“Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists.”

“Nobel prize–winning economist Michael Spence makes this really clear: there are tradable jobs (doing things that could be done somewhere else, like building cars, designing chairs, and answering the phone) and non-tradable jobs (like mowing the lawn or cooking burgers). Is there any question that the first kind of job is worth keeping in our economy?  Alas, Spence reports that from 1990 to 2008, the U.S. economy added only 600,000 tradable jobs”

Even though just about everyone in the West has been through years of compulsory schooling, we see ever more belief in unfounded theories, bad financial decisions, and poor community and family planning. People’s connection with science and the arts is tenuous at best, and the financial acumen of the typical consumer is pitiful. If the goal was to raise the standards for rational thought, skeptical investigation, and useful decision making, we’ve failed for most of our citizens.”

“The common school (now called a public school) was a brand new concept, created shortly after the Civil War. “Common” because it was for everyone, for the kids of the farmer, the kids of the potter, and the kids of the local shopkeeper. Horace Mann is generally regarded as the father of the institution, but he didn’t have to fight nearly as hard as you would imagine—because industrialists were on his side. The two biggest challenges of a newly industrial economy were finding enough compliant workers and finding enough eager customers. The common school solved both problems.

“The normal school (now called a teacher’s college) was developed to indoctrinate teachers into the system of the common school, ensuring that there would be a coherent approach to the processing of students. If this sounds parallel to the notion of factories producing items in bulk, of interchangeable parts, of the notion of measurement and quality, it’s not an accident.”

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/stop_stealing_dreams/2012/02/stop-stealing-dreams-the-entire-manifesto-on-the-web.html 

Hope: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/they-aint-making-any-more-of-them-the-great-engineering-shortage-of-2012/ lists some of the technology schools cropping up online to address this need and fill good jobs for people joining the ”rise of self-directed learning services and websites such as Codecademy,CodeLesson, General Assembly, Dev Bootcamp, Treehouse and Udemy (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Udemy) make the lower numbers of college graduates with computer science degrees less disconcerting.”

1.       Create exclusive time periods to focus on only the code you’re working on – focus wholly on the work that is producing great user experience, increasing profit, widening margin, etc.  – then take a break and do other stuff.

a.       Email, chat, FB, Twitter, Instagram update, Pinterest alerts distract us much more than we think. Focus until we reach a stopping point.

2.       Improve the quality of work by focusing  on 1 customer deliverable at a time – this is one reason to permanently address the interrupt driven maintenance taxes

3.       Vacations – TAKE EM!!!  and off time should be away!  use those times to refresh your mind/creativity/drive.   The problem will find you if it needs you.

4.       Shorter and fewer meetings. Be ontime and no alerts.  End with a decision, an owner, and an estimate.  If it’s just sounding out ideas, then none of that applies.

Task switching to something else while you are coding a solution is expensive and inefficient.  For Programmers, Joel Spolsky notes: “task switches take a really, really, really long time. That’s because programming is the kind of task where you have to keep a lot of things in your head at once. The more things you remember at once, the more productive you are at programming.  A programmer coding at full throttle is keeping zillions of things in their head at once: everything from names of variables, data structures, important APIs, the names of utility functions that they wrote and call a lot, even the name of the subdirectory where they store their source code.”  Multi-task advocates think you can effectively concentrate on 2 things at the same time without degrading your effectiveness.  The harder your job, the more you need to focus.  The context switch between checking mail/chats/updates is very, very expensive– focus on developing a solution , and then take a good long break to focus on FB friends, Draw!, etc.

“I check my e-mail much less often,” he said. “The interruptions really can throw you off-track.”  In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. “I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month. <citation>

Harvard Business wrote recently about Focus and taking all your vacations! –  http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/03/the-magic-of-doing-one-thing-a.html   

“What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. …The biggest cost … is to your productivity. In part, that’s a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you’re partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it’s because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you’re increasing the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.”  <my addition>: this is called FLOW, and it’s critical to both quality and creativity> … “if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy  … I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.”

This isn’t about reducing internet/surfing or conversation.  It is about how we chunk out our work and ignore (SILENCE?!) the ding of the meaningless social update during our sprints of work.  It’s about admitting that multi-tasking is mostly self-delusion.

“consumers are bringing their preferences to work is clear. At many companies, they’re actually bringing their own tools.  Forrester has done a number of studies on the trend. In a recent survey of 1,700 information workers, nearly half of the respondents said that they bought their own work smartphones while only 41 percent reported that their company paid. Another study of 4,000 similar workers found that 37 percent of employees were using “do-it-yourself technologies without IT’s permission. LinkedIn, Google Docs, Smartsheet.com, Facebook, iPads, YouTube, Dropbox, Flipboard — the list is long and growing.” <citation>

The responsive company already has a lot of the thinking done for us.  With excellent work by Alan Murray, Jack Welch, and Clayton Christensen’s research on the market conditions around Innovation, and the sources of Innovation, the threats to Innovation, and the value which Innovation provides. Disruptive technologies and disruptive times are not frequent, but most companies miss those opportunities, and are often upended by them.  With consumer products (and cloud-services) increasingly being incredibly easy to use/install/deploy, the IT departments have large pressure to innovate.  Saying NO is not enough anymore (thanks God!).

I’ve summarized the different ways companies tap creativity using the exact motivations which are specifically important for knowledge workers.  The specifics of Innovation programs at Google, Wikipedia, GE, Seagate, 3M, and other companies are included in the link above. I hope I described the link between the  knowledge workers’ Drive (Daniel Pink!) and the Innovation program successes at those companies. Pink repeats the answer several times: Science already knows a lot about motivation and behavior, which most businesses have yet to understand about us humans.

1. Sources of Innovation – Small, cross-functional, diverse thinking and visibly supported in taking risk to solve important problems which they believe the company will act to solve.
2. Threats to Innovation -The sacred structures so beloved in the post-industrial manufacturing world – the MBO management by objective scorecards – the measures which are not linked to bottom-line or top-line growth. Managers seeking acquisition of resouces or budgets, rather than accomplishment. Uniformity and conformist cultures.
3. Value of Innovation – this is tempting to say, if you don’t ‘get it’ you never will.  But…
   1. Facebook’s Hackathon Innovation sessions are credited as large part of leading FB to 1B users in less than 7 years.
   2. Failure to embrace distuptive change they themselves started – killed Seagate.
   3. The largest 3M product (post-it!) was bootlegged within the company to prevent existing products from killing it.
   4. Gmail and Adsense @ Google were created on 20% free-time – these are top revenue and advertising elements in Google’s platform.
   5. Employees leading reason for leaving companies? Bad managers. A top reason employees cite- bad managers failing to support good, new ideas.

