03 Oct 2016
in the past two days, two good friends (thx cameron and spencer) have told me i should write a book. this post is the first pass at what i think it could be about. take two has already been framed up by spencer; it’s about the implications of not wanting our parents’ systems. will probably write that tomorrow.
ok. take one:
i write and think about productivity, love, justice, and revolution. these are surprisingly consistent. they relate in surprisingly intimate ways.Â
being productive results in knowing exactly how much you can produce given a certain input. it also generates the knowledge of what is your maximum comfortable/reasonable output.
this relates to love because when our work is right-sized, we have loving relationships between our colleages and collaborators and we leave space to love people outside of our work. lovers, parents, friends, children, community.
the love for community is where justice comes from. when you have time to love those around you, you begin to realize how you can do things to make life better for others. this generates specific action. that action is justice.
and this justice, love in action for your community, creates revolution. first internal, then interpersonal, then systemic.
productivity, love, justice, and revolution.
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02 Oct 2016
earlier this week, ross and i talked through a core piece of jungle’s thinking. the conversation was more coherent than this, but here are some bits and pieces.
unfortunately (and largely due to the industrialization of everything), organizations and corporations are built as if people within them were cogs. roles and responsibilities are delineated under specific positions and titles as if replacing the current person in a position with another will allow that work to be done just as well.
we all know that’s not real. we also know that even though these work systems are designed with that notion in mind, they don’t often ever even work that way. ross and i have both worked in several organizations where our presence or absence (just like everyone else’s) had a significant impact on what work got done and how. of course, the destructive side of this is what most people have experienced as a complete stall of forward motion when someone is missing (short- or long-term) from a team.
so how do we (jungle and beyond) do better? a few things:
- don’t design work teams, protocols, and systems as if people are replaceable.
- find the balance between setting goals and allowing whatever team (individual or multiple people) to bring their skills and passions to the table in order to achieve it. this is a non-trivial procedure.
productivity shifts when different people are on a team. just because someone is (temporarily or permanently) missing from a team, doesn’t mean the team’s progress should stop. it does mean that progress might (should?) look different. this is because people are unique. this fact should be treated like an asset, not a hindrance. this will require a cultural shift. it is beginning, but we have a long way to go.
note: this is sort of a follow-up from a piece i wrote earlier today:Â on companies that plan on employee burnout
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01 Oct 2016
at the end of this piece are excerpts from two articles i’ve read in the last couple of months. they both point to a phenomenon whereby companies essentially plan on a particular employee burnout rate. i think that’s a shitty thing.
i first noticed this trend among my friends who left undergrad and went to work in finance (mostly at hedge funds) or management consulting (bcg, kpmg, mckinsey, etc.). almost everyone worked at their firm for two years and then moved on. the verbalized reasons were different for each of them, but i definitely noticed a consistency in the two year tenure. trends like this almost always point to deeper structural or systemic factors.Â
i don’t think there’s anything wrong with knowing at what rate people turnover from your company. i do think there’s something wrong when you plan on a particularly high churn rate. i also think it’s a problem when you know that rate, do nothing to lower it, and use it as a cornerstone of your business.
the problem with that is that it treats people like cogs. people are not cogs. industrialization and the mechanization of labor has created this myth and it’s still wreaking havoc today. mechanistic design for tools (bikes, factory machines, computers) has allowed humanity a massive number of quality of life improvements. however, applying that same thinking to people in organizations and societies i think is fundamentally wrong. a cog or spring in a watch is easily replaced, but a person in a role is unique. people bring their own experiences, knowledge, identity, and perspective to everything they do. building systems as if two people are able to do a particular task the same is not just wrong, it’s actually a sub-optimization.
more on that in the next post…
quotes that inspired this post:
- “I remember giving a talk at a prestigious investment bank several years ago. At the end a partner stood up and said, “Mr. Schwartz, this is all very interesting, but we have a thousand people knocking on the door who can’t wait to come in and replace the people we’ve burned out. Why should we worry about giving people time to renew? When they burn out, we just bring in a fresh new group of people, who are thrilled to get the jobs.” I’d argue that in knowledge work, you get more out of a person in the third or fifth or seventh year than out of the replacement you brought in because the first worker collapsed in year two. This is a broader issue that deserves attention. We can’t keep pushing people to their limits and expect them to produce at a sustainably high level of excellence. The companies that build true competitive advantage in the years ahead will be those that shift from seeking to get more out of people to investing in better meeting their needs.” - tony schwartz in the article being more productive, harvard business review
- “Driver turnover is a key metric. As long as there are lots of people willing to try working for the service, it is possible to treat drivers as a disposable commodity. But this is short-term thinking. What you want are drivers who love the job and are good at it, are paid well, and as a result, keep at it. Over the long term, I predict that Uber and Lyft will be engaged in as fierce a contest to attract and keep drivers as they are to attract and keep customers today.  And that competition may well provide further evidence that higher wages can pay for themselves by improving productivity and driving greater consumer satisfaction.”
