This week's top stories may finally get your coworkers to read your emails and help you recover from the workplace's daily injustices.
This week we learned how to write more open-worthy email subject lines, what it takes to bounce back from unfair treatment, and how to put downtime to more productive use.
Got a feeling that too many of your emails are being ignored or deleted unread? What you write in the subject field could be the culprit. This week we discovered what tech researchers say should appear in the subject lines of emails that are statistically more likely to be opened.
Experts believe there are actually three kinds of injustice that we're likely to experience at work: "distributive," "procedural," and "interpersonal." Here's how they differ, plus a few strategies you can use to recover from the latest slight, no matter which category it falls into.
You might not see the federal government as a leader when it comes to flexible work arrangements, but the latest data from FlexJobs says that's exactly the case. Here's a look at the other unexpected fields that are championing remote employment.
Turns out the way you spend your downtime can affect how well you do on the job. This week Fast Company asked a research psychologist why that may be true, and which hobbies have the biggest positive impact.
Got a formula you use to kick off every talk you give? Scrap it—your listeners can tell it's canned. Keep these five guidelines front-and-center instead as you craft a fresh opening.
A combination of complex legacy computer systems and strict uptime requirements make more of these disruptions almost inevitable.
After a data center outage caused Delta Air Lines to cancel more than 2,100 flights this week, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the company's doing everything it can to make sure such an event never happens again.
"This isn't the quality of service, the reliability that you've come to expect from Delta Air Lines," he said in a statement, after the company offered $200 vouchers to customers whose flights were canceled. "We're very sorry. I'm personally very sorry."
But experts say the airline industry's legacy computing systems, 24-hour uptime requirements, and difficulties attracting top technology workers could make preventing future similar outages a major challenge.
"The airlines are dealing with a hodgepodge of equipment that's been cobbled together over the years," says George Hobica, the president of Airfarewatchdog.
Industry mergers have meant airlines have interlinked systems, sometimes decades old, from a range of legacy carriers, all without the luxury of ever shutting down their systems for maintenance, he says. While other businesses can occasionally shut down their computer systems for scheduled or even emergency maintenance without a public outcry, airlines simply can't track passengers, baggage, planes, or crew without their technology systems, he says.
"In order to fix the No. 2 [New York subway] line, the MTA sometimes has to shut it down," Hobica says, but airlines never plan to ground flights or shutter reservation systems to do upgrades or maintenance. And they're also competing with technology companies that can often offer more pay and prestige to hire workers with the skills to keep tech systems up and running, he says.
"Good IT talent is really hard to find," he says. "And if you're a superstar, are you gonna work for Delta because you get free flights now and then, or are you gonna work for Google or Facebook, or a billion dollar startup that is giving you stock options?"
And, says Joseph George, vice president of global recovery services at Sungard Availability Services, air travel can be a particularly unforgiving field when it comes to computer problems: Outages in a variety of systems can make it difficult to check in customers or dispatch planes, quickly wreaking havoc for the traveling public and costing airlines huge amounts of money.
"They've got more mission critical customer facing applications, so when there is downtime it's immediately obvious," he says.
Delta attributed the service disruption to a fire in an uninterrupted power supply component, which led to a power outage at the airline's main Atlanta data center that wasn't properly handled by the airline's backup systems.
"Around 300 of about 7,000 data center components were discovered to not have been configured appropriately to avail backup power," the company said. "In addition to restoring Delta's systems to normal operations, Delta teams this week have been working to ensure reliable redundancies of electrical power as well as network connectivity and applications are in place."
But similar service issues, attributed to different technology failures, have affected other airlines in recent months: A router issue led to the cancellation of more than 2,000 Southwest Airlines flights just last month, reportedly costing the airline more than $54 million, and similar issues caused widespread disruptions for United Airlines and American Airlines flights last year.
"It seems like the redundant systems are not working," says Billy Sanez, vice president of marketing at travel search engine FareCompare.
One issue, he says, is that airlines' flight networks are so intertwined that any disruptions to service quickly cascade through the country or even the world. With planes scheduled to make multiple stops throughout the day, a cancelled takeoff can lead to two or three more cancellations at the aircraft's next destinations. And while airlines may be able to operate a limited schedule without computer systems, operating a full slate of flights with pen and paper just isn't practical, he says.
"You can do it manually, but instead of doing thousands of flights a day, you can probably do a hundred a day," Sanez says.
The bottom line, he says, is that travelers shouldn't be completely surprised to see flights grounded by computer problems in the foreseeable future.
"As passengers, you always have to be prepared for things like this," he says. "No meeting is too important. No vacation can't be rescheduled."
You still have to motivate the team members who work remotely, temporarily, or part-time.
How do you manage someone you've never met in person? And how do you gain loyalty from somebody who works for you 10 hours a week? How do you make all the parts work together?
For all the talk about the gig economy, it's still something most people have little firsthand experience with. According to a recent Pew survey, only about one in 10 Americans have even heard of the term "gig economy," even though it's been estimated that about 40% of the U.S. workforce will consist of freelance and independent workers by 2020.
Already, the rise of gig work means considerable management challenges, particularly for business leaders tasked with overseeing a revolving door of contractors. Here are four ways to help keep everything running smoothly.
Even those who manage a decentralized, part-time workforce need to provide that sense of context and motivation to everyone involved. Working with freelancers may seem as though it frees you up from having to invest in that social capital, but you risk being left with a disconnected workforce that does exactly what they're told and no more—like an army of robots that need to be carefully programmed. There are few forms of waste costlier than apathy.
It can be exciting to do the math on the benefits of breaking up your operations through gig work. When I was managing complex global logistics at the head of an international shipping company, I was thrilled at the ROI of my decision to split one job into two. But I was less successful as I tried to keep getting more and more granular—until what was once one full-time job was now handled by a bevy of freelancers filling three or four separate roles. The math worked when I broke one job up into two; it fell apart once one job had become four.
Specialization has its limits. Keep in mind that every addition to your workforce—even if they're only part-time or around for just a while—means added communication, on-boarding, and management costs. Careful leaders watch for the point of diminishing returns, where the inefficiencies of managing too many people to do a single job outweigh the benefits.
The gig economy demands different and more precise calculations on the cost of alternatives to get given jobs done within an organization. And it's up to managers to track all that continuously, lest companies create waste in the pursuit of efficiency.
Any startup CEO can tell you how important a flexible workforce can be. The person you hired to do XYZ six months ago may now be doing ABC (or even ABCXYZ). But freelancers can't fill the gaps formed from the crises of the day without direction coming from some centralized source. You need to carve out these utility roles intentionally. And to do that, you need to decide whose gig it'll be to fill the gaps between everyone else's gigs: Whose job is it to manage all these disparate experts?
