Economy – Mutual Responsibility

November 30, 2014

How Important Are Good Relationships Between Workers & Supervisors?

How Important Are Good Relationship Between Workers & Supervisors?

Seeing eye-to-eye about the employee-supervisor relationship is equally, if not more important than the actual quality of the relationship

– Fadel Matta, lead investigator on the study and a management researcher in MSU’s Broad College of Business.

A new study led by Michigan State University business scholars finds that workers are more motivated if they and their supervisors see eye-to-eye about a bad relationship than if they have different views about their relationship.

Past research suggests workers and their bosses often have differing views about the quality of their relationship. Matta and his fellow researchers set out to examine whether that affects actual work engagement, or motivation.

It does. According to the MSU-led study of 280 employees and their bosses, motivation suffered when an employee believed he or she had a good relationship with the boss but the boss saw it differently. The finding held when the flip side was true and the boss believed the relationship was good but the subordinate did not. The two were surveyed separately, meaning the boss did not necessarily know how the employee felt about him or her, and vice versa.

Interestingly, employee motivation was higher (and the employee was more apt to go above and beyond his or her basic job duties) when the worker and supervisor saw eye-to-eye about the relationship, even when it was poor.

“Some people would say it’s better to fake it, but our results indicate that the opposite is true,” said Matta, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Management. “At the end of the day, it’s better for everyone to know where they stand and how they feel about each other.”

– Michigan State University’s Department of Management, Trouble With Your Boss? Own It. , Nov. 21, 2014

August 31, 2014July 30, 2014

NEF Report ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ Identifies Important Role of Social Connections with Happiness

In the NEF’s report “Five Ways to Wellbeing: A report presented to the Foresight Project on communicating the evidence base for improving people’s well-being,” the factor stated to affect happiness the most is social connections.

In 2008, at the request of the British government and financed by the British Ministry of Science (New Economic Foundation – NEF), in cooperation with the University of Cambridge, a comprehensive project was carried out, summarizing and comparing studies, identifying which factors affect the citizens’ happiness. The most influential factor is social connections. Out of the 5 recommendations suggested, 2 of them are directly connected to social relationships.

Image: "Happy Monday" by Yasin Hassan.

August 30, 2014July 30, 2014

The Destructive Effect of Negative Emotions in the Workplace

In the article “Emotional Contagion Can Take Down Your Whole Team,” Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything, describes how negativity begins in an office setting by one person talking and passing negative emotions from one to the other, and how negative emotions in this setting have destructive effect.

Emotional contagion takes hold and as the negativity spreads, it drains the energy from the team and the company as a whole. The negative emotions temporarily overwhelm the capacity to assess the facts at hand.

“How much do emotions matter in the workplace? Walk into any Department of Motor Vehicles and you’ll feel the impact of the prevailing mood instantly — a dense fog of sourness, irritability, and listlessness. Walk into almost any Apple store and you’ll experience the opposite — a sense of aliveness and excitement that raises your energy.”

Schwartz tells a story of his personal experience with a senior executive, and lists some points that he had learned from the experience in the article.

Image: "Gossip Walk" by Ktoine.

August 28, 2014July 30, 2014

Managerial Case Study Shows How Bringing People Together for a Common Meeting Gets Things Done Better than Holding Multiple Individual Meetings

In the article “Don’t Neglect Your Power to Bring People Together,” Ron Ashkenas describes a situation where a manager first tried fulfilling a certain task according to common managerial lines, of “calling meetings for their own direct staff and those who report to them.” However, although everyone agreed and got to work, little of the task’s goals were fulfilled.

In frustration, the manager grouped all parties together for a common meeting, through which all the obstacles were discussed together, and after which the task’s goal became fulfilled to much greater effect.

Then, Ashkenas continued to look into the reasons why managers don’t take steps initially to call common meetings outside their own staff and people who report directly to them, if the results of such meetings can be more effective. Some of the reasons Ashkenas mentioned included fears and anxieties in making sure no one is left out, preparing convincing cases as to why this is important for each member attending the meeting, the possibility of some or many of the invitees refusing to attend, as well as other fears.

However, in conclusion, Ashkenas encourages managers to overcome these fears in order to convene people together since “bringing the right people together from across the organization (and even including suppliers and customers) is often the best way to get things done quickly.”

Image: "Skype Reverie" by Steve Jurvetson.

August 25, 2014July 30, 2014

The Importance of Empathy and Quality Personal Interaction in the Future of Employment

What’s the crucial career strength that employers everywhere are seeking — even though hardly anyone is talking about it? A great way to find out is by studying this list of fast-growing occupations, as compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sports coaches and fitness trainers. Massage therapists, registered nurses and physical therapists. School psychologists, music tutors, preschool teachers and speech-language pathologists. Personal financial planners, chauffeurs and private detectives. These are among the fields expected to employ at least 20% more people in the U.S. by 2020.

