Bob Sutton

On the Marginal Utility of Pure Economists

One of our most charming and well-read doctoral students (he is just finishing-up, in fact, I believe he is already a Ph.D), Issac Waisberg, just sent an old quote that is pretty funny.  I apologize to my economist friends, but recent global events make this comment seem more true than ever:

In an essay about Walter Bagehot:

"I have been careful not to say that the pure economist is valueless but, if I may borrow one of his own conceptions, his marginal utility is low." F. S. Florence, The Economist, July 25, 1953, 252.

If you check-out the link, you will see Bagehot was the editor of The Economist a long stretch in the 19th century"  "For 17 years Bagehot wrote the main article, improved and expanded the statistical and financial sections, and transformed the journal into one of the world’s foremost business and political publications. More than that, he humanized its political approach by emphasising social problems." It sounds like he was great editor, but I still love the snarky and well-crafted dig.

A Different Version of the Creation Myth



 

A big thanks to Carol Murchie for sending this my way.

Creativity: Another Reason that Having a Drink -- or Two -- at Work Isn't All Bad

Last April, I had fun writing a guest column for Cnn.Com arguing that having an occasional drink with your colleagues while you are at work isn't all bad:

In addition to its objective physiological effects, anthropologists have long noted that its presence serves as a signal in many societies that a "time-out" has begun, that people are released, at least to a degree, from their usual responsibilities and roles. Its mere presence in our cups signals we have permission to be our "authentic selves" and we are allowed -- at least to a degree -- to reveal personal information about ourselves and gossip about others -- because, after all, the booze loosened our tongues. When used in moderate doses and with proper precautions, participating in a collective round of drinking or two has a professional upside that ought to be acknowledged.

Now there is a new study that adds to the symbolic (and I suppose objective) power of alcohol to bring about positive effects. The folks over at BPS Research Digest offer a lovely summary of an experiment called "Uncorking the Muse"  that shows "mild intoxication aids creative problem solving."   The researchers had male subjects between the ages of 21 and 30 consume enough vodka to get their blood alcohol concentration to .07, which is about equal to consuming two pints of beer for an average sized man.  Then they gave them a standard creativity task 'the "Remote Associates Test", a popular test of insightful thinking in which three words are presented on each round (e.g. coin, quick, spoon) and the aim is to identify the one word that best fits these three (e.g. silver).'

The tipsy respondents performed better on the test than subjects in a sober control group:

1. "they solved 58 per cent of 15 items on average vs. 42 per cent average success achieved by controls"

2. "they tended to solve the items more quickly (11.54 seconds per item vs. 15.24 seconds)"

The reasons they did better and moved faster appear to be lack of inhibition ("intoxicated participants tended to rate their experience of problem solving as more insightful, like an Aha! moment, and less analytic") and, following past research, people with superior memories tend to do worse on this task -- because drinking dulls memory, it may help on the Remote Associates Test.  The researchers also speculate that "being mildly drunk facilitates a divergent, diffuse mode of thought, which is useful for such tasks where the answer requires thinking on a tangent."

I am not arguing that people who do creative work ought to drink all day -- there are two many dangers.  As I warned in the CNN piece, booze is best consumed in small doses and with proper precautions.  And of course people who don't or should not drink for health, religious, or other reasons ought not to be pressured to join in the drinking.

Yet,  this study, when combined when with other work suggesting that drinking can serve as a useful social lubricant, suggest that having a drink or two with your colleagues at the end of the day now and then, and kicking around a few crazy ideas, might both enhance social bonds and generate some great new ideas.  The payoff might include innovative products, services, experiences and the like -- if you can remember those sparkling insights after you sober up!

P.S. The citation is Jarosz, A., Colflesh, G., and Wiley, J. (2012). Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving. Consciousness and Cognition, 21 (1), 487-493

Secret Features of Apple's Proposed New Campus

Apple has proposed a most inventive new campus in Cupertino. The folks as joyoftech.com had good fun imagining the "hidden features." I especially like the empty part of the building where no one is allowed to go -- and is meant to create mystery.  That is VERY Apple.  Thanks to Alistair Davidson for sending this my way:

 

The "Rotten Apple" Effect Happens in Herds of Cows Too

 

  

Thanks to Jason, I learned of some weird but unsurprising research that brings together the bad apple studies described in Good Boss, Bad Boss and work on emotional contagion in The No Asshole Rule.  A five-year study led by Mississippi State University Associate Professor Rhonda Vann found that cows that were "very aggressive, excitable, and out of control" not only got sick more often, weighed less, and wrecked farm equipment, these bad things "rub-off" on the rest of the herd.   Here is the story from Delta Farm Press, called "Calm Cattle More Valuable."  Of course, human groups are different from farm animals in many ways, but the parallel between this and Will Felps' research on bad apples, and related work on "bad is stronger than good"  is striking (See this HBR post).

