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In praise of “laziness/busyness”: Businesspeople would be better off if they did less and thought more

In praise of laziness: Businesspeople would be better off if they did less and thought more

Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition

THERE is a never-ending supply of business gurus telling us how we can, and must, do more. Sheryl Sandberg urges women to “Lean In” if they want to get ahead. John Bernard offers breathless advice on conducting “Business at the Speed of Now”. Michael Port tells salesmen how to “Book Yourself Solid”. And in case you thought you might be able to grab a few moments to yourself, Keith Ferrazzi warns that you must “Never Eat Alone”. Yet the biggest problem in the business world is not too little but too much—too many distractions and interruptions, too many things done for the sake of form, and altogether too much busy-ness. The Dutch seem to believe that an excess of meetings is the biggest devourer of time: they talk of vergaderziekte, “meeting sickness”. However, a study last year by the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that it is e-mails: it found that highly skilled office workers spend more than a quarter of each working day writing and responding to them.

Which of these banes of modern business life is worse remains open to debate. But what is clear is that office workers are on a treadmill of pointless activity. Managers allow meetings to drag on for hours. Workers generate e-mails because it requires little effort and no thought. An entire management industry exists to spin the treadmill ever faster. All this “leaning in” is producing an epidemic of overwork, particularly in the United States. Americans now toil for eight-and-a-half hours a week more than they did in 1979. A survey last year by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that almost a third of working adults get six hours or less of sleep a night. Another survey last year by Good Technology, a provider of secure mobile systems for businesses, found that more than 80% of respondents continue to work after leaving the office, 69% cannot go to bed without checking their inbox and 38% routinely check their work e-mails at the dinner table.

This activity is making it harder to focus on real work as opposed to make-work. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, who has been conducting a huge study of work and creativity, reports that workers are generally more creative on low-pressure days than on high-pressure days when they are confronted with a flurry of unpredictable demands. In 2012 Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, and two colleagues deprived 13 people in the IT business of e-mail for five days and studied them intensively. They found that people without it concentrated on tasks for longer and experienced less stress.

It is high time that we tried a different strategy—not “leaning in” but “leaning back”. There is a distinguished history of leadership thinking in the lean-back tradition. Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, extolled the virtues of “masterful inactivity”. Herbert Asquith embraced a policy of “wait and see” when he had the job. Ronald Reagan also believed in not overdoing things: “It’s true hard work never killed anybody,” he said, “but I figure, why take the chance?”. This tradition has been buried in a morass of meetings and messages. We need to revive it before we schedule ourselves to death. Read more of this post

Weak entrepreneurship education could provoke backlash; much of entrepreneurship education is subpar, relying on what he describes as inspirational anecdotes rather than demanding courses that teach discrete behaviors and processes

Weak entrepreneurship education could provoke backlash

1:31pm EDT

By Sarah McBride

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When Bill Aulet tries to hire faculty to bolster entrepreneurship courses at MIT, where he is a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, he often runs up against a familiar challenge. “We bring in people and interview them all the time,” he said at a breakfast in San Francisco last week to mark the publication of his new book, “Disciplined Entrepreneurship.” “They’re not MIT rigor. And we get to see the best of the best.” The paucity of teaching talent underscores what he sees as the biggest drawback in entrepreneurship education: much of it is subpar, relying on what he describes as inspirational anecdotes rather than demanding courses that teach discrete behaviors and processes. The situation could cause a backlash against entrepreneurship, he said. Such a backlash, Aulet said, could lead to undesirable outcomes including lack of policy geared toward entrepreneurship – such as tax breaks, or visas for foreign entrepreneurs – or fewer people starting companies. “Entrepreneurs won’t receive the support they need,” he said in an interview with Reuters. Read more of this post

Lessons From Monks About Designing The Technologies Of The Future

Lessons From Monks About Designing The Technologies Of The Future

KLINT FINLEY

posted yesterday

“The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body,” William S. Burroughs once said in a Nike commercial, of all places. But things haven’t worked out that way, at least not for most of us. Our technologies are designed to maximize shareholder profit, and if that means distracting, confusing or aggregating the end-user, then so be it. But another path is possible, argues Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in his new book The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul. Read more of this post

Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition

The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. By Amanda Ripley. Simon and Schuster; 320 pages; $28. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

BAMA Companies has been making pies and biscuits in Oklahoma since the 1920s. But the company is struggling to find Okies with the skills to fill even its most basic factory jobs. Such posts require workers to think critically, yet graduates of local schools are often unable to read or do simple maths. This is why the company recently decided to open a new factory in Poland—its first in Europe. “We hear that educated people are plentiful,” explains Paula Marshall, Bama’s boss. Read more of this post

When cities start to decline, economic diversity is the thing that can save them

When cities start to decline, economic diversity is the thing that can save them

Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition

DETROIT’S newest industry is “ruin porn”—photos that document the city’s rotting physical infrastructure. The Motor City is an extreme example of a decline that has beset industrial cities across America’s Midwest and northern Europe. Their rise and fall (and, in some cases, renaissance) illuminate the deeper forces that hold cities together and pull them apart.