— tim o’reilly, to survive, the game of business needs to update its rules
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30 Sep 2016
a few days ago, my good friend and writing buddy, erin, put down some good thoughts:
“We live in the time of “truthiness”, where people seem ready to simply believe that something is true, rather than investigate it. See Rush Limbaugh’s interview about feeling that urban crime is increasing despite data proving otherwise. Despite opening access to information and data to the masses, the democratization of media and information (aka the internet) also gives an equal mouthpiece to misinformation. You can find anything anywhere on the internet to back up any idea, even if it’s totally bogus.”
“All of this (combined with the rise of Trump, anti-intellectualism, and the ridiculousness that is our current news and conventional wisdom discourse) makes me think that (good) leaders can’t depend on “truth” or data at all. Perhaps they need to combine facts, history, science, trends and data along with tools like charisma, emotional narratives and a little Machiavellian strategy – or else face power that is essentially fueled by insanity.
And/or: maybe we need to focus on dialogue, discussion, argument and consensus-building in our public school system.”
i think he’s dead-on. now that the internet exists, as soon as a human has even the most basic grasp of written and verbal language (and all you need is one), that person gains access to essentially all of human knowledge (past, present, and future). you can even use the internet to get better at your language, learn other languages, and translate things from languages you don’t know into ones you do.
given that reality, schools as hubs of knowledge and information transfer is outdated. the education field has been wrestling with this for a while and many people talk about it (there’s a whole series of ted talks on it).
that said, public and private schools have massive physical capital and that doesn’t have to go to waste. so what are schools still good for?
as erin put it, school are places to learn and practice dialogue, discussion, argument, and consensus-building. group settings are still the only places where we can really learn and practice those things. of course there are whole fields of research that have to do with communication, but reading and writing will never replace the ability to have a face-to-face conversation with someone. in fact, some people (sherry turkle, for one) have posited that over-emphasis on virtual and digital communication actually undermines empathy and the ability to have meaningful, face-to-face conversation where we really and genuinely listen to each other.
so. schools need to shift focus or get out of the way. when students “have problems focusing” maybe it’s less because they’re broken students and more because they know how much time they’re wasting listening to someone “teach” them something they already knew or could look up in ten seconds on their smartphone.
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29 Sep 2016
about a year ago, i stopped drinking coffee past noon.
initially, i was following the lead of my director and friend, danielle coates-connor. she had a “no coffee past 2p” rule and it seemed like a good idea. since then, i’ve become religious about not drinking coffee in the afternoon. why? better sleep, fewer caffeine headaches, and a positive impact on my time/energy/mood management strategies.
- better sleep. how do i know i sleep better? the same way i know pretty much everything about myself: i experimented and gathered my own data. i used an app to track my sleep (sleep cycle) and i created two variables that i could toggle: drank coffee and drank coffee in the afternoon. i then tested out different scenarios over a series of weeks. turns out i sleep the best when i don’t drink at coffee (but my morning productivity is lower), i sleep slightly worse than that when i only have morning coffee, and i sleep the worst when i have coffee in the morning and afternoon. (there are many other things i could have tested - like how much does the volume of coffee affect my sleep, but i felt like i had enough data to move on).
- fewer caffeine headaches. when i only have one cup (iced) per day, i noticed that i had fewer caffeine (withdrawal) headaches. i also try to take the weekends off from coffee altogether to reset my system and keep the caffeine potent. overuse numbs any system.
- more strategic time management. i know that caffeine makes my brain work faster. now that i know that i really should only drink coffee in the mornings, it incentivizes me to put the work that needs my highest brain functionality in the morning instead of saving it for the afternoon and relying on a second cup of coffee to get me through it. obviously the second cup would help me finish the task, but it undermines my long-term overall productivity because of the negative sleep impact.
relevant resources:
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