1. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
1. “McKinsey Global Survey Results: How Effectively Executives Use Their Time,” McKinsey & Company, 2011.
2. “About Remember the Milk,” www.rememberthemilk.com/about.
1. John Perry, “Structured Procrastination,” www.structuredprocrastination.com.
2. Joseph R. Ferrari et al., “Frequent Behavioral Delay Tendencies by Adults: International Prevalence Rates of Chronic Procrastination,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 38, no. 4 (July 2007): 458, doi: 10.1177/0022022107302314.
3. Laura J. Solomon and Esther D. Rothblum, “Academic Procrastination: Frequency and Cognitive-Behavioral Correlates,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 31, no. 4 (1984): 503–509, doi: 10.1037/0022-0167.31.4.503.
4. Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch, “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment,” Psychological Science 13, no. 3 (2002): 219–224, doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00441.
5. As a proportion of total revenue. Jennifer Smith, “Companies Reset Legal Costs,” Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230458770457733171
1808572108.html.
6. Stephanie Francis Ward, “The Ultimate Time-Money Trade-off,” ABA Journal, February 21, 2007, www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_ultimate_time_money_trade_off1.
7. For further reading on this subject, see Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It (New York: Penguin, 2008).
8. Kimberly D. Elsbach, Dan M. Cable, and Jeffrey W. Sherman. “How Passive ‘Face Time’ Affects Perceptions of Employees: Evidence of Spontaneous Trait Inference in Context,” Human Relations 63, no. 6 (2010): 735–750, doi: 10.1177/0018726709353139.
9. These researchers specifically used what’s called a “false recognition” experimental procedure. They provide a subject with a few sentences that describe a certain type of behavior (but does not use the specific word). A few minutes later, subjects are asked to identify whether various words were actually in the description. For instance, the sentences could say, “Today, I went out and bought a car. I don’t need it, but it struck my fancy. I like doing things this way—I hate to spend too much time mulling over a decision.” If the subject mistakenly thinks that the explanation included the word “spontaneous,” it is evidence that the subject subconsciously associates the idea of “spontaneity” with the description that he or she was given. This example sentence is from Donal E. Carlston and John J. Skowronski, “Savings in Relearning of Trait Information as Evidence for Spontaneous Inference Generation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, no. 5 (May 1994): 840–856, doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.66.5.840.
1. For more, see Robert D. Knapp, The Supernova Advisor: Crossing the Invisible Bridge to Exceptional Client Service and Consistent Growth (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2008).
2. For more, see Leslie A. Perlow, Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).
3. See, e.g., Joshua S. Rubinstein, David E. Meyer, and Jeffrey E. Evans, “Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 27, no. 4 (August 2001): 763–797, doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763.
4. Kenneth Lovett, “Ousted Majority Leader Malcolm Smith Fiddled with BlackBerry While Senate Burned,” Daily News, June 10, 2009, http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-06-10/news/17925247_1_thomasgolisano-republicans-independence-party.
5. Maralee McKee, “Seven Ways to Text with Graciousness and Savvy,” www.mannersmentorblog.com/only-at-work/seven-ways-to-text-with-graciousness-and-savvy.
6. Marsha Egan, “Meeting Manners: Keep the Phone Off and Away,” April 20, 2011, www.nationalmortgagenews.com/on_features/keep-phone-off-1024418-1.html.
7. Thom Shanker, “Gates Takes Aim at Pentagon Spending,” New York Times, May 8, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/us/politics/09gates.html.
8. Viola Gienger, “Gates Says Defense Bureaucracy Swollen, Declares Cuts,” Bloomberg.com, August 10, 2010, www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-09/gates-says-defense-bureaucracy-bloated-declares-cuts-in-contractor-jobs.html.
9. For more, see Russell Bishop, “Don’t Let Bureaucracy Ruin Your Day,” New York Times, April 2, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/jobs/03pre.html?ref=bureaucraticredtape. Also see Leisha DeHart-Davis, “Green Tape: A Theory of Effective Organizational Rules,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 19, no. 2 (2009): 361–384, doi: 10.1093/jopart/mun004.
1. Quoted in Rachel Emma Silverman, “Where’s the Boss? Trapped in a Meeting,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204642604577215013504567
548.html.
2. Bharat Mediratta, as told to Julie Bick, “The Google Way: Give Engineers Room,” New York Times, October 21, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/jobs/21pre.html.