Nor does the gig economy lend itself well to people "growing into the role." It's critical to be more deliberate about investing up front in precise expectations about what success looks like within every role—including the part-time and temporary ones. You have performance metrics for all your full-time positions, and you can't skimp on them for your freelance ones. How will progress be measured, by whom and when? Answer these questions first—before bringing anyone aboard.
Managing a constantly changing team of freelancers can be a real challenge. To do it right, leaders have to maintain a sense of purpose and balance, just the way they would while managing teams based right in the office. It's easy to get caught up in the hours your gig talent tends to keep, but managers also need to stay grounded. You already know which hours in your workweek are your most productive. Focus on those—even if they don't sync up exactly with your freelancers'. Those hours are usually when you complete tasks you're most passionate about and the work you can't delegate. If you can stay focused on your own solo work at the same time that you oversee your gig workers, you'll feel less overwhelmed by the challenges that presents.
But even if you find yourself struggling to manage a growing workforce of freelancers, the gig economy may be able to help there, too. Many companies are hesitant to do so, but there's nothing stopping you from hiring qualified independent workers for your c-suite. Especially in startups' growth phases, leaders should consider outsourcing a COO position to help navigate this new world of work so they can focus on the core of the business.
Justin E. Crawford is the founder of Agents of Efficiency and author of the international best-selling book Live Free or DIY. Justin has been featured in over 200 major media outlets, writing and speaking regularly on the issues of growth hacking and startup and small business operational process refinement.
Morning Joe co-creator Chris Licht on removing roadblocks, fostering collaboration, and minimizing drama.
After launching MSNBC's Morning Joe and reinventing CBS This Morning, producer Chris Licht is steering his career in a darker direction—literally. As the new executive in charge of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Licht has ditched the crack-of-dawn time slot of past gigs for a program that airs when most people are heading off to bed.
Since starting in April, Licht has begun retooling how the show operates and has made some tweaks to the format (such as a tighter opening sequence). "My approach is the same whether it's this show or CBS This Morning or Morning Joe," he says. "My sole job is to look at where there are roadblocks to people succeeding and do everything I can to remove them so people flourish, are creative, and have the power to take risks and chances. That ultimately helps the product on television." It's too soon to know how the changes might affect the ratings (The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live both trail time-slot leader The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), but Licht is eager to have an impact. "I'm very competitive," he says. "I'm trying to beat the other guys—not only in the ratings, but to just be better."
A key part of this, he believes, is to foster collaboration, both with the staff and the show's host. "One of the most enjoyable parts is learning from Stephen. There is a science to comedy. Like, what's the setup to the joke, where are the ways it can go, what technique are you going to use to get there? I also talk to him about organizational stuff. His brain works in every part of the organization. He's a problem solver. He's very curious. He's interested."
"The Uber-fication that allows the elimination of corrupt middlemen. It's just thrown the establishment on its ear. I don't think you can overstate how that's going to affect things. It affects how we deliver content. It's much more than being able to get a ride."
"I love watching people as I walk to work in New York City. Being in the moment and thinking about things—that's part of my process. I don't listen to anything. I just walk."
Sharing knowledge, expertise, and information can help you be more persuasive, but it isn't persuasion itself.
I once asked the head of a top ad agency what makes a good ad. "No idea," he said. "I have creatives for that! My job is to manage the prima donnas."
He was being sarcastic, of course, and downplaying his own expertise, but I could tell he had a lot of confidence in his team leaders' creativity. And it wasn't because they educated him on the finer points of great advertising. It was because they'd influenced him—to believe that they knew what makes a good ad.
It's a crucial difference but one that many of us miss. In order to get your leaders to have confidence in your ideas and your career potential, you need to persuade them. Sharing information—informing your supervisors—is part of that process, but it isn't the process itself. No matter how much you want them to understand the depth of your work, your knowledge, and your expertise, your leaders are not studying for a test. By shifting your focus from educating to influencing, you can build the credibility you need to get where you're trying to go.
When you try to educate somebody about a particular subject, you implicitly assume that you have the power. You're the one with ideas, knowledge, and information—that's why you're imparting it, after all. Everyone else is just hoping to soak in as much as they can.
And indeed, being able to explain things coherently to different audiences is a key leadership skill. But the art of persuasion demands relinquishing some of the power that educating people requires us to hang onto. When you focus on influencing others, you make them feel like they're the ones with the power. You focus your ideas at the right level for your audience, in terms that are straightforward.
You want your listeners to see how smart they already are. Instead of explaining the numbers, tell them what the numbers mean. When your audience feels smart and capable, they'll view you as smart and capable for having made the meaning and impact so clear.
We recently helped a CFO make this shift in the group-speaking program my company runs. She started out by simply pointing out financial numbers that her listeners could find on the sheets on front of them: "We started the year at $76.6 million. Right now, at July 31st, we're at $77.2 million." But with a little work, she was able to discuss these figures in in a way that drove home their impact to her audience: "By staying on plan with expenses the rest of the year, we will be within budget for 2015." With this simple yet subtle shift, she moved from educating to influencing.
When you try to educate your audience, you're asking them to trust your information. You hope that if they understand your data and the thrust of your argument, you'll bring them around to your conclusion, and they'll agree with you. So you build slide deck after slide deck, inviting your audience to delve into the details so that they have everything they'll need to grasp your analysis in detail. You believe that the more they understand, the greater they'll trust your conclusions.
But by focusing on influencing your audience, you ask them to trust you, not your information. You want them to believe that you're thoughtful, thorough, and have sound judgment. If they have confidence in you, they'll have confidence in your conclusions and the data you're using to back them up.
When you're deciding whether to eat at a certain restaurant, for instance, you could seek out a detailed ingredients list, portion size information, and nutrition facts—or you could just ask a friend with good taste. Data is important, but if you want to influence people, you need to demonstrate your own conviction through your delivery—your energy, tone, and pacing.
If you're informing your audience, you establish the context, background, and process—then you give your audience the conclusion. Demonstrating that you follow the scientific method is a great skill to have in school, but it's not so great for influencing people.
To shift toward influencing, give the conclusion first. You can provide further background and details as you get into the meat of your presentation, but you need to deliver the key message right away if you want to maximize your influence.
For example, if you're warning someone about black ice on Minnesota roads in January, you could explain the meteorological conditions that lead to the dangerously transparent ice—or you could just say, "Drive slowly if it snows when it's below zero!" Impart the most relevant information immediately, and only then back it up with reasons why. You'll sound more credible—and be more influential—when you do.
Or think of it this way: Information isn't hard to come by, so you need to bring more to the table than that. Concentrate on influencing for action instead. Instead of showing people the facts, explain what needs to be done about them.
It's normal to ruminate on real or imagined crises, but these strategies can help keep your anxiety down and your productivity up.
