Dates covered: February 11-17, 2019 (week 7 of 52)
Business
Yes, Sustainability Can Be a Strategy (via Harvard Business Review)
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings indicate that some of the techniques that typically pertain to sustainability (e.g., water conservation, environmental impact) are things that most companies are doing because it’s either standard practice or helps them make money. The study showed that there are examples of companies that “do well by doing good.”
How to Train Someone to Translate Business Problems into Analytics Questions (via Harvard Business Review)
“Analytics translators perform some of the most essential functions for integrating analytics capabilities in a company. They define business problems that analytics can help solve, guide technical teams in the creation of analytics-driven solutions to these problems, and embed solutions into business operations.” Instead of parking people in front of training and expecting them to be successful, pair them with people already doing some of this work (i.e., coaching). The coursework helps to let future translators know what’s in their toolbox, so don’t skip that step.
Why Tech Companies Hire So Many Economists (via Harvard Business Review)
Economists have investigated empirical relationships, which help indicate which variables are correlated. Markets and incentives are also in the realm of economics. The article goes on to list five questions that economists can help answer.
Communication
What to Do When You Realize You’ve Made a Mistake (via Harvard Business Review)
“When that happens, we are likely to act out in ways that undermine our claimed identities even more, such as arguing, blaming others, withdrawing, deflecting accountability, or digging in our heels.”
- Take responsibility (active voice, not “mistakes were made”)
- Address what you need to do right now
- Share what you’ll do differently next time
13 Ways We Justify, Rationalize, or Ignore Negative Feedback (via Harvard Business Review)
- Play Victim: “Yes, that’s true, but it’s not my fault.”
- Take Pride: “Yes, that’s true, but it’s a good thing.”
- Minimize: “It’s really not such a big deal.”
- Deny: “I don’t do that!”
- Avoid: “I don’t need this job!”
- Blame: “The problem is the people around me. I hire badly.”
- Counter: “There are lots of examples of me acting differently.”
- Attack: “I may have done this (awful thing), but you did this (other awful thing).”
- Negate: “You don’t really know anything about X.”
- Deflect: “That’s not the real issue.”
- Invalidate: “I’ve asked others and nobody agrees with the feedback.”
- Joke: “I never knew I was such a jerk.”
- Exaggerate: “This is terrible, I’m really awful.”
Culture
Research: When Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive (via Harvard Business Review)
It’s a self-fulfilling cycle: if a culture or country values diversity, then diversity helps company performance. There was an interesting example of “necessary but not sufficient” — Japan has legal structures to protect diversity, but is culturally male-dominant, so diversity in companies does not make them more productive. Europe however has cultural acceptance and legal structures, so diversity does help there. Diversity leads to success, not the other way around.
Our Digital Lives Don’t Need to Make Us Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unwise (via Harvard Business Review)
Digital media occupies a significant portion of our lives, and can have impacts on our physical and mental health according to some studies. What steps should we (or industry) take to minimize these impacts? Some analogous industries that come to mind are tobacco, food, and movies/television.
Leadership
Why Highly Efficient Leaders Fail (via Harvard Business Review)
“…the number one differentiator of effective leaders is strong people skills, and that six out of ten of their biggest strengths related to people skills such as listening, developing others, and empowering their team members.”
- Get feedback — e.g., on a scale of 1 to 100 how would you rate my focus on results vs. people?
- Identify high-value ways to focus on people — get to know people beyond work
- Engage in self-observation and reflection — “What am I trying to avoid?” or “What do I fear by slowing down?”
- Debunk your limiting beliefs — talk to others who focus on people to affirm that it helps
- Practice self-management — be able to pause and choose a different approach
Process
When Your Moonshots Don’t Take Off (via Harvard Business Review)
- Look to science fiction (e.g., cell phone inspired by Star Trek communicators)
- Consider analogies (e.g., Circuit City being a supermarket for electronics)
- Use first principles logic (e.g., SpaceX’s rockets from commercial- instead of space-grade materials)
- Explore adjacencies using exaptation (i.e., taking something with one purpose and seeing if it works for another)
How to Orchestrate Change from the Bottom Up (via Harvard Business Review)
This article talks about how semi-professionals (e.g., nurses, staff) in hospital settings were able to nudge doctors into putting different practices in place. The author posits that enlisting such people (e.g., administrative assistants) in other organizations could have a similar effect.
To Get Companies to Take Action on Social Issues, Emphasize Morals, Not the Business Case (via Harvard Business Review)
“…when employees used moral language and framed the social issue as part of the organization’s values and mission, they were far more successful. By tailoring the moral message to also fit with something perceived as legitimate — what the company stood for — it provided cover, license, and an impetus for the manager to put energy into working on the social problem.
Technology
Continuous Monitoring: The Big Picture (via Understanding DevOps path)
Part of DevOps is understanding what the state of the system is and when that state changes in a way that requires some action. This course explains active vs. passive monitoring, application performance, and infrastructure monitoring as well. Although it doesn’t cover specific tools, the course gives you a list of traits to consider when evaluating those tools.