Innovator’s Dilemma – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875845851/   I am including my own notes blended with the summaries there.    

Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen says that in certain circumstances, “outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership, or worse, disappear completely.” He proves his conclusion and articulates how to avoid a being killed by disruptive technologies.  Incrementalism is defined as a management strategy to pursue annual 2%-5% changes through optimization.  In dealing with disruptive, market changing situations the incrementalist approach causes actual harm to a company’s ability to adopt fast-moving changes in cost, function, features. Several corporate institutional hurdles also insulate the incrementalist’s failure under rapidly changing value propositions.  The movement of structural and software development to “the cloud” changes cost, speed and availability radically, and maps well to the topics covered in 8088 processor, Seagate drives, and the hydraulic excavator. 

Alan Murray’s WSJ summary of most managers is interesting to evaluate -”Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.” Alan Murray and Christensen are collectively observing that managers, management, and companies are usually unsuited to move quickly during disruptive periods.

Examples of corporate insulation mechanisms which cause harm under these disruptive cycles include;  static scorecards, corporate bonus structures on existing KPIs, long-range business-plans, “small market” syndrome and failure to appreciate the need to possibly support new products which erode existing products. These structures all provide validation to the objection against adopting innovations.  This concept links nicely to Jack Welch analogy of layers of management acting like successive layers of coats – preventing people from even accurately perceiving basics like the temperature.  For a humorous look at this see http://www.thelowbar.com/2008/08/how-shit-happens.html. 

Most technologies improve the performance of existing products in relation to the criteria which existing customers have always used. These technologies are called sustaining technologies. Disruptive technologies do something different. They create an entirely new value proposition. They improve the performance of the product in relation to new performance criteria. Products which are based on disruptive technologies are often smaller, cheaper, simpler, and easier to use. However, the moment they are introduced, they cannot immediately compete against the traditional products and so they cannot directly reach a big market. The initial period of disruptive technologies usually see objections because the innovation does *not* map well to the existing structures of scorecards, traditional delivery models, existing mental models, staffing targets, and other plans built for the existing world, rather than the future.

Christensen focuses on “disruptive technology” of the Honda Supercub, Intel’s 8088 processor, and the hydraulic excavator.  He shows why most companies miss “the next great wave.” Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.”

Christensen researched how disruptive technologies have developed in the computer disk industry, an extremely rapid evolving industry. He identified six steps in the emergence of disruptive technologies:

1. Disruptive technologies often are invented in traditional large companies. Example: at Seagate Technology, the biggest producer of 5,25 disks, engineers in 1985 designed the first 3,5 disk.

2. The marketing department examines first reactions from important customers to the new technology. Then they notice that existing customers are not very interested and they conclude that not a lot of money can be made with the new product. Example: this is what happened at Seagate. The 3,5 disk’s were put upon the shelf.

3. The company keeps on investing in the traditional technology. Performance improvement of the traditional technology is highly appreciated by existing customers and a lot of money is being made. Example: Seagate invested in the 5,25 disk technology. This led to considerable improvement of the technology and to a considerable improvement of sales.

4. New companies are started up (by ex-employees of the traditional companies) and markets for the new technology emerge by trial and error. Example: ex-Seagate people started up Corner Peripherals. This company focused on the small emerging market for 3,5 inch disks. In the beginning this was only for the laptop market.

5. The new players move up in the market. The performance of the new technologies gets better after some time, enabling them to compete better and better with the traditional companies and products. Example: the performance of the 3,5 disks improved drastically. The 3,5 inch disk moved up in the market, to the personal computer market. Corner pushed Seagate out of the PC market for 3,5 inch disk drives.

6. Traditional companies try to defend their market position and to get along in the new market. Often they notice that they have fallen behind so far, that they cannot keep up. Example: Seagate did not succeed in capturing a significant part of the new market for 3,5 inch disk drives for PC’s.

The events described above can be understood by the four principles of disruptive technologies which Christensen formulates:

1. In well-led companies it is customers, not managers, who actually determine resources allocation. This is a proposition of the resources dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) which is supported strongly by the research of Christensen. In essence: middle managers will not tend to invest in technologies that are not directly appreciated by important (large) clients, because they will not be able to get quick financial gains by doing this.

2. Small markets can not fulfil the growth need of large companies. For several reasons, growth is important for companies. Unfortunately, the bigger the company, the harder it is to continue growth. A small company (40 million sales) with a growth target of 20%, must achieve 8 million extra sales. A large company (4 billion sales), has to achieve 800 million of extra sales! Emerging markets often simply are not large enough to fulfil such growth needs. They can, however, fulfil the growth needs of new small companies.

3. Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed. The ultimate applications of disruptive technologies cannot be foreseen. Failure is an intrinsic unavoidable step toward success.

4. Technology supply does not always equal the market demand. The speed of technological progress is often bigger than the speed with which the customer demand develops. By improving the performance of the disruptive technologies (for instance the 3,5 inch disks, first only used in the laptop market), they became suitable for the larger PC-market.

These steps explain why traditional companies are often not capable of applying disruptive technologies. Christensen argues that you cannot resist these four principles. What you can do however, is use them to your advantage. For instance: in a large company you can create an ‘island’ where the new technology is developed for the new market. Also it is possible get an ownership in emerging companies which develop the new technologies (several companies have done this successfully).”

• Five primary behaviors block a group’s ability to work together. The foundation is absence of trust, and each of the other changes builds on improving Trust.  The Inattention to Results is  the final attitude which the leaders must change.

