where they are from, this apparently isn't so (at least on some dimensions).  The third is more practical: if you are a Westerner and are accustomed to getting your way by browbeating negotiation opponents (and speaking in an angry tone), your usual approach may backfire if you try to use it on East Asians. And if you are from an Asian background, and have to negotiate with Westerners, it might help you to get pissed-off (or at least pretend to be) at times. 

Cool study.  And instructive. It is only one study, but there are other experiments that show such cultural differences on other dimensions -- for example that Westerners are more like to "free-ride" or engage in "social-loafing" then people raised in Asian cultures.  For example, this study found that Chinese school kids performed better when working in pairs than working alone on an "auditory tracking task"; but U.S. school kids performed better when working alone than in pairs.  Again, there is a reverse effect, and evidence that well, we aren't all the same. 

What are your reactions to these cultural differences?  The usual explanation for such findings is that Asians are from "collectivistic" cultures and that Westerners are from "individualistic" cultures.  Is that why? Any other explanations or implications strike you? 

P.S. The citation for the negotiation study is: Adam H, Shirako A, & Maddux WW (2010). Cultural variance in the interpersonal effects of anger in negotiations. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21 (6)

BPS Research does it again. Check-out this study.  The upshot:

Forced to wait for fifteen minutes at the airport luggage carousel leaves many of us miserable and irritated. Yet if we'd spent the same waiting time walking to the carousel we'd be far happier. That's according to Christopher Hsee and colleagues, who say we're happier when busy but that unfortunately our instinct is for idleness. Unless we have a reason for being active we choose to do nothing - an evolutionary vestige that ensures we conserve energy.

This research explains nearly 100% of my emotions, actions, and predilections!  And it is very consistent with what every parent knows: When the kids are complaining about being bored or are sitting around being grumpy, get them to do SOMETHING no matter how trivial or inane it may seem.  This may apply to bosses too, but I have to think about it.

The citation is: Hsee CK, Yang AX, & Wang L (2010). Idleness aversion and the need for justifiable busyness. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21(7). 

I was interviewed for a New York Times column by Phyllis Korkki on The True Calling That Wasn't, which appeared last Sunday.  In course of the conversation, I started thinking about what I learned from Richard Hackman (one of my mentors) about what kinds of jobs motivate people and about theory and research on identity in organizations.   In doing so, I realized that while much of what I write about focuses on bad versus good bosses, jobs, and organizations, that I ought to also be emphasizing that there are many perfectly good jobs out there held be people who are, nonetheless, quite unhappy because the kind of work they do, the mission of their organization, and a host of other factors simply do not mesh well who they are and what they would want to be. 

Of course, one of the key dimensions here is whether a person is an extrovert or an introvert.  I had a little glimpse of this with my own family a few weeks back when we were on vacation in Mexico, and my daughter and wife started talking about what job they would most like at the resort.  My daughter loved the idea of being the bartender because there would so many people to talk to; my wife picked being one of the landscapers because the idea of working in silence and sustaining beautiful plants and grounds appealed to her sense of order and aesthetics.  In her case, I should add one of the main reasons that she loves her job is that helping girls grow into confident young woman with great skills and character counts so strongly in her value system, that doing all the extroverted things she does as CEO of the Girl Scouts of Northern California trumps her inner introvert.

But some of us have jobs that don't fit who we are and we would be much happier doing another kind of work.  As the article says, in talking to Phyllis, I thought of three signs that someone is in the wrong job. These are:

1. "People whose careers aren’t the right fit often feel like impostors, even if they are very skilled at their jobs."

2. "Another symptom is constant annoyance with the demands being made of them, even though these are reasonable for the business they’re in."

3. "An additional warning sign is a feeling that their current work doesn’t rank very high in their value system."

This little list just begins to scratch the surface.  As we are -- I hope -- beginning to move to a time when many people who have decent jobs that don't fit their identity can find a better calling.

I wonder: What are other signs that a competent person is in the wrong job?  And, when they are looking for a new job, what are signs it will be better for them?

One of the themes I have been writing about lately is on The Delicate Art of Being Perfectly Assertive. I have been focusing on this skill as a hallmark of great bosses, but I have been noticing lately that it is also a hallmark effective people more generally.  I love working with moderately pushy and competent people -- be it my research relationships, other colleagues, my clients, the folks who often write me emails and comment on this and other blogs where I post, or friends and acquaintances.  I don't like dealing with flakes who never answer or follow-up.  But I especially don't like dealing with people who treat everything as an emergency that needs to be done right now.  I can think of at least five different types of people who drive me especially nuts in this regard:

1. Friends and colleagues who believe that their concerns are ALWAYS so important that they can interrupt whatever I am doing.  I had one colleague who, although she was competent and caring in many ways, believed that whatever concern she had was so important that regardless of who I was meeting with, she had permission to barge into my office, drag me out into the hall (or if it was a student, she often ordered the student in the hall), and then press her (usually) non-urgent issue on me.