3. Carl Nielsen, as quoted in Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols, Composers on Music: Eight Centuries of Writings (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pantheon Books, 1997), 216.
4. Roy F. Baumeister et al., “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 5 (May 1998): 1252–1265, doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252. Also see Kathleen Vohs et al., “Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 5 (2008): 883–898, doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.883.
5. See, e.g., Ernesto Pollitt and Rebecca Mathews, “Breakfast and Cognition: An Integrative Summary,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 67, no. 4 (suppl.) (2008): 804S–813S.
6. Craig Lambert, “Deep into Sleep,” Harvard Magazine, July–August 2005.
7. See, e.g., Masaya Takahashi, Hideki Fukuda, and Haihachiro Arito, “Brief Naps During Post-lunch Rest: Effects on Alertness, Performance, and Autonomic Balance,” European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology 78, no. 2 (1998): 93–98, doi: 10.1007/s004210050392.
8. Corry Schiermeyer, “IBOPE Inteligência Poll: Two-fifths of Employees Would Take Naps at Work if Allowed,” June 30, 2011, http://zogby.com/news/2011/06/30/ibope-zogby-poll-two-fifths-employees-would-take-naps-work-if-allowed.
9. Joseph Carroll, “Workers’ Average Commute Round-Trip Is 46 Minutes in a Typical Day,” August 24, 2007, www.gallup.com/poll/28504/workers-average-commute-roundtrip-minutes-typical-day.aspx.
10. See, e.g., Suzanne M. Bianchi et al., “Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor,” Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000): 191–228.
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “American Time Use Survey Summary,” June 22, 2011, www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm.
12. Hans P. A. Van Dongen et al., “The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology from Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation,” Sleep 26, no. 2 (2003): 117–126.
13. The three tests were a psychomotor vigilance task (measuring sustained attention), a computerized digit symbol substitution task (measuring working memory capacity), and a serial addition/subtraction task (measuring cognitive throughput).
14. Performance relative to the control group. Van Dongen et al., “The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness.”
15. Yvonne Harrison and James A. Horn, “One Night of Sleep Loss Impairs Innovative Thinking and Flexible Decision Making,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 78, no. 2 (May 1999): 128–145. For a review of this and other related studies, see: William D. Killgore, “Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognition,” Progress in Brain Research, 185 (2010): 105–129, doi: 10.1016/B978-0-444-53702-7.00007-5.
16. William D. Killgore, Thomas J. Balkin, and Nancy J. Wesensten, “Impaired Decision Making Following 49 H of Sleep Deprivation,” Journal of Sleep Research 15, no. 1 (2006): 7-13, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2869.2006.00487.x.
17. It is unclear whether two nights of ten hours’ sleep is sufficient to recover from a week’s worth of six hours’ sleep. One study (Siobhan Banks et al., “Neurobehavioral Dynamics Following Chronic Sleep Restriction: Dose-Response Effects of One Night for Recovery,” Sleep 33, no. 8 (2010): 1013–1026) suggested this to be the case, but another study (Alexandros Vgontzas et al., “Effects of Recovery Sleep Following Modest Sleep Restriction for One Workweek on Daytime Sleepiness and Performance: Gender Differences,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, June 15, 2011) disagreed. In any case, the long-term effects of such deprivation and recovery are not well understood.
18. Andy Pringle et al., “Cost-effectiveness of Interventions to Improve Moderate Physical Activity: A Study in Nine UK Sites,” Health Education Journal 69, no. 2 (June 2010): 211–224, doi: 10.1177/0017896910366790.
19. For example, one study divided adults randomly into three groups by exercise level: low intensity, moderate intensity, and no exercise. Each week, the researchers examined the level of energy or fatigue that the subjects in all three groups felt. Both low- and moderate-intensity exercisers reported feeling more energy and less fatigue than the no-exercise group. See Timothy W. Puetz, Sara S. Flowers, and Patrick J. O’Connor, “A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effect of Aerobic Exercise Training on Feelings of Energy and Fatigue in Sedentary Young Adults with Persistent Fatigue,” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 77, no. 3 (2008): 167–174, doi: 10.1159/000116610.
20. Leon Watson, “The App That Tells You When You’re Happiest (Unsurprisingly, It’s 1.50pm on Christmas Day),” Daily Mail, www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2058228/Sex-makes-Appy-know-iPhone-study-reveals-satisfied.html.
