Everything's An Algorithm

A recent Wall Street Journal article caught my eye. Scott Morrison writes that Google is using algorithms in their efforts to manage and retain talent.

When you have a really big data analysis hammer, do even your people look like a nail?

Smart people have been talking about something that makes intuitive sense: it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a subject.

That's 3 years of full time effort.

Organizations need people to master their jobs. So it's important to hire good people. But that’s not enough.

Beyond mastery of basic job skills, people also need to practice navigating your organization (and an industry's culture).

In a big or complex company, can take years to log the hours of practice required to master the firm's particular code of etiquette. When you're writing code, you're getting better at writing code. Not politics; that's a separate practice.

If the organization itself has any meaning at all -- retaining people is important.

Some readers seemed to feel that Google's methods were a bit cold. Really?

An algorithm is "a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer," per Merriam-Webster.

On Saturday, I went out at 6am for coffee here in Lower Manhattan. Scanning the streets, quiet because of the holiday, I saw a man. Was he crazy looking? Yes. Did he appear motivated to bother me? No. Was there sufficient traffic nearby should my last determination be incorrect? Yes. Should I proceed to my coffee destination? Yes.

It's an algorithm.

We run algorithms in our heads all the time. I ran this one in about a second. ("The heels or the flats?" is a complex operation and may take longer.)

The algorithm is not the problem.

Problems: the wrong variables, assigning incorrect yes/no values -- and possibly most important, but least transparent: when we’re not sufficiently aware of how our algorithms work.

Which leads me to the dreaded "bad fit". The hire we never should have made.

It takes time, and costs money, to bring people into your ecosystem. When someone doesn’t fit, it's rarely pretty. And that costs you more time, and often money.

To hire the right people, you have to know what you want. The Google story caught my eye because we make our best hiring choices by being very clear with our algorithms.

Unless we're self-aware, our constantly running programs may not contain the correct variables. A degree from a particular school may not be a true indicator of success. We might misinterpret a line on a resume. Or we may not interview strategically.

Hiring the right people requires practice.

While interviewing skills are important, the more important work happens before we even talk to a candidate: practice selecting the correct variables.

When we select a particular degree to indicate that candidate can do a job, we may be right. And also dead wrong. It’s not whether he can do the job. It’s whether he will do the job. In your firm, and on your team.

That's an answer to a different question, or questions -- different pieces of the algorithm.

Were there other steps in my coffee algorithm I couldn't see, like whether I thought I could outrun the crazy guy to my neighborhood firehouse if I needed help? (Was I correct?)

The discipline of identifying the correct questions offers the opportunity to practice a kind of self-awareness. Not just a navel gazing exercise, because some unconscious steps in our algorithms (age, gender) might put our firms at risk.

And if you hire well, then you'll have Google's challenge: who to retain, and how to retain them.
Last year, at a panel discussion on talent management, I heard an executive from a global Fortune 500 consumer goods company say that his firm was investing 80% of the firm's training and development resources in 20% of their people -- the "high performers".

This doesn't sound like an investment to me. It sounds like a gamble.

It all boils down to what you want, and whether you want the right things.

(Photo: Jared's "Engraved Invaders", used under Creative Commons license. His beautiful algorithmic artwork on flickr sent me to his profile, which notes that he's a founder of Etsy. (If I had time, I'd be obsessed with Etsy.) Thanks, Jared.)

Paying Attention

I'm visiting family in the suburbs. This morning when we stepped out for coffee, the woman making our drinks was taking multiple orders.

Wearing a headset, she simultaneously juggled our drinks and asked a drive-through customer to repeat their order. I usually wind up amazed by the listening skills of the young people who make my coffee.

Today, we arrived home to find that we had gotten one drink that we hadn't ordered.

When we think we're "multi-tasking," we're actually quickly shifting our attention between multiple things. Sometimes this does not end well. (In the scheme of things, the wrong coffee was hardly an issue.)