2. People who are very flaky about answering my questions and inquiries, but whenever they have a question or concern, they make very clear -- using terms like ASAP or those awful exclamation marks in Outlook that their concerns must be answered right now, no matter how trivial.

During the years that my wife was managing partner of a large law firm, she always described the use of those exclamation marks in emails as a personality characteristic.  She had some partners who never sent emails about anything without using those things.  Recently, I was dealing with a corporate lawyer over the release of a teaching case and -- although there were perhaps 15 people involved in the discussion from four different organizations -- only one person used those awful exclamation marks and used words like "urgent" and "ASAP," the lawyer.  I wrote him a note saying that he was doing a disservice to himself and his profession by using such repeated and claims of urgency, as it reinforced negative stereotypes of lawyers.  I also noted that he was the least responsive person in the group to requests from others.  

3. People who I have never met, but insist that their questions or concerns are so important that I must drop whatever I am doing right now to deal with their concerns.  As readers of this blog who email me or make comments know, I really do try to be responsive to everyone's emails and questions.  But I can only move so fast and must do triage.  I got a phone call from a woman -- followed by an email -- I have never met the other day demanding that I stop everything I am doing and help her with deal with her asshole boss.  I feel bad for her and I try to be responsive to such people, but her request came on a day that my dog was very sick, and I had to deal with that.  She wrote back a couple more times and I can't bring myself to answer her emails.

4. People who show no respect for the fact I have a personal life and a family, and there are many times when those concerns come first.   Frankly, I am pretty aggressive about pushing back when people do this to me.  I really do put my kids and wife first most of the time.  But I do have some colleagues who treat this a weakness and press me to change priorities.  I have become especially clear on this since having open heart surgery in April.  

5. People who won't let a conversation end.   I am a pretty friendly guy, but like everyone else, I have lots of different things to do, and there are some people I deal with who don't seem to get even the most blatant efforts to end the conversation.  Saying "I have to go now, I am late" seems to cause some of colleagues to block the door or grab my short so I can't leave!

At this point, I best emphasize that I am not perfect and have committed all of the sins listed above.  But I am trying to do such things less and hope I am making progress.  In closing, I have two questions for you:

1. What kinds of overbearing people do you find especially distressing?

2. How can you fight back against such intruders without being an overbearing jerk yourself?  In my old age, I seem to be using passive aggressive methods more -- being especially slow to respond to people who want an instant answer for example.   I still use confrontation but am trying to learn to be more polite about it.

This reminds me, I had a colleague ask a really funny and intriguing question a few weeks back: How would the Dalai Lama tell someone to fuck-off? I am using that as a headline because I think that might be the skill required here -- the ability to gently, firmly, and graciously assert yourself.  And it is a great question -- and it is a great book title too! 

Check out Tom's new post at HBR on Five Ways Pixar Makes Better Decisions.   As often strikes me when I learn more about a great company like Pixar, their success is grounded in knowing and consistently doing obvious but powerful things.  While some management gurus are saying we have to reinvent management for the times, what they are doing at Pixar are approaches that I have been around for a long time.

Indeed, when we interviewed Brad Bird (Academy Award winning director of Pixar blockbusters The Incredibles and Ratatouille) he emphasized that the most important lessons he learned -- like persistent attention to quality, the power of pride in doing good work, constant feedback and constructive conflict, and on and on -- came from his early interactions with the master animators ( known as Walt's Nine Old Men ) at Disney who produced classic films like Snow White, Dumbo, and so on.

Here is just a little taste from Tom's great post:

Even though directors have autonomy, they get feedback from others. "Dailies," or movies in progress, are shown for feedback to the entire animation crew. In The Economist interview, Catmull also describes a more extensive periodic peer review process:

We have a structure so they get their feedback from their peers. ... Every two or three months they present the film to the other filmmakers...and they will go through, and they will tear the film apart. Directors aren't forced to respond to the feedback, but they generally do — and the films are generally better for it.

This is a great example of striking a healthy balance between autonomy and control, which is always a balancing act.

Also, I wonder, do people agree with my argument that there really isn't difference between what great bosses did 50 or 100 years ago and what they do now? Or, as some thought leaders argue, it is time to reinvent management?  My view, perhaps too cynical, is that claims that a brand new management paradigm and practices have been invented, that I as a thought leader or guru am selling them, and if you don't use my stuff or accept my given truth, you are doomed for trouble, smacks of snake oil.  