21. For a specific example, see Emma E. A. Cohen et al., “Rowers’ High: Behavioural Synchrony Is Correlated with Elevated Pain Thresholds,” Biology Letters 6, no. 1 (2010): 106–108, doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0670.
1. In one survey, 85 percent of executives stated that they consider teleconferences to be significantly inferior to personal contact with potential customers or partners. See “Business Meetings: The Case for Face to Face,” Forbes Insights, 2009, http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Business_Meetings_FaceToFace.pdf.
2. The average wait time from plane to baggage claim is seventeen minutes, according to http://doubletakemarketing.com, and it also takes several minutes to check the bag at your point of departure.
3. A. N. Nicholson and Barbara M. Stone, “Influence of Back Angle on the Quality of Sleep in Seats,” Ergonomics 30, no. 7 (1987): 1033–1041.
4. “Difference Between Business Class and Economy Class,” January 23, 2011, www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-business-class-and-economy-class.
5. Karl Doghramji, “The Effects of Alcohol on Sleep,” Medscape Education, 2005, www.medscape.org/viewarticle/497982.
6. Here’s one idea: Carry packets of oatmeal and tea in your luggage. That way, you have a quick and easy breakfast that requires only hot water!
7. See, e.g., Arne Lowden and Torbjörn Åkerstedt, “Eastward Long Distance Flights, Sleep and Wake Patterns in Air Crews in Connection with a Two-Day Layover,” Journal of Sleep Research 8, no. 1 (March 1999): 15–24, doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2869.1999.00129.x.
8. For more, see Jim Waterhouse et al., “Jet Lag: Trends and Coping Strategies,” Lancet 369, no. 9567 (2007): 1117–1129, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60529-7.
9. See, e.g., Anna Wirz-Justice et al., “No Evidence for a Phase Delay in Human Circadian Rhythms After a Single Morning Melatonin Administration,” 32, Journal of Pineal Research, no. 1 (2002): 1–5, doi: 10.1034/j.1600-079x.2002.10808.x.
10. C. M. Espino et al., “International Business Travel: Impact on Families and Travellers,” Occupational & Environmental Medicine 59, no. 5 (2002): 309–322, doi: 10.1136/oem.59.5.309.
1. Nicholas Romano and Jay Nunamaker, “Meeting Analysis: Findings from Research and Practice,” paper presented at the 34th Hawaii International Conference, January 2001.
2. Oriana Bandiera et al., “What Do CEOs Do?” Social Science Research Network, February 2010, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1758445.
3. For more, see Charlan J. Nemeth et al., “The Liberating Role of Conflict in Group Creativity: A Study in Two Countries,” European Journal of Social Psychology 34 (July–August 2004): 365–374, doi: 10.1002/ejsp.210.
4. E.g., Optimum = 7: Marcia Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, and Paul Rogers, Decide & Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization (Boston: Bain & Company, 2010). Optimum ~=5: J. Richard Hackman and Neil Vidmar, “Effects of Size and Task Type on Group Performance and Member Reactions,” Sociometry 33, no. 1 (March 1970): 37–54, doi: 10.2307/2786271.
5. A. H. Johnstone and F. Percival, “Attention Breaks in Lectures,”Education in Chemistry 13, no. 2 (March 1976): 49–50.
6. “Cabletron Systems, Inc.,” www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Cabletron-Systems-Inc-company-History.html.
7. Joan Middendorf and Alan Kalish, “The ‘Change-up’ in Lectures,” National Teaching & Learning Forum 5, no. 2 (1996): 1–5.
8. The line, of course, is from Network, directed by Sidney Lumet, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1976.
9. “‘When We Understand That Slide, We’ll Have Won the War:’ US Generals Given Baffling PowerPoint Presentation to Try to Explain Afghanistan Mess,” Daily Mail, April 28, 2010, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1269463/Afghanistan-PowerPoint-slide-Generals-left-baffled-PowerPoint-slide.html.
10. This is the strategy of Ori Hadomi, the CEO of Mazor Robotics, based in Israel. He makes sure that there’s a devil’s advocate appointed in every meeting, so that the company does not rely on overly optimistic assumptions. See Adam Bryant, “Every Team Should Have a Devil’s Advocate,” New York Times, December 24, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/business/orihadomi-of-mazor-robotics-on-choosing-devils-advocates.html?pagewanted=all.