• Absence of Trust – To achieve a common goal, the team members must trust that their weaknesses will not be used against them or manipulated by managers.  “Trust requires that team members have confidence in each other intentions, that they are good and therefore have no reason to be protective and careful in the team…The key to overcoming a lack of trust is shared experiences, multiple follow-throughs and integrity.”  Leaders must build trust, “The primary role of the leader is to lead my example, be the first one to be vulnerable, and create an environment where it’s safe to be vulnerable. Building trust makes conflict possible!” Open discussion and assuming people’s best intentions toward the group goals are both great examples of where leaders can demonstrate Trust as a core value.  The most common sign of absence of Trust is the inability of the team to acknowledge the need to change, accept constructive disagreement, and quietly nodding at meetings without any action or change in behavior.  These are all addressed below.  Trust is the critical foundation for addressing any of the other problems, and the CEO (Kathryn) realizes she must first restore a firm foundation of trust before she can proceed to introducing Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results-focus. 

• Fear of Conflict – Once a team has trust, productive conflict becomes possible.  This fear of conflict commonly appears as inauthentic “buy-in” without honest follow through.  From the book, ““Harmony itself is good, I suppose, if it comes as a result of working through issues constantly and cycling through conflict. But if it comes only as a result of people holding back their opinions and honest concerns, then it’s a bad thing.”  Leaders should be “careful not to try and steer the team towards premature resolution of conflict with the intention of protecting people. It’s important for leaders to help the team members to learn and develop positive conflict resolution skills. The best way to do this is for leader to “lead by example”, modeling the appropriate behaviors, rather than trying to smooth over the conflict. The author also points out that conflict is never going to feel comfortable but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t engage in it.  Consensus is not the goal of conflict.  Conflict allows people to express their opinions before a decision is made.  Once teams can accept healthy conflict, people can buy into decisions.  This is because “most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to.”

•  Lack of Commitment – Leaders seek buy-in and commitment, and are commonly confused why it is difficult to establish this attitude.  The gap is because Trust and Conflict are required building blocks for Commitment.  While it is difficult at first to adopt, the following reality is what leads to honest commitment by teams – “When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board…Leaders help facilitate commitment by reviewing all key decisions made at the end of team meetings, making responsibility and deadlines clear.”  Without managers committing to a common purpose, individual managers commit to their own specific objectives.  This often does not effectively advance the overall group’s goals.  It is critical to build collective ego, through open conflict and trust, so that the group builds respect and a sense of collective accomplishment.   Once teams trust one another, manage conflict honestly and transparently, and are able to form commitment to shared goals, the team can address the next building block – accountability.

• Avoidance of Accountability – Without team commitment, conflict and trust, you cannot have accountability. If the team is to be accountable, everyone must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.  From the book – “People aren’t going to hold each other accountable if they haven’t clearly bought in to the same plan.”  Every team member must become accountable to the team, and as the author points out Communication of Accountability is key, “employees need to hear messages up to seven times before they really absorb them.” When managers hold each other, themselves, and the team accountable, it becomes easy to see -“Team members should never let the team down regarding commitments. The team needs to hold their peers responsible for achieving results and working to high standards.”  Leaders must encourage others to hold them accountable and openly hold one another accountable to model the open discussion, trust, and delivery of results. Leaders who do not model this behavior must see that change as the only option to fit within the group.  “When teams are not holding one another accountable it’s usually because they’re not measuring their progress. It’s important to make clear what the team’s standards are, what needs to get done, by who and by when. Ambiguity is the enemy of accountability.”  Once teams trust each other, handle conflict productively, are committed, and accountable to the same plan, the last piece can be addressed: Inattention to Results.

• Inattention to Results – Leaders must drive for results which advance the entire group’s objectives.  In response, a healthy team places team results as the most important goal. A performance based culture seeks accomplishment and improvement as goals worthy of sacrifice and take pride in the results the group accomplishes.   “When all team members place the team’s results first the team becomes results orientated.  Leaders need to make the teams results clear for all to see, rewarding the behaviors that contribute to the team’s results. It’s the responsibility of the leader to keep the teams focus on results.”

• How will we know what success looks like–
  • Trust – People are willing to be open and vulnerable in the group – “I screwed up” is OK! to say.
  • Conflict – team engage in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas
  • Commitment – team members openly discuss and commit to decisions
  • Accountability – team members call their peers on actions/behaviors which hurt the team or don’t serve our common goal
  • Results – team members do use results as their basis for success.  Team members stop putting their individual needs before those of the group.

• Further reading
  • A follow up book for change management by the same author: http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Facilitators/dp/0787976377
  • Much of this is taken or quoted from from http://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Lencioni/product-reviews/0787960756?pageNumber=2,  http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/book-review-the-five-dysfunctions-of-a-team , http://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2009/04/22/the-five-dysfunctions-of-a-team-book-review/, http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Five-Dysfunctions-of-a-Team/107423249287576?sk=info, and an interview with the author: http://www.cio.com/article/462315/Patrick_Lencioni_on_Leadership

Chris Anderson (also wrote the Long Tail) covers the history and future of monetizing software on the internet. He mostly (but not exclusively) addresses pricing tendencies and approaches to pricing as it relates to software. The contention and evidence supports the conclusion that most consumer software will become free over time via commoditization. He does not address the “cloud” which is a gap I would like to see him address. His conclusion, and much of the evidence on software sales is to ensure that your business model reinforces the few critical, for-profit products. Do this by delivering free, excellent software intentionally. Make sure you’re creating unique, awesome, easy, and free software. Serve the consumer by providing so much free, beneficial software that the customers understand that the few fundamental pieces require some charge. Anderson also, incredibly, ties in one of my favs last year, Predictably Irrational, on the overconsumption of free, versus low priced-goods. Free is much, much different than cheap. Zero is a powerful price, and the buffet-effect is triggered in the brain on free items, not so with low or under-priced items. As a nice corallary on how for-profit companies are tapping into this element, Google and 3M have long had set-aside time for people to spend specifically on whatever they wanted (thereby removing the for-profit justifications). 3M got the post-it note, and Google has most of its most successful applications from it’s “20% Time” People react differently in these “free” situations. Free is one of the few recent books on the neuro-economics-meets-behavioral psychology topic

Smart and Gets Things Done – Knock, Knock it’s reality – if you want developers to develop, you need to read this. Joel has NAILED what makes rockstars run from managers (TEAMWORK posters!) and what actually attracts people who work all weekend, even if not metric is served by writing that killer code. Intellectual Diversity, Hiring methodology, and how to combat that creeping sense of dread that big companies give the smartest people…Thank you Joel.I have watched devs laugh openly and in groups at managers, for exactly the ‘sins’ Spolsky details in 150 pages. The 12 step program appendix is also excellent to ensure you’re shipping tight code.