Did you notice the common thread? Every one of these jobs is all about empathy.

In our fast-paced digital world, there’s lots of hand-wringing about the ways that automation and computer technology are taking away the kinds of jobs that kept our parents and grandparents employed. Walk through a modern factory, and you’ll be stunned by how few humans are needed to tend the machines. Similarly, travel agents, video editors and many other white-collar employees have been pushed to the sidelines by the digital revolution’s faster and cheaper methods.

But there’s no substitute for the magic of a face-to-face interaction with someone else who cares. Even the most ingenious machine-based attempts to mimic human conversation (hello, Siri) can’t match the emotional richness of a real conversation with a real person.

Visit a health club, and you’ll see the best personal trainers don’t just march their clients through a preset run of exercises. They chat about the stresses and rewards of getting back in shape. They tease, they flatter — maybe they even flirt a little. They connect with their clients in a way that builds people’s motivation. Before long, clients keep coming back to the gym because they want to spend time with a friend, and to do something extra to win his or her respect.

It’s the same story in health care or education. Technology can monitor an adult’s glucose levels or a young child’s counting skills quite precisely. Data by itself, though, is just a tool. The real magic happens when a borderline diabetic or a shy preschooler develops enough faith and trust in another person to embark on a new path. What the BLS data tells us is that even in a rapidly automating world, we can’t automate empathy.

–Taken from the article “The Number One Job Skill in 2020” by George Anders.

August 21, 2014July 30, 2014

How Money, Trust, Generosity, a Sense of Belonging, Perceived Freedom and Getting Outside Your Comfort Zone Affects Your Happiness

Time and time again, we find that people systematically overestimate the impact of material things and underestimate the positive impacts of social connections.

–John Helliwell, a University of British Columbia economist who was asked to help the United Nations measure and improve global happiness levels.

The following are summaries of 6 main points Helliwell listed as important discoveries in happiness research:

1. More Money Doesn’t Make You Happier
Studies found that income does support life satisfaction, but mostly at low income levels, and not as much as people expect. Positive social interactions have a much greater impact on well-being.

2. The Importance of Trust
When trust is high, people have the confidence to reach out, whether in the workplace or in the community.

3. A Sense of Belonging
Studies show that feelings of belonging at the local community level have twice the impact of those at the national or provincial. As for social media, a Canadian survey found that it is the size of your network of real-time friends, and not the online version, that supports life satisfaction.

4. The Importance of Generosity
Donors and volunteers to charities have been found to receive greater personal satisfaction from their philanthropy than recipients. In a recent study, cancer patients who counseled their peers received even larger benefits than those they were counseling.

5. Perceived Freedom to Make One’s Own Life Choices
While good health is important, the perceived freedom to make important life choices is also crucial. For example, Denmark, which has the world’s highest self-assessed levels of freedom, also has the highest life satisfaction levels.

6. The Importance of Reaching Outside Your Comfort Zone & Establishing Good Relations
Small towns tend to outperform the big cities on happiness because it is easier to get to know neighbors, build trust and create a sense of belonging. “When people ask where to start, I say transform your elevator ride from a prison sentence to a social event,” he says. “Chat with neighbours and help carry their groceries. It’s easier to reach outside your comfort zone when you realize that you and the whole community are likely to benefit.”

–The above points are taken from the article “Six Things Science Tells Us about Happiness” by Basil Waugh, University of British Columbia.

Image: "3D Social Networking" by Chris Potter.

July 8, 2014July 8, 2014

12 Ways Positive Social Connections in the Workplace Increases Business Success

1) More Positive Emotions = More Productivity & Creativity

Whether we looked at entrepreneurial startups or large, established enterprises, the same holds true: People are more productive and creative when they have more positive emotions.

–Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, 2011.

2) Negative Emotions Have the Opposite Effect

We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity. Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect.

–Economist Team led by Andrew Oswald, Warwick Business School, July 2010, in “A New Happiness Equation: Worker + Happiness = Improved Productivity.”

3) Positive Workplace Interactions = Improved Employee Health

Positive social interactions at work have been shown to boost employee health, e.g. by lowering heart rate and blood pressure, and by strengthening the immune system. Happy employees also make for a more congenial workplace and improved customer service. Employees in positive moods are more willing to help peers and to provide customer service on their own accord. What’s more, compassionate, friendly, and supportive co-workers tend to build higher-quality relationships with others at work. In doing so, they boost co-workers’ productivity levels and increase coworkers’ feeling of social connection, as well as their commitment to the workplace and their levels of engagement with their job.

