Category: Career in the Collaborative Age

How to Explain the Excessive Usage of Personality Tests Results

In a professional environment or out of personal curiosity, we’ve all taken personality tests that indicate our strengths and weaknesses. Why are those reductive tests so popular and in use? In David Epstein book ‘Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World‘, the author takes the position that it respond to our and organisation needs to classify us and pigeonhole us.

“A lucrative career and personality quiz and counseling industry survives on that notion. “All of the strengths-finder stuff, it gives people license to pigeonhole themselves or others in ways that just don’t take into account how much we grow and evolve and blossom and discover new things,” . “But people want answers, so these frameworks sell. It’s a lot harder to say, ‘Well, come up with some experiments and see what happens.’”

On one hand I find those tests quite insightful and they generate useful thinking about oneself and what we should reinforce or change; on the other hand it is true that they tend to classify us. By the way, the best advice is certainly not to try to improve weaknesses but rather to further enhance those strengths that make us so specific.

Organisations are then advised to seek diversity (i.e. a set of people which results to the test spread nicely across categories), and may outright reject applications on the basis of test results.

Those tests are an extremely reductionist approach to our personality and they also don’t account at all on the fact that we may evolve. Taking important decisions on their basis and letting them classify ourselves in categories is certainly excessive. They should remain as an interesting insight in our personality, but should not be used beyond a certain limit.

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How Life Coaches Should Be More Aware of Their Limits

This interesting article addresses a key question: ‘Life coaching is unregulated and growing rapidly. Should it be reined in?‘. As life coaching becomes more prevalent as a career and service, shouldn’t it become more regulated and should not access to the profession become more restricted?

Of course the article is written by a psychiatrist and therefore he complaints about the amateurish handling by coaches of exchanges that border on therapy (and tends to protect his profession, degree and the many years of associated suffering). Coaching is “intended for individuals without mental health problems. It’s also supposed to be more collaborative, brief, focused, future-oriented and informal than psychotherapy.” However, “it must be difficult for a coach to come across as anything other than a therapist. Common topics for leadership coaches – performance maximisation, workplace relationships and professional anxiety – are the bread and butter of many a therapy session. The confusion is even greater with coaching outside of the work environment, which can encompass, as the ‘life coach’ moniker makes clear, just about anything.”

The author also makes an excellent point on the issue of stigma getting into psychotherapy. “People who are concerned about stigma might think that coaching offers a creative workaround – a malleable means of offering therapy under a different guise and a different name. While the motivation might be noble and understandable, the reality is scary.“

From my own experience of coaching, I believe the point made can be sometimes valid. While coaches have a high-level training about the fact that there is a border beyond which they are not supposed to intervene, and require psychotherapy, this training is quite limited. Also, I have observed that many life coaches have entered into this activity following strong personal issues, questioning and sometimes difficult events, sometimes more as a way to discover themselves. They are not always extremely stable themselves, and they sometimes investigate areas that should be off-limits. They should probably be made more aware of their limits.

I am a strong supporter of coaching as a softer way to challenge people and enhance their underlying performance. Coaching training if done properly is quite thorough, but it is true that more exchange with psychotherapy professionals and more awareness of the limits of coaching versus therapy would probably be useful.

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How Automation Increases Pressure on Basic Production Positions

As part of the current debates about the impact of automation of our work environment, I found this post ‘How Hard Will the Robots Make Us Work (In warehouses, call centers, and other sectors, intelligent machines are managing humans, and they’re making work more stressful, grueling, and dangerous)’ quite interesting.