You make a mistake at work that you immediately know will have negative consequences. So you think about what went wrong and how you could've prevented it, but failed to. Then you mull over the likely short-term fallout, followed by the long-term consequences of the blunder. From there you return to what you did wrong and why you did it in the first place. And the cycle continues.
This cycle of negative thinking is called "rumination," based on the word for a cow chewing its cud. It's normal to ruminate—most of us do it. But some of us do it more than others. It's more common among people who suffer from anxiety disorders and depression, and there's also a tendency for those with high verbal intelligence—those who are good at language-based problem solving (in other words, the high school newspaper and drama kids as opposed to the math league)—to ruminate more than those with less verbal facility.
At any given moment, about 18% of the adult population is suffering from serious anxiety and/or depression. So if you find you ruminate a lot—so much so that it gets hard to cope with your anxiety—consider finding a therapist or counselor to work with. Many of the treatments for anxiety and depression involve learning to influence your thought patterns to break the cycle of rumination.
Short of professional help, though, there are a few steps you can take to stop worrying quite so much and get back to your work.
My colleague James Pennebaker has demonstrated that writing about difficult and traumatic events may have long-term health benefits. One thing that writing can do is to give you a chance to work through what went wrong and how you might fix it—on paper instead of in your head, over and over again.
By writing about the event, you're forced to create a coherent story to describe what happened. This narrative is less likely to trigger additional rumination than the fragments of events that often lead you to keep thinking about a problem obsessively.
One of the key underlying advantages of mindfulness exercises is that they can make you aware of the source of some of the negative thoughts you're having. This way you can recognize when you're slipping into a cycle of negative thinking before you do—and steer yourself away from it.
People who ruminate a lot tend to avoid addressing the sources of their anxiety. If they have concerns about their work performance, they avoid talking with their boss to get feedback on how they are doing. If they hate public speaking, they avoid opportunities to give talks.
But this is a far cry from problem solving. And as it often turns out, the worst-case scenario isn't as bad as the most inveterate ruminators fear. Psychologists have even shown that we imagine we'll react worse to situations that worry us than we do when we actually experience them. While giving a talk before a packed room can be nerve-wracking, even doing a less-than-ideal job is almost never a catastrophe. So rather than allowing yourself to continue worrying about a future event, it's often best to just engage with the thing that worries you—and experience the real outcome, not avoid it.
For instance, many people believe that getting fired from a job will have a disastrous impact on their long-term happiness. In fact, getting fired is difficult in the moment, but most people are just about as happy six months after a firing as they were six months before. Overestimating the impact of negative events is common, but it can make us forget about the other aspects of life that balance out our sense of well-being—the things that wouldn't be affected by the things we worry about happening, even if they do.
It's validating when your intern supervisor wants to hire you, but there are a few reasons to think twice before accepting.
You crushed your internship—nice work, by the way!—so much so that the company has offered you a full-time job. For the first time in your life, you have a salary in front of you, benefits, and a fancy professional title to append to your resume. There's no reason not to take the offer, right?
In reality, you might be leaving a better option on the table by not exploring other opportunities. Then again, it may be the right call to stay at a place you know and are familiar with. So what do you do?
We spoke to career experts about whether you should take that job offer—or keep looking for something better.
Even though you may have interned at this company for a few months, you may not know what it's like to work there full-time. For better or worse, interns often have vastly different experiences than employees who work year-round. Before committing, it's essential to research the job and company. That includes asking current employees who used to be interns what their transitions were like, as well as meeting other members of the team and asking about their experiences working for the company.
"Your goal should be to learn as much as possible about the company," says Marc Prosser, the cofounder and managing partner of Fit Small Business, a site that provides reviews and articles for small business owners. "The best way is to talk to people and set up interviews. Ask the internship coordinator to see if they can set up meetings for you with members in management to learn more."
It's always good to keep your options open, but you don't want indecision to cost you opportunities. That's why clarifying the time you have to make a decision is crucial.
"Explore other options, but keep in mind not to take too long," says Prosser. "Whenever you're offered a job, be sure to ask, 'How long do I have to decide?'"
Next, decide what you're looking for in terms of compensation and benefits, as well as what kind of company culture you want for the long term. Knowing these factors will help you decide, advises Tiffany Gibson, lead talent acquisition specialist at Alexander Mann Solutions, a Cleveland-based talent acquisition and management solutions company.
"The question is, what's your motivation for wanting to explore those other [job] opportunities?" she says. "Know your deal breakers and ask questions about the perks or benefits you feel you're missing out on." If you think the place you've been interning with won't be the right cultural fit or just can't offer the benefits you need (schedule, commute, insurance, etc.), then it's probably a good idea to look elsewhere.
Remember, your first job is far from the end-all be-all, especially with millennials making job hopping the new norm. So if you are happy with your coworkers, the compensation and benefits you've been offered, and the opportunity for career growth, then it usually makes sense to take the job.
For Alexandra Vidaeff, marketing and business development coordinator at Graced by Grit, a women's workout apparel company, the decision was easy. She based her decision of accepting the full-time offer from her internship off of these four factors:
She felt respected by the company's senior management.
She was given an immense amount of responsibility immediately.
She found a mentor who helped ensure she was growing professionally and within the company.
She knew her coworkers were intelligent, hard-working, creative, and fun.
"I knew that even if I got a better offer, [one that was] better paying or from a more prestigious company, I would not feel so respected or so trusted to do work that directly affects the image and growth of the company," Vidaeff says.
Whatever you decide, congratulations if you're offered a full-time gig from your internship. That means you've been doing a stellar job—and you've got a great start to your career ahead.
This article originally appeared on Monster and is reprinted with permission.
Your brain emits "theta waves" when you're falling asleep or waking up. Here's how to use them for problem-solving.
Eat. Sleep. Solve problems. Repeat. You probably spend a large part of your waking hours tackling challenges, especially when you're at work.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the world's top business visionaries, from Sara Blakely to Richard Branson, owe their success to their ability to identify problems (in both their cases, unmet consumer needs) and deliver solutions.
Of course, regardless of how expected (or important) workplace problem-solving is, it's still stressful, and some people seem to be better at it than others.
So, if you want to raise your game here, I suggest you start finding the answers in your sleep—literally. It's called riding the theta brain waves. No, this isn't not about self-hypnosis or Zen meditation: It's pure science, and it works.
As educator Ned Herrmann explains, brain waves—the "electrical activity emanating from the brain"—occur in four states depending on your level of activity. Herrmann continues on to break down each state by decreasing wave frequency.
At your most active, you generate beta waves (for instance, when you're in the middle of a job interview). When you're relaxed (like when you've finally wrapped that big project and can take a breath), your brain switches to alpha waves. Now, jumping ahead for a minute, the fourth stage is delta and it's when you're in a deep sleep.