11. See, e.g., Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely, “The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love,” Journal of Consumer Psychology (2011), doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2011.08.002.
1. The study defined readers as “proficient” if they could gather content from different parts of a text, analyze when and if they fit together, and make inferences based on the text. See Statistics Canada, Learning a Living: First Results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (Ottawa and Paris: Statistics Canada and OECD, 2005), www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-603-x/2005001/pdf/4200878-eng.pdf; and Lois Romano, “Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline,” Washington Post, December 25, 2005, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400701.html.
2. For more on adoption of online news, see Chee Youn Kang, “Communication Technologies: Diffusion of Online News Use and Credibility Among Young Web Users in the Information Age,” master’s thesis, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2009.
3. Corey Binns, “Slow Down: Speed Reading Is Bunk, Studies Say,” March 20, 2007, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17705002/ns/health-livescience/t/slow-down-speed-reading-bunk-studies-say.
4. Jukka Hyönä, Robert F. Lorch, Jr., and Johanna K. Kaakinen, “Individual Differences in Reading to Summarize Expository Text: Evidence from Eye Fixation Patterns,” Journal of Educational Psychology 94, no. 1 (March 2002): 44–55, doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.94.1.44.
5. Three of their subjects fit into a third category, nonselective rereaders (i.e., those who reread portions of text, but not in a way that reflected the structure of the text).
6. Jukka Hyönä and Robert F. Lorch, “Effects of Topic Headings on Text Processing: Evidence from Adult Readers’ Eye Fixation Patterns,” Learning and Instruction 14, no. 2 (April 2004): 131–152, doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2004.01.001.
7. I’ve edited this article significantly for length and clarity. So if you’re an expert on corporate governance and think that this article misses some key points, I kindly direct you to the original version here: Robert Pozen, “The Case for Professional Boards,” Harvard Business Review 88, no. 12 (December 2010): 50–58, http://hbr.org/2010/12/the-big-idea-the-case-for-professional-boards/ar/1.
8. Suzanne E. Wade, Woodrow Trathen, and Gregory Schraw, “An Analysis of Spontaneous Study Strategies,” Reading Research Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1990): 147–166, doi: 10.2307/747599.
9. The study had a very small sample size (sixty-seven total and only six “Good Strategy Users”); the improvement in test scores was not statistically significant.
10. Barbara J. Phillips and Fred Phillips, “Sink or Skim: Textbook Reading Behaviors of Introductory Accounting Students,” Issues in Accounting Education 22, no. 1 (February 2007): 21–44, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/iace.2007.22.1.21.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. See, e.g., Ana Taboada et al., “Effects of Motivational and Cognitive Variables on Reading Comprehension,” Reading and Writing 22, no. 1 (2008): 85–106, doi: 10.1007/s11145-008-9133-y.
13. See, e.g., CarolAnne M. Kardash and Roberta J. Scholes, “Effects of Preexisting Beliefs, Epistemological Beliefs, and Need for Cognition on Interpretation of Controversial Issues,” Journal of Educational Psychology 88, no. 2 (June 1996): 260–271, doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.88.2.260.
14. Teachers often use summarization as a technique to teach primary school children how to read. In one summarization strategy, the teacher reads a story one sentence at a time. After hearing each sentence, students must compose a summary—of no more than fifteen words—for the entire story up to that point. As students summarize longer and longer portions of text, they are forced to prioritize what is really important. In an experiment, researchers found that this strategy significantly increased comprehension. See Thomas W. Bean and Fern L. Steenwyk, “The Effect of Three Forms of Summarization Instruction on Sixth Graders’ Summary Writing and Comprehension,” Journal of Literacy Research 16, no. 4 (December 1984): 297–306, doi: 10.1080/10862968409547523.
1. National Commission on Writing, “Writing: A Ticket to Work … or a Ticket Out,” September 2004, www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf.
2. Ronald T. Kellogg, “Competition for Working Memory Among Writing Processes,” American Journal of Psychology 114, no. 2 (2001): 175–191, doi: 10.2307/1423513.
3. Ronald T. Kellogg, “Attentional Overload and Writing Performance: Effects of Rough Draft and Outline Strategies,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 14, no. 2 (April 1988): 355–365, doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.14.2.355.
