Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I had made a passing reference somewhere to “The Three Things Morgan Hasn’t Got the Balls to Blog” and someone was wondering what those three things were. Well…this article does borrow some things from Thing #3.
The researchers placed nearly 700 people into groups of between two and five, then gave them problems to solve, such as visual puzzles, games, negotiations, and logical analysis. Here’s what they found:
Individual smarts doesn’t affect performance. The average intelligence of team members wasn’t related to team performance. So if you’ve got a team that’s struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn’t going to help.
EQ–emotional intelligence– is more important than IQ. Good communication and good coordination make teams function well. To get that, you need people who are good at reading and responding to other peoples’ emotions. Teams that included even one person with superior skills in this regard had better performance.
A ’strong’ personality hurts performance. Groups where one person dominated the conversation or the decision-making, or where people didn’t do as well taking turns, had worse performance. This correlates well with other research that shows ’stronger’ leaders are often less effective than those who perceive themselves to be less powerful.
:
The researchers found one fairly simple answer: Add women. [that last emphasis mine]
Yes, that has been my experience. There really aren’t too many things on Creation less productive than a group of men.
But of course, that isn’t the least little bit politically-incorrect for me to be pointing it out. Why then would I not have the balls to blog it? Because this is part of a graph. Picture the X axis as being gender saturation; on the left, 0.0, the group is all females and on the right, 1.0, it’s all males. The Y axis is productivity and it enters a steep nosedive on the right side, approaching 1.0. In fact, on the square to its immediate left, 0.95, where you have a large group of one men with a single reasonably-intelligent reasonably-assertive woman at its nexus, productivity is at its zenith. Pull the female out, round up to 1.0, and with the men no longer having to prove anything or maintain some modicum of civility, it’s crash-and-burn time.
Why would I be afraid to blog that? Because of the stuff that goes on to the left of the 0.95; and that’s all I’m sayin’ about that.
People just aren’t very productive when they’re in their comfort zones. They’re not very smart in that state, either. That goes for both sexes.
The article starts to get new-age touchy-feelie toward the end, and dissolves into a puddle of Age of Aquarius silliness:
…Heidi Grant Halvorson suggests a number of ways any team can become more socially aware, and therefore, higher performing:
Create opportunities for team members to express their feelings, and for others to respond to them. Encourage face-time whenever possible. Cultivating a work environment where team members experiences are acknowledged and understood will create teams that are smarter, happier, and far more successful.
I don’t know how the ‘express your feelings’ bit would have gone over at some of the places I’ve worked–although if “creating opportunities to express feelings’ means just putting an end to some of the macho teasing I’ve seen, I’m all for it. But as the researchers found, you don’t have to break out the hankies to get reap the benefits of social sensitivity. Just try taking turns.
I recall one place I worked in particular became enamored of the “strong personality.” I didn’t fare too well under this management style; I must have one of the weaker ones. But I got the distinct impression everyone else in the room was as frustrated as I was with missing out on an hour or two out of the day, toward no higher purpose than to round out an audience of “Oh let us all admire what a strong personality [Mr. X] has.”
I really despise watching people show off like that — dictating what product should be bought, what feature is important, what button should be pushed what and lever should be pulled. Drives me right up a tree. Fills me with an acute sense of dread. I mean — here, I’ll just abandon all the suspense & come out & say what everyone with a brain is thinking already — if they really knew that much about it, wouldn’t they be in a back room somewhere, completely out of sight, earshot or mind of anyone, busying themselves with pushing the damn button or pulling the damn lever?
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“Individual smarts doesn’t affect performance. The average intelligence of team members wasn’t related to team performance. So if you’ve got a team that’s struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn’t going to help.” – That explains the constant failure of Big Smart Harvard Government petty damn well.
- DirtCrashr | 04/12/2011 @ 17:24It’s also been my unvarying experience that groups of women devolve into “everybody gets a chance to talk” to the extent that nothing ever gets decided in the interests of “consensus.”
Another group that operates that way is Red China, where everybody feels they’ve contributed and then the Totalitarians go ahead and make the rules for everybody anyway. Avoiding results because Little Jenny has her feelings hurt because other people are smarter than her is a good definition of a death wish.
- rob | 04/12/2011 @ 23:19I can’t emphasize enough that it really depends on what it is that needs to be accomplished. You damned sure can’t run a military operation on the ideas presented in that article.
I think it all comes down to incentive. Whether the incentive is prosperity or mere survival, it’s those who understand and appreciate the stakes who make things happen. Then some in the group see that the best that they can contribute is to play a supporting role. Finally some just get carried along because of the benevolence of the rest of the group.
My bottom line is that there is no set formula for any of this.
- Moshe Ben-David | 04/13/2011 @ 04:42It’s also been my unvarying experience that groups of women devolve into “everybody gets a chance to talk” to the extent that nothing ever gets decided in the interests of “consensus.”
Yup. A critical-mass of all-women is barely more functional than a critical-mass of all-men. But, to be fair about it, all-women turns into a dysfunctional hen-fest at a nose-count of about five; all-men turns into a dysfunctional “Home Improvement” episode (albeit not quite as presentable for prime-time family teevee) with a nose-count of about three. And once both teams have hit this critical mass, the gals still get more done.
You damned sure can’t run a military operation on the ideas presented in that article.
Yeah, funny you should point that out; I was just thinking, after the post went up, about the video with four guys disassembling and re-assembling a jeep in under three minutes. There’s an example that just doesn’t fit the mold. What’s the secret? Discipline and training, for one thing. But it should also be pointed out that this exercise falls out of scope — all the figuring-out has been done, all the procedures reduced to a clean, unalterable script.
And that’s where I criticize these flippant “experts” who go ’round with these poorly thought out recommendations for how to conduct a “brain storming session.” These methodologies have to be palatable to the “everyone gets included” types or they won’t sell. But everyone can’t be included, unless you’re past the point of filtering out the ones who lack an interest and lack any stake. If 80% or 90% of the people in the room are opposed to deciding anything or doing anything remarkable, you need to work through that as a first step.
- mkfreeberg | 04/13/2011 @ 06:57