–Emma Seppala, “Why Compassion in Business Makes Sense,” Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, April 2013.

4) Business Success Depends on Empathetic Leaders

Business success depends on empathetic leaders who are able to adapt, build on the strengths around them, and relate to their environment.

–Jason Boyers, “Why Empathy Is the Force That Moves Business Forward,” Forbes, May 2013.

5) Happy Employees = Happy Customers and Happy Shareholders

Loyal, passionate employees bring a company as much benefit as loyal, passionate customers. They stay longer, work harder, work more creatively, and find ways to go the extra mile. They bring you more great employees. And that spreads even more happiness — happiness for employees, for customers, and for shareholders.

–Rob Markey, “Transform Your Employees into Passionate Advocates,” Harvard Business Review, January 2012.

6) The Frequency Employees Help One Another Predicts Sales Revenues

Evidence from studies led by Indiana University’s Philip Podsakoff demonstrates that the frequency with which employees help one another predicts sales revenues in pharmaceutical units and retail stores; profits, costs, and customer service in banks; creativity in consulting and engineering firms; productivity in paper mills; and revenues, operating efficiency, customer satisfaction, and performance quality in restaurants.

–Adam Grant, “Givers Take All: The Hidden Dimension of Corporate Culture,” McKinsey & Company, April 2013.

7) 5 Ways Organizational Effectiveness Is Increased When Employees Freely Contribute Their Knowledge and Skills to Others

Across these diverse contexts, organizations benefit when employees freely contribute their knowledge and skills to others. Podsakoff’s research suggests that this helping-behavior facilitates organizational effectiveness by:

enabling employees to solve problems and get work done faster
enhancing team cohesion and coordination
ensuring that expertise is transferred from experienced to new employees
reducing variability in performance when some members are overloaded or distracted
establishing an environment in which customers and suppliers feel that their needs are the organization’s top priority

–Adam Grant, “Givers Take All: The Hidden Dimension of Corporate Culture,” McKinsey & Company, April 2013.

8) More Cooperative Work Teams = More Accuracy in the Work Done

In a landmark study led by Michael Johnson at the University of Washington, participants worked in teams that received either cooperative or competitive incentives for completing difficult tasks. For teams receiving cooperative incentives, cash prizes went to the highest-performing team as a whole, prompting members to work together as givers. In competitive teams, cash prizes went to the highest-performing individual within each team, encouraging a taker culture. The result? The competitive teams finished their tasks faster than the cooperative teams did, but less accurately, as members withheld critical information from each other.

–Adam Grant, “Givers Take All: The Hidden Dimension of Corporate Culture,” McKinsey & Company, April 2013.

9) Diversity in the Workforce Is Necessary to Drive Innovation and Promote Creativity

A diverse and inclusive workforce is necessary to drive innovation and promote creativity – 85% of respondents agreed (48% strongly so) that diversity is crucial to gaining the perspectives and ideas that foster innovation.

–Debbie Weathers, “Forbes Insights Study Identifies Strong Link between Diverse Talent and Innovation,” Forbes Insights, July 2011.

10) Different Experiences and Different Perspectives Build the Foundation Necessary to Compete on a Global Scale

Companies have realized that diversity and inclusion are no longer separate from other parts of the business. Organizations in the survey understand that different experiences and different perspectives build the foundation necessary to compete on a global scale.

–Debbie Weathers, “Forbes Insights Study Identifies Strong Link between Diverse Talent and Innovation,” Forbes Insights, July 2011.

11) The Ability to Deal with People = the Highest Value

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee, and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

–John D. Rockefeller Senior, stated while setting up the Standard Oil Company.

12) Effective Engagement of Employees = Higher Productivity and Better Financial Outcomes

The most successful organizations effectively engage their employees, leading to higher productivity and better financial outcomes. …

When organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared with an organization with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers. …

Actively disengaged employees alone cost the U.S. between $450 billion to $550 billion each year in lost productivity, and are more likely than engaged employees to steal from their companies, negatively influence their coworkers, miss workdays, and drive customers away.

–Gallup research, “The State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders.” Gallup, 2013.

Image: "Corporate Express Meeting" by Office Now.

June 29, 2014June 30, 2014

World Economic Forum Global Risks Infographic

The Global Risks report published by the World Economic Forum presents an astonishing risks interconnection map. It clearly reveals how all global risks are interrelated and interwoven, so that economic, environmental, geopolitical, social and technological risks are hugely interdependent.

A crisis in one area will quickly lead to a crisis in other areas. The interconnection and complexity in this map compared, to our surprise, at the impact and speed of the recent financial crises illustrates the discord that exists in all systems we’ve built and shows just how disconnected we’ve become.

Humanity’s attempts at managing these systems are fragmented and simplistic and not up to the challenges that we face today.