P.S. If you want to read a great book on Pixar, I suggest The Pixar Touch, which I wrote about here. Their history will just amaze you.

Today, Julia Kirby over at HBR posted number 6 of my list of 12 Things That Good Bosses Believe.  My new post digs into nuances of a theme that I have been writing about for years, attitude of wisdom and the related notion that the best bosses have strong opinions, weakly held.  It is called Confident But Not Really Sure, a line from a Tom Petty song.  I use a number of examples, but perhaps the most timely and compelling comes from my former student and now colleague in multiple d.school adventures, Bonny Warner-Simi.  As I say:

Many of the bosses I admire most — from P&G's AG Lafley, to IDEO's David Kelley, to Pepsi's Indra Nooyi, to venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Randy Komisar, to Xerox's Anne Mulcahy, to less well-known bosses like JetBlue Director Bonny Simi — seem to have this ability to act confidently on what they know, while doubting their knowledge. Take Bonny, for example, who is a three-time Olympian in the luge and still an active commercial pilot (both excellent metaphors for the need to maintain forward motion while making judicious course corrections!). She recently led JetBlue's successful effort (after a pair of failed ones) to develop procedures for delaying with flight delays and airport shutdowns caused by bad weather. Dealing with such "irregular operations" is crucial to JetBlue's reputation, even its survival. Remember its infamous failure to deal with a winter storm delay, when it kept thousands of passengers packed in planes sitting on socked-in runways for hours and hours? That was February 14th 2007, and the incident not only made for horrible press, it ultimately cost CEO David Neeleman his job. Bonny and her team tackled the challenge through a process of prototyping, identifying all the steps involved in a model shut down and re-opening of airport operations, and then putting their refined system through its paces again and again under different scenarios, looking for the ways it could fail them. Iterative prototyping like this is so powerful because the attitude of wisdom is at its heart. Each iteration represented a decisive act: Bonny's team had arrived at a new approach they felt confident about implementing. But even while believing it would work, they knew their job was to stay atuned to new information coming in, look for signs of problems and imperfections, and find ways to improve upon it further. They were confident, but not really sure. Early signs suggest that the "irregular operations" systems and procedures are a huge improvement; they worked perfectly earlier this year when JetBlue was forced to suspend operations at Kennedy Airport for a day as a result of a bad storm: There were no stranded passengers on planes, operations resumed to nearly normal levels the next day, and it was all so routine that the press didn't write a thing about it. The company, Chip and Dan Heath tell us, now recovers from major delays and setbacks 40% faster than just a year or so ago. That saves it millions of dollars, and buys incalculable amounts of customer goodwill.

Along similar lines, I was quite struck with a New York Times article this morning about Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who is generally lauded for handling the meltdown better than any other CEO prior to and during the financial meltdown.  The article is interesting because he expresses a a great deal of confidence about things the bank is doing now, but at the same time, is open about things he worries about and cannot control.   As the Times notes:

But taking a victory lap, or even basking in the adulation he has received while his fellow bank chiefs have been pounded, is the last thing Mr. Dimon claims to want. He knows all too well the dangers of swaggering in the footsteps of former Wall Street kings like Sanford I. Weill, his onetime mentor, who helped build Citigroup into an institution so unwieldy it nearly went bankrupt, or Lloyd C. Blankfein, the Goldman Sachs chief whose crown has been tarnished by accusations of double-dealing under his watch.

Many bad things have come of the meltdown, but if it has made Wall Street titans like Mr. Dimon a bit wiser and along related lines, a bit more modest, at least something good has come of it.

This all leads me to a question you might answer here or over at HBR. Who are the wisest leaders you can name? Who are the least wise? 

I first heard this saying a few years back from Joe McCannon of the Institute for Health Improvement, who was campaign manager for an amazing effort by this non-profit to reduce the number of preventable deaths in U.S. Hospitals. It was called the 100,000 Lives Campaign, which according to most experts who have looked at the data, probably did reduce 100,000 preventable deaths as a result of implementing simple evidence-based practices like hand-washing and keeping the bed elevated about 45 degrees for patients on respirators.  Huggy Rao and I have written about the campaign in the McKinsey Quarterly if you want to read more.

I was quite taken with Joe's use of that expression and emphasis on logistics and the campaign he led did have a grand strategy and a big hairy goal.  But big hairy goals don't mean much without thousands of small wins.   My colleague Jeff Pfeffer and I have argued for years that implementation, not strategy, is what usually separates winners from losers in most industries, and generally explains the difference between success and failure in most organizational change efforts, sales campaigns and so on.  I also believe (and wrote here) that one of the dangers of talking about leadership versus management is that the implication is that leadership is this important high status activity and management is the shit work done by the little people.  My view (and there is plenty of evidence to support it) is that effective management -- the work done by the collection of bosses and their followers in an organization, if you will -- is probably most crucial to success. After all, they are the people who turn dreams into reality.