A Concise and Brilliant Peer-Reviewed Article on Writer's Block

Below you can see an entire article (including a reviewer's comment) that may look fake, but is legitimate. It was published by Dennis Upper in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis in 1974, and is funny, true, and inspired -- and a great demonstration that "brevity is the soul of wit."   Academics, especially the editor's of our journals, have a well-deserved reputation for being humorless assholes (note I edited a couple academic journals and include myself in this swipe), so I give these editors a lot of credit.  A big thanks to Thomas Haymore for telling me about this masterpiece and to Professor Brad DeLong for publishing it on his blog a few days ago.

This is probably going to sound really weird, but were you ever on a japanese gameshow?

This is an email I got recently from a reader -- one I don't recall hearing from before.  The answer is no, I have never been on a gameshow of any kind. But it just cracked me up, because that was the whole question and it seemed to so random, although I am wondering if I have twin out there who has been on such a show. 

Eight Signs You Are Boring: Wisdom from Gretchen

Gretchen over at The Happiness Project has a great list of eight signs that you are boring another person. They are all wonderful, but I especially like the last one:

8. Audience posture. Back in 1885, Sir Francis Galton wrote a paper called “The Measurement of Fidget.” He determined that people slouch and lean when bored, so a speaker can measure the boredom of an audience by seeing how far from vertically upright they are. Also, attentive people fidget less; bored people fidget more. An audience that’s sitting still and upright is interested, while an audience that’s horizontal and squirmy is bored.

As usual, I find Gretchen to be insightful, funny, and remarkably helpful -- alas, I see a bit of myself in a number of her tips and it makes me squirm.  It also reminds me, however, that I have a weird obsession with the virtues of being boring. I touch on it in this post, in more detail, in Weird Ideas That Work.

There are just certain times in life that you don't want to attract attention, don't want people to listen to you very carefully, and don't want to get their emotions cranked-up --- and boredom is a perfect solution in such cases.  A former Stanford administrator I knew was the master of strategic boredom.  He could fairly charismatic and entertaining when he believed it was constructive.  But the more controversial and heated that things became, the more dull and mind-numbing his delivery became.... I saw him defuse tense meetings on at least two occasions by lulling angry people into a listless state.   It was tiring to experience, but fascinating too.

More Jargon Monoxide: A Lovely BBC Story Adds to the Pile

One of the themes I can't resist posting about is the horrible language used in business.  It has been especially fun since I heard Polly LaBarre call the whole mess, "Jargon Monoxide," one of the best phrases I have ever heard in my life.  I wrote a later post on terms that make me squirm, where I complained about value added, leverage, and core competence.  Most recently, we had some fun, and expressed some disgust, talking about euphemisms for layoffs, which -- thanks to your comments -- produced such gems as "fitness plans," "offboarded" (I see a picture of someone walking the plank in mind's eye), "He got the box," and the differences between management language "Your position is redundant" or "rationalizing," versus employees language like "He got shit canned" or "he got whacked." 

The ever helpful Dave sent me a great BBC article today that continues the tradition of cataloging jargon monoxide.  It is called 50 Office Speak Phrases You Love To Hate. I don't want to spoil your fun by listing too many, but I especially loved to hate "ideas showers," "we need a holistic cradle-to-grave approach," "granularity," and a truly wonderful sentence that a university sent out to its staff after a round of layoffs "We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders."

 I believe the translation of that sentence is "We are trying to figure out what the hell to do next."

Let me know if you have any new favorites that might be added to the BBC article.
 

P.S. Dave, thanks again.

How to Survive in New York On a Lousy $500,000 a Year

I am not the right person to write this book, but I bet there is a market for it!