The Long Tail – Very smart book. Following are a few of the points I enjoyed:

-TV/mass media always targets common interests, and that means sex, relationships, and stupid gameshows…this is not NOT! because people are dumb, but because in sex, relationships, and gameshows, mass-culture doesn’t vary much…whereas with many other topics (vacationing, food choice, historical interest, beer-making etc) people vary much more than about sex…which is why those become niche market/channels. very smart.

-Search filters improves the utility of the long tale, as people can then find their own niche interests. brilliant point.

-critical mass for niche/long tale is very low –very interesting implications for future.

-People don’t view stealing music/media as stealing anymore. especially true in GenY…this is scary, but as he pts out- must deal with this truth

Predictably Irrational – My favorite for 2008, The author explains a lot of things about our relative sense of pain, emotion, analysis, and bargains. He brings you to a hospital, where he is in a body-cast having been blown up at 18 years old. His year in bandages sparks curiosity: Why do nurses rip off bandages quickly? When we are slowly desensitized to pain. He then pulls us over to free chocolate vs. really cheap GOOD chocolate…People won’t spend 1 penny but will horde free candy. Anticipation of vinegar beer vs. beer has very surprising results too. And when people (his studies are on males) are sexually aroused, the decision making powers to acquire short term gratification (not just that!) actually heighten…and long term planning is shot…but the feeling passes quickly. Dan Ariely is really an economist on the wild side of studying human behavior. Good companion book is Stumbling on Happiness, as it’s Phychologist’s study of similar quetions.

An Unquiet Mind – A powerful personal description of life with bipolar disorder (the author is leading researcher, and prefers the term manic depressive disorder). In 200 pages she details the important role this plays in society, but more importantly she provides a view through her own clinical analysis of her own struggles and accomplishments through the range of mania and depression. She is a leading researcher and leader in the field, as also a strong spirit in explaining why lithium is a constant battle. A heroic personal account.

MoneyBall – Just read this book and don’t ask why. It’s a thing of beaty, even if you don’t think it will turn out to be fascinating.   Using statistics and analysis to dethrone the ‘good old boy’ network; Michael Lewis points out how poorly predictions using traditional baseball coach analysis is to predict whether a pitcher or hitter will do well in the future. This is an interesting sports analogy for the power of analysis and numbers. Also quoted by Microsoft in re-assessing the ‘old way’ of patent valuations; and a really clear attack on the good-old-boy approach to evaluating talent. The “he looks like a pitcher” is brutally mocked, and backed up by data as well as logic. Interesting tie-in covered in SWAY indicated the same bias on first round NBA picks holds true, despite the proof laid down on so many over-rated #1 round picks. I have recommended this book as a primer into stats and hiring talent. It has been well received in both areas. Hiring talent has a lot of echos in this book, especially actually looking at how people help a TEAM win…which is the goal when you hire into a team.

Why We Buy, the Science of Shopping – This is retail shopping exposed.  The book has some interesting observations (Butt Brush effect which prevents browsing, Threshholding the front of a store, and male-try-on rates for clothing vs buying behaviors). However, the sexist generalizatons about shopping seem to be unsupported in a lot of the text. I’d have preferred a thinner book with more data and less stereo-typing. There is interesting data on shppping, but you have to wade through some 1950s generalities on men/women shopping, which just don’t add much to the discussion.

Nudist on the Lateshift – Insanely good Po Bronson—great stories of techies in the Tech Bubble, and lovely told by a sympathetic smart-dude. UberGeek and GeekHaus are amazing, and the naked programmer story is just too funny to avoid. Bronson works his magic explaining the psychology of techie-weirdness without mocking the internet geeks.

Sketching User Experiences – Bruxton is very smart and creative and demonstrates how user interfaces (UI) can be built and tested for a range of products (from IPod to Bifocal computer UI). It is maybe 100 pages of text, and 150pages of “how to pictures” and it is an excellent read on the near future of UI design for both hardware devices and software.

The Dip A little book that teaches you when to quit – When to quit…wow, so smart a topic. Best quotation: “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” Grodin’s 75 pgs are worth reading to see when pushing through adversity is beneficial (do others fail right at this same point for manageable reasons) or when to move on (is the block for most people actually the reason this fails, and why you will too). Continuing when you should see failure comes in 2 kinds – the cliff, and culdesacs, which certainly makes sense but he tells it in humorous, quick bites. Scattered examples also worth keeping. Situational leadership, a good course which coveres some of these same topics, could really benefit from this realization: some things don’t require a better leader, you should just quit doing them! People get this intuitively is Seth’s point, but we get coached out of quitting, to our own detriment sometimes.

Drive, the surprising truth about what motivates us – Wikipedia killed Microsoft Encarta and Britanica isn’t competitive with Wikipedia. What motivation drives so many humans to create and contribute without any traditional financial reward model? For-profit businesses benefit by finding out why this happens. Drive is a guide on why Google’s 20%, 3M’s personal bootlegging time, and Wikipedia existence generate so much passionate and successful work. Pink repeats the answer several times: Science already knows a lot about motivation and behavior which most business have yet to understand about us humans. Pink then gives a summary of what science knows about human motivation.

Humans have 3 interecting motivations. Motivation 1.0 – Survival: sex, food, shelter, safety. Mo 1.0 had its hayday for most of human evolution, because we didn’t have enough food, safety or shelter (I will sidestep the obvious joke about sex at this point). Motivation 2.0 – Carot n’ stick of monetary rewards by external managers. Mo 2.0 really gets busy in the Industrial-Revolution. Motivation 3.0 – Once past the baseline money all people want, Mo 3.0 kicks into high gear and asks “do I LIKE doing this work?” 1.0 must be satisfied before it will give up control, then 2.0 takes over and will dominate until a baseline reward exists (making ‘enough’ money). After that amount, additional dollars do not matter nearly as much as our desire for”Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.” There are several convincing studies demonstrating our desire for autonomy, mastery, and purpose – some even demonstrate that monetary awards in constricted environments produce *less* results than giving the same person less money and more control over how they accomplish work.