I skipped over the third stage, theta, because that's the one that's best for problem solving. Herrmann says:
Individuals who do a lot of freeway driving often get good ideas during those periods when they are in theta . . . This can also occur in the shower or tub or even while shaving or brushing your hair. It is a state where tasks become so automatic that you can mentally disengage from them. The ideation that can take place during the theta state is often free flow and occurs without censorship or guilt.
You're also in theta when you're falling asleep or waking up and between active alertness and deep dreaming. As Herrmann shares:
During this awakening cycle it is possible for individuals to stay in the theta state for an extended period of say, five to 15 minutes—which would allow them to have a free flow of ideas about yesterday's events or to contemplate the activities of the forthcoming day. This time can be an extremely productive and can be a period of very meaningful and creative mental activity.
Taking advantage of when your brain is prepared to give you the best ideas is something successful people have been doing for hundreds of years. Artists like Salvador Dali, writers like Mary Shelley, and great thinkers have understood that the early "nodding off" stage of sleep, when theta waves predominate in the brain, is the best time to let the creative juices flow.
Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison also relied on half-sleep moments to chew over big ideas. A nimble, creative mind is primed for solving problems, and that's why mentally running through the day's challenges early in the morning while you are still in this state (or even at night as you start to fall asleep) can yield amazing results. What worked for Einstein can work for you, too, although maybe not in a theory-of-relativity kind of way.
Learning to utilize theta waves takes some practice. Do it regularly, though, and you'll develop a positive habit that may take your productivity to new levels. Here's how to get started.
1. Pick a task. Just as you start to become conscious in the morning, but while your eyes are closed and your brain's still dreamy, think of the most immediate problem or task you have to face today. Maybe it's having a tricky conversation, negotiating with a client, writing a report, or creating a new marketing campaign. No matter how many to-do's might be racing around in your mind, choose only one and let the brain ruminate.
Don't force your thoughts in any direction except to stay focused on the topic. Because your brain has likely been kicking around these problems in the background all night, as you begin to ponder the subject your subconscious will start to make headway on a solution.
Often, you'll nab a useful idea or two. Every so often, you'll score a sheer flash of genius. Now, to be honest, you'll probably forget to do this every day when you first start, but over time you'll be able to make it a habit, just another part of your morning routine.
2. Take notes. If you're like me, the most frustrating part of problem-solving in theta is that you tend to forget these inspired ideas once you get up and start rolling. You'll be wracking your brain in the shower trying to recall those three brilliant bullet points you mentally drafted. That's why you need to write them down in as soon as you rouse yourself enough to open your eyes.
Grab your smartphone (it's charging on the bedside table anyway, right?) and jot down or voice record your thoughts. Make this quick. Stick to key words, descriptions, and phrases that'll jog your memory later when you're ready to use the information.
Added benefit: the blue light from your phone will help you wake up. (Conversely, if you'd like to near asleep-problem-solve at night, consider using the old-fashioned pen and paper method to record your ideas, so that the electronic light doesn't disturb your sleep.)
3. Review. Keep track of your "theta thoughts" so you can look them at them over time and find patterns. You may find that, for you, it's best for tackling creative work, like writing or designing. Or you could discover it gives you an edge in spoken communications or scheduling. This will help you know what questions to ask yourself during this mental state in the future.
Inspiration comes at us from all corners. But so do obstacles. Thinking in theta exploits the mind's inherent problem-solving skills in a way that lets you recall solutions and use them. Often it's just about finding a path around a block in the road, or crossing a bridge from a half-baked idea to a truly useful one—and why not do that before you even get out of bed?
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
A decade after leaving the industry, fashion's power couple is back—and they've got a new name.
No one knows the benefits and perils of turning your name into a brand better than Kate Spade. The designer's eponymous line of bright handbags and shoes dominated fashion in the late '90s and early aughts, and remains prominent today. But when your brand no longer belongs to you—Kate and her husband, Andy, sold their stake in 2006 for almost $60 million—how do you launch a new company? You begin by changing your name: Late last year, Kate visited a Manhattan courthouse and officially became Kate Valentine Spade. She's now doing business as Kate Valentine. Her new accessories company, launched in February, is Frances Valentine, named after her two grandfathers.
The quiet arrival of Frances Valentine, which sells shoes and handbags directly to consumers online and through a handful of retailers including Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, and Shopbop, took some industry pros by surprise. Created by Kate and Andy, along with Kate Spade partner Elyce Arons and former shoe design director Paola Venturi, the company has an impeccable fashion pedigree. But instead of going big and bold, the founders wanted to bring their new brand forward slowly. "[We thought]: We're going to make mistakes," says Kate. "Let's make them on a smaller scale." Or, as Andy explains: "The expectations are higher now. So we have to make a great product, and then we'll build out the company."
The market that the Spades are reentering has changed dramatically in the past decade. Social media has personalized the way people discover and follow fashion, and the affordable-luxury industry is already crowded with brands like Coach, Michael Kors, and, of course, Kate Spade, along with new direct-to-consumer lines like M. Gemi. Then there's the economy: "America is not a growth engine for luxury," says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. "Americans aren't spending a ton, and we're not seeing more rich people [enter the market]." The Frances Valentine team is undeterred, banking on the strength of Kate's designs and her husband's marketing savvy.
The company's fall line, which includes patent-leather flats and suede ankle boots, haircalf totes and leather bucket bags, is reminiscent of Kate Spade: elegant yet quirky, with an air of preppy suburbia. But like the designer herself, it's a bit more grown-up, and Kate says she's brought a new architectural perspective to her work. The signature Frances Valentine heel is a textured knob, a nod to Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome. "The shoes really have a very different and distinct point of view," says Anne Egan, VP and divisional merchandise manager for salon and designer shoes at Nordstrom.
But with the U.S. clothing and accessories market expected to grow by less than 2% this year, according to Mulpuru, Frances Valentine will also have to attract shoppers by creating a strong brand identity. That's where Andy comes in. After growing Kate Spade, he spearheaded the concept and launch of its rugged menswear line, Jack Spade, in 1999. Since then, through his creative studio, Partners & Spade, he's worked on marketing campaigns for companies including J.Crew, Whole Foods, and Target, and led the design of Warby Parker's successful retail outposts.
With Frances Valentine, Andy has tasked himself with creating a company narrative that resonates. He's looking to open a flagship in New York and plans to bolster their social media presence with insider content. And he's personalizing things: The brand's first photo shoot took place in the desert, an homage to Andy's childhood in Arizona, while the second campaign is set in the Spades' Manhattan apartment and focuses more on the couple's city life. "We're trying to figure out what our lives are now and how to talk about that—how to tell a more grown-up narrative of where we are today," says Andy.
Family matters:Andy Spade is infusing Frances Valentine with his own life story.
For the Spades, business will always be personal. "When we left the [industry], everyone said, 'Why would you ever go back to it? You don't have to do this,' " says Andy. "And we say, 'No, we love to do this.' It's important that we get back to doing what we love to do."