The point of the article is that in many instances, workers get monitored by algorithms that catch much more than a human manager would do in terms of fine grained performance and efficiency, and that it leads to far more pressure on workers. “These automated systems can detect inefficiencies that a human manager never would — a moment’s downtime between calls, a habit of lingering at the coffee machine after finishing a task, a new route that, if all goes perfectly, could get a few more packages delivered in a day. But for workers, what look like inefficiencies to an algorithm were their last reserves of respite and autonomy, and as these little breaks and minor freedoms get optimized out, their jobs are becoming more intense, stressful, and dangerous”

The article goes on to describe a number of grueling examples, but what has struck me is that most examples relate to production positions that are close to being automated, and based on hourly compensation. The only exception in the article is a software engineer whose productivity and presence is monitored at tight intervals, but apparently he is supposed to provide run-of-the-mill coding. The point is quite clear that for those production positions, automation is stressful because they are increasingly expected to be as good as robots – until they will be replaced. This however does not apply to more complex positions related to creativity and system architecture, where productivity can’t be measured the Industrial-Age way.

Still, this is a warning that for production positions that are close to being automated, the current development of AI and automated monitoring systems will create a stressful environment through closer supervision and this may be an area where regulation may need to intervene to protect workers.

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How Humans Will Crush Machines in Open-Ended Real World Problems

Following our previous posts (‘How Learning Approaches Must Be Different in Complexity: Upending the 10,000 h Rule‘) let’s continue our exploration of the excellent book ‘Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World‘ by David Epstein. Beyond putting in question traditional learning techniques, and more generally pointing out the limits of specialization, he makes the point that in an increasingly automated world, the generalists that have a broad integrating picture are the ones that will be in demand.

“The more a task shifts to an open world of big-picture strategy, the more humans have to add“. “The bigger the picture, the more unique the potential human contribution. Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly.” Reference is made here to open-ended games or infinite games compared to closed or finite games that are won by specialists (refer to our post ‘How Important It Is to Distinguish Between Finite and Infinite Games‘)

Therefore, “in open ended real-world problems we’re still crushing the machines.” This distinction between simple and complex, open and closed problems is really essential in defining the approaches that are needed and the competencies required.

Human’s strength is the capability to decide in complex open-ended problems, and this is what we need now to put emphasis on in terms of education, career and recognition.

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How Learning Approaches Must Be Different in Complexity: Upending the 10,000 h Rule

Following on our previous post ‘How Generalists Are Necessary for the Collaborative Age‘, let’s continue some exploration of the excellent book ‘Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World‘ by David Epstein. One of the main topics in the book is to show that the famous 10,000 hours rule for mastering some area of knowledge is actually only applicable to certain types of activities that are bound by clear rules: chess, music, golf. It does not apply to mastering complexity or any activity that does not respond to those characteristics.

“The bestseller Talent Is Overrated used the Polgar sisters and Tiger Woods as proof that a head start in deliberate practice is the key to success in “virtually any activity that matters to you.” The powerful lesson is that anything in the world can be conquered in the same way. It relies on one very important, and very unspoken, assumption: that chess and golf are representative examples of all the activities that matter to you.”

The concept of the 10,000 h rule to master some practice is thus upended. Worst, “In 2009, Kahneman and Klein [found that] whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question“. Sometimes even “In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons.”

Thus in the real complex world, actual learning must happen differently that repeating many times the same exercise in a predictable environment. It probably requires exposure to many different situations. Learning also cannot be expected to be continuous: it is probably discontinuous, with some ‘aha’ moments separated by slow maturing of new understanding.

Quite some thoughts that upend a lot of common knowledge. And still more thoughts that put into question traditional education.

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How Generalists Are Necessary for the Collaborative Age

I recommend highly the book ‘Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World‘ by David Epstein. It has provided quite a few interesting insights for me, which will be the subject of a few following posts.

For those that have been following this blog, I have expressed many times that the Collaborative Age calls for generalists, contrary to the specialists fostered by the Industrial Age (for example here and here). This book confirms this hint in a very convincing way and goes beyond to show that complex systems can only be dealt with by generalists. And that being a specialist can be quite dangerous in terms of decision-making beyond the bounds of specialization validity.

“Highly credentialed experts can become so narrow-minded that they actually get worse with experience, even while becoming more confident— a dangerous combination.”

