Obervations

Zadie Smith’s recent blog post for NY Review of Books http://bit.ly/MkkARo inspired a number of questions for me. One was her challenge to the assessment of libraries from a purely functional perspective, which plays nicely into the point I want to get across here. The other, captured above, really enforces the question I have - are we rejecting or at least getting impatient with the idea of Pathos? Are we constructing everything around the idea that emotion has no place accept as a reproach - Stop being so emotional or the trouble with him is that he’s too emotional?

“We’re humans, not robots.” 

Last week I saw two pieces in the WSJ that touched on this question. The first - Software Raises the Bar for Hiring  http://on.wsj.com/Mkgt7V - covers the subject of college graduates seeking jobs and their applications being rejected by computers not humans. The dangers of this approach were spelled out by one human resources professional who had applied for a role in his company and the software rejected him as not fitting the qualifications for the job. The only upside in the article was the idea that students had worked out how to bypass the algorithm and get the interview. Apparently all you have to do is repeat back the job description but ensure it’s delivered in your voice as the software works out if people are just copying and pasting.

Then in a completely unrelated article - Learning How Your Start Ups Stack Up  http://on.wsj.com/Mk7Avb - talks about new web services that provide benchmarking for start ups. The article spoke of the very helpful nature of this data and on the surface it sounds really good. Through anonymous sharing, you can find out, based on similar sized businesses, the salary levels, investment levels, staffing levels, even Founder behaviors, business strategies, etc,. It sounds like the connection businesses need to take them out of what often feels like a solitary state. Then one entrepreneur stated “abnormality might be your competitive advantage.” In other words, surely if we all run the same way, then there’s no form of differentiation and business thrives on differentiation and competition.

This leads me to two questions. The first is whether data is tying us up in knots. The whole subject of Big Data is one well documented - I even gave a talk on this as part of my Emerging Behaviors presentation to OSU http://slidesha.re/Mka5h4. But this is not what I’m talking about here. It’s more fundamental and potentially more serious.

My first question is this - when we are given the opportunity to ask questions of data, do we tend to get carried away and ask too many questions? 

Is there a point where too many questions creates a loop of no return? As the article spelled out “With so much talent looking for work, why not get what you really need? Here’s why: Managers pile up so many requirements that they make it nearly impossible to find anyone who fits.” The answer seems to be yes.

As Howard Gossage - potentially famous for fifteen people but a brilliant advertising guy in his time - said, great advertising is that which leaves room for the mouse. In other words, if the block of cheese is too big in the trap then the mouse can never get in to a position to be entrapped. I would argue that data should answer enough questions to provide a grounding of understanding but human intuition and just basic human interaction for those job seeking students is a must to find tomorrow’s best people.

My second question pivots off the idea of businesses sharing data to the point of sameness. Are we obsessing over data to the point where we believe that all is answered by it? The sameness comes from the level of emphasis put on the data. It’s only sameness if you choose to lean against the data rather than use it as a grounding for your own decisions and actions. 

Data can be very useful and will inform more and more in the future as we understand how best to work with it but the Greek triangle of Logos, Ethos and Pathos should, in my opinion, be used to balance our approach to data. Let’s embrace the irrational that exists within emotion. It’s the magical piece that invariably makes its way in to great success stories. Only a great writer like Zadie Smith can remind me of that importance - forcing me through a lengthy article that the logical mind would say I don’t have time to read. 

I’m starting to question whether having dogs in the workplace is a good thing when it comes to driving business success. My perspective here leans heavily towards idea led and innovations type companies but it may be true to a broader group.

 

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a tremendous fondness for dogs. It started before I was old enough to know what fondness meant. I grew up with dogs in the family and distinctly remember our last family dog because I found it dying in a field we rented to a local farmer. The farmer had shot Sasha because unfortunately Irish Red Setters are prone to go vampire like around sheep. He couldn’t afford to lose a lamb, so we lost our family dog.

 

I then revisited the idea of dogs with my ex wife and we got an amazing dog called Ilsa - a Weimaraner. I went with the theory that you end up looking like your dog, so I shot high. Ilsa was stunning but Ilsa also recognized that not everything was right in our family home. She became quite an anxious dog. They say that dogs only dream in the western world because we put so much stress on them. The relationship ended in an acrimonious divorce and part of that acrimony was letting Ilsa stay with my ex. California was the right place for her to stay and apparently she responds well to acupuncture.

