The COVID pandemic has created an experiment in remote work for many employees and employers. Can employees work remotely with no decrease in productivity? Some have been doing this for years. For most it was a new experience. How one views the benefits and costs of remote work depends on whom you ask. Last year The Wall Street Journal published remarks on remote work from 19 CEOs. As I reported in a previous blog, only 3 of the 19 made positive comments; 9 were negative; 7, on the fence. 
 
The personal benefits of remote work, especially working at home, are well documented. I have read less about the costs. The August 16, 2021, edition of The Wall Street Journal included a special report, “The New Workplace.” In an article “Here Comes the Two-Tier Workplace”, Peter Cappelli of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School addressed some of those costs: 

• “Face time still matters.”
• “On-site employees will get the bulk of the attention – and the promotions.” 
• “Employees in the office get more access to leaders.”
• “On-site employees get first crack at opportunities that pop up because they are likely to see them first.”
• Attending meetings remotely more problematic than physically being present.
• More work for managers to manage remote workers versus on-site workers.
• “Companies will have a two-tier workplace.”

 
Cappelli suggests a key to insure fairness is objective performance outcomes for all workers regardless of where they work. However, as he acknowledges, most organizations have difficulties with objective performance management, eliminating biases “is frankly an impossible task.” He does offer a caveat: if remote workers only do so occasionally, “the differences between in-office and hybrid won’t be all that great.” 

He also makes an important point often overlooked: "The pandemic past isn't a reliable guide to the pandemic-free future." It is one thing to have to work remotely; it is another to choose to work remotely.

My take-aways:
 
1. As I stated in Decoding the Workplace, “we are more likely to interact with others who are around us physically than with people who are farther away.” This is especially true comparing on-site and remote workers. All things being equal, in most organizations managers will be more inclined to favor the on-site worker they see every day over the remote worker with whom they interact virtually. As Cappelli suggests, a two-tier system will naturally develop. 
 
2. In past positions I have had offices close to senior leadership and offices far removed. There were definitely differences in interactions and effectiveness. I once had my teams moved from near senior leadership offices to a location several miles away. Even though our relationships with senior leadership were well established, the more remote location made some daily activities more difficult. Location can matter in many jobs. 
 
3. Cappelli’s comments are consistent with our understanding of workplace dynamics. Will this two-tier system develop for all organizations? Of course not. Some enterprises are more compatible with remote work. However leaders, and employees, should be aware of the potential for a two-tier system developing. 

Cappelli, P. (2021, August). Here comes the two-tier workplace. The Wall Street Journal, R4.

Image by freephotocc obtained from https://pixabay.com/photos/cup-of-coffee-laptop-office-macbook-1280537/
 
© John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
 __________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell popularized the “10,000 hour rule”, the idea that it takes at least 10,000 hours of practice to become truly expert in an activity. Gladwell suggested the Beatles accomplished this through the many hours they spent in Hamburg, West Germany, and Liverpool, that Bill Gates accomplished this because of his early access to computers at the age of 13 and over 10,000 hours programming. Critics have questioned the validity of the 10,000 hour rule.

In a Forbes post, David Burkus examined the often cited source, a 1993 article by K. Anders Ericsson and associates in Psychological Review. He points out that Ericsson is not talking about 10,000 hours of practice but rather 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”, specific training activities, not work, not play. Burkus challenges managers to think about their 10,000 hours. Is it business as usual or deliberate activities to grow through news skills and methods? 

Burkus’s post spurred me to read Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer’s original article. Here are some highlights:

• The authors talk about 10 years of preparation in the article. This has been translated into the 10,000 hour rule. 
• They credit the “10 year rule” to Hebert Simon and William Chase who in 1973 estimated the time required to attain exceptional performance in chess. Simon and Chase stated that no one had reached the grandmaster level “with less than about a decade’s intense preoccupation with the game”, and estimated a master had spent “10,000 to 50,000 hours staring at chess positions.” (p. 402) 
• The 10 year rule draws support from music, tennis, swimming, long distance running.
• Ericsson et al. studied violinists and pianists.
• People often perform below their potential even on tasks they do frequently.
• Deliberate practice is highly structured, designed to overcome weaknesses, “not inherently enjoyable”, requires access to resources such as teachers, must not be done daily to the point of exhaustion, and performance must be carefully monitored to find ways to improve. 

Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald (2014) examined over 9,000 potential articles for a meta-analysis. Only 88 met all criteria for inclusion. Their study looked at 111 independent samples totaling over 11, 000 participants.

Their findings? Deliberate practice overall was positively correlated with performance, but not as strongly as might be expected from claims in the literature – “deliberate practice explained 12% of the variance in performance” (p. 1612). Deliberate practice accounted for different amounts of the variance in performance in different activities:

• Games (e.g., chess) – 26%
• Music – 21%
• Sports – 18%
• Education – 4%
• Professions – less than 1%

They suggested “the effect of deliberate practice on performance tended to be larger for activities that are highly predictable” (p. 1615).

My take-away: 

It is easy to see how the 10,000 hour or 10 year rule applies to elite performance in the arts. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, as explained above, seems more difficult for leaders and managers to acquire. Practicing the violin is not the same as practicing leadership or practicing management. Where is the carefully monitored feedback, and so forth? 10,000 hours as a manager is not the same as 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. 

But regardless, I find a fundamental truth here: We do not achieve higher levels of performance in most endeavors, including leadership and management, unless we are committed to learning and improving. Being a manager for over 10,000 hours does not necessarily mean that the manager has learned much. Only the person who actively seeks to elevate her or his game, to perform at an even higher level, to seek feedback, to self-monitor, to reflect on her or his own behaviors and observe how people respond, to study both success and failure – in short to deliberately grow – only this person can excel as a leader and manager. 

Burkus, D. (September 25, 2013). Are you wasting your 10,000 hours? http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidburkus/2013/09/25/are-you-wasting-your-10000-hours/

Ericsson, K. A.,  Krampe, R. T. & Tesch-Römer, C.  (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.  Psychological Review, 100 (3) 363-406.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York: Little, Brown and Company

Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L. (2014). Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1608-1618.

Simon, H. A., & Chase, W. G. Skill in chess: Experiments with chess-playing tasks and computer simulation of skilled performance throw light on some human perceptual and memory processes. American Scientist, 61 (4), 394-403.

Image, "The Wedding Gift".  ©John Ballard, 2013. 
 
Modified from my previous blogs on 9/25/2013 and 8/21/2014. © John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
 __________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook, and CD, are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

Management by walking around (MBWA) is not for everyone. Anita Tucker and Sara Singer (2014) implemented an 18-month MBWA-improvement program at 19 hospitals. They found MBWA had a negative impact on performance. They were surprised. I’m not. I wrote about MBWA in Decoding the Workplace:
 
     I had a boss once who was told by his boss to get out from behind his desk and walk around. His boss believed strongly in managing by walking around. My boss asked me what I thought. Should he give it a try?

     I said, “Sir, if you do that, start just walking around, you are going to scare people. They’re going to wonder what they are doing wrong. They’ll think, ‘Why is he here?’ No, sir, you’d just cause more problems and you don’t need more problems.

     He smiled, almost a smile of relief, and said, “Thank you.”

   The good leaders want honesty. My boss was a task-oriented manager to the “nth degree.” He drove his organization but people respected him. He had risen to a high leadership position probably because of his analytical and decision-making acumen, but he did not have strong people skills. 
 
My take-aways:

 The utility of MBWA depends on several factors, such as:

• The likeability or people skills of the leader, especially the ability to actively listen.
• The level of trust in the organization’s culture.
• The nature of the enterprise.
• The effectiveness of the workplace being visited. 

For some it is a good way to lead, learn, and motivate. For others, as Tucker and Singer found, it could have negative consequences. 
 