Personality isn't necessarily a bad guide to leaders' effectiveness, but there are some major red herrings.
When Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine announced last week that she couldn't bring herself to vote for Donald Trump for president, she hardly mentioned his policy positions. Instead, Collins focused on Trump's personality. "His disregard for the precept of treating others with respect, an idea that should transcend politics," she wrote in the Washington Post, concluding that "Trump lacks the temperament, self-discipline, and judgment required to be president."
It was less about what Trump might do as president than about who Collins perceived him to be. And since voters tend to think in similar terms, it's worth asking: Is that a bad approach?
In large measure, modern U.S. political campaigns are personality contests rather than rational choices between policies or ideologies. On the one hand, this isn't necessarily problematic; studies consistently show strong correlations between leaders' personalities and their effectiveness as leaders—and not just in politics. In other words, Collins is onto something: Who you are does largely dictate how you lead.
On the other hand, voters (and senators, for that matter) aren't always able to pick up on some crucial signals of leadership competence. Perhaps more worryingly, they often assume that certain qualities indicate effectiveness when they're really just decoys. The traits that help people get elected don't necessarily help them perform well in office.
Among the personality attributes routinely mistaken for signs of leadership potential, none is as influential as narcissism, a trait researchers have linked to "grandiosity, arrogance, self-absorption, entitlement, fragile self-esteem, and hostility." Narcissists are often deluded about their talents, which (ironically) helps them come across as more talented to others. When you think you're great, you're less likely to display insecurities—which creates the impression that you really are great. This kind of self-deception may even have evolved as an accidental strategy to deceive others, which would help explain the preponderance of narcissists in politics.
By the same token, voters tend to be wary (or outright distrustful) of politicians who are cautious and measured. Unsurprisingly, researchers have even found a positive correlation between politicians' narcissism scores and their chances of winning a presidential election—even though that trait often results in destructive leadership. In other words, voters tend to inadvertently reward leadership qualities that tend to punish them later. Because it's been linked to charisma, narcissists are likely to entertain, but they're also less likely to competently lead.
At the same time, there are clearly some relevant personality attributes for inferring leadership potential more reliably. Effective leaders, you won't be surprised to learn, rank high on integrity, judgment, and the ability to handle pressure. (This is true even in politics—even though we aren't exactly spoiled for choice of exemplars in that arena, at least not within a given generation.)
From a personality perspective, competent leaders also tend to be emotionally stable, resilient, and open-minded. They're often smart academically and favor data-driven over intuitive decisions. They're altruistic and prefer not to be the center of attention. Importantly, they care deeply about how they impact other people and are focused more on the collective welfare than on their own personal success.
Modern electoral politics tends to discourage all this. But when these qualities do coexist, which is fairly rare, such leaders are also likely to be modest; they let their achievements speak for themselves, don't blow their own trumpet, and resist getting defensive when criticized. In other words, the type of personality most closely correlated with effective leadership is more Angela Merkel than Donald Trump, who is virtually her polar opposite. Effective political leaders are bureaucrats, not showboaters—basically, they're boring.
Introverted, low-key, calm, rational politicians don't often survive the popularity-contest aspect of high-level elections. If we could inject some charisma and bravado into those types of personalities, we'd probably end up with a higher proportion of competent political leaders. Alternatively, it would be great if there was a way to enhance the judgment, integrity, and emotional intelligence of the many narcissistic politicians we're likely to elect—even those who have serious deficits when it comes to actual leadership competence.
Both seem pretty unlikely. In the meantime, we're stuck with what we've got. There's really no time between now and November to change the implicit criteria voters use to assess leadership potential, however imperfectly, or to convince the media to devote more time to the more boring personalities in politics—even if they may serve us better in government.
ADAY has made a name for itself by creating garments that can be worn directly from a marathon to a meeting with the prime minister.
Unfortunately, the word "athleisure" looks like it's here to stay. Although it is awkward, the term captures a truth about modern life—we don't want to distinguish between the clothes we wear for our athletic pursuits and casual leisure activities. The original athleisure garments were meant to get people from yoga class to brunch without requiring a major costume change.
Over the last few years, however, Americans have started to demand even more from our clothing. We're increasingly expecting to wear an outfit directly from the gym to a client meeting. (Our Carey Dunne wore yoga pants to the Fast Company offices for a week and reported the outcome over at FastCo Design.) But while leggings work fine in a casual corporate environment, there are few brands out there that have designed trousers that work in both the fitness studio and the boardroom.
ADAY has worked hard to design a garment that truly bridges this divide. Their Throw and Roll leggings, for instance, are made of a lightweight, shiny material that can be dressed up to look like workwear, but also do well for sport, since they're moisture wicking, stretchy, and have UV protection for good measure. In places where the wearer is most likely to sweat, such as the thigh area, there is a strip of airy, breathable fabric. It also comes with a designated smartphone pocket.
"We were really trying to create garments that will literally work in any context," says ADAY cofounder Meg He. "It's not limited to going from the gym to the office; we want women to be able to put them on in the morning and do anything throughout the day."
She says that customers have worn the Throw and Roll leggings in a wide range of activities. One woman wore them to run the New York Marathon, while another wore the very same leggings to a meeting with David Cameron while he was still the U.K. prime minister.
Their versatility have made them very popular. These particular leggings have sold out four times, often within 24 hours. The pants currently have a 2,000-person waitlist, and ADAY says it will have new stock available in September. And today, they're launching a high-waisted version of the trousers that they designed based on customer feedback. "Women wanted to be able to style them in different ways, the way they might have low-rise and high-waisted jeans," says He.
American women, in particular, seem to be intrigued by the possibility of wearing clothes directly from a sweaty pursuit to an occasion that requires a bit more formality. The company, which launched in London in 2015, recently moved its headquarters to New York to be closer to its largest base of customers. "So many more orders were coming in dollars rather than pounds," she says. "We really wanted to double down on the American market."
While the Throw and Roll leggings have proven to be a hit, there are several other items in ADAY's 17-piece collection that have been easily adaptable from athletic activities to the office. The Late or Never Jumpsuit fits into the current summer trend of wearing one-piece outfits. It is made of a slimming black performance fabric, but thanks to its minimalistic silhouette and a rose-gold zipper at the back, it can be easily worn to work. (This item has also repeatedly sold out.) The Up in the Air Jacket has an asymmetrical zip that drapes nicely, so it looks like it could be a work blazer, but it is also made of materials that help manage moisture and temperature. As its name suggests, it was specifically designed for wearing from the plane to the office, since it is comfortable and stretchy, but does not look like the slouchy hoodie you might otherwise wear.