P.S.  There is also another possibility.  It could be that strategy is very important to the success of firms, but it does not explain differences among firms in an industry because following the right strategy is required to stay alive and that executing strategy explains the differences in performance among living firms.  In other words, all the firms that followed the wrong strategy are dead -- which I think is a reasonable and quite plausible explanation and is supported by some research in a subfield of organizational studies called population ecology.

 

I got a note from my Italian literary agent, Roberto, last week with the proposed cover for the updated Italian version of The No Asshole Rule, which appears in September.  I love it.  What do you think? 

I have been amazed by the popularity of the book in Italy, as it has sold over 200,000 copies.

The latest Fortune magazine has a list of the Smartest People in Tech, they listed 50, starting with Steve Jobs. Also on the list was IDEO's Diego Rodriguez, who has written the inspiring Metacool blog for years (Don't miss his innovation principles on the right side of his blog).  I was delighted to see Diego on the list because we are friends and he has helped me in many ways over the year.(he got me started on both blogging and the twittering thing). But I was also delighted because, after seeing him in action at IDEO for over a decade (off and on, he went to Harvard Business Business school and did a stint at Intuit), first as young engineer and now as a partner and founder of their business design discipline.  I also taught a class at the d.school with Diego called Creating Infectious Action the first year the Stanford d.school was open. 

I have him watched him grow into one of the most imaginative and practical people in the innovation world.  Diego's ability to understand design and business, and their intersection, at such a high level constantly amazes me -- he takes design principles (often with his own twist)  such "the mind of a child,"  "build to think," "prototype until you puke,"  and "failure sucks but instructs" and then applies them to hardcore business problems -- strategy, organizational design, the CEO's role in a company, performance metrics for innovation -- that are both new and at the same time reflect the practical realities of running a business. 

I am glad to hear this as it is nice pat on the back for Diego.  I am also glad to hear it because it is a nice reflection on IDEO and the Stanford d.school.  And I am also glad because Diego's success, like so many people I know, would not have been possible without David Kelley's amazing creative courage and vision, as in the process of founding and building IDEO and then the Stanford d.school, Diego is just one of many of us who have been taught and inspired by David, and benefited in more tangible ways too, from the the fruits of David's imagination (See this recent post on creative confidence for a bit more about David along with this older one on the inevitable messiness of innovative work).

Once again, congratulations to Diego.

I have been blogging a bit here about the strategic use of swearing (see here and here), which was originally inspired by Dan McGinn's great post at HBR on "Should Leaders Ever Swear?" This was followed by a podcast at HBR where I talked about about the same subject.  NPR got wind of all this and I was interviewed for a story that aired on NPR yesterday, on All Things Considered.  It is called Power Players and Profanity, and it a four minute segment that covers characters from Carol Bartz and Michelle Obama, to President's Obama and Bush, to General George Patton.  Here is a little excerpt from the transcript:

Gen. Patton was once quoted as saying, "When I want it to stick, I give it to them loud and dirty." Sutton says that's consistent with the idea that words are just tools in an executive toolbox.

"Sometimes, when you really need that wallop, you want to get out the word. But then there's other times when you don't want to give it to them 'loud and dirty,' because you embarrass them. You get them all cranked up and you've got a mess on your hands."

This comment was inspired by  inspired by by psychologist Timothy Jay's work on the evolutionary value of swearing. As noted in an earlier post, he wrote: Taboo words persist because they can intensify emotional communication to a degree that nontaboo words cannot .  Fuck you! immediately conveys a level of contempt unparalleled by nontaboo words; there is no way to convey Fuck You! with polite speech." 

Finally, a comment about the experience with NPR; I was interviewed on Friday by Lynn Neary, on tape, and had felt as if I had not answered a couple of the questions very well.  NPR's great editing made me sound much more coherent than I was, and I appreciate it.  

P.S. The link to the story has both a written summary and the audio.

The people at Rypple seem to be going nuts in anticipation of the webinar that starts in less than hour, and they clearly work to deadlines!  They also just finished a 15 item quiz called the B.O.S.S. that you can take to determine which fictional famous boss you are most like -- Darth Vader, Miranda Priestly, Michael Scott, and so on.  I just took it, and it said I was Captain Kirk.  Honestly, I am not that good a boss, so I think the B.O.S.S. might not be quite tough enough, but it is fun.  I wrote the questions, but they did the rest.  I hope you find it as fun and funny as I did -- and the questions do link quite well to the main ideas in Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Again, you can take it here, and you will see that you can share the results with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or email. 