Dave Sherman, PhD
Business strategist, sustainability expert

Source: Global Risks 2012: Seventh Edition.

November 18, 2012

Can The US Economy Be Fixed?

Newly Re-Elected President Obama Is Expected To Fix The Multiple Problems Ailing The US Economy

Jeffrey Sachs, American Economist and Director of the Earth Institute writes in The Economist in his article “Obama has four years to fix the economy:”

The modern president must therefore not be the overseer of aggregate demand but the conductor of deep-seated structural changes. He should be the convener of governors, mayors, university presidents, CEOs, healthcare providers and scientists to clear the obstacles from investment programmes in energy, education, infrastructure, health and skills.

Mr Obama’s legacy should be to foster the overhaul of the US economy.”

It is widely accepted that the newly re-elected President should be presiding over a structural reform of the economy, but most probably not in the way the writer suggests.

What Is The Main Problem With The US Economy?

As the global crisis exemplifies, despite occasional revivals, the constant quantitative growth economic model is unsustainable, as it is unnatural.

This model is built on excessive overproduction and over consumption of mostly unnecessary (by certain statistics over 90% of what is produced is obsolete), and many times harmful products.

This model is progressively exhausting both the natural and human resources, causing increasing social inequality and tension, jeopardizing food and water supplies within the very short future. As a result, human beings themselves are becoming increasing sick and depressed, the family unit and the social network is breaking, basically all human built institutions are in crisis.

The human society within nations and internationally is strained and threatened with conflicts all over the globe, and humanity in general is at war with the natural ecosystem around.

A viable structural change for the economic model is to first make sure that everyone’s basic needs are met, i.e. that people have a home, food, health care, and all the necessities in place to provide them with a comfortable life. Secondly, people would need to develop their awareness about how to live comfortably in today’s new globally interdependent conditions. In other words, where the constant quantitative economic growth model, together with its inherent individualism and competitiveness, leads to the increasing problems mentioned above, a new model embracing mutual responsibility and cooperation would literally need to be “taught” to people regularly in order for the economy to truly become fixed.

On top of that, such change cannot happen nationally in isolation. Since humanity is an interdependent network, any planning, decision and action needs to happen in conjunction with the rest of the network. As such, any plan or action people make should be in line with the whole system’s well being, otherwise it cannot work. It would cause harm, and that harm would return to the initiator as a boomerang with multiple force.

Any Solution To The US Economy Needs To Consider Global Interdependence

Only taking the above mentioned into consideration can the President or any other leader hope for a true legacy and a place in history.

Image: “tools3” by tigrre from Flickr

October 27, 2012October 24, 2012

The Court Jester Cannot Solve The Kingdom’s Problem

Today The Central Bankers Seem To Be The Main Players In Trying To Solve The Global Crisis

Raghuram Rajan, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business assesses the role of the central banks in solving the global crisis in the article “The Only Game In Town.” He writes:

What should central banks do when politicians seem incapable of acting? Thus far, they have been willing to step into the breach, finding new and increasingly unconventional ways to try to influence the direction of troubled economies. But how can we determine when central banks overstep their limits? When does boldness turn to foolhardiness?

Central bankers nowadays enjoy the popularity of rock stars, and deservedly so: their response to the difficult and uncertain environment during and after the financial crisis has been largely impeccable. But they must be able to admit when they are out of bullets. After all, the transformation from hero to zero can be swift.”

But In Reality Banks Are Powerless In Assisting A True Solution As The Troubled Economies Are Not Only Financial Problems, But Part Of A Larger Human System Failure

Unfortunately, the whole situation is upside down.

The central banks, or any bank in fact, should not play any role in what is happening. The banks simply got into their prominent positions as a result of the excessive, constant growth economy forcing everybody into overspending, relying more and more on credit.

But these financial institutions, with their inflated and imminently bursting bubbles have no real bullets at all, they have absolutely no capacity to solve the crisis. It is the opposite. By pouring virtual money into the tanks of the broken system, all the banks are doing is delaying the inevitable recognition of the true problem: the foundation of the whole economic model and its serving cast. The troubled economies are not just financial problems, but a system failure as humanity is stubbornly pushing on with the wrong system at the wrong time.

The “rock star” bankers are just as real as other reality TV stars: they grab the headlines but provide no positive contribution.

A ‘True Solution’ Can Only Come From Dealing With The ‘True Problem’: The Globally Interdependent Human Network & How Its Members Should Behave In It

The banks should gradually withdraw from the arena leaving leaders and public to examine and understand how a global, interdependent human network works in a closed and finite natural system, and what new socio-economic model is suitable to provide a predictable and sustainable future.

Image: “all in jest” by Will Montague from Flickr