Online today at Guardian.co.uk Peter Walker writes about introspection at business schools about their place in the credit crisis. The lede:

"When the former bosses of HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland were called before the Treasury select committee a month ago to explain exactly how their institutions got into the current mess, one question concerned formal banking qualifications. Just one of the four possessed anything remotely relevant: the Harvard MBA earned by Andy Hornby, the deposed HBOS chief executive."

Financial institutions used to provide lengthy and competitive credit training programs for people on banking tracks. In all of the finger pointing, the business press seems to have missed at least one interesting point: there has been a decline in credit training programs at financial institutions.

I studied finance at Wharton: that this was not, nor was it intended to be, a credit training program. An MBA is not a "formal banking qualification."

I've been paying attention, offline, to gathering background and content for the series on fear in the workplace (thus absent here). On deck: 3 posts on the media, including the financial media, and what contributes to their erroneous belief that an MBA might be a "formal banking qualification."

(And speaking of paying attention, I recently succumbed to Twitter. Frankly, I think that the crisis of attention today dwarfs the financial crisis...so I'll be interested to see how this whole thing works, and how the business case that keeps getting Twitter funding could possibly play out.)

(Photo: "paying attention", by flickr's zachstern used under Creative Commons license.)

Hope

New Yorkers participated in a shared dream yesterday. In a luminous confluence of talent, compassion, right effort, and what some would call karma, Circle Line and New York Waterway boats were alongside FDNY and NYPD, aiding the crew and passengers of the US Air jet that miraculously landed on the Hudson River.

The water temperature (as I heard on the news) is around 40F; if you're in that water, you lose mobility after a few seconds. By the time I was on my way home, it was clear that all were ok, and I stopped to chat with a local first responder, saying, "It's a miracle that you guys made it there so quickly." Characteristically, he responded that the Circle Line had gotten there first. We then agreed that people are good. (Generally.)

I spent the rest of the evening at a local restaurant with some neighborhood moms, gathered to support JustTell, a young non-profit led by Vivian Farmery. Some of the women's teenagers studied and ate at tables nearby as the group brainstormed about pulling together resources for a fundraiser and local outreach. (It's true, if you want something done, give it to a busy person!) One kid matter-of-factly spoke into his cell phone, "No, it wasn't a terrorist attack."

Before dawn this morning, I prepared for 11 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures by donning layers (enough to prevent me from raising my arms above my shoulders) and walked over to the Hudson where the plane was tied up along the waterfront. I don't know what I expected to see, really.

I guess I was looking for hope realized.

What I saw was a bunch of news vans and emergency response vehicles, what I heard was a local newsperson rehearsing her pitch about a miracle, and what I felt was -- cold.

Ducking into the World Financial Center dressed for a hike in the Himalayas, I grabbed a double espresso, chatted briefly with an NTSB guy, and walked up to look out across the street at the construction on the World Trade Center site.

Warm and hopeful, and holding news images of people standing on the water outside the aircraft, I walked home. Grateful that lower Manhattan smelled like coffee and discarded Christmas trees, and not like tens of thousands of burning computers.

(OK, I'm feeling all arty and abstracty with my iPhone -- the photo is actually construction at the WTC site, with palm trees from the World Financial Center and my Himalayan silhouette reflected in the window.)

The Business of Creativity, Part I

The handmade movement here in the US links and aligns sustainability, authenticity and the infinite human capacity to create. All things I love to celebrate here.

New industries start on the fringes. (As I learned from Wendell Dunn, in the early days of the internet.)

After seeing a wide range of Americans -- mostly women, many with an agenda to recycle and consume less -- creating small home businesses from making and selling craft and art works, I started to watch.

I came across an excellent podcast episode, Craftypod's Making A Creative Career, With Kim Werker. Kim talks with Diane Gillieland about following her creative love as a career path.

If you're starting a business, invest 30 minutes to hear Kim's archetypal story of the ups and downs of making her avocation into her profession.

Please stay tuned, there's a more in-depth post on handmade in the works. And an update on another Conscious Business project -- I'm excited by the responses from some great people I've approached on the topic of fear as it operates in the workplace.