I was reading the Rypple blog this morning in anticipation of the Good Boss, Bad Boss webinar they are hosting at 2 Eastern today.  There is a great new post there by Alanah Throop on The Top 10 Worst Fictional Bosses.  Check it out.  I don't want to ruin the fun, but in looking at the list and thinking of the worst bosses, I would argue that to be really awful, a boss needs to be both an asshole and incompetent at getting things done.  So I would say, for example that some of the folks on their list like Darth Vader and Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada definitely qualify as certified assholes, but I would not rate them as the worst of the worst because they are good at getting things done.  And both did show a modicum of compassion eventually. So that leaves me with bosses who are both certified assholes and incompetent.  For me, the winner is Bill Lumbergh from Office Space.  His veneer of consideration combined with incessant nagging for TPS reports and other acts cruelty and incompetence are tough to beat.  Also, for bonus points, above he is pictured wearing the infamous asshole collar.

Who would top your list? 

 Rypple is a company that sells "social software" that is designed to make giving (and getting) frequent feedback easier and more constructive.  They are hosting a free one hour webinar on Good Boss, Bad Boss. It will be today at 2:00 PM Eastern (or 11 AM Pacific).  I will talk about the main ideas in the book for 40 minutes or so and then we will open it up to Q&A.  Please go here to sign-up.

I look forward to it, especially to your questions and comments.

One of the chapters in Good Boss, Bad Boss is called "Serve as a Human Shield" and it argues -- and shows how -- the best bosses protect their people from idiots and idiocy of every stripe, from overly nosy executives and visitors, to moronic procedures, to meetings that run too long or never should have been held in the first place, and a host of other intrusions, distractions, and needless sources of friction that make it harder to do their work and to sustain good mental health.   I have a Harvard Business Review article coming out in fall that digs into this question, and today, at HBR.org, I posted the 5th point on my list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe.  It is called: Do You Have Their Backs?  Or Just Your Own?  Here is a taste:

Robert Townsend might be the poster child for the kind of boss that provides tangible cover to his team. He tends to be known at this point for having written the most outrageous management book ever published, Up the Organization. It's a collection of 150 or so ruminations on business life that are delightful, irreverent, and sometimes politically incorrect — all penned in an era before blogs were invented and such things were called short essays. But Townsend gleaned his insights from his succession of management jobs, notably as CEO of Avis Rent-a-car, where he was a widely loved wildman. In contrast to the usual hollow rhetoric, he never left any doubt that the people of his organizations came first, and that his job as a boss was to serve as defender and warrior on their behalf. Once, for example, he fought off a request from a powerful Avis board member, National Broadcasting Company founder David Sarnoff (aka "The General"), that would have been a time sink for his staff. Sarnoff couldn't believe there was no accurate tally of all the cars that Avis owned, and demanded that one be produced — a task that would have taken weeks. In that kind of situation, any of us can imagine rolling our eyes, but in a choose-your-battles world, how many of us would have refused? Townsend did, because he knew his people had more important work to do. "If I don't need it to run the company," he told Sarnoff, "you sure as hell don't need that information as an outside director."

Even more telling, for me, was the time Townsend was stopped in the hall by his own boss. This was earlier in his career, at American Express, and the firm's Chairman wanted to express his pleasure with a "good bond swap" by Townsend's group. Again, how would most people use that face time? In Townsend's case, it wasn't to take credit and jockey for his next promotion. He replied that he didn't even know about the swap, and complained colorfully about how hard it was to get resources and better pay for the undervalued people doing such magnificent work. He chose to cover their backs, in other words, rather than climb over them.

This topic of bosses as "human shields" is one I have discussed here before a bit (see here and here), but I dig into in much more detail at HBR.org than in the past.  Let me know what you think, either here or there, as I am always interested in the means that good bosses use to shield their people so they can do good work and do it with dignity.

BPS research reports an interesting study that suggests, as usually seems to be the case, that students know what helps them learn better than their teachers.  I have heard quite a few professors argue that, when they do a PowerPoint presentation, they don't want to pass-out the slides before the talk because students flip ahead, don't pay close attention, don't take good notes and -- in some cases -- because they think the students ought to pay for the copies (although with the web, that argument goes away because you can just post them on a website).  Not all faculty are so down on passing out the PowerPoints before: The study reported at BPS found that 50% of lecturers preferred to give handouts before, while the other half was split between lecturers who distributed them afterward or not at all.  The students had more consistent opinions, with 74% preferring to get the handouts before the lecture.