Tucker, A. L., & Singer, S. J. (2014). The effectiveness of management-by-walking-around: A randomized field study. Production and Operations Management, 24 (2), 253-271.
 
Image by geralt obtained from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/man-businessmen-woman-economy-162951/ 
 
© John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
 __________________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook and CD are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

I am a fan of Herbert Shepard's classic "Rules of Thumb for Change Agents." HIs last rule of thumb, Rule VIII, is "Capture the moment." He suggested that we can handle a situation at work or in life more effectively if we allow ourselves to be more engaged, to approach from different perspectives. He called this the "multiple potential of the moment." For example, apply not only your intellect to a situation but also your heart. He wrote, "One needs to have as many frameworks for seeing and strategies for acting available as possible."  I agree with Shepard. Sometimes we can be too linear in our thinking.

In discussing "Capture the moment" with my students, I put another spin on it. I offer my spin as Rule IX, "Celebrate the moment." In the course of our days, our weeks, there may be small victories, small moments that we should savor -- but we don't. They barely register. We move on to the next task, the next meeting, the next project. Savor that "nice work", "great job". Allow yourself to enjoy the contribution you made to the success of the team, of another person. My guess is that most of us frequently have moments somewhere in our day, that if we let them, would bring a smile to our face, increase meaningfulness of our activities.

Sometimes as leaders we fail to celebrate the successes of our units. I had an older graduate student who led an organization that had a very successful year. After we discussed celebrating the moment in class, he realized that he had not done so with his company, that he barely acknowledged the great year before focusing on the next. The next Monday when he went to work, he corrected that situation. They celebrated the moment. 

Celebrate the moments, large and small, that unfold to you. 

Shepard, H. A. ( 2012).  Rules of thumb for change agents. In J. Vogelsand et al. (Eds.), Handbook for Strategic HR, (pp. 88-93). New York, NY: AMACON.

Image,"Coffee Book Flowers" by Sophkins obtained from https://pixabay.com/photos/coffee-book-flowers-setting-2390136/
 
Modified from my blog of 12/31/2013. © John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook and CD are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

Six years ago in May, Praeger (ABC-CLIO) published my book Decoding the Workplace. I was at the early stage of learning the “book” business and I am still learning. Unlike many career and business books, this book "deals with principles and practices that are timeless" (Riggio, 2018). It has now been released in five formats. Here is a brief chronology:
 
2015  Praeger publishes as hardbound and ebook. 
2016  Next Generation Indie Book Awards honors it as best Career book. 
2018  Gildan Media (Recorded Books Inc.) releases audiobook.
2019  ABC-CLIO publishes as paperback.
2021  Gildan Media releases as audio CD.
 
I am pleased and surprised about the recent release as audio CD. The audiobook narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon has been a popular format. 
 
Why did I write this book? Short version: To help others. The longer answer is here. 
 
In 2019 Pietro Marenco interviewed me for Science for Work. With permission and for more insight about Decoding the Workplace, I share part of that interview:
 __________________________________________________________________________
There are thousands of business books claiming to help people be more effective in the workplace. How is your book different?

Many business books are based just on personal experiences. “This was true for me so it is probably true for you.” The management scholar Stephen Robbins talked about this in his book The Truth about Managing People. He said that a lot of the information in these books tends to be superficial, even wrong. In fact, even the most influential business books may have problems. Back in 2007 Phil Rosenzweig had a “must read” article in the California Management Review that spoke directly to this issue. He analyzed the data supporting In Search of Excellence, Built to Last, and Good to Great and found the quality of the data, and hence the conclusions, questionable.
Decoding the Workplace is not like that. It’s based on decades of management and organizational behavior research. If I give an opinion, I tell you it’s my opinion.

A senior editor at a major publisher told me years ago that as professors we know a lot about workplace dynamics but we mainly just talk to each other and nobody can understand our papers. “I need a book about the workplace that people can understand.” Decoding the Workplace is that book: evidence-based and easy-to-read with over a hundred stories to illustrate the concepts.