Best Business Bobs

I am honored to be on Jeremy Nulik's list of Best Business Bobs, but troubled to listed right below Bob Knight -- yes, he is the most winning college coach ever (in terms of number of games), but he seems to qualify as a certified asshole (see Pam Slim's post).  Read Season in the Brink if you don't believe me -- also look at this tape, it sure looks like he is choking a player to me (If you choked a subordinate, would they let you keep your job?) 

Back to the Bobs, it is such a meaningless name that I often don't turn my head when I hear the name. And one of the weirdest Bob things that ever happened to me was when, a long time ago, I was at a think tank (pre-Internet!) called The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a lovely place where we didn't even have phones in our offices. In my little building, there were six offices, a telephone room, and a bathroom. When a call came in,you would be buzzed to go to the phone room.  One day I as buzzed, and asked to give a talk at something called The Food Research Institute at Stanford (now defunct).  The day I got there to give the talk, I noticed that there was someone else's name on the door -- another Bob! They had meant to invite one of the other Bob's (four of the six of us in this little building were named some variation of Robert).  I can't recall the right Bob's name, but he studied food production and consumption in developing countries. They suggested I give my talk anyway (which was on the stigma of bankruptcy), but within about 10 minutes, the 30 or so people in the room dwindled to 8 or 10.

It is easy to be the wrong Bob.

P.S. Check out the Mistake Bank, following John's comment below. It funny and apparently devoted to the notion that failure sucks but instructs!

Sailing Down The Street in Menlo Park

My family just got back from a wonderful vacation in Panama, at a little resort (six cabins or "cabanas") called Tranquilo Bay. I will put up an extended post about it, as it is one of the best vacations my family ever had. And the story of the two lovely families that run the place is among the most inspiring I have ever heard.  The sacrifices that entrepreneurs make here in Silicon Valley seem trivial by comparison.  For example, Jay and Jim, two guys who had a dream to have a Caribbean resort, quit their jobs at big companies and CAMPED for 5 years while they built Tranquilo Bay in on an island in the middle of a rain forest.  People talk about working "24/7" here to get their start-ups off the ground, but these guys took it to an entirely different level.

Meanwhile, while we were gone, it rained like hell in Northern California. The picture of the guy sailing a Laser down the flooded street was taken about three blocks from our house in Menlo Park, California.  The power was out at our house a lot, but all is fine. Check out the rest of the story in the Almanac. Apparently, we chose a good week to get out of town.

The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Slackers (Because 7 is too Many)

I got a charming email from K.P. Springfield about his book "The Five Habits of Highly Successful Slackers."  K.P. wrote approvingly of my suggestion that "Indifference is as important as passion."  I made the suggestion on a serious note, as there are times when a bit of emotional detachment can help people cope with stressful situations.  K.P.s book and his website take the idea of not caring -- and goofing-off -- much further.  And do it in a much funnier way (well, at least the website is funny, I actually haven't read the book).  I especially recommend the Slacker Quiz on his website.  Consider a sample question:

3. If you are in a situation where either a co-worker or a manager is trying to blame you for the failure of a project or other assignment, and you have proof that you are not to blame, do you:
A) Go over that person’s head and prove with the information that you are innocent.
B) Send the accuser an email with a subject line that says “Herpes Test Results” while they are in a large meeting with their computer screen on a projector.
C) Sit down with the individual and try to work out the conflict.
D) Take the evidence, throw it up in the air and say “Whatever!”

K.P. tells us that the right answer is "D" because "Successful slackers never stand-up for for what they think is right, because in the corporate world, it doesn't matter who is right."

Alas, this strikes me as too true in too many organizations that I know.  There are far too many organizations where speaking-up just gets you in trouble, and has little effect on the organization.  This isn't just an opinion, research on whistle blowers and people who "speak-up" documents the dangers -- see Fred Alford's book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power for an example.

As for the slacker book, I feel obligated to order it, even though KP wrote me that: "I had The 5 Habits printed with the absolute highest quality paper, giving it exceptional burn qualities. So at a minimum, if the book fails to entertain, I can assure you that it won't fail as effective fireplace kindling this holiday season."

Frankly, in a world where too many people take themselves entirely too seriously (I plead guilty), K.P.'s attitude is refreshing.  Perhaps my reaction is fueled by the two days that I spent at a creativity conference at Harvard Business School last week.  It was a splendid conference (Diego blogged a bit about it), but HBS is a VERY serious place. Everyone always seems too earnest about things there, and I find myself acting that way there as well. K.P.'s book reminded me that I need to lighten-up a bit.