Maybe today’s financial crisis has an unexpected upside

That, at any rate, is the view of Terence Blacker, writing for Britain’s newpaper The Independent (“Reasons to be cheerful about the credit crunch”).

He cites a number of potential upsides: people realizing once again that a house is somewhere to live, not an investment opportunity or a source of never-ending income; less constant yakking about making money; a sense of disgust at some of the incomes of top executives; less indulgence in conspicuous spending; even a greater appreciation of what we all have today. Continued

People may be born with intelligence, but that may not mean they keep it

Balmain Working Mens’ Institute
photo: J Bar

In the debate about what makes a country or a society competitive in the world, it would be interesting to know how much a decline in educational standards counts for. We tend to assume that children are usually better educated than their parents, since standards are rising constantly. What if this is not so in a country — say in the US?

Clive Crook, writing in the Financial Times reports this fact and is clearly of the opinion that it should be more widely reported and discussed than it has been so far:

A startling and profoundly important fact about the US economy has received surprisingly little attention. The educational quality of the country’s workers is starting to decline – not just relatively (because other countries are catching up and moving ahead) but also, for the first time, in absolute terms. Over the coming years, baby-boomers departing from the labour force will have better educational qualifications than the younger workers replacing them. If the ultimate source of an economy’s ability to grow and prosper is its human capital, the US is in trouble . . .

Between 1940 and 2000, the educational standard of people entering the US labor market rose markedly. While fewer than 5 per cent of the population had at least a four-year college education at the start of this period, more than 30 per cent did so by the end.

When the educated Baby Boomers retire

However, the children of the post-war Baby Boomers now have fewer post-graduate degrees than their parents’ generation. What happened? Have they lost interest? Does a good degree count for less in getting a job?

Whatever the immediate reason, there has been no such decline, it appears, in countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada and Russia. In fact, in many other countries, the proportion of people aged 25-34 with at least a college education is now as high as, or higher than, in the US — and still climbing. When the US Baby Boomers leave the labor force, as they are already starting to do, a good proportion of the educational attainments of the country will leave with them. Continued

Is the gap narrowing between TV reality-show fantasy and today’s economic activity?

Both current economic models and TV reality shows reward all-out competition driven by material self-interest. Both, as Lynne Truss described in her book “Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door,” consist of people being competitive, underhand, rude and aggressive towards one another in contrived and stressful situations.

How did it become entertainment to watch a rich guy with a seriously awful hairstyle fire people on camera? Maybe it’s the ultimate fusion between sport and the stockmarket: corporate life as a spectator event. Maybe people just enjoy seeing devious, smarmy, pushy and treacherous know-alls kicked in the teeth. Maybe it’s a symptom of an insane society.

Still, there it is. A big cheese showing off by firing small cheeses desperate to become bigger ones. In the past, being an apprentice meant signing your life away for years to serve and learn from a master of some craft. Now it means imitating a rich person with a dubious track-record and trying to knife your fellow contestants before they manage to knife you. Continued

What are you wishing on your children?

Perfectionism is a form of control that lasts a lifetime. Parents who seek too much from their children leave them emotionally and mentally crippled. Adults who demand too much of themselves increase their stress, ruin their health, and destroy most of their relationships. Organizations that demand too much of their employees produce burnout, increased turnover and a corporate culture riddled with no-holds-barred competitiveness — and often dishonesty too.

The killer that lurks within perfectionism is that constant sense of criticism: the knowledge that whatever you do is never going to be quite good enough; the sense that every achievement will create an instant demand to do better. It is, in the words of Hara Estroff Marano, author of A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting, in Psychology Today (“Pitfalls of Perfectionism”):

. . . an endless report card; it keeps people completely self-absorbed, engaged in perpetual self-evaluation—reaping relentless frustration and doomed to anxiety and depression.

Continued

Too much safety may be bad for you

Human beings have an odd tendency to evaluate risk as much by whether they feel safe before they start as by the inherent nature of the risk, or the chances that something will go wrong. We evaluate risk intuitively, and intuition is often a poor guide in this area.

That’s the conclusion of research by Clifford Winston, an economist at the Brookings Institution and the author of the 2006 book “Government Failure versus Market Failure,” as reported in The Washington Post (“Taking More Risks Because You Feel Safe”).

“The research consistently finds that, in fact, government efforts to correct market failures have little effect, or actually make things worse.”