4. In chapter 6, I mentioned that bringing people together to brainstorm may not be productive unless accompanied by debate. But here I’m talking about brainstorming by yourself, which is still quite valuable.
5. Paragraph 1 is a summary, whereas paragraph 2 is a conclusion.
6. Though these rules should guide your writing style, none of them is absolute; the situation sometimes calls for you to violate these principles, as I do occasionally in this book.
7. “Don’t Forget the Spell-Check,” http://officeteam.rhi.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=247&item=811.
8. Bob Boice, “Which Is More Productive, Writing in Binge Patterns of Creative Illness or in Moderation?,” Written Communication 14, no. 4 (October 1997): 435–459.
1. Seinfeld, season 4, episode 63, first broadcast May 20, 1993, NBC, directed by Tom Cherones and written by Larry David.
2. Geoffrey Brewer, “Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears,” March 19, 2001, www.gallup.com/poll/1891/snakes-top-list-americans-fears.aspx.
3. For fascinating reading on this subject, see Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic, “Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberate Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 102, no. 2 (2007): 143–153, doi: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.01.005.
4. “‘You’ve Got to Find What You Love,’ Jobs says,” Stanford Report, June 14, 2005, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html.
5. Scott Berkun, Confessions of a Public Speaker (Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 16.
6. Ralph R. Behnke and Chris R. Sawyer, “Patterns of Psychological State Anxiety in Public Speaking as a Function of Anxiety Sensitivity,” Communication Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2001): 84–94, doi: 10.1080/01463370109385616.
1. Of course, the support of your peers may also be crucial. Nevertheless, I decided not to include a chapter about “Managing Sideways” for two reasons. First, I believe the relationships between you and your boss and you and your subordinates are most critical to your productivity. Second, various parts of each chapter apply just as well to your equals as they do to your boss or your subordinates.
1. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, “Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance,” Harvard Business Review 85, no. 5 (2007): 72–83, 144.
2. Ibid. If you’re curious, managers tended to rank “recognition for good work” as most important.
3. Adam Bryant, “In a Big Company, Make Everyone an Entrepreneur,” New York Times, October 29, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/business/lynn-blodgett-of-acs-on-entrepreneurship-in-a-big-company.html?pagewanted=all.
4. Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005).
5. Toby D. Wall et al., “Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Work Design, and Performance: A Change Study,” Journal of Applied Psychology 75, no. 6 (December 1990): 691–697, doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.75.6.691.
6. The study also made conclusions about such job characteristics as task variety and effective feedback. See J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham, “Motivation Through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16, no. 2 (August 1976): 250–279, doi: 10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7.
7. Rosanne Badowski, Managing Up: How to Forge an Effective Relationship with Those Above You (New York: Currency, 2003), 46.
8. Such as Alison Doyle, “Interview Questions and Answers,” http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewquestionsanswers/a/interviewquest.htm.
9. For example, looking at data from forty-three automotive firms in the United States, researchers found that managers who had more trust in their lieutenants were much more likely to delegate tasks to them. See Gretchen M. Spreitzer and Aneil K. Mishra, “Giving Up Control Without Losing Control: Trust and Its Substitutes’ Effects on Managers’ Involving Employees in Decision Making,” Organization Management 24, no. 2 (June 1999): 155–187, doi: 10.1177/1059601199242003.
10. “Maritz Research Hospitality Group 2011 Employee Engagement Poll,” June 2011, http://maritzresearch.com/~/media/Files/MaritzDotCom/White%20Papers/ExcecutiveSummary_Research.ashx.
11. If you want to learn more, start here: Steven A. Melnyk, Douglas M. Stewart, and Morgan Swink, “Metrics and Performance Measurement in Operations Management: Dealing with the Metrics Maze,” Journal of Operations Management 22, no. 3 (June 2004): 209–218, doi: 10.1016/j.jom.2004.01.004. Also see Steve Kerr, “The Best-Laid Incentive Plans,” Harvard Business Review 81, no. 1 (January 2003): 27–33.
12. Sue Shellenbarger, “Better Ideas Through Failure,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204010604576594671572584158.html.
13. Ibid.
14. Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath, “Creating Sustainable Performance,” Harvard Business Review 90, no. 1–2 (January–February 2012): 92–99.
15. Roy F. Baumeister et al., “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” Review of General Psychology 5, no. 4 (December 2001): 323–370, doi: 10.1037//1089-2680.5.4.323.
