Are You Making the Same Movie?

In 101 Things I Learned in Film School, Neil Landau quotes Sidney Lumet's description of the director's job: to "make sure everyone is making the same movie."

Successful movies aren't the handiwork of artists, but of practical visionaries, Landau says.

"Production staff need to get to the set on time, work hard, and take disciplined breaks. 

"Staff can't work at cross purposes, and must always understand the bigger picture into which their work fits. Where interpretation is called for, it must be performed within the context of the larger vision."

How are things going at your studio? 

Are your marketing team members "making the same movie?" 

Or is each preoccupied with budget, power and career?

If the latter, the team's probably not being held accountable.

Your top executives think of you as artists, and don't expect box office results.

Wintry Discontent

I get terrorists.  

But why does someone who's not politically minded relentlessly bully schoolmates, shoot up a theater, drive a speeding car into a crowd, or hike the price of a life-saving drug 5,500 percent?

Pessimism. A First World problem, if ever there was one.

In The Conquest of Happiness, philosopher Bertrand Russell devotes a chapter to pessimism, a feeling he has little patience for.

Pessimism, he says, "is born of a too easy satisfaction of natural needs."

When too much falls into your lap, struggle, "an essential ingredient of happiness," ends; and, with it, desire.

"The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. 

"If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. 

"He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

Child Speed

Every week, my two-year-old granddaughter dashes past another developmental milestone.

She's unafraid to ask questions or state her observations. 

For their part, the googly-eyed adults around her make a willing audience. 

Of course, it does't hurt to be adorable.

Eighteen years ago, designer Bruce Mau wrote his 43-point Incomplete Manifesto for Growth to inspire the designers in his studio in Toronto.

Point 15 of the Incomplete Manifesto reads:

Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

Were it possible to learn for a lifetime at my granddaughter's present speed, we'd all be geniuses. 

Unfortunately, brain physiology holds us back.

In fact, most minds fossilize before their owners turn 30.

But destiny shouldn't deter you from asking stupid, innocent, childlike questions.

Who knows?

Once in a while, you might get an adult answer.

Disclosure: Bruce Mau is now my employer's Chief Design Officer.

Parents, Quit Mollycoddling

"Helicopter parents" have spawned a generation of incompetents, says Stanford’s former dean of freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims and author of How to Raise an Adult.

She recently told the Los Angeles Times that a helicopter parent is incapable of raising a future worker, "Somebody who pitches in, who rolls up their sleeves and says, 'How can I be useful here,' instead of, 'Why isn't everyone applauding my every move?'"

Before powered flight, texting and nanny cams, our forebears had a term for helicopter parenting: mollycoddling.

Coddling in the 18th century meant to treat someone as if he or she were an invalid. The word derived from caudle, a drink served to the sick. Molly derived from an 18th century pejorative for a gay man.

A man who was considered timid and ineffectual was thought to have been raised by overprotective parents, or mollycoddled.

Thank goodness, invalids no longer have to drink gruel; or gay men, prove they're courageous.

But I like old words.

So I urge overprotective parents: you're jeopardizing America's competitiveness and your child's future income! Quit mollycoddling.

What's the Most Revealing Interview Question Employers Could Ask?

What's the most revealing interview question employers could ask—the one that would guarantee they hire the best talent available every time? The killer question you should ask every job seeker.

With apologies to the management gurus, it's none of these:

• Why will you thrive in this position?
• What's your greatest weakness?
• Who's your role model?
• What did your parents do for a living?
• What things do you dislike doing?
• Why are manhole covers round?
• Why did you leave your last job?
• What's your spirit animal?
• What's the most significant thing you've done since breakfast?
• What would you like to ask me?

I learned the killer interview question not from an HR manual, but a former boss; and it worked like a charm.

Adman Bill Kircher, founder of Fixation Marketing, posed the killer question at the close of every candidate interview he conducted. 

With it, he built an exceptionally creative, productive and tight-knit team; one that attracted loyal and prestigious clients, enjoyed a reputation for high quality, and earned handsome profits.

His killer interview question: What book are you reading right now?

What makes the question killer?

It's simple. Candidates didn't have to ask Bill for clarification.

It's tricky. The qualifier "right now" essentially disqualified as honest answers To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, and other sophomore-year reading assignments.

It's decisive. Hesitation, blank stares, or answers like "I mostly watch TV" eliminated candidates from consideration.

It's nondiscriminatory. Any title sufficed as a correct answer. Bill didn't care what you read, as long as it was sandwiched between two boards. After all, John F. Kennedy loved From Russia with Love. Ronald Reagan raved at a news conference about The Hunt for Red October. And friends spotted James Joyce in a cafe once reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Reading books proved to Bill's thinking a job candidate was curious, diligent, self-caring and culturally engaged.

And his results proved he was spot on.

24 Things You Should Never Say to a Welsh Woman

Why do lists lure more readers than other narrative modes?