The pain of saying goodbye to her was somewhat alleviated by a lucky chance of a new girlfriend who had an amazing ridgeback called Gemma. Luckily for me Gemma seemed to take to me really well. We had incredible fun together and became the best of buddies. Then of course, I screwed up that relationship and lost my new best friend in the process.

My most recent dog was Dolly - a German Short Haired Pointer. A dog that arrived by air crate at Newark as a puppy and jumped in to my and Sally’s life with full gusto. We got a car to fit Dolly. We bought a house upstate for Dolly. She would run free with me in the forests in Mass as I rode my mountain bike in the summer and cross country skied in the winter. I would never see her until I fell over and there she would be - by my side and checking I was ok before running off again. She was an amazing dog.

Unfortunately, it became clear to us that Dolly hated the city and we live in The City - Manhattan. The upstate house was the place she wanted to be and we started to feel cruel forcing her back into the city at the end of every weekend. Fortunately, a fortuitous move out to San Francisco for work changed Dolly’s life for the better. She loved the beach. I took her into work everyday - yes I readily admit I’ve been a fan of doggy love at work. Things were looking great except Sally and I didn’t really take to San Francisco. Eventually, we chose to make the move home to New York and the question of Dolly’s next move was very front of mind.

Like all things in life - at least in my life - circumstances played out in our favor with  a chance meeting on the beach. A guy knew someone who also had a GSP and was looking for another GSP for his dog to have as company. It got better because this gentleman had a 20 acre vineyard - all fenced in – which meant we didn’t have to worry about Dolly running in front of fast cars, a dangerous concept she never quite understood. This was a perfect solution to leave Dolly with this gentleman but it was really sad for me to let her go. This had to be my last go of having a dog except of course my son Charlie loves dogs, so whom am I to stop him asking and getting a dog one day?

My history with dogs probably plays more like an Emile Zola novel than a happy, Hallmark type moment but I hope you can understand - I love dogs. So it might surprise you to hear that the point I want to make in this post is that dogs are making us soft at work.

My real concern is that I’m pretty convinced that being soft is not conducive to making a business successful. I don’t recall any mention of a dog in Steve Jobs’ life nor for that matter in Bill Gates’. Yes Zuckerberg has a much-publicized dog but I haven’t heard any mention of his dog being in the office. I’m sure Google has a dog policy but I’ve never seen one there and I suspect no one would ever consider bringing a dog in to work because they are so driven to be successful. Is it possible that what we thought was a good thing for office environments actually reduces a business’s potential?

There’s plenty of research out there that suggests dogs are good for you. There’s even research that speaks to the reduced stress in the office environment thanks to the introduction of dogs. I just saw a study this week by Randolph Barker, a professor of management at Virginia Commonwealth University’s business school in Richmond, Va., which showed a 11% reduction in stress at work where dogs were present. But is reduced stress good for business? When considering the behavioral science of business; the carnal nature of competition and drive for success seem to be front and center in discussions, which to me is in stark contrast to this focus on stress reduction. It’s true that this carnal nature has got us into a lot of trouble especially with rogue CEOs, cost cutting oil companies and egotistical bankers but that’s a small group of individuals and shouldn’t dictate macro shifts in my mind. I’m not advocating for cutthroat competition because this is too singular in behavior and causes too many problems - the sort of problems that make a dog pooping in the office look like a bunch of flowers arriving at reception.

I think a good level of stress and competition in the office is essential to business success and I’m coming to the conclusion that dogs are one of the enemies to these dynamics.

I believe the ideal behavior in building business success will be one that’s an active collaborative state. Collaboration is a dangerous word in my mind because it gets cloaked in friendliness and mutual adoration - dog like descriptors - but when I use the adjective ‘active’ , I’m advocating for the concept of a healthy wrestle to get to strong ideas. Northwestern University Sociologist Brian Uzzi’s study of Broadway musicals supports this belief in my mind. He showed, where groups were too familiar with one another, fresh ideas tended to be stifled.

Perhaps you’re not in an idea led type business or each new day doesn’t call for exceeding the previous day’s successes. In your case, my argument is perhaps meaningless. For those businesses where I believe a healthy level of stress and competition makes for greater success, I’m ready for your counter arguments.