And 50 keys. Your book is subtitled 50 Keys to Understanding People in Organizations. Why keys? Why 50?

I use keys as a metaphor. They unlock things, decode programs. The keys in the book can help you decode the world around you, perhaps see things you had not seen. These new perceptions might suggest ideas to make you more effective. There are ideas in the book for most people to “up their game.”

Here’s an example. One key is “Be aware, as best you can, of the impressions that you create.” The discussion is about impression management and the blindspots we have. I tell the story of Ted, a manager, seen as technically proficient but aloof. Ted’s direct reports just did their jobs but had no desire to go beyond that. He was not approachable. A reader emailed she saw herself in the story of Ted, changed some behaviors, starting joining others for lunch, and became more effective. I thanked her for sharing.

Why 50? There are probably many more than 50 keys in the book. I focused on the 50 I found most useful as a consultant and manager. Readers might find other keys I did not identify as such. For example, I tell the story of Gerald who was not given the opportunity to give high profile presentations because, as he discovers, has an “ehm” problem. I then describe how Gerald overcame that problem. For some people, that might be the key to improving their effectiveness, getting rid of an “uh”, ”um”, “erm”, or “like” problem in public speaking, but I did not identify that as a key.

And publishers of business books seem to like numbers in the title. 7 Habits? 10 Clowns Don’t Make a Circus? 1001 Ways to Reward Employees.

So what topics do you cover? How is the book organized?

You’ll find many of the topics that you’d find in an organizational behavior textbook, just presented very, very differently, topics such as norms, roles, perception, leadership, power, to name a few. I laughed at this question because I wrestled with how to tie all the concepts together. After several months, the model I developed was a pentagram.

Proudly I showed it to my wife who remarked, “So it’s a book about witchcraft?” I had to laugh. That never occurred to me. The pentagram model remains somewhere in my discarded files.

The Kirkus Review of Decoding the Workplace commented that the book “covers a lot of territory” and that’s true. The idea is to give people food for thoughts on a broad variety of topics and foster reflection. My favorite management philosopher is Mary Follett from a century ago. She emphasized learning from our experiences by observing how people respond to us, reflecting on those observations, and then adjusting our behaviors to obtain new evidence and so forth. In a sense the book is a guide to reflecting on our experiences based on what science has found to be relevant factors in understanding workplace dynamics. It’s not a book just to be read. It’s a book to use.

There’s a lot of information around us about us that we don’t pay attention to. Decoding the Workplace makes that information easier to identify. 

Riggio, R. E. (2018). [Review of the book Decoding the Workplace: 50 Keys to Understanding People in Organizations, by J. Ballard]. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 17(2), 229-230.

Image,"Decoding the Workplace audio cover". © John Ballard, PhD, 2020.
 
Blog, © John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, audiobook, and audio CD. The best-selling audiobook is narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

In a blog years ago Paul Brown remarked successful people do not whine. Dan Rockwell also has posted interesting comments about whiners. In my brief research I did not find any workplace-relevant research specifically on whining. However I did find an interesting essay in Skidmore College’s Salmagundi Magazine, “Whining” by Daniel Harris published in 2006. Here are some thoughts from Harris’s essay. Any misinterpretations of this essay are mine.

• Our culture creates conditions for whining. We elevate success and instant gratification. Failures to achieve, to advance, to obtain, result in irritation and “petty grievances.”
• Whining is primal, “perhaps the first form of human behavior”, the baby cries for mother’s milk. We learn whining can be nourishing. 
• “Misery may love company but by no means does company reciprocate with the same fond feelings.” (p. 167)
• Because whining is intermittently reinforced, it becomes an enduring habit. It is “fueled by the partial fulfillment of our need for sympathy.”
• “Whining irritates us”, “every whine is a set up”, that preys on our conscience, our goodness, our sense of fairness. 
• Whining is “a form of bad story telling” depicting struggles between whiners and others, such as employee struggles with management, introducing a touch of melodrama into a perhaps otherwise uninteresting narrative.
• “Whiners are resistant to advice because they really don’t want problems solved.” (p. 169)
• Whining can be addictive because it elevates our self-importance vis-à-vis others who just accept their fates.
• Whining focuses on causes outside of one’s self, “through no fault of my own but through your fault, your negligence  . . .  not (shortcomings) of my talent.” (p. 170)