Drive is careful to point out that Motivation 3.0 may only operate in creative, heuristic-based work. This analytical, creative work requires self-direct and very smart people. 3.0 does not want to follow step-by-step toward a preset algorithm producing more widgets. We want to create, not follow. Mo 3.0 is happy when work provides 1) autonomy in our efforts; in work which 2) provides the ability to progress toward mastery of a subject; and 3) serves a purpose we can see, understand, and support. Pink also spends a good deal of time explaining the mental zone this puts us into, called “flow.” This concept of intentional practice is covered well in Gladwell’s book “Outliers.” Gladwell concludes that becoming an expert in virtually any field requires 10,000 hours of intentional practice; where intentional practice is doing work with the conscious intent to get better at the skills you are using. Gladwell also agrees with Pink’s conclusion that people will only sustain this intentional practice if there is a purpose which is clear and interesting to pursue.

Back to Google and 3M – Their unstructured employee time is always spent on heuristic solutions to problems people are insterested in solving. This is where true creativity and interest get unlocked and motivation reaches peak performance. For people: metrics boards or productivity reports will always lose out to interesting software problems or better ways to solve a basic human need. Google and 3M are finding a way to take that reality, and include it within their business. They’ve had a lot of success. Other companies are doing some very smart things to free employees from ‘if you do this, then you get that’ reward systems. Altassian created “Fed-Ex Days” where employees are free to choose their teams and work on any problem *they* want to solve 1 day per quarter. This is called “Fed Ex” because you have to deliver the idea, code, or whatever next day. The results at Atlassian were so good that very quickly it justified moving to a full 20% of engineering time moving to Fed-Ex. This removed managers’ direction, allowed engineers to choose whom they associated with, and only had results as the requirement! Atlassian has zero engineering turnover. Google has 50% of its offerings coming from its “20% time.” We humans are more productive when we have freedom to work on projects we care about; and we also get better and better at the work we do when we work on projects we care about. It is a virtuous circle which requires little management to shepherd into the for-profit business model.

One question which Pink did not ask in Drive, but I think he should have is whether 3.0 emerged because of the Internet age. In the last 20 years, finally, we’ve started to have a group of people focused on work where the ‘boss’ may not be the expert. The differences between the assembly line and software development are pretty easy to see. Henry Ford’s managers knew the work better than the assembly-line workers. The managers wrote the manual. That is not true in a highly differentiated company, where the technical expert is the person closest to the problem. This difference has actually reduced the difference in wages/income between front line work and managers. This rise in income for front-line workers has been excellent in many ways, and also may be driving the emergence of Mo 3.0. I wish Pink had investigated this question.

Personality Test to see where you fall on Drive’s continuum of motivation.

If the topic of human motivation in the Internet age or software creation is interesting, you should read Drive. If you do not think people will organize outside of direct-profit motive, you have missed out on what is happening, and you should immediate go and buy a copy of FREE, summarized here. Chris Anderson will do an excellent job of explaining how the future is already arriving, and you need to understand creative people a lot of software development is already finding ways around the direct “if I do this, then I get that” payment models. Both models will continue to exist, so paying attention to the new one seems very important.

One Second After – Asks a very interesting question: At 350M people, can we maintain freedom without modern technology, and how would post-technology world look. Especially interesting as I learned what threat is #5 on the Terrorist Watch List, given that I’d only heard about EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) from James Bond. It is a very fast read, and interesting how little we focus on survival in comparison to the world he creates…also interesting to read in light of Seth Godin’s blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/how-far-away-is-your-future.html 

Chasing Daylight, how my forthcoming death transformed my life – Eugene O’Kelly learned he had very little time left on Earth, due to incurable brain cancer. His reflections on what it means to be alive, and responsibilities to people you know, love, or/and lead are incredibly simple and pointed – listen. speak honestly. tell them the truth they need to hear. don’t regret the life you have lived by skimping on responsibilities. Truly a moving 100+ page book.

the Diving Bell and the Butterfly – If you want to stop feeling sorry for yourself, this book will correct that feeling. Bauby loves his life, and misses much of what you’d expect, but also points out how much he misses being able to digress into humor mid-sentence and relax when communicating. His discussion of humor inspires anyone who thinks humor doesn’t help to lighten pain. I have not seen the movie, because I fear ruining the piercing images his book delivers. maybe one day.

Problem Solving 101  A simple book for smart people – Good outline for a book, but lacks enough examples or difficult problems to prove his outline on breaking problems down into possible causes, most probable causes, and workarounds vs. root cause solutions. Watanabe did write this as instruction for high-school, and I would recommend it there, but would like him to include samples for kids to work/discuss with teacher/mom/dad etc. very short book, so worth the investment to start discussion with kids on how to diagnose and troublshoot issues.

The Starfish and the Spider – Two topics are well-covered in this book. The concept of Catalysts (similar to Gladwell’s Connectors in Tipping Point). These are people who’s combination of loose social ties, broad interests,high trust, and no risk aversion. These people build self-organizing groups capable of producing loosely ordered but productive teams. The other concept is rejecting 1950′s command/control enterprises, because of their failure to respond to knowledge-workers principles, and therefore orgs which loosely associate on few, core principles with a mostly-defined objective beat the crap out of 1950 mgmt style. His examples are excellent, his metaphor does get somewhat tiring (enough spiders…they suck!).

Wikinomics, how mass collaboration changes everything – Excellent book, especially because of the many examples of companies embracing collaborative content creation and enabling cooperative development/solutions…the reference to Boing Boing and firestorm around IBM were good too, as speaks to how quickly the webinati can move things along. Excellent coverage of Peer-Created work, in open formats, not just wikipedia but the OS creation of Linux Kernel work being collaboratively done. Second half of book is a bit preachy and future-casting but the first half, and the details of modularity in production for motorcycles in China and Boeing’s core business focus (most of Dreamliner is partner created)…these details were fascinating to demonstrate the authors’ points on how important OPEN software and OPEN supply lines have come in 10 years. Great points to couple with content creation, especially when some view these types of detail oriented work as ‘too hard’ to be done with remote, self-selecting Subject Matter Experts.