And specialization can indeed lead to poor real-life outcomes. For example, “One revelation in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis was the degree of segregation within big banks. Legions of specialized groups optimizing risk for their own tiny pieces of the big picture created a catastrophic whole. To make matters worse, responses to the crisis betrayed a dizzying degree of specialization-induced perversity.”

This realization is pervading more and more organisations and society when it comes to choosing someone to lead a complex endeavor. The best candidates are generalists, or at least people who have been exposed to many things beyond their main area of interest. “the most common [path to excellence] was a sampling period, often lightly structured with some lessons and a breadth of instruments and activities, followed only later by a narrowing of focus, increased structure, and an explosion of practice volume.”

I have always been convinced, and I am more and more convinced, that the rounded individual exposed to largely varied experiences and fields of knowledge is the new type of leader we will be looking for in an increasingly complex Collective Age. And this is probably the biggest challenge of our learning and academic institutions today.

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How You Should Always Give It At Least a Second Try

In Kevin Kelly’s ‘68 bits of unsolicited advice‘, one bit of wisdom about being turned down raised my interest: “Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works“

This resonates indeed with my experience, and sometimes actually you’ll need to try again for a few more times than just a second one. And it is true that many people having experienced rejection will tend not even to give it a second change. Overcoming this feeling of rejection is an essential skill in society and is becoming even more important as we are all becoming more independent economic actors.

It is quite true that rejection is only a feeling and that many times, it is not just rejection, but that we tried to connect at an inadequate moment; and that this impression of indifference and rejection is just an artefact of other people being too busy to notice.

Next time you’ll feel rejected, brush it away and try a second time. And a third, fourth time if needed, at least until you get a clear reaction.

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How Remote Work Will Extend But Still Not Become the New Normal

The experience of remote working has dramatically spread this year with the pandemics. As soon as the worst was over however, many employers tried to revert back to the previous normal, but many employees actually enjoyed the experience. Cal Newport in this New Yorker column ‘Why Remote Work Is So Hard—and How It Can Be Fixed‘ provides interesting insights.

In this post we learn that the concept of ‘telecommuting’ was actually created in the 1970s to address congestion. But the concept struggled to spread, ““Flexible work” arrangements tend to be seen as a perk; a 2018 survey found that only around three per cent of American employees worked from home more than half of the time.”

“But there were other, entirely legitimate reasons for companies to retreat from [remote work], and they are just as relevant today as they were a decade ago [when Yahoo asked everybody to be back at the office.” The issue is about informal interaction, integration of newcomers into the community, the need for individuals to have interaction. “Face-to-face interactions help people communicate and bond, but that’s only part of their value. The knowledge work pursued in many modern offices—thinking, investigating, synthesizing, writing, planning, organizing, and so on—tends to be fuzzy and disorganized compared to the structured processes of, say, industrial manufacturing.”

Cal Newport continues by seeing the transformation into full remote work being a slow process, and offices – and office time – remaining an important part of everyone’s life in the next decades. Still, there will be more remote work. New personal discipline and habits will need to be introduced, and new collaborative tools and approaches will be perfected as well.

Aligned with Cal Newport views, I observe that during the pandemics some companies commented that remote work would become the new normal, only to relent as soon as restrictions were lifted, most companies seeing only maximum one or two remote days per week being the maximum allowable. Still it will provide knowledge workers with a new rhythm and possibly a new way of living.

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How Modern Learning is On-Demand, Bite-Sized

In this post ‘The Upcoming Journalism School Overhaul‘, Frederic Filloux expands about modern education and learning in the specific context of journalism. One of the aspects he highlights is how differently people acquire skills today, thanks to inline bit-size tutorials.

Before, one had to master extensively and widely all techniques associated with its trade before being considered competent (hence, the master and companions approach). Now, “Today’s generation has a completely different approach when it comes to acquiring technical knowledge: they will call for it on a need-to basis, in response to a specific project requirement. They will go on YouTube, which is also an unfathomable resource for skill-learning, to understand how to do a specific kind of shooting or mastering a particular editing technique. This is the way things are done now.“

Modern learning is on-demand, bite sized, and leverages on shared platforms, possibly with collective knowledge sharing. Industrial-age learning models, based on classrooms and large institutions, will get upended up to a certain point. And this is a good thought to have when developing new learning offers. It is important to fit with the new expectations of on-demand, bite-sized learning experiences.

