Thanks also for reminding us that pollution, even in China, is worth being concerned about.

That’s a very good point. Most people would likely choose a small project, to avoid the risk of no personal contribution.

I’m a little different though. In these decisions, I try to be as strict a utilitarian as I can be. I’ll maximize expected value for the world — not just for me.

Let me suggest that there is still a trade-off in your value system: the risk-adjusted value of the work you contribute personally vs. the risk-adjusted value that you contribute to a collective effort.

To take an extreme if oversimplified case, imagine that there are a hundred equally plausible ways to solve a first-class problem. In this idealized example, let’s assume that the optimal collective strategy is to have a hundred teams pursue the problem using independently selected approaches and use the best solution. Implicit in this assumption is that the value of the solution is well worth the investment of the hundred teams, and that we have no basis for more efficiently targeting the efforts. So the strategy is collectively optimal, and you personally can support this collectively optimal strategy by joining one of the teams.

But joining one of those teams means you’re facing a 99% chance that your personal contribution is nothing more than helping eliminate a dead end. And there may be other projects where you are more likely to personally create something valuable. Perhaps not as high an expected contribution, but with much lower variance (e.g., a problem like the above, but where the optimal strategy involves only a handful of independent teams).

While this discussion is abstract, I don’t think it’s that far off the mark. Individual risk/reward is different than collective risk/reward, since individuals don’t get to benefit from the central limit theorem (and yes, again oversimplifying–I agree with your earlier post that the preconditions for the CLT are rarely met).

Also, note that I’m not talking about money or prestige. You can pick any definition of value, and personally I happen to like yours. The question is whether you can take satisfaction in knowing that your contribution is as a cog in a collective effort that may even throw away your personal contribution as a negative result. I’ll confess that I cannot.

But I think it’s pretty hard to make that case that malevolence will help you. The fastest growing companies tend to make things possible for people that they could never have before. This tends, often, to be obscured by politics. Yet, on the balance, our world benefits as companies do. Or at least, more often than not, which is my point.

And while it was a struggle to find a meaningful project and the ability to focus on it, I was able to. I may have fewer responsibilities and things weighing me down, but that’s because I made thousands of small and many big, hard decisions, to make it this way, to free me for the best work I can do. And while I may not have as many personal responsibilities as many others, I do share, recognize, and rise to the greatest responsibilities I know of: to oneself, to live honestly, and to the world, to do one’s best.

“… there’s a strong correlation between a healthy corporate culture and financial success.”

I have to word it strongly, so my feelings come out clearly enough: BS!

I currently work on a project for a financially highly successful insurance company, of which the corporate culture I can characterize any way but healthy. As a project manager, I managed many projects for many companies, and this company qualifies as one of the top three companies managing projects badly. There’s no process in place to catch this problem, neither does anybody speak up, not even when it’s obvious. I’d say this is a sick corporate culture, in no way a healthy one. Still, simply due to scale factors, they do extremely well financially.

In fact, I have met very few companies of which I would say they have a healthy corporate culture. There are few companies rotten to the bone which can show some financial success, but there are many (I’d say the majority) companies which have a stinking corporate culture (like “keep your head down and do what you’re told”), which does not stimulate continual improvement of processes and product quality in any way, but which are still doing very well financially.

I think the problem is that management makes the corporate culture and people make a company’s success, often in spite of the company culture.

If I get it right, the article’s author just says that she’d rather spend her time on doing useful and meaningful work (of course, useful and meaningful by her definition), rather than spending a significant amount of effort battling the corporate culture. Sounds reasonable to me. Only, given the job market, I think she’ll have a hard time finding that meaningful job she’s looking for.

Besides, she can be happy not to have responsibilities, such as children, old and helpless parents, an autistic sibling or the like to take care of. This is actually the safety net someone was talking about, not the “be a student for ever” stuff. It’s easy to take risks as long as you take them only in your behalf. It’s a lot harder to do so when you’re not responsible just for yourself anymore. Unfortunately, this is the situation of most of us.

FWIW, when I lived in Beijing most Chinese wore masks against the dust blown in from the nearby desert, although the polution was also pretty bad in winter (people used to heat their houses with coal).

So what creates a healthy culture? It starts with work that feels important to the people who are doing it. The other essential ingredient is a group of people who enjoy working together, who trust each other, and who are rooting for each other. A shared goal is implicit here … but it’s worth mentioning. I think that’s about it. Well, maybe a ping-pong table.

Ideally now, I should go out and attempt to hire as many millennials as possible so I can adapt and learn what it’s going to take to see us all succeed since…with certainty…they’ll be leading the way in organizations within a few short years.

Please keep the dialogue going and I will subscribe to your blog. Kindest Regards,
Doug.

Issac Garcia Writes:

Millennials in the Workplace – The Luxury of Work

I came across this article titled “The Choice of Work” the other day and felt that it captured “the mindset and outlook of a young, “Millennial Worker” better than anything that I’ve read/heard/seen to date.

I still can’t figure out if this outlook is “good” or “bad.” While I admire the idealism – the author (rather, the entire generation) might be setting themselves up for massive disillusionment….if this hasn’t already set in.

I guess these are the luxuries that we are all afforded in a rich society. In the Depression (or practically anytime prior to 1950) the emphasis was on survival, sustenance, safety and their families.

There was no “Choice of Work” – rather, it was “The Luxury of Work.”