The “Net-Gen” is another critical concept. People under some age or experience who are radically different than people who view the computer-age as basically a new kind of telephone/video device. This is more about how you view the web, than your chronological age. Net-Gen on the other hand is mostly interested in read/write web (where contribution is peer-created without huge barriers…think wikipedia, peer review movies, facebook commenting, or other easy to change/add sites). THe read-only web is still useful to gather info, but the higher rating you have with read-write, the easier it is to include the intellect of Net-Gen people. The influence of NetGen goes up every day. obviously.

but note to self: repeatedly telling me how successful GM is going to be because of their Globalized IT and decision-making structure doesn’t seem to look very good…mid-bailout in 2009.

Twilight – 500pages; and nearly 250 good ones! I am 40, reading it to reassure my wife that my 12 year old could read it. It’s not a bad book, just a little slow and bland for me…but I did finish it, and it is not a bad vampire book. I prefer Bram Stroker (of course!) but again, a clever spin on an interesting topic.

Generating Buy-in – A delight at <150 pages. Of all the management books on presenting ideas, this is the first and foremost in my opinion; explaining everything from motivations to creating reality for others. I am amazed this book isn’t standard reading. So glad I picked it up. Give 3 concrete examples in any forward looking story; paint visual stories about how life gets better; focus on people, not things; and remain focused on the vision, and step over quibbling. all very important.

Gut Feelings, the intelligence of the unconscious – This is background research for Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. Blink fascinated me (why do we like ice cream more in a round container?!) Turning to Gut Feeling, it is a little deeper than Blink, but not much. His main point is that we’ve evolved unconscious ‘rules of thumb’ over 30K years which rational/logical thinking post-dates. These rules of thumb explain trust, love, and other emotions which run contrary to logic. While perhaps true, not much additional research escaped Gladwell’s summary of this investigation. I’d recommend Blink many times over as broader than ‘Gut’ and Gut isn’t much deeper than Gladwell’s survey.

Watch you Bleed –  I am a sucker for misunderstood genius, but Axl was over the top even for me. Axl Rose treats many people amazingly badly. Details within. There are some interesting stories regarding Aerosmith and Rolling Stones; and a very raw sequence about how hard the band manager tried to keep this group together to allow the talent onto records…but the group was a timebomb, and everyone seemed to sense it.

Facing Down Evil – This book had so much promise, and did not deliver. The author has been at the center of many national crises, and essentially founded the HRT and hostage negotiation team at the FBI. But, sadly, the stories drag on without any of the tension I am sure actually existed. All in all, a let down for me.

The Number -   Quick read on retirement plan. 4% and what DellWebb knows about what we enjoy in retirement.

The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King – 100-200K Hold’em private tournament with famous poker players ‘ganging up’ on a very smart rookie-banker. Surprising result, and excellent history lesson from 2001-2005 as Poker started to take off nationally. Good insight on gambler-psychology as well

Choke – Palahniuk’s book reads at a furious pace. It is too edgy for me, and has way too much porn (I didn’t know best-sellers would have porn?!) But, there are some positives – he has mastered writing the way we think, which speeds it…and his characters are compelling, if extremely tragic. The dudes trapped in 1780′s historical amusement park, and collecting rocks, and cruising sex-addicts anonymous for dates. So it is off the wall but turns pages. More graphic and SouthPark-ish than I expected from the summary/blurb and thumbing thru it. that said, fun 2 day adult-only read.

Useless Arithmetic – This book has an agenda. However, it does ask a series of vary interesting questions on multi-variant models used to predict the future. From learning about Atlantic cod (nearly wiped out) from wolves, to wave-erosion…many of our existing models on multifactorial equations where the variables are interdependent is basically just crap…we don’t predict stuff very well, and often salmon, cod, or beach front property is wiped out in excess etc. Neither author is a mathmetician, and yet their commendary and observations about faulty predictions and common modeling mistakes is very clear.

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe – Dr. Firlik is a neurosurgeon, who is interested in the logic and emotions involved in treating head trauma and chronic brain problems. She is very clear in her style (short book) and is crystal clear on the processes involved from accident/stroke/growth through to correction or death (or somewhere in between). She GETS what crisis means, and writes to pull you into her operating room. crisis-people may cuss a little, be self-assured, and have a loud sense of humor, she explains why wonderfully two different times in the book.

How would you move Mt. Fuji – How the world’s smartest companies select the world’s most creative thinkers – 50 pages long. excellent hiring book – alpha risk discussion and good honing hiring questions to avoid bias and help prevent people from hiring clones of themselves. The section on avoiding snap judgments and the detailed answers pointing out the important ways to ensure intellectual diversity while driving a very high bar on analytical skills.

Built to Last, Successful habits of visionary companies – 2 things in the book are smart, the rest is bizbook speak. Hedgehog: Do what you are good at, and not the other stuff…and when taking on a new leadership position, get the bad apples off the bus, then get the good apples ON, then decide the detailed direction of the bus…The order is important.

Turing’s Delirium – A nightmare-ish sci-fi about a kafka-esque compsci gov’t hack in Bolivia who is debating retirement from Cryptogrophy. Overall, it was too dark for me, but I admit that his daughter’s cyber-space escapades kept it perverse enough to keep me reading:) End was a little less than the rest of the book.

Guns, Germs, and Steel – The best read I had in 2007 –  Seed packages travel with humans, fruits are HUGE because we poop huge-seeds because we prefer huge fruits, and latrines are 4000 years old…we’ve self-selected apples, berries, oranges because they grew out of the outhouses in clumps. Cross-polination and self-polination blend to form the best surviving plants. And, we domesticated all ungulates before Moses…the buffalo is too wild to be demosticated for farming…Corn took forever to grow into stalks we could eat (Maize) but 2000 yhears ago even maize hadn’t become worth eating from caloric standpoint. How can you not want to know these facts that drove evolution laterally (because seeds survive that way).

On the Wealth of Nations – PJ O’Rourke gives you crib notes on economics. very useeful (and funny) summary. Most important point is that Adam Smith has VERY LITTLE to do with today’s conservative movement. Smith was advocating that we enable consumers to succeed, instead of today’s conservatives focusing on CORPORATIONs succeeding.