(Hat tip to Kim Fraser, Spoonflower's crafter-in-chief, for the heads up on Craftypod. Spoonflower produces print-on-demand fabric, with a potentially great business model combining elements of Threadless, Etsy, and Lulu. They use online so skillfully to tell their story that I wanted to hop on a plane to Raleigh-Durham for a visit. Fascinating.)

(and the photo -- a work in progress, I'm getting crafty myself and learning how to crazy quilt!)

Brownie Points: Wrapping Up the Holidays (and 2008)

Sustainability was entering the mainstream conversation when I started to write here at Conscious Business.

189 posts later, this space has been a laboratory for my learning, and a place to share what I’ve learned. Meandering and returning to one theme: how does our behavior at work matter?

Early on, I used my own experience to explore basics of environmental sustainability. In 2008, a few things converged in my on-line and off-line lives.

The sheer volume of media coverage on sustainability has both encouraged and disenchanted me. And I became more engaged in off-line sustainability efforts.

And my focus shifted to subtler views, particularly the ideal that sustainability means not wasting people. This past spring, I started a consulting business to help business owners and managers to engage optimally with our employees and colleagues.

Diverted by my non-virtual efforts, and encouraged that topics like water conservation will be amply covered by journalists and bloggers who have both passion and bandwidth, I’ve shifted some of the creativity and attention I once directed to blogging into developing my consulting business.

What a ride!

It has been challenging to stay out in front of people this fall. Many friends and clients are in financial firms; it has been tough to imagine how to connect with people when they are fearful of being booted, bought, or bailed out (or not).

Everyone is stressed, and I’ve started to offer workplace stress management programs. This has been an easier topic of conversation.

But with some people, and some firms, silence and compassion have seemed like the best approach.

And, brownies.

Baking is an excellent science for left brainiacs. Predictably delicious outcomes are almost assured when you use the best ingredients, measure and mix them correctly, and use the right tools.

I’m a pretty good baker, and home-baked breads, cookies and granola have been frequent gifts for my friends and family members.

In past holiday seasons, I’ve sent tins of Dean and Deluca cookies to business friends and clients. People seemed to love them. But this year, the faux homemade cookies in the elegant silver tin looked a little cold.

I intend for my business services to be handmade with good ingredients, and with care for how they are presented. So this year, I decided to bake that metaphor into brownies.

It was great fun to select and source the ingredients, tins, ribbons and cards. (Readers who know me may smile to hear that I used an excel spreadsheet as a project planning tool.)

I fell into a rhythm of baking early in the day, letting the brownies cool while I worked. In the afternoons, I’d construct the packages and schedule deliveries based on where I had other afternoon appointments.

(Knowing that recipients would have an abundance of available holiday sweets, the packages were petite, just enough for a couple of people to share a snack or two while they were fresh. And to avoid raising either the Grinch's ire, or true ethical concern, in firms where gift policies prevail.)

After all of this holiday fun – and it was fun -- it was heartening to see press coverage about home-baked gifts. The health blog at The New York Times, Well, posted at least two items.

Commenters on one NPR story shared my dismay with Claire Crespo’s suggestion that we use cake mix and canned frosting to make good looking gifts that make people smile.

Our willingness to value things that look good, but lack substance, has contributed to our current problems. And it literally feeds our health care challenges.

(Is canned frosting even food?)

I felt more aligned with Nicole Spridakis, who spoke of the pleasures of baking gifts from scratch; her results sound far more elegant than my simple brownies.

Holy Zeitgeist Batman, could home baking be an antidote to the financial crisis?

It seems that the raves I’ve won relate less to my baking prowess, and more to the power of a humble, but well constructed, bakery item to speak to a place in our hearts that can’t be touched by the markets.

That’s the kind of leadership we need -- in abundance -- as we approach this next and very hopeful new year. Eyes wide open.

(The photo is a few of my finished gift packages...I had a heck of a time keeping the ribbons tied onto the round tins. Sigh.)