"Our use cases for these items were our lives: traveling, going to the office, doing things in the evening," says ADAY's other cofounder, Nina Faulhaber. "We wanted to design staple pieces that could work anywhere, so you didn't need to have so many items in your closet."
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Health care consumers pay a lot of money for bad design. It's time for the device and drug companies to stop.
A regular glass ketchup bottle is a poorly designed experience. To serve the ketchup you have to hold it at a 45-degree angle, tap it in a special place, insert a knife, and then it splatters not only onto your plate but also onto your lap.
Lo and behold the improved design of the squeezable plastic upside down ketchup bottle; the ketchup is right at the opening, it has a valve that doesn't leak, and it comes out of the bottle faster. Heinz designed a better ketchup experience, resulting in a product that is easier to use. That in turn has led to product design awards and greater sales.
The unfortunate reality is that this kind of experience design doesn't often occur in health care. Instead, this is what happens:
The condiment on the left costs $2.50; the one on the right costs $250.
No innovation in product or experience design, just higher prices.
The EpiPen is a prime example of this.
As a food allergy mom, I've written about the bad design of the EpiPen injection delivery system. To give the injection, you must pull off the blue cap, but the needle pops out at the opposite end, which is counterintuitive. Users will inadvertently place their fingers over the needle, leading to thousands of unintentional injections of individuals trying to deliver the medication. The EpiPen is so badly designed that it's used as a case study of bad medical device design by human factors design professionals.
Unfortunately because of recalls of other allergy medications, there are no other competitor products. As described in an article from STAT, Mylan, the company that manufactures the medication, has increased prices dramatically. Whereas it used to cost about $100 for two EpiPens, the price has increased to $600 or even $900.
The life-saving medicine on the left costs $100; the one on the right costs $600.
Pharmaceutical companies usually justify their price hikes based on the fact that they are funding not only the cost of medication but also research and development. However, Mylan bought the rights to the medication in 2007, and hasn't made any substantive changes to the design of the device. Given the lack of competitor products, this has prompted comparisons of the company to Martin Shkreli and Valeant Pharmaceuticals.
The prices are having an impact on patients and families, who can't afford the medication and are forced to carry around expired pens or take a huge risk and go without the medication. Sadly, emergency medical technicians in Washington State can't even afford to carry standard EpiPens, so they have created their own do-it-yourself epinephrine injection kit. It consists of a vial of epinephrine ($4), and needles ($1). (Yes incredibly, you can buy ampules of epinephrine at a fraction of the cost of an EpiPen, which means that we are paying $600 for a hunk of badly designed plastic.)
The irony is that the DIY solution may be the better designed solution. The cap is at the same end as the needle on a regular syringe, so the inadvertent injection is less likely to happen. In addition, use of the kits has led to more extensive EMT training in management of allergic reactions—EMTs were often reluctant to use the medication if symptoms weren't severe—and has led to an increase in the appropriate use of injections, from 40% to over 98%.
As Kate Farnsworth describes:
Perhaps food allergy patients and caregivers will have to follow the do-it-yourself model of Nightscout, a DIY mobile technology system for diabetes that was created by patients and caregivers. The community helps individuals create their own DIY medical devices in a variety of ways, such as providing open-source code and instructions online, virtual support through a Facebook group, and in-person support through DIY "build" parties.
Are "build parties" for DIY epinephrine kits on the horizon for the allergy community? Outlandish prices and the sad lack of innovation are a major #healthcare #design #fail. It is happening not only with EpiPens but also with insulin, Narcan, and a variety of other pharmaceuticals.
We pay lots of money for bad design in health care. When will device and drug companies create user-centered innovations that actually improve the lives of patients instead of their bottom line?
The article was adapted with the author's permission. Read the original here.
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The language-learning company's new app lets users teach and learn anything from biology to Pokémon. A look at the most popular topics.
Since Duolingo launched in 2012, the language-learning company's eponymous app has become a favorite, winning over 150 million users who enjoy its cheery animations and gamelike mechanics, as well as the ability to compete with friends. But they wanted more. "We saw that there has been . . . a consistency of demand for flashcards," says Zan Gilani, a marketing associate at Duolingo. The company obliged with Tinycards, an app that applies the company's philosophy of presenting material in multiple ways to reinforce it—as well as rewarding users with smiley faces and praise when they get something right.
Tinycards doesn't begin and end with language flashcards, though. The app (currently available for iOS devices in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia) is constantly adding new digital "decks" on topics ranging from science to history to geography. Tinycards also lets users make their own shareable decks on any topic they want. More than 10,000 have been created since the new app launched on July 19. Nine thousand people have favorited the user-created deck "Flags of the World." Reflecting the Zeitgeist, 8,000 have favorited "Who's that Pokémon?" and 6,000 favorited "Pokémon Names."
Flashcards have been around forever on paper, and flashcard apps are plentiful. A quick search on the iOS Store returns dozens of apps that have at least a flashcard component. Most of them are for language, which is popular with Tinycards users. (They can link Tinycards to their Duolingo account, so that progress they have made in the language app unlocks corresponding levels in Tinycards decks.)
Screens from the periodic table deck show how Tinycards reinforces concepts, asking users to type in the word "lithium" (at left) and double-checking that they know beryllium.
The unlimited range of topics, to which anyone can add whatever they please, is what makes Tinycards so addictive. There are other pop-culture themes among the top user decks, such as Marvel and DC Comics heroes. But many popular decks focus on academic and sometimes esoteric topics: dog breeds, art history, writing Arabic, and even Morse code (that one has 5,000 favorites). Tinycards fans are "people who want to learn something interesting every day or every few days," Gilani says. "If you look at the things that have been popular, like flags of the world and Pokémon, nobody is learning these [to prepare] for a quiz."
Most successful, though, have been the decks that two of Duolingo's professional designers create, including Countries of Europe (30,000 favorites) and the Human Skeleton (26,000). Gilani says that the company researches what topics people look for online and also picks topics for students, like the periodic table and the U.S. Bill of Rights. People are searching for "a lot of anatomy and medical stuff," he says.
Choices presented for the manubrium bone. (It's the one on the left.)
Cute illustrations certainly don't hurt Duolingo's appeal. The cartoony skeleton, for instance, with different bones highlighted on each card, is pretty adorable. But Tinycards also makes it relatively easy to produce decent-looking decks, like one I made on Roman architecture. The app's connection to the search engine Bing brought up a selection of serviceable images for such entries as the Palace of Diocletian. Duolingo says that the searches will be filtered to avoid copyrighted materials, pulling from such sources as Creative Commons, although they are still ironing out a few details.
To fill out text fields on the back of the virtual card (where, say, the name of the building and its location in Split, Croatia, would be listed), it's a simple matter of tapping and typing. Or sometimes not so simple: Thanks to my clumsy thumbs, I had to retype quite a few entries. I also had to pull out my laptop to research certain topics. (The Pantheon was completed in 126 AD, by the way.)