The interesting part is the follow-up, where, in the first experiment, there was no significant difference in test performance between students who got handouts before or after the lecture.  But, after tweaking the design a bit, they researchers did find that students who got handouts before performed better in a test given 12 minutes after the lecture.  Another interesting twist was that, in both sets of experiments, students who did not get handouts before took more notes.   As BPS reports:

The findings provide preliminary evidence that lecturers should provide their students with handouts during the lecture. Regarding the more extensive note-taking that took place when handouts were held back until after a lecture, the researchers speculated that this was 'unlikely to be a deep encoding task', which would normally be expected to aid memory retention, and may instead have acted merely acted as a distraction.

This is, as they say, preliminary research.  The first study did not reveal much, but the second is suggestive.  For anyone who teaches,  this study does suggest strong evidence that your students want the handouts first, some evidence that handing out the slides first will help them perform better, and no evidence that handing the slides out early harms their performance.

This is not an earth-shaking problem or issue, but I have been amazed too see how vehemently some faculty feel about this issue, so I am glad to see a little evidence.  

The citation is: Marsh, E., & Sink, H. (2009). Access to handouts of presentation slides during lecture: Consequences for learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24 (5), 691-706

If you've been reading this blog lately, you know that I've got a new book coming out in September called Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst. As all of you also know, the book business is in a period of profound transition, and the ways that publishers produce and market books is in flux.  My view, after talking to lots of people in the business over the past year, the bad news is that it is a period where "nobody knows anything," but the good news is that it is a period where many people in the business know that many of their old skills and assumptions are obsolete.  The other bit of good news -- at least to me, as I am attracted to the notion of pushing the envelope -- is that they are willing to try weird new things.  This blog post is one of them.

As some of you may know, one of the ways that publishers promote books for authors is that they print a bunch of "galleys" or "advanced copies" of the book -- essentially cheap paperback versions of the book that usually have a few typos and may need a little more editing -- to send to the press and other opinion leaders.  In recent years, publishers and publicist have also made a practice of sending advanced copies of books to influential bloggers.  I am a big believer in this practice, in part, because I believe that -- more than anything else -- the success of The No Asshole Rule was driven by early buzz on the blogs, and in particular, a key early post followed a couple months later by a post on the ARSE test by the amazing Guy Kawasaki. 

We are using a similar strategy to create buzz and encourage people to do pre-orders at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  I have written a lot of bloggers I know to ask if they would like a galley, and now that the power of blogs has been recognized in the book business, the publicists I am working with have supplied my lists of influential blogs -- ones visited by many people each day.  So I have written many of the people on the list, even when I don't know them.  I have been pleasantly surprised by how nearly all have written back and the support and enthusiasm they've expressed.  This is weird to say, but the occasional rejections have been equally wonderful.  I especially liked Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame), as he wrote that he was really too busy to do it, and added that he would probably never read a hard copy of any book again!  I still like the old-fashioned hard copies (although I also like reading books on my wife's Kindle, but not so much on my IPad as I wrote here).

In addition to this strategy of writing notes to a bunch of bloggers I know or hope might be interested in my book, I also would like to give the opportunity to bloggers I have may have overlooked or don't know to get a copy of the galley, and I hope, say something about it on their blog if they find it interesting.  So, if you are an active blogger, please write me and my publisher will send you a galley, which should arrive in the next couple weeks.   I am trying to keep this as open and "non-elite" as possible, but there are few guidelines:

1.  We have 50 galleys to mail out, when they are gone, they are gone.

2.  Because my publisher -- which is paying to send these out -- sells the book primarily in the U.S. and Canada, this is restricted to bloggers in those countries. 

3.  I don't care how many visitors you have, but I do care that you have a legitimate blog and that you blog actively (say at least three or for times a month?). So please send me the URL and your email so I can check it out.  We also will need a mailing address so we can send you the galley, so please include that in your note. Also, although I think I am pretty open-minded, I reserve the right to decline to send a galley to blog that offends my (biased) sensibilities.

4.  If you are interested, and "fit" the above guidelines, please send a note with the above information to my gmail account.

If you do get a galley, posting anytime is fine should you decide to do that, and it would be especially nice if you provided a link to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or another online seller and gently encouraged your readers who are interested in buying the book to consider pre-ordering it -- as that helps the book succeed.

Note I have never tried anything like this before and therefore not entirely sure what I am doing -- so please forgive me if I am doing anything badly or unfair. Whether you are a blogger or not, please let me know what you think of this idea and if you have any suggestions of how to make it flow easier for either bloggers or my publisher and me.  Thanks so much, and I will give you a report about how this little experiment turns out. 