It is not obvious, to economists anyway, that cities should exist at all. Crowds of people mean congestion and costly land and labour. But there are also well-known advantages to bunching up. When transport costs are sufficiently high a firm can spend more money shipping goods to clusters of consumers than it saves on cheap land and labour. Workers with specialised skills flock to such clusters to be near to the sorts of firms that hire them. Such workers make a city still more attractive to growing companies. The deep pool of jobs and workers improves matches between employer and employee, boosting productivity and pay. Read more of this post

Performance alone won’t win trust: study; Investors worldwide believe there is much that can be done to restore trust in investment profession

PUBLISHED AUGUST 17, 2013

Performance alone won’t win trust: study

Investors worldwide believe there is much that can be done to restore trust in investment profession

MALMINDERJIT SINGH MSINGH@SPH.COM.SG

IF you are an investment manager, you may do well in building trust with your client as he or she is likely to value ethical behaviour and transparency more than the performance of the investments. A CFA Institute/Edelman Investor Trust study shows that investors worldwide have little trust in the investment profession and believe there is much that can be done to restore trust. According to the study, just 53 per cent of investors in the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Canada and Australia trust investment firms to do what is right. Retail investors appear to be less trusting of the industry, as only 51 per cent of them indicated so, compared with 61 per cent of their institutional counterparts.

CFA Institute & Edelman Investor Trust Study: Investor trust fragile, aligned interests valued highly

Executive Summary

52% Of investors trust the financial services industry

73% Agree they have fair opportunity to profit by investing in capital markets

38% Cite “trusted to act in my best interest” as most important attribute in hiring an investment manager

The CFA Institute & Edelman Investor Trust Study examines trust by investors in investment managers, and explores what dimensions influence that level of trust. This study builds on the Edelman Trust Barometer which explores the levels of trust informed members of the public have in a variety of business, NGO, and government institutions globally.

The Investor Trust Study surveyed over 2,100 retail and institutional investors in the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, and Canada, and finds that while a slim majority of respondents trust investment managers, the level of trust is fragile. The study finds that beyond the usual financial issues of performance and fees, investors place value on alignment of interests in their consideration of which managers to hire.

Attention to detail has become a hallmark of Brito’s leadership of Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), a sprawling beer behemoth forged from six mega-mergers in 25 years

Carlos Brito: (Brew)master of the universe

By Daniel Roberts, writer-reporter  @FortuneMagazine August 16, 2013: 9:08 AM ET

Carlos Brito, in his favored attire of blue jeans and button-down shirt, takes a break at Brabant Belgian Brasserie in New York City.

Carlos Brito is walking the aisles of a vast São Paulo supermarket, continually stopping to pick up pieces of trash — a paper cup, a plastic fork — or to pull certain cartons of beer to the front of the shelves for better visibility. These are the kinds of menial tasks most executives wouldn’t touch. But Brito, CEO of the world’s biggest beer company, isn’t like most executives.

Attention to detail has become a hallmark of Brito’s leadership of Anheuser-Busch InBev(BUD), a sprawling beer behemoth forged from six mega-mergers in 25 years. Despite the size of Brito’s enterprise, he handpicks promising young employees to promote early in their careers and greets each new class of global management trainees. When he visits diners and lunch counters all over the world that serve AB InBev beers, he walks behind the bar to personally inspect the boxes of empties. Read more of this post

‘I lost £150,000 due to Nineties pension sales frenzy’; A former a soldier lost his generous army pension because he was persuaded to switch to a private scheme – but he won’t win compensation

‘I lost £150,000 due to Nineties pension sales frenzy’

A former a soldier lost his generous army pension because he was persuaded to switch to a private scheme – but he won’t win compensation. Dan Hyde reports on the modern-day fallout from the 1988-94 pension mis-selling scandal.

Sgt Phil Patrick, pictured with daughter Ayane, 5, has missed out on thousands of pounds Photo: Stuart Nicol

By Dan Hyde, Deputy Personal Finance Editor

6:11AM BST 17 Aug 2013

The harrowing legacy of the Eighties pensions revolution is resurfacing as a generation of savers nears retirement. An estimated 5 million people were sold pensions by commission-hungry salesmen between 1988 and 1994 in one of the biggest financial scandals ever to affect Britain. Typically, these workers were pulled out of generous company schemes – where their employer guaranteed a pension linked to their final salary – and enrolled instead in a substandard plan linked to stock market returns. Read more of this post

How Cath Kidston lured in high-powered women with a passion for polka dots as sales break £100m

How Cath Kidston lured in high-powered women with a passion for polka dots

Many of us spend our days staring at computer screens, but sipping coffee at our desks out of a flower-sprigged mug is bizarrely grounding, says entrepreneur Josephine Fairley, who explains the global phenomenon of Cath Kidston as sales break £100m.