There will eventually be a web interface for designing Tinycards. "It will make card creation infinitely easier," says Gilani, though he can't say when that will happen—nor when the much-requested Android version of the app will come out. And while Duolingo says it's focused on the English-speaking market for now, once Tinycards becomes available in other countries, the number of decks should grow even more.
Selections in my Roman architecture deck.
One high school Latin teacher has created 78 decks for students, and users have made 99 decks that reach the mandated limit of 150 cards per deck. Some of those Latin decks are taken from textbooks, which could present copyright problems. Following our phone conversation, Gilani emailed me Duolingo's official response on the issue: "'[We] comply with reports of copyrighted content from the content owners and take down infringing content."
Still, having users that go a little overboard is an enviable problem for an app maker. Tinycards feeds another urge beyond learning—and that's teaching. People are proud to show off what they know—in Wikipedia entries and YouTube how-to videos and across all social media. With the game aspects that let people compete against friends, Duolingo's original app made language learning social. By letting people be both learners and teachers, Tinycards has done something similar for all fields of knowledge.
The questions interviewers aren't allowed to ask are pretty clear-cut, but how to respond when you're asked them anyway isn't.
Are you married? Planning to have kids? When did you start your career? Where are you from originally? Do you celebrate any specific religious holidays?
Make no mistake: These questions are illegal to ask job candidates. But that doesn't prevent job seekers from being asked them now and then. Your response depends on how offensive you find them and how much you still want the job after fielding intrusive queries from the person who may become your manager.
Still, few job seekers simply get up and walk out of an interview in situations like this. So it helps to be prepared to respond just in case, even if the experience does sway you against taking the job.
What employers are allowed to ask about and what they're not is straightforward. Questions about your marital status, sexual orientation, children or intent to have them, religion, age, disability status, and country of origin are out of bounds—and, technically speaking, interviewers can get slapped with discrimination lawsuits if they ignore these rules. In practice, though, some interviewers are ignorant (or sneaky) and will ask anyway. How do you handle these uncomfortable questions?
Sometimes you'd be more than justified in bluntly telling the interviewer that their ham-fisted question is completely inappropriate. But if you still want the job after they ask, this will definitely hurt, if not completely destroy, your chances. Other times, an interview is more conversational, and you end up wandering into technically dicey territory through the seemingly innocent flow of conversation. If that happens and you're personally not bothered by a question, go ahead and answer.
But what about the middle ground? Legalities aside (and it bears mentioning that this article is no substitute for professional legal counsel), interviewers have a genuine interest in your commitment and ability to do the job. Sometimes your personal situation does, in reality, impact that.
So how do you respond when you sense the interview is probing off-limits topics but also believe their motivation is not blatantly discriminatory (even though there's always unconscious bias to account for, too)? Basically, the question is annoying—but not annoying enough to make you not want the job. One good technique in these situations is to address the underlying worry that's behind the question while dodging the specific query. Here are a few examples of diplomatic responses to off-limits questions:
Q: Do you intend to have kids anytime soon? A: I plan to keep working whether or not I decide to have a family.
Q: Will you be taking any specific religious holidays? A: I've never had any issues staying within the limits of my employer's policy on leave before, and don't imagine that will be a problem here either.
Q: What an interesting accent! Where are you from originally? A: My family is from [country], but I've been living in the U.S. for many years/since I was . . .
One final option is the blatant dodge. The subtext of this response is essentially, "That's inappropriate and I'm not going to answer," but the wrapping is warmer and less aggressive.
Q: Do you have kids? A: [Pointing to a picture on the desk] I see you have two. How old are they?
If the interviewer persists despite your attempts to nudge the conversation back on track, you might want to think long and hard about whether this is really the right company for you.
The most productive people think about output deliberately, and then keep switching up their tactics to get the best results.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," goes the old adage, but the most productive people throw this advice out the window when it comes to getting stuff done.
Instead of letting habits, routines, and best practices rule their day and put them on autopilot, highly productive people change, and even overhaul, their systems on a regular basis whether they need it or not, says Charles Duhigg, an investigative reporter for the New York Times.
"Almost exclusively, I found that the people who are most productive had decided to think about it deliberately," he says. Letting habit take over might work for a little while, Duhigg explains, but you won't notice when it eventually stops working. "Habits are useful tools, but they can hinder as well as help," he adds. "It's about choosing to encourage habits, rather than following them blindly."
The most productive people frequently try new systems instead of finding and sticking with a single method that fits their style. "For six months, they'll use a version of [David Allen's Getting Things Done] with files and ticklers," says Duhigg. "Then, they'll decide to try a new system, maybe using color-coded tabs and inboxes. Then they'll find another new system," he says. "Constantly cycling through systems forces you to think about your own productivity."
While some people are naturally more productive, continuously changing your methods is especially effective for those who struggle to be productive, says Duhigg. That's because productivity requires attention, focus, and a willingness to be challenged.
In his book, Duhigg interviewed professional poker player Annie Duke, whose decision-making skills boost her productivity. "I asked Annie why she's good at decision making and interestingly, she said it's something she's not naturally good at," he says. "In fact, it's exactly the opposite. She's always thinking about it and testing it."
Ironically, the most productive people don't always feel productive, adds Duhigg. In fact, they feel that they're not productive enough, but they use that worry to design systems that force themselves to think about productivity. On the other hand, people who believe they are productive often feel confident and even protective about their methods, leaving them unwilling to change.
"The easiest thing to do is stop thinking about it," Duhigg says. "Highly productive people force themselves to think about things they might otherwise allow to recede into the background and continually improve."
For the past five years, turnover among Patagonia employees who use its child care program is 25% lower than in its overall workforce.
To support our families, Patagonia provides company-paid health care and sick time for all employees; paid maternity and paternity leave; access to on-site child care for employees at our headquarters in Ventura, California, and at our Reno, Nevada, distribution center; and financial support to those who need it, among other benefits. In particular, offering on-site child care, we believe, is the right thing to do for employees, working parents, and the life of the workplace.
However, a reasonable businessperson might ask, "What does it cost?" It's expensive if you offer high-quality care and subsidize your employees' tuition—but not as expensive as you'd think.
The poet Maya Angelou said, "When you know better, you do better," but despite everything we know about the tangible and intangible benefits of taking care of our working families, collectively, we American business leaders provide paid family leave to just 11% of U.S. workers.
To date, three states and the District of Columbia offer paid family leave: California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. The United States is one of only two countries in the industrialized world that offers no federal paid maternity leave. And every day in America, most women return to work after the birth of a child to find an unsupportive environment lacking on-site child care, lactation programs, and paid medical leave.