My Take-Aways:

Harris’s unit of analysis is the individual. There are interesting ideas here for research. How does individual whining affect a team, a group? Does it lower productivity? Should the supervisor counsel the whiner? Is whining a blindspot? If the person is not a perpetual whiner, why is this person whining now? Personal, perceptual, and/or attributional errors may be factors.

But what if the whining is situational, the cause shared by others? If many are whining, complaining, perhaps there is something management should address. Leaders should listen and try to understand the nature of group or organizational whining. Whining may be a symptom.

Harris, D. (Fall 2005 - Winter 2006). Whining. Salmagundi, 148/149, 165-170.

Image by OpenClipArt-Vectors obtained from pixabay.com/vectors/complaining-human-talk-unhappy-154204/

Modified from my blog of 12/31/2013. © John Ballard, PhD, 2020. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, and audiobook. The best-selling audiobook is narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.

How do CEOs view remote work? In September 2020 with the pandemic engulfing the world, The Wall Street Journal published remarks about remote work from 19 CEOs. The CEOs represented different sectors, different managerial philosophies. What follows is my brief analysis of these comments. 
 
I categorized remarks for each CEO as positive, negative, or “on the fence”. So how do the CEOs feel about remote work?

• 3 positive
• 9 negative
• 7 on the fence

Positive comments spoke to lessons learned:

• We adapted, we adjusted, hard to believe but we did it.
• Some work can be done well remotely. 

But the limitations of remote work drew more comments:

• “cannot get the same quality of work” 
• productivity drops
• need social interaction for personal and professional development
• for innovation, creativity we need people together

 
My take-aways:
 
1. My guess is that remote workers might be more positive than those in the C-suite. In the WSJ’s small sample there were those who felt remote work was problematic – less quality, less productivity, less innovation and creativity. In some organizations, in certain work cultures, this may be true. In other cases it may simply reflect attitudes about what it takes to lead that organization’s workforce.
 
2. Positive comments spoke to organizational resilience. We had to go to remote work and we did it. We adjusted. We adapted. And we are still getting the job done. The comments were not about advantages of remote work. 
 
3. What does the future hold? I expect to see large individual and organizational differences. Individuals will know whether they prefer remote work and may seek to be employed in organizations that allow that. Organizations' use of remote work will depend on environment and strategy. Many will go to a hybrid model, (1) either some workers in company offices and others at home or (2) workers rotating in and out depending on the week. 
 
4. The pandemic has forced leaders to make choices. Likewise it has broadened horizons of employees as to what is possible and what is not possible in their daily work life. Perhaps more importantly, the pandemic has given all of us an opportunity to reassess our priorities, our plans, our relationships, and how we want to live. 
  
 Illustration by RoadLight. https://pixabay.com/illustrations/remote-work-office-home-office-5491791/

 © John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, and audiobook. The best-selling audiobook is narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.
 
 

There is a goldmine of ideas and information in the "An Immigrant's Gift" interviews about the life and impact of Dr. Joseph Juran. Among those interviewed were Steve Jobs, Robert Galvin, Genichi Taguchi, Takeshi Kayano, W. Edwards Deming, Arturo Onnais, Gerald Hartman, Bob Scanlon, and more. The interviews are available online at Nova Southeastern University. Here is the history of An Immigrant's Gift archival project. 