I've known IDEO's Brendan Boyle for a good 15 years. I first heard of him before I met him, as an inspired toy designer and one of the best brainstorming session leaders at IDEO (he now applies design thinking to many problems, from consumer experiences to organizational design and strategy).  I also heard that he had an incredible ability to come up with really crazy ideas that seemed nuts at first, but if you backed them off a little, or thought about them more, you might actually have something that would sell in the marketplace. 

One of my favorite examples, and one I still use in talks at times, is an idea that Brendan came-up with -- a good 15 years ago perhaps even 20 -- for a device that enabled you to use (i.e., steal) those coat hangers that were common in hotels in the U.S. (and I still see them in Europe) that have have the little round balls at the top (see the [picture of one below)-- which are meant to be useless to steal (the new solution to this problem, of course, is tiny hook on the hangar that is too small to use at home).  Here is a drawing of this product on an old CAD machine (along with the coat hanger0, and apparently, Brendan has the physical prototype someplace:'

I saw Brendan at a party the other day and was tickled to learn that he is continuing this tradition in a big way.  He just completed a book with Klutz founder John Cassidy that is, essentially, and encyclopedia of about 200 ideas where "brilliant meets ridiculous.  The book is called The Klutz Book of Inventions.  It comes out September 1st. The process by which they produced it was crazy, but very much straight out of the design thinking playbook.  They would sit around and brainstorm ideas that were crazy and fun and just just possibly useful -- like coat hanger device above -- and when they would decide one was crazy and brilliant enough to put in the book, they would build a working prototype -- in the end over 200 prototypes were built by IDEO's shop (our of over 2500 ideas generated).  Brendan said some of the ideas in the book included a StairMaster for elevators, a helium-filled hide-a-bed (so when you got up, it floated to ceiling), and my personal favorite, parking tickets that have scratchers like lottery tickets where, depending on your luck (I actually have not seen this, and my memory may be off, but this is close), you get, say, a double fine, the usual fine, 50% of the fine, no fine, or now and then, they paid you. 

This last one intrigues me because it is so Brendan -- looking for a way to make an awful experience fun -- even if this does not work, the approach reflects a great creative process.  You list things that just suck -- going to the DMV, getting parking ticket, and on and on, and try to figure out how to make it fun (you can see why he co-teaches a d.school class on play, see this Fast Company story). As an example, I think Disney does a great of with people standing in line, for example.

The book contains pictures and and the philosophy, that Brendan explains so well, that one of the big impediments to creativity in everyone from kids to college students, to people who do creative work like product designers and artists, to executives is that they take themselves entirely too seriously -- is they not only are often afraid to have fun, don't know how to do it, and feel guilty when it happens, they look on people who are having fun with suspicion and try to stop them when they "catch them" the act.

I just pre-ordered the book because it sounds so fun.  I hope you will join me in the fun.

P.S. Brendan sent me some pages of the book, and it has line I just love, one I believe to be true: "Dignity is enemy of invention." The creative process is often about trying stuff so weird and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, so one motto might be that embarrassment in combination with pride and persistence are hallmarks of the creative process! 

I was pleased to hear that Kyle Stock from the Wall Street Journal selected Good Boss, Bad Boss as one of "Six Business Books to Read at the Beach."  I was also a little surprised because it won't be available officially until September 7, although they way the book business works, copies will likely begin to be available by August 20th or so.   In any case, I appreciate the vote of confidence, and here is the rest of is list.  All sound interesting, but the one I just ordered was "The Upside of Irrationality" as Dan Ariely is brilliant and that sounds like a great topic:

Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hiseh

Multipliers, by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown

Employees First, Customers Second, by Vineet Nay

The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor

The Upside of Irrationality, by Dan Ariely

 I would also add Chip and Dan Heath's Switch and the deeply insightful and most troubling The Invisible Gorilla.  And, if you never read it, the astounding Orbiting the Giant Hairball -- still the best creativity book ever written. 

What would you add?  What would you subtract?

Check out this research summary at BPS Research.  This study showed that the rate of eye-blinking was linked to performance on a creative task -- bot not to IQ.  Those subjects who blinked at a moderate rate were most creative.  Apparently, eye-blinking frequency is linked to dopamine.  As BPS reports:

The researchers pointed to evidence showing, for example, that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is associated with excess dopamine, tend to have high eye blink rates. Patients with Parkinson's, by contrast, which is associated with reduced dopamine, show low eye blink rates. They also highlighted past research linking dopamine with creativity. For example, there's evidence that positive mood - which is related to dopamine levels - can enhance creativity, although the results in this area have been extremely inconsistent.