Human cognition craves lists, says web analytics guru Neil Patel, citing studies by neuropsychologists of the brain's structure.

Our hunger for specificity drives us to click headlines that promise a list. 

What's more, reader-survey and test results show:

1. Headlines promising a numbered list are 71% more popular than headlines merely promising a list.
2. People value the clarity of headlines that promise a list.
3. Women like lists more than men.
4. Longer lists deliver greater reader satisfaction than short ones.
5. Odd-numbered lists outperform even-numbered ones.
6. The optimal number of items in a list is 25.

These results make lists "a content marketer’s go-to technique," Patel says.

But lists have a dark side.

Lists advance human misery, according to Right Life Project, promoting clutter, instant gratification and thoughtlessness.

As Zig Ziglar once said, "The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations."

Mindblind

Why does every management consultant want executives to become "storytellers?" Why does every grammarian want businesspeople to "write like you're having a conversation?"

Mindblindness.

Also known as the "curse of knowledge," mindblindness grips you when you know so much about a subject, you can't see it through the eyes of anyone less informed.

When you're mindblind—when can't imagine life for those who don't know what you know—you can't communicate why or how others should follow your directives; and you can't write (or speak) with clarity or concision.

Mindblindness produces not only unrealistic expectations ("We always delight our customers!"), but blame ("You slackers, you disappointed our customers!").

Mindblindness is a primary reason leaders fail, and why so much business writing stinks.

It never occurs to the mindblind that others aren't up on the latest jargon and grasp the steps too obvious to mention. So they don't bother to explain the jargon, spell out their logic, or supply details.

Philosophers call extreme mindblindness "solipsism," the belief that nothing exists outside your mind.

Bertrand Russell said that, although it could be true, solipsism should be rejected because it's easier to believe the external world—including other people's minds—exists.

“As against solipsism it is to be said, in the first place, that it is psychologically impossible to believe, and is rejected in fact even by those who mean to accept it," Russell said. 

"I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician and a solipsist, her surprise surprised me.”

Save $26,041 per Employee with this Simple App

A 2008 study by SIS International Research showed that an employee squanders 17.5 hours a week deciphering faulty communications in the workplace. The researchers estimated the wasted hours to cost a small company $26,041 annually.

No surprise. 

Communication, like every business activity, is prey to Murphy's law. 

Any message that can go wrong will.

But there's a simple app available that will staunch the flow of red ink.

It's called clarity, and it's friendly and easy to use:

• Turn long sentences into two or three shorter ones.

• Chop big blocks of text into separate paragraphs.

• Use connectors—words like although, but and because—to join ideas together.

• Avoid pronouns—words like it, we, they and this. Use pronouns sparingly and you won't write a sentence like: Advise customers they are guaranteed to work 24/7 when we upgrade our servers.

• Be careful with directions—words like about, before, on and over—and you won't write a sentence like: Before lunch with the client we should hash out next year's price increases.

You can get the full download on clarity from "grammarphobes" Patricia O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman's You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online.

To Spur Innovation, Sponsor Playtime

Do deadlines breed innovative work?

Rarely, say most organizational behaviorists.

That's because creativity results from the playful association of ideas.

Deadlines dampen that play.

While they drive workers to work harder and longer—and even lead them to think they're innovating—deadlines, in fact, kill creativity.

To lessen deadlines' deadening effect, behaviorists suggest bosses:

• Set deadlines that allow for playtime—and build some into every week


• Shield workers under deadline from interruptions


• Help workers understand why particular deadlines are mission-critical

What Do Gen Xers Want from Tradeshows?

Part 1 of a 2-part series

New psychographic research from Amsterdam RAI says organizers need to show Gen Xers a special brand of love to attract them to tradeshows.

“Generation Xers are very pragmatic when it comes to making decisions, mainly because they suffer the most from the current economic crisis,” the RAI says.

“They are not loyal if they can get a better deal somewhere else. They often have a cynical world view and are very conscious of media and marketing. Many of them are project parents, which describes the over-involvement when it comes to their children.”

As a result, the RAI recommends organizers:

• Rationalize Gen Xers' costs to participate and offer guaranties.
• Be transparent and play to Gen Xers' cynicism.
• Cater to Gen Xers' helicopter-parent lifestyles.

End Sloppy Emails

When I first entered the workforce, no one would dare send a written communication (we called it a "memo") without prior review by the boss.

Business ran according to military rules (in fact, many of the bosses were former military officers). 

Those days are long over.

"A new status symbol in today's generally more egalitarian business environment has arisen: sloppy e-mails," says consultant Keith Ferazzi.

Writing for Harvard Business Review, Ferazzi recommends these four tips for ending sloppy emails:

Empathize with readers. Too many writers lack empathy for their readers. When writing an email, "use respect, positive affirmations, and gratitude to set the right tone and proper context." Your writing will display more empathy if you "visualize that individual in his office as you send him an e-mail."