Bob Scanlon was interviewed on October 29, 1992, in Atlanta, Georgia. At that time he was Director, Quality and Reliability Engineering for Southern Pacific Transportation Company. Scanlon got to know Dr. Juran during the sixteen years Scanlon worked for Caterpillar. Here he recalls asking Dr. Juran something different: advice on raising children. 

SCANLON: . . . I recall one conversation, as we 
were driving up to Aurora  . . . I have three 
daughters. And I was interested in getting a little advice on 
child rearing . . . I asked Dr. Juran . . . what 
advice would he give me on raising kids or  . . . through his experience, looking back, what was important, what wasn't?

And he just said: “Don't get hung up on the little issues. On the big issues, you'll know when 
it's time to take a stand, but don't get too inflexible. I guess the word would be, on the little things. Life's too precious to be 
fighting all the time.” I'm not 
articulating that very well but it was an interesting 
conversation. I enjoyed hearing his perspective on those 
kinds of issues. 

My take-away:  

This is great advice for leaders. “Don’t get hung up on the little issues . . . know when it’s time to take a stand, but don’t get too inflexible.” This theme is oft repeated but how well do we heed this advice? Consider:

"Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren't really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and concerns and blow them way out of proportion" Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

“Choose your battles wisely. After all, life isn't measured by how many times you stood up to fight. It's not winning battles that makes you happy, but it's how many times you turned away and chose to look into a better direction. Life is too short to spend it on warring. Fight only the most, most, most important ones, let the rest go.” C. Joybell C.

“Learning to choose our battles wisely is not only a smart thing to do; it is a requirement to guard the sanity of our lives. As humans we have limited time, energy and strength, which means we cannot engage ourselves in all the battles that come our way.” Rev. Francis Burgula.

“Any fool can criticize, complain, condemn, and most fools do. Picking your battles is impressive and fighting them fairly is essential.” Dale Carnegie.

What issues do we embrace? How much energy and time should we invest? How successful are we at making the right choices?

Burgula, F. (2007, August 2). Choose your battles wisely. Retrieved from http://www.fuelforfaith.com/fuel_for_faith_vault_articles_view.asp?ID=9

C. Joybell C. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/choose-your-battles-wisely

Carnegie, Dale. Cited by Judy Goldman in http://www.careerprofiles.com/career-coaching/blog-pick-your-battles-in-the-workplace/

Carson, C. (1996). Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff. New York: Hyperion.

Image by Geralt. https://pixabay.com/illustrations/road-sign-attention-right-of-way-63983/

Modified from my blog of 4/10/2013. © John Ballard, PhD, 2020. All rights reserved.
_______________________
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Available as ebook, hardback, paperback, and audiobook. The best-selling audiobook is narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon, 

My annual blog about the importance of reading books, modified from my previous January blogs. 

I start each new year with a question: What book are you reading now? My experience is the best leaders always have a book they are reading. Lifelong learning is essential to our growth.

But how do you nurture book reading in those who do not enjoy reading. For those in education, we lead by example. We share our stories, the role books have played in our lives. As parents, we read to our children. My Aunt Bertha Anne read to me in my very early years and nurtured my love of books.

What role do books play in your life? In your learning? My guess is that for many, we just don’t have enough time. Making time to read books is important. I usually have several books in my study that I am working through. On long trips I enjoy audiobooks. I have friends who like audiobooks best. Currently the audio version of my book Decoding the Workplace is outpacing the other formats.
 
2020 was different in that I did not read as wide a variety of books as I usually do. Two books about Abraham Maslow captured much of my attention. Personality & Growth: A Humanistic Psychologist in the Classroom by Abraham Maslow is fascinating for those who enjoy reading Maslow and about Maslow. This book consist mostly of complete transcripts of a Maslow course taught at Brandeis 1963-64 including student discussions. Rich insights for those of us interested in everything Maslow but probably less so for most people. I reviewed this book for the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 

Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman offers a reinterpretation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs supported by contemporary research. While I found interesting, I would have enjoyed editing. For me there were at least two books in this one volume: (1) A book about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and how his theory might be changed based on his thinking in his latter years. (2) A book that is about helping oneself grow and develop, a self-help book. On page 80 Scott discusses the audience for his book, those who "truly wish to self-actualize -- and even transcend." A good suggestion for your local library if they don't have it.   