Now, this is just one study, but the implications are intriguing, and a bit scary.  If you have ever seen Blade Runner, you may recall that the test they used to determine if a creature was a human or a "replicant" entailed asking various strange questions and watching for changes in the rate of blinking. I can imagine some employment test based on the same principle, where -- much like Harrison Ford did in Blade Runner -- job candidates are given some test to determine their blinking rate.  Perhaps in our strange future, employers will forget the job sample test and other tried and true predictors, or the portfolio of past work, or that training in design thinking, and just look at the blinking rate! 

I hope this is just a strange fantasy, but it is a cool study. 

The reference is: Chermahini, S., & Hommel, B. (2010). The (b)link between creativity and dopamine: Spontaneous eye blink rates predict and dissociate divergent and convergent thinking. Cognition, 115 (3), 458-465

It was one of those things that, even as I did it, I was wondering, how my life had reached this point.  The soundtrack that kept playing in mu mind was the Talking Heads, singing over and over, "Who am I? How did I get there?"  There I was -- and I guess still am --talking with a very respectable Harvard editor -- Sarah Green --  about the strategic use of swearing by bosses.  You can listen to the podcast if you like, they just posted it here.  This podcast weaves together issues from Dan McGinn's wildly popular HBR post Should Leaders Ever Swear?, and my follow-up posts here on strategic swearing and the evolutionary value of swearing.  In the podcast and my posts I am careful to talk about the dangers of swearing at the wrong time and places, and of swearing too much.  But I also am quite taken with the argument from academic work on the evolutionary value that " Taboo words persist because they can intensify emotional communication to a degree that nontaboo words cannot."  

This topic stirred up numerous clashing opinions on my blog, from people who argued that it was inappropriate under any circumstances, to people who swore at the workplace and felt bad about it, to people who disliked their colleagues' swearing, to people who said it was bad for children.  Two of my favorites made me think hardest -- albeit in opposing directions:

This one from Liam-og Griffin struck my fancy both because I like the idea of strategic swearing (at the right times, as except when I talk about The No Asshole Rule, I virtually never swear when I teach or give a speech) and it fits very well with the evolutionary argument:

The 'f' word is unrivaled in power in the English language. It's got aggression built in and demands to be heard. Choosing to avoid the use of powerful words like this is like choosing to use a screwdriver to drive a screw, when you've got a 24v drill driver in the back of the van. Distinguished craftsmen would advocate the eloquence of using your hands to create beautiful works of art in the same way a writer would only use 'acceptable' language to colourfully express the full spectrum of emotions. I've got no problem if you want to be old school and proud of the craftsmanship of your handy work, but you're out of your fucking mind if you don't use the best tool for the job!

I love the last sentence.  On the other hand, I was stopped in my tracks by a great point from a fellow who used to work at UCLA and had numerous conversations with the late John Wooden, the greatest and wisest basketball coach who ever lived:

Words are tools - we tend to use the tools the most that have worked the best for us in the past. My wife often uses the butt end of a screwdriver to drive a nail. Makes me cringe, but she always seems to reach her goal. "Goodness gracious sakes alive." That was all the swearing Coach Wooden ever needed. It's just a matter of how you choose to apply your tools.

Coach Wooden is a tough act to follow!  This is one of those cases, I confess, where I hold conflicting and inconsistent opinions.  I try not to swear when it offends others or makes me look like an immature and inconsiderate jerk, but there are lot of times when it is the norm in a particular group, there are times when strategic use has effective shock value (I think the title of The No Asshole Rule is such a case), and their are times when I get pissed-off, swear, and then feel bad about it.

I also have a view about children that others may not hold: Even if you don't swear around them, most will learn to do it a very young age, and swear when their parents and other adults are not around.  One of my favorite memories of my two daughters -- my youngest Eve was about 3 and big sister Claire was about 6 -- happened one day when they were outside my study (they didn't know I was there)and Claire was teaching Eve how to perform the word "shit."  Not just say it, I mean perform it.  I would hear, "Now Eve, you don't just say shit, you stomp your foot and you look real mad, like this..." and then Claire would model the desired behavior, and say "OK you try it."  And then I would hear something like "That is OK, but stomp your foot harder and try to look a little madder." The Eve would say "Oh shit" and I would hear her foot stomp and big sister would say, "You've almost got it, try it one more time." 

So, while swearing at the wrong times and in front of the wrong people is bad for children, my belief is they are going to do it mighty early themselves, and the best you can hope for is they will learn to use it sparingly and at the right times -- and when those times come, to do it well! 

We likely have exhausted this topic on this blog and at HBR.  I will get back to something else, but the podcast got me going on the topic again.

Have a great fucking Fourth of July....

Sorry, I know it was tasteless, but I could not resist.