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How Founder Compatibility Is Essential In Startups and Any Venture

This post ‘Startup Founder Compatibility is Vital‘ reminds us how essential it can be that founders go along well together, both in good and bad times. And it is not easy because often, company founder teams get together only a short time before kicking off the venture.

While the post is specifically geared towards start-ups, this is quite true for any kind of company including taking over an existing company. Differences and mis-alignments will appear in tense times, and can be quite devastating and mentally tiring (I speak by experience).

“The relationship among founders of a healthy business is like a marriage. Compatible goals, thinking, values, and decision-making styles is really important.” I can’t agree more, and like marriage it is essential to take the time to know each other well before committing into it.

“Don’t confuse compatibility with sameness. It takes a mix of different skills and backgrounds to build a business right.” On this one, I agree that different skills are needed. However I disagree when it comes to values and understanding of business ethics. On those aspects, an alignment is essential because when bad comes to the worst, founders will have to look at their values as a reference. And a misalignment there have quite dramatic consequences.

Founder compatibility is essential, and particularly in terms of shared values, ethics and benevolence. Take the time to know your partners before entering into a venture. It is like marriage.

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How the Economy Becomes Increasingly Bi-Polar

This extremely interesting post ‘We’re living in two economies, and they are tearing us apart‘ aligns with many of our views in terms of the current revolutionary transformation from the Industrial Age into a new age which the author calls ‘Autonomous Age’, which is what we call the ‘Collaborative Age’. The interesting part is the analysis of what happens in the economy during this transformation, with an increased bi-polar economy between traditional (physical) and virtual economies.

The interesting part of the analysis is how the two economies are “pulling in opposite directions, and doing so, tearing the Old Order apart“. “In particular, the traditional economy is biased toward inflation. By comparison, the Autonomous Economy is biased toward deflation.” “The problem is non-monetizable productivity — unlike in the real world, the productivity gains in the Autonomous Economy don’t translate to increased incomes for average folks.”

We connect here with the Baumol effect that we described in the post ‘How the Relative Increase of Cost for Education or Health Care Can be Explained‘. Physical services struggle to improve in terms of productivity and become therefore relatively more expensive.

The author of the post however goes further and asks itself how we can avoid an upcoming wave of unemployment as the virtual economy productivity will require much less people to provide the same or a better level of service.

As I observe at the same time a strong trend to go local and develop human touch services, I am not too concerned on the long term although the transition may well be difficult as people lose their jobs and struggle to transform their occupation.

The bi-polar economy is there to stay and we need to be ready for the disruption. I remain optimistic on the longer term, but we need to brace for the short term.

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How We Need to Take Time To Know Each Other Before Entering a Business Partnership

Building on our previous post ‘How Founder Compatibility Is Essential In Startups and Any Venture‘, this also obviously applies to other situations such as partnerships, mergers and acquisitions.

I have too often observed partnerships between companies, or plans for merger or acquisition falter because after the operation has been consumed, partners realize that they actually have a low cultural or values compatibility. The root cause is the lack of time taken to get to know each other, and specifically, identify and address misalignment.

When things are not well anticipated, one of the parties will generally take the lead and dominate to the frustration of the other. And it most cases it leads to botched projects with people leaving the resulting organisation.

In my business practice I now try to spend a lot of time getting to know presumptive business partners well, before committing into a more serious relationship where reputations or even survival can be affected. It is not always possible to spend as much time and effort as we would like because of the pace of business. Still there is nothing worse than entering in a partnership and then be anxious that the partner will not play fair, or aligned with our values.

Take enough time to know your counterpart intimately. Partnerships, mergers and other (friendly) acquisitions only will work with benevolence, trust, and minimal cultural and values alignment.

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