by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
This cutting edge technology from MIT reminds me of something I learned in business school more than thirty years ago.
Professor Ashenhurst told us the story of how an “efficiency expert” had reduced productivity. The expert did a classic time and motion study of some programmers. He noticed that the programmers not only spent a significant amount of time walking to and from the punchcard reader to submit their programs but that they “wasted” large amounts of time talking to each other along the way and around the card reader.
The efficiency expert calculated that eliminating this lost time would more than pay for purchasing a teletype for each programmer, so they could enter their code from their desks instead of wandering to the punchcard reader. The new equipment was ordered and installed.
Productivity plummeted. A brief investigation uncovered the problem. You probably have already guessed what went wrong. The engineers around the punchcard reader had not been engaged in idle banter. They were exchanging tips and techniques to get better at their jobs. The conversations, it turns out, were not a problem. What looked like mere socializing was actually problem solving.
The famous MIT Media Lab has developed a (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners
I use Twitter to share brief messages, not more than two per day. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
Meditation is not what you think. Click here for more information.
Micro-management like autoimmune disease: too much control destroys the organism. Click here for more information.
Can the boss relax on vacation? Here’s how: http://tr.im/vacation
Most business books are worse than wrong. http://dld.bz/eTmg
Two keys to group cohesion: clarity and verity. Make your meetings better: http://tr.im/2agree
I’ve worked Monday and Tues made progress W,Th&F completed tasks on Sat&Sun No one ever did anything on “someday.” http://tr.im/smrs
Psychologist proves: Tracking your goal progress creates more time Click here for more information.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T.S. Eliot
To succeed in business it is helpful to read from spreadsheet, hopeless to lead from a spreadsheet.
Service to others is the rent we pay for being on earth –RIP Tony Curtis 1925-2010
I have discovered that all human evil comes from man’s being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone –Blaise Pascal 1623-1662 Simple meditation instructions here.
Prior tweets are here, at Twitter Logs.
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©2010 Tony Mayo
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Technology Tips
We all see a lot of graphics pretending to portray reality but we need to be cautious consumers of these images. They can bypass some of our analytic, linguistic centers and go right to our emotional brain, often leaving incorrect or incoherent impressions. The chart to the left is an excellent example of a graphic that overstates its case and obscures data.
I am a perennial proponent of graphically presenting financial data, so it was no surprise when a client emailed this graphic to the members of one of my CEO executive coaching groups. It purports to show where in the United States people prefer the words soda, Coke, or pop as a generic term for soft drink. “Soft drink,” of course, is a phrase only a bureaucrat would use in conversation, being a term better reserved for print. I grew-up in the center of “sodaville,” so I have often wondered as I traveled what the norms and borders are.
This graphic is more useful as an example of bad information presentation than as a guide to what to say in an out-of-town restaurant.
Notice that significant portions of the country are 50% or below in usage of the depicted term. Why then are then are these counties given a color very similar to the shade indicating the dominant term? The majority might use some other term for soft drinks, but then the map wouldn’t make it so easy for the viewer to draw (possibly wrong) regional conclusions. Also, why the odd choice of intervals: 30-50 (20% range), 50-80 (30%), and 80-100 (20%)? Suggests some cherry picking of data to make the map seem even more regionally coherent. The underlying data hardly merits such a powerful representation, since it is from a self-selected group of people who visited an obscure web page and bothered to respond, that is, people with nothing better to do. It is not random, scientific, or representative. Look at some of the responses in the “Other” category, for example: “headlice,” “Fizzy Giggle,” and “Kristina is HOT!!!”
A picture is worth a 10,000 words but may convey subtly inaccurate ideas. Stop, look, and think.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
Pair interaction, for example, conversation, is not a sequence of stimulus and response but a simultaneous co-creation, “both parties are processing an ongoing stream of stimuli and responding while the stimulation is still occurring.”
–Psychologist Susan Vaughan
in Two is the magic number:
a new science of creativity.
Joshua Wolf Shenk
Slate Magazine.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Recommended Books
The Economist offers a fascinating summary of the new book by Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t. The key requirement is to get into the right department and specialty. As with starting a business, riding a rising tide by choosing a growing, lucrative sector makes everything else easier and success more likely. Once you are in the right place, three practices help you rise to power:
- Manage up. Ask for help and mentoring; flatter your seniors; and make a good impression.
- Be a bridge or node. Nurture relationships across departments and levels; be able to call on the right person to get key information or smooth a transaction.
- Practice loyalty. Persevere with difficult postings. Don’t change companies for short term advantage.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners
…adding five substantive conversations to your weekly social calendar could boost your spirits dramatically.
–Skip the Small Talk:
Meaningful Conversations
Linked to Happier People
Scientific American.
See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Recommended Books
And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not.
An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
–William James
The Principles of Psychology
1890 Page 494
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Quotes and Aphorisms
I use Twitter to share brief messages, not more than two per day. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
You can’t control the wind so learn to control your sails.
When a thing is new people say, “It is not true.” When a thing seems to be true people say, “It is not new.” William James
I’ve done things on Monday and Tuesday, made progress on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I have completed tasks on Saturday and Sunday, but I’ve never accomplished anything on “someday.” See Goal Setting on this blog.
Failure lies not in needing help but in failing to accept help when needed. Tony Mayo
Impossible to modify your immutable past. Just mute it and move on. Tony Mayo
Prior tweets are here, at Twitter Logs.
I have been posting fewer and fewer tweets because they have been producing fewer and fewer responses. Has Twitter jumped the shark?
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©2010 Tony Mayo
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches
One of the most popular posts on this blog is my commentary on the 2008 Conference Board survey of worldwide top executive coaching rates and budgets. The Conference Board has recently released its 2010 update and revision to that report. Unfortunately, the report no longer contains information on the amount organizations are paying for executive coaching per hour or by engagement.
The most interesting tidbit is that most organizations are compensating executive coaches for travel time.
You can visit the Conference Board site and purchase the report by clicking here.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Team Manager Skills
Trust is increasingly recognized as an essential element of successful personal relationships, effective teamwork, and large-scale commercial relationships. The amount citizens of one country trust the residents of another has even been shown to correlate with the amount of trade between the countries.
Evaluating the level of trust in a relationship is an often evaded and sometimes sensitive task. My work coaching top executives and facilitating work groups has taught me that the “trust topic” is much easier to discuss once we realize that trust has at least five constitutive components. Examining each aspect of trust, one by one, leads us to better judgments and more fruitful conversations.
- Sincerity
- Capacity
- Competence
- Consistency
- Care
When we say that we trust or mistrust a person it means that we have evaluated their:
1. Sincerity — Does what the person says match their internal conversation? Are they telling us what they honestly believe and truly intend? Once a person establishes a reputation for (more…)
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