You’re probably guilty of “unconscious bias” at work – The Wall Street Journal

Have you ever taken a fellow employee more seriously because of the school they attended? Or were impressed with the authority and confidence in a coworker’s delivery – and so gave more credence to their ideas? Unconscious bias, defined as “an implicit preference for certain groups,” is considered a growing problem and is being addressed more and more by U.S. corporations. Estimates suggest that nearly 20% of large U.S. employers with diversity programs now provide training for unconscious bias, too. Those companies include Google and BAE, a major defense contractor. The obvious or perhaps most common victims (there are beneficiaries too, of course) of unconscious bias may be women or minority groups, but employment decisions can be affected by any number of things – tall stature vs. short, thin vs. overweight, extrovert vs. introvert, etc. Continue reading →

“Rational” resolutions for 2014 — The Wall Street Journal

It’s not too late for resolutions, is it? This article gets into the science of “optimized decision-making,” helping people set achievable goals and strategies to meet those goals. The category that appealed most to me is “structured procrastination.” I read about this approach years ago, and believe heartily in it. Basically, if you know you’re going to procrastinate on a project, get something unrelated done. Clean the kitchen or get some exercise. It’s a way to stay away from Facebook and cat videos and actually get something accomplished.

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The lost art of conversation – The Atlantic

The use of smartphones and other interactive devices in almost any setting has become pervasive, so articles like this have started becoming pervasive, too. How is the constant use of devices going to affect human interaction? Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at MIT, wrote “Along Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other” in 2011, when smartphone saturation was just emerging. This article features Turkle, who is described as a “tech critic” despite not being “tech-skeptical.” Imagine, if you can, reading about this future phenomena 10 years ago. It would have seemed straight out of a Ray Bradbury novel. Continue reading →

In defense of a messy desk — The Economist

If you keep a cluttered desk, you’ll love this article from The Economist. This piece is near and dear to my heart, but a warning: it’s pretty long. And it was written 11 years ago, so some of the specifics may be dated; after all, a lot of organizational resources – and even the iPhone – weren’t present in 2002. Here is a teaser: “Work by Steve Whittaker and Julia Hirschberg of ATT Labs-Research, however, suggest that clutter may actually be quite an efficient organizing principle…There is a ‘warm’ area, of stuff that needs to be got through in the next few days: it may be there, in part, as a prompt. And there is a ‘cold’ area, at the edges of the desk, of stuff which could just as well be in an archive (or, often, the bin).” Take that, chronic organizers!

Executives learn the basics in social media — Wall Street Journal

CEOs and other high-level executives are paying as much as $60,000 for a two-day course to learn the basics of social media. And you might be surprised how basic these basics are, such as teaching the difference between a Facebook “like” and “share.” The class gets into much more detail and ultimately hits on complex marketing strategies involving social media, but it’s surprising to learn how little some executives know about something that is second nature to workers in their 20s and 30s. And that suggests again how beneficial a “reverse mentoring” program would be for some companies. I linked to an article about the practice in my first blog on November 13.

The 8-hour workday vs. the 90-minute project – LinkedIn

This article on LinkedIn discusses the arbitrary nature of the 8-hour workday. It’s not the result of rigorous scientific analysis, but rather the post-Industrial Revolution desire to add balance to people’s hardworking lives. “Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest,” went the refrain. Continue reading →

I like to sift the good articles from the dross and share the good stuff with friends and coworkers. That’s the purpose of this column, incidentally. I read stuff, find things that are both informative and interesting to working professionals, and offer it for your consumption. Continue reading →

I like to sift the good articles from the dross and share the good stuff with friends and coworkers. That’s the purpose of this column, incidentally. I read stuff, find things that are both informative and interesting to working professionals, and offer it for your consumption.

Get enough sleep or die – Mashable
The topic of sleep is always close to the fore here at Leggett & Platt, so a lot of us pay attention to every bit of news we get about it. So, here’s a short piece about it. By the way, have you noticed how much attention has been given to sleep lately? It seems as if you can’t go a day without hearing about the importance of sleep, and how you’re basically a nonfunctioning troglodyte if you don’t get the recommended eight hours. Does this article shed any new light on the subject? A little, at least for me. And that is: the cells in our body produce waste product, which needs to be cleaned up. The best conditions for that cleanup exist while we’re sleeping.

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I like to sift the good articles from the dross and share the good stuff with friends and coworkers. That’s the purpose of this column, incidentally. I read stuff, find things that are both informative and interesting to working professionals, and offer it for your consumption.

A lot of good work is done by average people – The Economist

Today’s blog features a couple articles about workers and the workplace. Incidentally, has “worker” become a pejorative or politically incorrect term yet? With so many companies referring to their employees as “associates” or “partners” (at Leggett & Platt, we prefer “employee-partner”), “worker” seems harsh somehow, even to an avowed capitalist like me. Anyway, this article describes the criticism leveled at Yahoo recently when it was revealed that they use a “ranking and yanking” policy in assessing employees. The approach, which began in the ‘80s and ‘90s but went out of fashion, is considered by many to be a severe way of ranking employees, with part of the purpose to get rid of the ones at the bottom.

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Every week, I read stuff, find things that are both informative and interesting to working professionals, and offer it for your consumption.

For the week of Monday November 18, 2013:

To sleep better, limit your bedroom activities to sleep and sex – The Economist

Here at Leggett & Platt, we sell good sleep. We do it through the marketing of our comfortable bedding products. (Marketing example: as a copywriter, instead of writing that our products are “comfortable,” I might write that they’re “ultra-comfortable.” I learned how to do that in college.) But through the Adjustable Bed Group, we are also realistic in our marketing, knowing that the bedroom – and the bed – has become a place for many other things, such as watching TV, using a laptop, and reading. This article emphasizes that if good sleep is your number one goal, you should limit the number of things you do in bed.

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