16. Andrew G. Miner, Theresa M. Glomb, and Charles Hulin, “Experience Sampling Mood and Its Correlates at Work,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 78 (June 2005): 171–193, doi: 10.1348/096317905X40105.
1. For more on this topic, see Managing Up: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2008); and Michael and Deborah Singer Dobson, Managing Up!: 59 Ways to Build a Career-Advancing Relationship with Your Boss (New York: Amacom, 2000).
2. Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954).
3. This is inspired by Yael S. Zofi, TOPS: Managing Up. How to Identify Your Manager’s Style and Build a Stronger Relationship (Brooklyn, N.Y.: AIM Strategies, 2008).
4. “Thoughts on Disagreement,” http://thoughts.forbes.com/thoughts/quotes/disagreement.
5. Kenny Rogers, “The Gambler,” United Records, 1978, LP.
6. Dan Bobinski, “Using Humor to Deal with Workplace Stress,” Management-Issues, September 16, 2003, www.management-issues.com/2006/5/25/opinion/using-humor-to-deal-with-workplace-stress.asp.
1. “Occupational Employment and Wages—May 2010,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 17, 2011, www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf, table 1.
2. http://hrweb.mit.edu/system/files/Skills+Exercise.pdf. This list was compiled by MIT’s Human Resources department.
3. Richard Kim, “The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street,” Nation, November 2, 2011, www.thenation.com/article/164348/audacity-occupy-wall-street?page=full.
4. This is actually quite difficult to measure. You can’t simply look at people who have twelve years of schooling and people who have thirteen years and look at the difference between their wages. People who choose to get an extra year of education might be systematically different, so simply comparing the wages of the two groups of people would confound multiple effects. For a review of this and other related issues, see George Psacharapoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Education Economics 12, no. 2 (2004): 111–134, doi: 10.1080/0964529042000239140. The more mathematically inclined can refer to David Card, “Estimating the Return to Schooling: Progress on Some Persistent Econometric Problems,” Econometrica 69, no. 5 (2001): 1127–1160.
5. This is even more difficult to measure than the wage-schooling relationship. Much of the research on this question was developed by the “father of labor economics,” Jacob Mincer. In 1962, he made a rough estimate that on-the-job training (OJT) was roughly as valuable as formal schooling. In 1974, he revised that estimate downward, suggesting that OJT is worth about three to five extra years of school. For further reading, see Jacob Mincer, “On-the-Job Training: Costs, Returns, and Some Implications,” Journal of Political Economy 70, no. 5 (1962): 50–79; Jacob A. Mincer, Schooling, Experience, and Earnings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Barry R. Chiswick, “Jacob Mincer, Experience and the Distribution of Earnings,” paper presented at the Conference in Honor of Jacob Mincer’s 80th Birthday, New York, 2002.
6. Loren Gary, “Right Kind of Failure,” Harvard Business Publishing Newsletters, January 1, 2002.
7. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2009).
8. All professionals should make an annual checkup of their Career Aims, regardless of their particular situation—but professionals in the middle of their careers are the most likely to forget this step.
9. Sixty-eight percent of those who had yet to retire. AARP, “Staying Ahead of the Curve 2003: The AARP Working in Retirement Study,” 2003, http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/econ/multiwork_2003_1.pdf.
10. At age sixty-five, an individual can expect to live an additional nineteen years. In 1950, a similar individual would have expected to live an additional fourteen years. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Health, United States, 2010: With Special Feature on Death and Dying” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010), www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus10.pdf, p. 132, table 22.
11. AARP, “Attitudes of Individuals 50 and Older Toward Phased Retirement,” March 2005, http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/post-import/phased_ret.pdf.
1. Testimony to Congress: “Home Recording of Copyrighted Works,” 1982, http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm. Josh Barro, “Thirty Years Before SOPA, MPAA Feared the VCR,” Forbes, January 18, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/01/18/thirty-years-before-sopa-mpaa-feared-the-vcr/.
2. This rough idea forms the basis of Prospect Theory, a recent development in the field of behavioral economics. For a good introduction to this subject, read chapters 25 through 28 of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
3. For a more rigorous explanation of this theory, see Rose McDermott, James H. Fowler, and Oleg Smirnov, “On the Evolutionary Origin of Prospect Theory Preferences,” Journal of Politics 70, no. 2 (2008): 335–350, doi: 10.1017/S0022381608080341.