Blink – Blink highlights situations in which we are suseptible to overthinking or misplace our trust in modern technology. ‘Blink’ moments occur when our intuition is in fact correct, such as fight/flight or trust/distrust decisions. Gladwell observes that our ‘thin slice’ is only useful under some circumstances. hemistry and fake documents led art historians astray and left them believing a forgery was accurate,because “science confirms it.” A panicked policeman or bodyguard resort to more primal instincts under pressure, when evaluating friend vs. foe. Complex logic evades people at 180 heartbeats per minute. The unconscious mind operates in the background, and this wiring predates modern human society; it remains, even if the reason it exists is long gone. For example, we have a flight response immediately upon seeing fur and fangs, even if we don’t recognize it’s a wolverine. We simply react to the teeth/claws. If we train our body to stay calm capacity to think under pressure. Being shot at makes the novice lose control of his bowels (and stop thinking!). with practice, soldiers and bodyguards learn to control their blood pressure and retain their logical mind, even when wounded.

THINK! Think! is primarily written to vent LeGault’s rage at decisions made in a ‘Blink.’ More generally, he tells us that TV, Media, and Americans are headed to intellectual hell because we are not thinking enough. LeGault makes the following observations: People do not use logic as much as they should. TV and the Media have degenerated even lower than we thought was possible; and Survivor isn’t even in syndication yet! LeGault’s research also confirms that most people would rather feel happy and accepted than be forced to think through difficult problems. To this we can say… Duh! When confrunted with a choice, most people prefer to tune in and drop out of intellectual excercises. Tuning out makes LeGault mad. And lastly, LeGault has noticed that when he rants at society for being stupid, few people send him thank-you notes. My suggestion would be to read Stumbling on Happiness instead of this book, or any number of books which touch on the topic of thought.

The Long Walk – Slavomir survived Stalin; barely. Escaping the Gulag, he found individuals who helped, and cared, even at risk of their own lives. The small band crossed Lake Bikal,Mongolia, China, Nepal, and India. They saved a young girl from certain death. They preserved human dignity and purpose in face of starvation and death.  There is a lot of debate if this actually happened – whether it did or not, the morals in this book are better and clearer than most leadership books.  Maybe it isn’t suprising that the best leadership book is a fable?

The Good Women of China, Hidden Voices. In 2006/7 someone told me about this book and I was getting ready to travel to China.  I read it.  One of the hardest books I have read, but presents the history and current conditions across different areas of China, specifically the lives of China’s women. Some of this is very dark, and scary, and repressive, and backwards but again, it is an area that opened my eyes to mistreatment happening today behind another iron curtain.

The Selfish Gene –  This book introduced two concepts very well: natural selection operates ‘as if’ genes wanted certain things; and writing science texts that interested non-science people…for that alone Dawkins deserves many stars. Hawking was right behind him I believe in time. If you enjoy this topic, also check out “Your Inner Fish” which is a more modern look at the last 30 years of science since the Selfish Gene was written.

The Mind of the Market – The Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer. The biology in the brain when we evaluate exchanges or proposals. Why humans evolved to trust and verify, why misunderstandings of economics made sense in 12,000 BC, and how misguided ‘folk economics’ is today. Also a tour de force on the modern neurology tools used to distinguish areas of the brain which are active/passive when people lie, choose, enjoy, or evaluate others’ motives.

Nuggets worth evaluating:
Majority of people fear losing 10 dollars 2 times more than they value gaining a new 10 dollar item. We share this common fear of losing with higher order monkeys. Most people work 2 times harder to save what we have, than to gain some new thing, of similar value. It makes sense (in evolutionary terms) that majority of people are like this, and we also need the rare person who reverses this math. Shermer posits this to explain clinging to losing stock and most people rejecting new ideas.
Humans evolved different systems for wanting something (food, sex, security) and liking something (spicy food, marriage, housing). The ‘Want’ system is shared with nearly all mammals. The Liking system we only share with the highest order relatives. Addictions tap into our wanting system, which makes them hard to break.
Trust is required for market economics. Humans are the only species he found willing to trust-and-see into the future. this behavior involves risk, but also enables huge rewards to the species. Social networks and public institutions recently (12,000 years or so) have enabled us to institutionalize trust with people we do not know. This expanded trade and trust greatly. The 2% of populace which break trust easily, “Psychopaths”, actually play an important role in punishing people who cannot trust accurately, says Shermer, using an interesting proof.
The productive origins of ‘group-think’ and effectively combatting its destructive powers when mob-rule occurs to kill people or ideas.
If you like this book, you might also like analyzing: Stumbling on Happiness (Psychology on why people incorrectly predict what we will like), Freakonomics (economist’s analysis on behavioral correlations and beliefs ranging from drug dealer-business structures to faith in child safety seats), Blink (survey book), and Why We Buy (analysis of purchase decisions by field researcher).

The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy – Younger friends ask me about pregnancy, and my only advice is don’t read! It will just make you paranoid.  But, since you are going to buy a book, buy this one.  This book is as funny as any on the topic. Of all the books my wife ‘read me’ while she was pregnant, this one caused the most laughter and answered the most common questions…without causing panic for my wife. Though I am sure there are more detailed or more researched books out there, this one balanced humor into this very serious topic.

Animals in Transition, using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior – The author has autism, invented several global standards for dealing with animals, and shares how autism and animals view the world. She does generalize a bit I believe, as there are such ranges of autism, but her insight into autism is singular. Her successes with animals is also legendary (USDA uses her suggestions, as do corporations to speed processing of animals). Well written, and she helped me understand some of the challenges which Autism poses to sufferers. She presented her autism and its effects while teaching me about how she analyzes animals behavior.

Shadow Divers – an excellent, fun, and exiting book (and I do not dive). The clarity and purpose of the divers here is amazing. I sincerely wish I hadn’t learned about “dirt dart” where divers rocket to the bottom, and decompression/death are nearly assured upon recovery. Thanks to the kindness of Shep Shepard, I’ve been introduced and spoken with both of the divers (John Chatterton and Richie Kohler) – they are incredibly generous with their time and also wonderful story tellers.  Their ability to describe handling crises underwater is so compelling I am half temped to re-read this book as an instruction manual for crisis handling.

The God Delusion – Some very harsh (but cogent) questions about what the major world religions do to hurt humanity. Dawkins is very hostile to religion (which he is honest about) so while his attacks hurt me to read, it is useful mentally to face some of the horrors which organized humans/religion has tacitly or openly caused. It would help if Dawkins believed smart people can disagree with him, but his tone gets in the way of his points sometimes. Still, it is useful inquiry.