Cath Kidston has admitted that she is far from being a domestic goddess in her own home.  Photo: REX FEATURES

By Josephine Fairley

12:59PM BST 14 Aug 2013

So: just in time for her brand’s 20th birthday, Cath Kidston’s sales have broken through the £100m mark – with earnings (before interest, taxes etc) topping £21 million. Wow. This is a feat for any brand. But how has a relatively shy, seriously self-effacing (not to mention deceptively scatty-seeming, when you meet her in the flesh) woman grown her brand from a single store in then-down-at-heel Notting Hill into a global brand? Because it isn’t just Middle England which loves Cath Kidston MBE: sales are booming in Asia, too. As well as a flagship store in London’s Piccadilly, a major store is scheduled to open in Shanghai before the end of the year. Read more of this post

If You Want to Be an Entrepreneur, Don’t Go to Harvard

August 15, 2013, 4:11 PM

Trending Topic: If You Want to Be an Entrepreneur, Don’t Go to Harvard

VIVEK WADHWA: My greatest disappointment after joining academia was to see my most promising students accept jobs at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. Engineering students with ambitions to save the world would instead become financial analysts—who used their skills to “engineer” our financial system. Or they would take grunt jobs in management consulting—another waste of valuable talent. Why would they sell their souls? Because they had no choice, the burden of debt they amassed while getting their degrees was just too great. They had six-figure student loans to repay and couldn’t take the risk of joining a startup or founding their own business. Read more of this post

Singapore’s $300,000-Salaried Politician Baey Yam Keng: I am surprised and flattered by the interest in my “selfies”

MP Baey Yam Keng the narcissist talks about his selfies

August 17th, 2013 |  Author: Contributions

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The Remarkable Story Of How Lobster Went From Being Used As Fertilizer and Unsightly “Cockroaches of the Sea” To A Beloved Delicacy

The Remarkable Story Of How Lobster Went From Being Used As Fertilizer To A Beloved Delicacy

MEGAN WILLETT AUG. 16, 2013, 2:00 PM 3,639 5

It’s time to eat all of the fresh lobster, seafood, and summer fare we can before Labor Day. But here’s something to think about while downing every lobster roll in sight before summer’s end — our beloved shellfish was once a throw-away food. Back when the first European settlers reached North America, they wrote that lobsters were so plentiful that piles up to two feet high would wash ashore in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Instead of this leading to epic clam bakes with buckets filled with butter, the colonists were embarrassed by these unsightly “cockroaches of the sea.” Read more of this post

Birds of a feather land together: How flocking birds avoid colliding when they touch down

Birds of a feather land together: How flocking birds avoid colliding when they touch down

Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition

LANDINGS are the most perilous parts of flying. Airline pilots have to practise hundreds before they can carry passengers. Even then, they have co-pilots, air-traffic controllers and all sorts of gadgetry to help them. And they do it one plane at a time, on clearly marked runways. Now imagine swarms of aircraft all trying to land together on a small stretch of water with no assistance and no gizmos. The result would surely be disastrous. Waterfowl, however, frequently land in groups on featureless bodies of water, yet they rarely collide. So how do they manage it? Read more of this post

Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant aims to increase crop yields and feed a hungry planet. He’s now deft at countering critics—and enriching shareholders

SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013

Planting the Seeds of Growth

By DYAN MACHAN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant aims to increase crop yields and feed a hungry planet. He’s now deft at countering critics—and enriching shareholders.

Is Monsanto the Great Satan? Opponents of genetically modified seeds have called the company evil incarnate, notwithstanding its notable contributions toward lifting farmers out of poverty and expanding the food supply of a growing world. Environmental crusaders, movie stars, and politicians have all gotten in on the vilification act, charging that Monsanto’s seeds and the plants they produce are unsafe and violate farmers’ and consumers’ rights. Read more of this post

M&A as competitive advantage; Treating M&A as a strategic capability can give companies an edge that their peers will struggle to replicate

M&A as competitive advantage

Treating M&A as a strategic capability can give companies an edge that their peers will struggle to replicate.

August 2013 | byCristina Ferrer, Robert Uhlaner, and Andy West

Most companies approach deal making as an art rather than as a corporate capability deployed to support a strategy, and they see individual deals as discrete projects rather than integral parts of that strategy. Few have found a way to build and continuously improve, across businesses, an M&A capability that consistently creates value—and does so better than competitors. As a result, many lament how hard M&A is and worry about the statistics highlighting the failure rate of deals rather than how to build a capability that helps them win in the marketplace. Read more of this post

Lying about its lion, Chinese zoo closed for going to the dogs

Lying about its lion, Chinese zoo closed for going to the dogs

8:21am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – A zoo in central China has been closed after visitors were outraged to discover its lion was really a bushy and barking Tibetan mastiff. The dog was not the only fake at People’s Park Zoo in the city of Luohe, which tried to pass off other common mammals and rodents as a leopard and snakes, Chinese media reported. Photographs showed the mastiff with its muzzle poking through the bars of its dingy enclosure. A grimy sign on the cage read “African Lion” in Chinese characters. The zoo apologized for the exhibits and was closed down for “rectification”, the Beijing News said, citing local officials. Animal rights activists have criticized Chinese zoos for their record of poor conditions and other abuses. Chinese zoo that substituted lions with dogs closes temporarily. The Chinese zoo which substituted its expensive and rare animals for cheaper “alternatives” has shut for one day, to allow the enclosure signs to be changed. Read more of this post