Appreciate different styles. "We all tend to prefer a certain 'language' for communications at work," Ferazzi says. Some people prefer numbers; some, pictures; and others, stories. Appreciating others' styles improves your ability to communicate and reduces the likelihood of misinterpretation.

Spell things out. "We often communicate less information than we think we are, a syndrome psychologists call signal amplification bias," Ferazzi writes. Make descriptions and instructions clear and complete.

Respond promptly. Readers care not only about content, but about the promptness of your replies to their emails, Ferazzi says. "When your reply is tardy, the other party is left wondering whether you value that relationship or not."

Where DId We Get the Word "Salary?"

Part 4 of a 5-part series on word histories

In Ancient Rome, centuries before refrigeration, soldiers received a regular allowance to buy sal, the Latin word for salt.

They used the salt to preserve food.

The allowance was called a salarium.

English-speakers eventually changed the word to salary.

Echoing the word's origin, we still say, "He's worth his salt."

And if an Ancient  Roman soldier went beyond the call of duty he received a bonus, the Latin word for good.

Office Spaced

Office supplier Herman Miller introduced the Action Office 1 in 1964.

It featured wall-less work spaces of varying heights that allowed freedom of movement. 

The designers believed Action Office 1 was ideally suited to small professional offices, where managers and employees often interacted using the same furniture.

But the product was expensive and flopped big time.

Herman Miller quickly redesigned Action Office 1 and re-released it as Action Office 2.

The redesign was a hit. 

Today we call the product a "cubicle." 

In 1970, the designer of the Action Office 1 wrote that Action Office 2 was perfect for "planners looking for ways of cramming in a maximum number of bodies, for 'employees' (as against individuals), for 'personnel,' corporate zombies, the walking dead, the silent majority."

Starbucks' "Newsjacking" Attempt Falls Off the Cliff

Starbuck's attempt to "newsjack" deficit negotiations has fallen off its own cliff.

Last week, CEO Howard Shultz asked the employees at 125 Washington, DC-area stores to scribble the phrase "Come Together" on the paper cups they hand customers. 

But employees aren't cooperating.

I asked three of them why.

"We're too busy," one said.

"We can't remember to do it," said another.

"It's pretty stupid," said the third.

Lesson learned: There's many a slip between the cup and the lip. 

If you want to newsjack successfully, first get your employees on board.

The Secrets of Teamwork

Thomas Edison's great grandniece has penned Midnight Lunch, a 300-page book that reveals the inventor's four-faceted approach to teamwork.

• Edison built teams from diverse disciplines. The team that invented the lightbulb included chemists, mathmeticians and glassblowers.
  
  
• The inventorlearned from his mistakes. After state and local governments rejected his electronic vote recorder, Edison decided to focus exclusively on consumer products.
  
  
• Edison's vision kept the teams on track. When team members floundered or disagreed, the boss quickly intervened, deciding the course.
  
  
• Edison changed direction with the market. Other inventors of the day ignored the fact that consumers wanted products powered by electricity—and they failed.

Bread and Circuses

Will games become the new social divide?

TIME reports this week that 70 percent of big companies will embrace gamification in 2013.

While most will use gamification to attract customers, many companies—40 percent, according to new research from Gartner—will embrace it as an employee-retention tool.

Endorsing the latter, 20-something gamifier Katherine Heisler recently urged readers of Forbes to gamify the jobs of next-gen workers.

Citing a new workplace survey by MTV, Heisler argues that "Millenials overwhelmingly agree that their jobs should reflect their lifestyle."

The workplace, in short, should be "social and fun."

"Some people think of my generation as lazy, good-for-nothing slackers, feeling entitled to everything and entirely lacking a work ethic," Heisler writes. 

"But that’s wrong: Millennials have an incredible work ethic. We want to work, we want to succeed and want to reshape the world in our image. We are simply motivated in non-traditional ways."

When I was young and struggling alongside my fellow Boomers for a handhold on the slippery corporate ladder, money was a pretty good motivator.

But—excluding those at the very top of the ladder—money's in short supply today.

Will employers compensate for today's measly paychecks with "social and fun?"

Will circuses take the place of bread?

Burned Out?

Too busy to perform your job well?

Join the crowd.

New research by Towers Watson reveals that, thanks to workforce cutbacks during the past five years, "employees feel overwhelmed by seemingly impossible workloads and endless demands on their time."

That stress is driving four in every ten employees to "disengage" from their jobs.

Towers Watson suggests that employers need to stop trying to squeeze more out of people and start concentrating on their fundamental need for down-time.

What should employers do?

Towers Watson says they should allow flexible work-schedules, encourage telecommuting, and permit workers to curtail the length of meetings and the hours during which they'll answer emails.

Ironically, while many employers promote wellness programs that offer incentives to employees who exercise, diet or manage chronic illnesses, the same employers are harming their employees with overwork, Towers Watson says.