In the early 1990s, I had the good fortune to work for Robert B. Reich, then the U.S. Secretary of Labor. He taught me a simple (and free) tool for diagnosing the health of an organization. When he visited companies and talked with employees, Reich listened carefully for the pronouns people used. Did employees refer […]
A major TV network is doing a piece on new ways to work — and has enlisted my help in finding folks to profile. In particular, the producers are looking for people in the Washington, DC, area who contribute to open source projects such as Linux, Apache, and Firefox. If you fit that bill (or
Kevin Nalts is a very funny guy with a penchant for social psychology. In this video, he announces an experiment in which he’ll pay his kids to play videogames in a seemingly peculiar effort to reduce their playing time. Think it’ll work? We’ll report the results in a few days.
“In 2007, 47 percent of Harvard grads went into finance or consulting.” (Source: David Brooks, “The Power Elite,” NY Times, 02.18.10) BONUS! Quote of the day from the same column: “The meritocracy is based on an overly narrow definition of talent. Our system rewards those who can amass technical knowledge. But this skill is only
Call someone a “liar,” and it’s clearly an insult. Call someone a “genius,” and it’s almost always praise. But how about calling someone a “perfectionist”? Is that a diss or a kiss? The answer, it turns out, depends on what kind of perfectionist the person is. And that depends, in turn, on the person’s motivation.
In 2007, American women earned about 166 associates degrees and 135 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 earned by men. Among African-Americans, women earned 219 associate’s degrees and 192 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 earned by men. (Source: WSJ via Dep’t of Education, 2/12/10)
Here’s a new one, courtesy of Eddie Garcia. Take a look at this unsubscribe link from Groupon. Pretty clever. I have a feeling it could actually get people to reconsider ending their subscription. (Note: Because Groupon is apparently overwhelmed with visitors today, I had to link to a Screenr video of the unsubscribe page rather
“According to an operational study of National Football League teams prepared for The Wall Street Journal by Boston Consulting Group, the typical NFL season requires 514,000 hours of labor per team. That’s about eight times the effort it took to conceptualize, build and market Apple’s iPod, according to BCG, and enough time to build 25
Brandon Schauer at Adaptive Path has put together a 49-second video designed to invigorate your corpus callosum and fire your creative powers. In a blog post, he says that his creation builds on research showing that side-to-side eye movement, by increasing communication between the left and right hemisphere, can increase creativity. If you’re facing a
In an inspired act of crowdsourcing, showmanship, and democratic participation, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman has turned to us to refashion the NEA’s visual identity. Yesterday Landesman announced that his modest but mighty federal agency was accepting submissions to redesign the logo for the NEA’s “Art Works” initiative. As the NEA blog