 Fast Food Nation –  Interesting book, good case against eating badly. too conspiracy-driven for me, but the observations he makes are really smart…it is only the ultimate solutions he draws which scare the free-marketeer in me. The coverage of ‘de-skilling’ within fast-food market was really compelling reading, to see that McDougall’s measures Time-To-Competency for new fry-cooks in minutes.

What Should I Do With My Life – WARNING: This book may not help short-term happiness. Po Bronson’s next quick-hitting book. He reveals profiles of people who chunked their current job to do something which excited them. Bronson’s characteristic smart questioning means you get to learn more than ‘why’ but what aspects of it drove you to become a…. It is a great book to work through getting to a job that you love, rather than survive.
Give this as a gift to folks who want to read about happiness in occupation. Po Bronson loves people and their logic of what makes them happy, and he writes beautifully. Each person gets 3-5 pages on what drives them

On Bullshit – Worth reading (short) for the clarity regarding crap we hear today, and why people think they can lie to generate people buy-in and how that ultimately backfires.

The World Is Flat – worth the proofs on the deflationary effects of Walmart to an economy, and the value-chain of export/import jobs. The supply chain being nible examples of sourcing was good. The book did drag though. UPS and its drive to provide supply chain services from financing, to drop shipping to handing computer repairs for customers ws also very interesting.

Back to Google and 3M – Their unstructured employee time is always spent on heuristic solutions to problems people are insterested in solving. Algorithmic problems (step 1 through step 10) are not what people choose to figure out – because it’s already been figured out.  Heuristic problems are interesting!  This is where true creativity and interest get unlocked and motivation reaches peak performance.  For people: metrics boards or productivity reports will always lose out to interesting software problems or better ways to solve a basic human need.  Google and 3M are finding a way to take that reality, and include it within their business.  They’ve had a lot of success.  Other companies are doing some very smart things to free employees from ‘if you do this, then you get that’ reward systems.  Altassian created "Fed-Ex Days" where employees are free to choose their teams and work on any problem *they* want to solve 1 day per quarter.  This is called "Fed Ex" because you have to deliver the idea, code, or whatever next day.  The results at Atlassian were so good that very quickly it justified moving to a full 20% of engineering time moving to Fed-Ex.  This removed managers’ direction, allowed engineers to choose whom they associated with, and only had results as the requirement!  Atlassian has zero engineering turnover.  Google has 50% of its offerings coming from its "20% time."  We humans are more productive when we have freedom to work on projects we care about; and we also get better and better at the work we do when we work on projects we care about.  It is a virtuous circle which requires little management to shepherd into the for-profit business model.

• The big companies Mr. Christensen studied failed, not necessarily because they didn’t see the coming innovations, but because they failed to adequately invest in those innovations. To avoid this problem, the people who control large pools of capital need to act more like venture capitalists, and less like corporate finance departments. They need to make lots of bets, not just a few big ones, and they need to be willing to cut their losses.
• Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.
• The resource allocation problem is one Google has tried to address with its "20%" policy. All engineers are allowed to spend 20% of their time working on Google-related projects other than those assigned to them. The company says this system has helped it develop innovative products, such as Google News. Because engineers don’t have to compete for funds, the Google approach doesn’t have the discipline of a true marketplace, and it hasn’t yet proven itself as a way to generate incremental profits. But it does allow new ideas to get some attention.
• The "innovator’s dilemma" applies to management, as well as technology

I just ordered Mr. Murray’s book, and you can too - look for a review soon.

“give me an hour one on one and I can tell more about how a (senior level) programmer will be in the long run than all the coding tests in the world. Why? Good programmers talk like they work when you engage them in details of past projects they spent months on. You can’t fake something you invested a good chunk of your life on. A good programmer …remember(s) how they dealt with some nasty design problem or fixed a complicated bug. Good programmers …have good programming in their DNA, and love to talk about them with a peer. Crappy programmers evade and toss out bullshit or forgot what they did… Programming is not about writing lines of code, it’s about completing projects or shipping applications ”

*Managers should be put in with IC (individual contributors, aka-people who produce work. Otherwise managers stop producing work and start watching work. All managers should be directly involved in producing one or more of the areas they manage.  Only exception may be newly promoted managers, who need first 6 months to learn to guide people.

*Who has accomplished the most results for your team – regardless of level, write that person down. Then write down the person regardless of level who has produced the least results all year.  Now add one name to the top, but specifically put the lowest level, salary, position, category, into the top performer list and the highest level, salary, etc into the underperforming list.  For example, top person’s results OVERALL better be from your highest ranking, or your ranking is screwed up! Next find the lowest paid category and level and put the top person there (sometimes the junior person gets passed over unless you do this!).  Also, if you don’t find your highest level/ranked person who produces the least, you’re letting the top folks coast.

*If you have more than 75 people, you will have to meet the curve of your company (or so says the handbooks). But I’ve found some managers apply this to their teams!  Like 8 people or 5 people being forced into a curve. NUTS!!!  Anyway, I won’t address that further.  But the point of the curve is that it breaks out into buckets (some companies use a 9 grid system, some use Welch’s 20-70-10 rule, stickynote stackrank, and some use??  So the point of htis story is this – whatever buckets you end up with, remember this: a person who is on the bubble, or at the margin is going to get pushed in 1 direction or another – this happens, your GM or whatever will do it, or HR will do it, or Diversity scrub will do it.  Live with the bubbles moving. It hurts a lot.  But in the end, the bubble is a close call.  The thing to avoid is making a huge mistake on someone (new, different, tranferring, or just lucky-great year) and MAKE SURE that person is rewarded exactly in the right bucket.  the close-calls are OK to miss (you can’t control it all!) but you can make sure every rock star year is rewarded with Rockstar awards.

^If you find yourself tempted to “push up” everyone in hopes of negotiating, you are attending your first review. Or your immediate manager above you SUX.  It’s one or the other.  Because any manager who cannot link high and low awards to specific results is going to get killed by any decent senior manager.  Avoid this temptation, it results in the lowest rewards for the team overall, as once people start picking, it means everyone is suspect!

read: Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters by Culbert.  It is an excellent book about speaking FRANKLY all year long (not at review time only) and the Performance Preview, which is simply genius, and forces us as managers, as senior managers, and employees to all admit what GOOD, BAD, and GREAT look like…in advance!