“There is a tendency for people to say, ‘If things are safer, then I will take more risk,’ ” he added. “It does not have to involve government interventions: Drugs are developed to reduce blood pressure, so people say, ‘Okay, I can eat more, and it does not matter if I gain weight, because I can take this pill.’”

Continued

In tough financial times, the traits of the chronic under-earner carry as heavy a penalty as those of the continual over-spender

Continental Congress Lottery Ticket
Source: Wikipedia

Over-spending is never a good idea and we’ve heard a great deal recently about the ways that people have been tempted into spending far too much by cheap and easy credit. Cutting back on your spending is certainly one way to cope with the financial downturn; one that many people are obviously taking, given the howls of anguish from industries facing lower sales. But what about under-earning? What if you find yourself in continual financial straits, not because you spend too much because you don’t earn enough?

Writing in BusinessWeek, Michelle Conlin suggests that “for every obscenely piggish ceo pay package, there’s legions of underearners crawling all over Corporate America. ” She bases her article on the book by Jerrold Mundis, Earn What You Deserve: How to Stop Underearning & Start Thriving. There’s also Barbara Stanny’s book, Overcoming Underearning: Overcome Your Money Fears and Earn What You Deserve.

In summary, under-earners may do great work, but they rarely get the financial recognition they deserve for it, mostly because they don’t believe their employers will pay them more. A few have the idealistic idea that money goes only to people who compromise their essential humanity or sell out their creativity to get it. Many simply won’t take responsibility for the problem or are too fearful to stand up for themselves. Continued

What happens when a word loses most of its meaning?

Here’s an intriguing thought from Andre, who writes the blog ‘Tools For Thought’ (“Questioning My Assumptions: Productivity as an Amoeba Word”).

He writes:

I’m over productivity. It’s outlived its usefulness as a focal point and framework for meaningful discussion.
 
Through overuse and misuse, productivity has become an amoeba word, a term whose meaning can morph to any usage the speaker or writer chooses by changing its frame of expectation. Productivity joins the ranks of words like “success,” “spirituality,” and “growth” to mean whatever the person using them decides they mean in the moment.

Continued

Do you need to be more skeptical to survive in the world of business?

Barry Maher, author of Filling the Glass: The Skeptic’s Guide to Positive Thinking in Business, offers a quick quiz to help you decide if you need to be a little less trusting of those around you in the world of business.

My favorites include these:

10. You believe the numbers in the business plan. I can’t believe anyone is that dumb, but maybe I’ve written to many myself in the past.

7. When they tell you this is a “people company,” you think one of those people is you. Only one group of ‘people’ truly count and they’ve all got corner offices and vast numbers of stock options.

5. When the CEO says that customers come first, you think that means BEFORE short-term profits and driving up his stock options. I’m almost sure nobody can be that dumb, but . . .

2. You accept a lateral move and relocate to East Cowflop, North Dakota, because you think that puts you in line for the next promotion rather than at the top of the list for the next hellhole where nobody else is willing to go. Yes, well, if that’s how you think, East Cowflop is probably where you need to be.

Check out the entire list here.

Technorati Tags: gullibility, trust, humor

Scott Berkun says it’s the easiest way

Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen says that the most common bottleneck to progress in the middle ranks of corporate America is too many people in the room — especially too many people with the power to veto progress.

He writes:

In these recessionary times it might seem cruel to bring this up, but if the goal is to be more creative, or to up the odds new ideas become products, the easiest move is is to get people out of the room. Either take away their power, or get them off the team, but reduce the number of people in rooms where decisions are being made.

I have to say I think he’s right. Few, if any, major breakthroughs, now or in the past, come from committees or teams. Nearly all are the product of creative individuals, who often had to fight tremendous odds to be heard at all in committee-mad corporations. Continued

We’re always being told people resist and dislike change. Not so. What they hate is stupid, pointless changes that produce nothing useful.

Change has become a constant mantra. We’re always being told that “change is inevitable” or “change is necessary” and that “without change, there is only decay.” All true — up to a point. You would think people would have got used to change by now. Besides, there’s little doubt that some kinds of change are welcomed. Look at the thousands of people turning out for rallies in the American presidential election, excited and energized by the prospect of significant changes after eight years of President Bush.

So why is it also a truism that much change is resisted, whether it’s change at work, change in social attitudes, or personal changes affecting how we live?

The Financial Times tackles the topic in an article called “Change we can believe in”. As you would expect, their emphasis is on changes in the workplace, but you can easily apply the same principles to any other type of change that threatens to effect groups and individuals. Continued