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth Among the Youngest Baby Boomers: Results from a Longitudinal Survey,” September 10, 2010, www.bls.gov/news.release/nlsoy.nr0.htm.
5. Ken Favaro, Per-Ola Karlsson, and Gary L. Neilson, “CEO Succession 2000–2009: A Decade of Convergence and Compression,” Strategy & Business 59 (Summer 2010): 1–14.
6. Both of the trends that I’m about to discuss—technological and demographic change—are immensely complicated subjects. Here, I’m painting a picture with only the broadest brush.
7. Martin Hilbert and Priscila López, “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information,” Science 332, no. 6025 (2011): 60–65, doi: 10.1126/science.1200970.
8. See: “Growing a Nation: The Story of American Agriculture.” http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/index.htm; America’s Farmers Campaign, “Did You Know? Facts About American Farmers,” http://www.americasfarmers.com/about/facts/did-you-know.aspx; World Bank, “Employment in agriculture (% of total employment),” 2011, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS.
9. Statistics Bureau, “Statistical Handbook of Japan,” 2011, www.stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook/index.htm.
10. Howard French, “China Scrambles for Stability as Its Workers Age,” New York Times, March 22, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/world/asia/22china.html?pagewanted=all.
11. Of course, countries are defined by more than their demographics: Russia is also facing challenges because of its concentration of wealth, while Brazil’s future is also buoyed by progrowth economic policies.
12. According to Lipper, a U.S.-based growth fund invests (on average) in companies that are at least one-fifth of a standard deviation more “expensive” (relative to earnings, cash flow, and book value) than similarly sized companies. A U.S.-based “value” fund invests in companies that are at least one-fifth of a standard deviation “cheaper” relative to the same metrics. See “Worldwide Holdings-Based Fund Classification Methodology,” April 30, 2010, www.lipperweb.com/docs/Research/Methodology/Worldwide_HBC_Methodology_1.12.pdf.
13. “Failure Quotes: Failure Leads to Success,” www.motivatingquotes.com/failure.htm.
14. Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).
15. This is admittedly a simplification. A normal distribution is characterized by a particular family of probability distribution functions, which results in a bell curve shape.
16. “In Plato’s Cave,” Economist, January 22, 2009, www.economist.com/node/12957753.
17. “Why Newton Was Wrong,” Economist, January 6, 2011, www.economist.com/node/17848665.
18. See Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher, “The Nature of Human Altruism,” Nature 425 (2003): 785–791, doi: 10.1038/nature02043.
19. Lisa A. Cameron, “Raising the Stakes in the Ultimatum Game: Experimental Evidence from Indonesia,” Economic Inquiry 37, no. 1 (January 1999): 47–59, doi: 10.1111/j.1465-7295.1999.tb01415.x.
20. Anne Fisher, “America’s Most Admired Companies,” Fortune, February 21, 2006, http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/17/news/companies/mostadmired_fortune_intro/index.htm.
21. John J. Skowronski and Donal E. Carlston, “Caught in the Act: When Impressions Based on Highly Diagnostic Behaviours Are Resistant to Contradiction,” European Journal of Social Psychology 22, no. 5 (September–October 1992): 435–452, doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420220503.
22. Luís Cabral and Ali Hortaçsu, “The Dynamics of Seller Reputation: Evidence from eBay,” The Journal of Industrial Economics 58, no. 1 (March 2010): 54–78, doi: 10.1111/j.1467–6451.2010.00405.x. The 13 percentage point result comes from the ThinkPad portion of the experiment.
23. “FedEx Guy Throwing My Computer Monitor,” December 19, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKUDTPbDhnA.
1. See U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2012, table 616, “Employed Civilians by Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2010,” www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0616.pdf.
2. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average employed worker spends four hours per week working at home; for managers, that number jumps to seven hours per week. See U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Work-at-Home Patterns by Occupation,” March 2009, www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils72.pdf.
3. More magazine survey of five hundred college-educated professional women over age thirty-four, as cited by Sue Shellenbarger, “Single and Off the Fast Track,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304791704577420130278948866.html.
4. Kenneth Matos and Ellen Galinsky, “2012 National Study of Employers,” April 2012, http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/NSE_2012.pdf.
