When “I’m sure it’s my fault” means “It’s not my fault” – Harvard Business Review

This Harvard Business Review article explores the challenges of cross-cultural workplace communication. The most important aspect of it seems to be the directness of language. The comparisons within this piece focus on British communication, which tends to be indirect, and Dutch and German communication, which is more direct. Most interesting, I think, is the mention of “upgraders” – words that emphasize and strengthen the other words around them – and “downgraders,” which do the opposite. In the Dutch and German style, upgraders are used. For example: “That is totally inappropriate.” In the British style, which seems very similar to how we communicate here in the U.S., a downgrader would probably be used instead: “That is a bit inappropriate.”

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Selling stuff in an age of skepticism – The Economist

This article from The Economist opens with a funny observation by the late British novelist Kingsley Amis, who as a skeptic of advertising was ahead of his time. Today, we live in an age of mass skepticism, and the landscape for marketers is as fraught as ever. Havas Media, a marketing agency, has done a series of worldwide surveys that indicate that people care less and less about brands. Its surveys revealed that a majority of people in Europe and America would not care if 92% of existing brands vanished. Of course, there is still the worship of brands (think Apple products), but lately advertisers have had to work harder. According to this piece, they have four avenues: acknowledge the skepticism; drown the skepticism with humor; disarm the skepticism with honesty; and make the case that buying your product will do good – like heal the planet or help the poor.

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Introductory note: This is yet another “Best of 2013” article. But as we are well into February, it will be the last one I link. Sorry, I guess I’m sentimental – 2013 still holds so many great memories. Actually no, I just like articles on year-end lists. Except ones that litter nearly every Internet news page – things like “2013’s Top Photos of Celebrities Without Makeup.” There aren’t many nutrients in those stories, I can tell you from experience, and in terms of brain cells killed, each click equals the strength of a 12-ounce beer, single shot of liquor, or glass of wine.

Did you take a selfie of yourself twerking on Thanksgivukkah? – Wall Street Journal

Anyway, onto the article. It’s an interesting time to follow words, isn’t it? They storm onto the scene with fierce momentum, seem cool for about 90 seconds, and then are overused by your workmates for the next six months. This Wall Street Journal article details some of the top words in 2013, including “selfie,” which ultimately won Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year honor. But did you know that “selfie” originated in Australia – more than 10 years ago? And “twerking” arose from New Orleans two decades ago? But “Thanksgivukkah,” and a bunch of other less-popular creations like “Turkukkah,” resulted from the extremely rare concurrence of Thanksgiving and the first night of Hanukkah. We can give thanks that “Thanksgivukkah,” which unlike “selfie” and “twerking” graciously stopped torturing us a few months ago, won’t be heard from again – or at least 70,000 years according to some calculations. They will definitely run out of Internet by then.

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Largely by accident, there’s a theme to this week’s three articles. All three are about creativity, and each offers a perspective that some might consider unconventional, at least in the buttoned-up corporate world. For people who work in the creative realm, each of the ideas pushed in these articles will seem familiar.

Masterful inactivity – The Economist

This first piece, entitled “In Praise of Laziness,” describes an approach in which workers are less engaged with meetings and small tasks and instead have big gaps of time to be creative. A study at Harvard Business School reports that workers are more creative on low-pressure days vs. high-pressure days. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But, at the same time, wouldn’t you think that creativity would also result from a flurry of activity and engagement with coworkers? 

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Do we have a corporate culture at Leggett & Platt? — The Economist

Members of our Creative Services team have fun with a stock photo.

How important is corporate culture? This article discusses a book on the subject, and asks what corporate culture is, exactly. Is it the image that your company projects to the world, or is it the most common habits, like, say, selling things heavily discounted? Or is it simply what this review calls “canteen culture” (for American English, “cafeteria culture”) – the conversations that coworkers have about their company when their boss isn’t listening? What kind of culture do we have at Leggett & Platt? We’re conservative, certainly. Traditional. Can a company as vast as ours have a uniform culture, or do different branches and groups have their own?

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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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