The alternatives to “work” were crime or death.

Today the alternatives to “work” are: perpetual student-life, living with mommy/daddy, “travel Europe,” Starbucks or Plasma Donations.

Note: This is coming from a workaholic, cynical, sarcastic Generation X-er.

Doug Mitchell adds,

Here’s how I read that essay Isaac. “I want my non-fat latte at 135.52 degrees with exactly 2.21 ounces of espresso and using a caliper…measure off .34 inches of foam. Oh and it’s on mommy’s tab and if you don’t do it right, I’m going to write about it because I have the time.

Right or wrong (I’m still not sure either) this generation has an extreme interpretation of “doing what they want to regardless of facts.”

If the author of this essay or any other from the generation had NO safety net period, they may have to actually do something that isn’t helping the climate or making them feeeeelllllll good. How utterly unattractive.

I think it can be summarized this way. The Millennial generation feels like it has 100 outs for every situation. When the going gets tough or isn’t so happy-feely-joy anymore, it’s OK to jump ship because THEIR feelings are more important than the feelings (and productivity) of their former employer. The true nature of this situation will probably only be known when the helicopter parents run out of credit on their HELOC’s

To which I reply:

That’s strange, Doug. I meant the exact opposite. I don’t care about lattes, or personal wealth, and I’m willing, and do, bear all the risk and make large sacrifices in comfort, energy, prestige, and stability, for the sake of trying to do something that I think matters.

This might surprise you, but I have, for example, lived on the street, dug ditches, moved across the country with almost no money, no credit, no family safety net, no insurance, and lived on a floor in a flea infested slum, while paying for other, like minded, idealistic people to live. It’s not like I’ve been living on handouts. I’ve been totally scraping by, and still am.

It’s not an attitude I’ve come to because I haven’t had to work for a living. It’s an attitude I’ve come to because I’ve been in the depths of poverty before, with no certainty of food on next week’s table (and, in fact, no table). And I saw how joyful I could be regardless. All I needed was to be able to make a difference in something I cared about.

That’s given me the power to ignore wealth, and ignore fake ‘responsibility’, in search of something I care about. Most work is pointless these days. I want to do something that isn’t.

Strikingly, this mindset seemed to be much more prevalent in the depression than it is even now. People had to care about something other than wealth. There was poverty all around them, but humanity, in every direction.

I enjoy motivated people and I know it is motivation (and ability) that makes you an expert on the long turn. However, if you are a beginner, what else can you offer than motivation?

With ‘expert’ I want to describe someone who has all the skills or abilities to do a particular job. When I wrote this, I had high profile jobs in mind. But I think the statement that /a badly motivated expert^wprofessional performs better than a motivated beginner/ is also right for simple jobs.

Of course, you are right that you need motivation on the long run. And I believe that most experts are motivated. And, from a management perspective, it is not wise to assign all tasks to the experts. This would avoid the emergence of new experts and prevent growth. But, this is another story…

Good point. I made that link as a form of attribution. I’m genuinely not sure what the status on air quality in China is — I have seen, on numerous occasions, videos of people walking around with breathing masks, but maybe these just get filmed more often because they’re so jarring.

I went to a Peter Senge lecture a while back where the following quote opened the discussion:

If I reflect on what many organizations have been going through, the whole awareness of sustainability is growing because systems thinking in different forms is enabling us to see interdependencies that we have not seen in the past.

It is those interdependencies which make you conclude that it is more than stupid, it is reckless to think of commercial sustainability in isolation of either social or environmental sustainability.

–Andre van Heemstra, Unilever Management Board

More info on the talk here: http://socialventurelabs.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/no-fish-no-fishsticks/

Tks for your nice words about your mom!

The idea of getting upstream was great.

Last week I blogged on ‘What will be the next BIG challenge for technology?’ I wonder what YOU think?

Url: http://catchthevision.wordpress.com

I click on the associated photo and read at the end:

“..we don’t really wear masks in eastern China or China in general.”

Nice sentiment and nice photo though.

Find your niche before you have kids. Then make a better world for them.

That’s a very good point. I’d also add that I actually linked to PG’s ‘cities’ essay, though as an example of the shift of wealth upstream, rather than an example of the power of ambitious communities.

On experts and greenhorns, I’d ask, ‘expert’ in what? Surely we know people who are ‘nothing if not eager’, but that attitude won’t sustain itself for long without building some skill.

Thanks. I didn’t actually know about that, though I suspected it was something like it, or that maybe Google really didn’t have much money back then. Heh.

Zero-dollar checks amuse me. I used to find them in my mailbox every month at Princeton, since my fellowship had supplanted ordinary pay. I wanted to frame them, but they’ve lost themselves on me.

Thank you for the kind words. It’s wonderful to hear that you’re pulling through. My mother is a passionate journalist, who also raised three little rascals. We gave her hell — so it’s doubly impressive that you’re doing it alone.

What kind of work would you like to do?

It is likely that excellent people are attracted by excellent people. That’s what Xerox PARC was in the 1970ies and Netscape in the 1990ies. Though, I believe that a badly motivated expert still performs better than an unexperienced greenhorn. At least at the beginning.

There’s a nice essay by Paul Graham titled “Cities and Ambition”. Paul looks at places that attracted painters and how excellent people motivated other excellent people. You can find the article here:
http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

Cheers

Good luck! And please use your amazing brain to save us from ourselves.