As I work on my next career-oriented book, I am revisiting the extensive library of leadership or leader development books. I think Jeffrey Pfeffer sums up much of the leadership literature in his book Leadership BS. A welcome addition this year was Ron Riggio's Daily Leadership Development, which I blogged about in October.  

As we begin 2021, here are a few of the books I am reading or are on my reading list:

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers by David Rubenstein
• The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
• Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clark, and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson
• The Apricot and the Moon Poems by Cathryn Essinger
• Rethinking Consciousness edited by John Buchanan and Christopher Aantoss
• Face It by Debbie Harry

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them”, Mark Twain. 

Or as the comedian Groucho Marx said, “Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”   
 
What are you reading?
_______________________
Image, my photo. 
​
© John Ballard, PhD, 2021. All rights reserved.
 _________________________
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Now also available as an audiobook and paperback. 

This time of the year I like to revisit a Christmas classic from Thomas Stetz of Hawaii Pacific University, “What Santa Claus Can Learn from I-O Psychology: Eight Performance Management Recommendations.” The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist originally published the article in 2012 and it can be read in full in the archives of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Here I will summarize (and elaborate on) Dr. Stetz’s astute observations and recommendations concerning Santa Claus’s questionable performance management system.

1. “Develop refined rating scales.” How does Santa determine whether a child is “naughty” or “nice”? What is naughty? What is nice? How can a child improve performance if the child does not have clear guidelines and examples of the behaviors expected?
2. “Develop SMART performance objectives.” A child needs clear goals to be successful at “nice,” goals that are “specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.” Ideally these would flow from the family strategic plan.
3. “Increase feedback throughout the year.” It’s either a lump of coal or presents one day a year. 364 days with no feedback is just not acceptable in the 21st Century. If feedback is too much for Santa to handle, he should delegate and train others, such as parents. 
4. “Establish a naughty review board.” There may be review boards in organizations that are naughty; this recommendation concerns grievances. What’s a child to do if deemed naughty and considers this an unfair assessment? Is it fair to not have a grievance procedure, especially in the absence of feedback?
5. “Get a handle on rating inflation.” Let’s be real. It seems most children get a “nice” rating and the associated benefits. Refined rating scales would definitely help here.
6. “Explain how he obtains his information.” This one puzzled me as a kid. How does he know if I am being naughty or nice? As Stetz’s very appropriately noted, “at least a consent-to-monitoring statement should be made.”
7. “Decide between developmental or administrative evaluations.” “Under the current system how can naughty children improve. They can’t” (p. 36). There is no feedback. Children simply did not know how to improve their performance. Santa’s performance system is administrative with only “rewards and punishments.”
8. “Institute self-assessments.” Instead of writing letters to Santa once a year, which not all children do, there should be periodic self-assessments from children. This could be an online system with elf’s perhaps providing feedback. Currently children have little opportunity to speak to the naughty or nice question with relevant supporting data.

Stetz concluded Santa would do well to employ an I-O psychologist.
 
My take-away:
 
Can any of the recommendations for Santa’s performance system be applied to your organization? If so, 2021 might be a good year to work toward improvements. Feedback is key to employee development and organizational growth and renewal.
 
Best wishes for the holiday season and a great 2021.
 
Stetz, T. A. (2012). What Santa Claus can learn from I-O psychology: Eight performance management recommendations. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 49 (3), 35-37.
 
Image of Santa by Clker-Free-Vector-Images. Image obtained from https://pixabay.com/vectors/santa-claus-christmas-reindeer-31665/
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© John Ballard, PhD, 2020. All rights reserved.
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Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Now also available as an audiobook and paperback. ​