5. For instance, Cisco Systems has instituted an extensive telecommuting program, allowing its employees to work from home and keep flexible hours by use of broadband technology. According to one estimate, this program saved the company $195 million in 2003 as a result of higher worker productivity. See Council of Economic Advisers, “Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility,” March 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/100331-cea-economics-workplace-flexibility.pdf, page 22.
6. Ellen Galinsky, James T. Bond, and Kelly Sakai, “2008 National Study of Employers,” May 2008, www.familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/2008nse.pdf.
7. Joan Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Work and Family Conflict and What to Do About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8. Hudson Worldwide, “In the Game of Hiring, Flexible Employers Win,” February 12, 2008, http://us.hudson.com/in-the-game-of-hiring-flexible-employers-win.
9. Ken Giglio, “Workplace Flexibility Case Study: The Detroit Regional Chamber’s Flexible Work Schedules,” https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/sites/workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/files/imported/pdfs/detroit_regional_chamber.pdf.
10. See, e.g., Charles L. Baum, “The Effects of Maternity Leave Legislation on Mothers’ Labor Supply After Childbirth,” Southern Economic Journal 69, no. 4 (April 2003): 772–799.
11. Dan R. Dalton and Debra J. Mesch, “The Impact of Flexible Scheduling on Employee Attendance and Turnover,” Administrative Science Quarterly 35, no. 2 (June 1990): 370–387, doi: 10.2307/2393395.
12. For a fascinating study of those in this line of work, see Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Work-week,” Harvard Business Review 84, no. 12 (December 2006): 49–59.
13. Henry M. Paulson, Jr., On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2010), 31.
14. Ibid.
15. Ginia Bellafante, “Two Fathers, with One Happy to Stay at Home,” New York Times, January 12, 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/us/two-fathers-with-one-happy-to-stay-at-home.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
16. Some U.S. organizations do provide day care facilities for all employees, though they tend to be concentrated in large public and private employers. On this subject, the United States lags far behind many countries in northern Europe. Denmark puts the most money into child care, followed by other Nordic countries. In Finland, for example, every child under three is guaranteed a place in a local day care facility, free to low-income parents and at a reasonable cost to other families. The facilities, which are open from 7 or 8 a.m. to 5 or 6 p.m., serve breakfast and lunch. See “Baby Blues: A Juggler’s Guide to Having It All,” Economist, November 26, 2011, www.economist.com/node/21539925.
17. Here’s one study that describes the harms of cell phones and emails after hours: Wendy R. Boswell and Julie B. Olson-Buchanan, “The Use of Communication Technologies After Hours: The Role of Work Attitudes and Work-Life Conflict,” Journal of Management 33, no. 4 (August 2007): 592–610, doi: 10.1177/0149206307302552.
18. Glen E. Kreiner, Elaine C. Hollensbe, and Mathew L. Sheep, “Balancing Borders and Bridges: Negotiating the Work-Home Interface via Boundary Work Tactics,” Academy of Management Journal 52, no. 4 (2009): 704–730.
19. Thomas J. DeLong and Camille Collett DeLong, “Managers as Fathers: Hope on the Homefront,” Human Resource Management 31, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 171–181, doi: 10.1002/hrm.3930310304.
20. Blake E. Ashforth, Glen E. Kreiner, and Mel Fugate, “All in a Day’s Work: Boundaries and Micro Role Transitions,” Academy of Management Review 25, no. 3 (July 2000): 472–491.
21. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Work-at-Home Patterns by Occupation.”
22. Kiran Mirchandani, “Protecting the Boundary: Teleworker Insights on the Expansive Concept of ‘Work,’ ” Gender & Society 12, no. 2 (April 1998): 168–187, doi: 10.1177/089124398012002004.
1. With one key exception: executive sessions. See Fred Wilson, “The Executive Session,” April 30, 2010, http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-04-30/strategy/29995759_1_executive-session-board-meeting-ceos.
2. See Marcia Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, and Paul Rogers, Decide & Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization (Boston: Bain & Company, 2010); J. Richard Hackman and Neil Vidmar, “Effects of Size and Task Type on Group Performance and Member Reactions,” Sociometry 33, no. 1 (March 1970): 37–54, doi: 10.2307/2786271.
3. For a review, see Clark W. Furlow, “Good Faith, Fiduciary Duties, and the Business Judgment Rule in Delaware,” Utah Law Review 3 (2009): 1061–1095, http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/viewFile/249/221.