President Obama acknowledges Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario as a Champion of Change for Working Families, April 15, 2015.[Photo: courtesy of Patagonia]
We don't have to scratch our heads and wonder why there's an alarming lack of women in leadership, boardrooms, and public office. Women will never be able to effectively "lean in" without the proper economic, social, and community support for the most critical work of all—raising the next generation. The good news for skeptical business leaders, though, is something I've learned firsthand: Supporting our working families isn't just the ethical thing to do (which, frankly, should be reason enough for responsible leaders); it will also balance out financially.
Research showing the business benefits of paid family and medical leave and other critical programs is abundant. For now, though, let me illustrate the basic math that gives me confidence as Patagonia's chief executive not only to provide on-site child care to our parents at our headquarters, but, as of this year, to expand it to our 400-employee distribution center in Reno, Nevada, as well.
The federal government recognizes the value of on-site child care to both working parents and the economy, and grants a qualified child-care program a yearly tax credit of $150,000. In addition, the government allows a company to deduct 35% of its unrecovered costs from its corporate tax bite.
To date, costs after revenues (tuition fees) for running Patagonia's child development center are approximately $1 million. With a yearly tax deduction of $150,000 and a second deduction of 35% of costs (35% of $1 million = $350,000), that's a total of $500,000 in costs recouped, or 50%.
Turnover costs (of losing an employee and training a replacement) include lost productivity while the position is vacant, plus recruitment, relocation, and training time. This can range from 35% of annual salary for a non-managerial employee, to 125% of salary for a manager, to a couple of years' pay for a director or vice president. In the United States, 20%–35% of working mothers who give birth never return to their previous job.
At Patagonia, for the past five years, we've seen 100% of moms return to work after maternity leave. Moreover, the availability of on-site child care remains important for allowing mothers to breastfeed infants on demand. For the past five years, our turnover rate for parents who have children in the program has run 25% less than for our general employee population.
To calculate our retention-related savings due to on-site child care, we first estimated the additional turnover we'd have if we didn't offer an on-site child-care center, and then estimated the cost of that turnover. This actually took three steps: calculating the cost of turnover, then the effect of on-site child care on turnover, and finally multiplying the cost of that turnover by how much we expected to reduce it.
The term "engagement" is used to measure wholeheartedness or simply how an employee feels about his or her job and employer. Higher engagement creates higher levels of customer satisfaction and business performance. Studies indicate that when parents have access to high-quality, on-site child care at work, they are more engaged—even more so than colleagues as a whole—and that increased engagement means the company does better financially.
We arrived at our 11% savings figure by first estimating the effect of on-site child care on the engagement of parents who use the program, then multiplied that by the estimated effect of parents' engagement on the company's financial performance.
Patagonia design team, 2016[Photo: courtesy of Patagonia]
In sum, we estimate that we recover 91% of our calculable costs annually. We're not alone. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., has estimated returns of 115% for its child-care program; global business consultant KPMG found that its clients earned a return on investment (ROI) of 125%.
Of course, this quantifiable picture leaves out the obvious intangible benefits of providing on-site child care. All told, we would say that an ROI of 115% or 125% on our own program wouldn't surprise us. Benefits in the intangible category include:
More women in management. Studies show that a healthy gender mix at the leadership level makes business smarter and more creative and improves performance. At Patagonia, women make up 50% of our workforce, including roughly half of upper management positions.
Greater employee loyalty. Providing high-quality, on-site child care helps a business exercise its obligations as an employer and community citizen. Such businesses earn the trust of their employees, who give their time more wholeheartedly, and the loyalty of customers, who will buy from a brand, all else being equal, with the better reputation.
A stronger workplace culture of trust. At Patagonia, if you ask parents the benefit of having their child on site, they might tell you what a difference it makes to be able to check in, have lunch together, and be freed from the complications stemming from dropping off and picking up the child elsewhere. If you ask a non-parent the greatest benefit of having the kids around, he or she might tell you that it reminds us—parents and non-parents alike—that we're behaving for real in a real world, and not just hired guns asked to leave our deepest selves behind the moment the workday starts.
For 33 years, Patagonia has provided on-site child care—a mandate from our founders, who believed it was a moral imperative. Even in times of economic struggle the program was never cut, because they believed in providing a supportive work environment for working families. Taking care of our tribe is part of our culture and our commitment to helping our own people live the way they want. It's true, there are financial costs to offering onsite child care, and they can be expensive if you offer high-quality programs or subsidize your employees' tuition when onsite care is not available.
But the benefits—financial and otherwise—pay for themselves every year. As a CEO, it's not even a question in my mind. Business leaders (and their chief financial officers) should take note.
New reports indicate that the Apple Watch 2 will show up later this year with basic upgrades and a GPS radio, but no cellular connection.
Sometimes I have to take a deep breath and remember that Apple isn't in business to entertain me. It's in the business of selling devices that look cool and work well, to as many people around the world as possible. It won't always seem magical.
Sometimes Apple products will follow perfectly reasonable roadmaps responding to legitimate market demands with perfectly reasonable sets of incremental improvements. Yes, perfectly rational—and kinda boring.
If reports about the forthcoming Apple Watch 2 are correct, this may be one of those times.
When Apple gets the press and analysts together early next month for its fall wingding[/url], we'll see a couple of new phones and the second iteration of the Apple Watch. The new phones—probably called the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus—will look a whole lot like the iPhone 6s, with some spec upgrades and a better camera.
The other marquee announcement that day, the Watch 2, will look like the same kind of (incremental) upgrade. In fact, the go-to supply chain source for this stuff—KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo—likens the "Apple Watch 2" to the "S" generation phones Apple releases between major, numbered, iPhone generations. These "S" series devices have some spec upgrades, but usually no major new feature or design innovations.
Kuo, who is usually accurate, cites supply chain sources to say that the new Watch will be roughly the same shape and size as the first Apple Watch, but will add a faster chip, a barometer (to measure elevation climbed), a GPS radio (for tracking runs), and some kind of waterproofing rating. The current Apple Watch comes in two sizes—42mm and 38mm. It remains to be seen if Apple keeps those sizes, but we've seen nothing that suggests it won't.
As any first-generation Watch wearer will tell you, the battery must be charged up every day. This will likely be true of the Apple Watch 2. That's because Apple will probably wring some better battery efficiency from the device, but that will be canceled out by the addition of the GPS radio, which is a bit of a power-sucker.
The battery is perhaps the greatest limiting factor for smartwatches today. New features—like GPS radios—increase the amount of power required from the battery. And the bigger the power requirement, the larger the battery must be, which presents a serious design challenge to Apple, which loves to keep making products that are thinner and smaller.
But Kuo doesn't believe Apple intends to add to the Watch 2 the one feature that could finally free it from the paired smartphone and give it a life of its own: the long hoped-for cellular radio. Kuo believes Apple will wait until 2017 to build an LTE chip into the Watch.
And there are good reasons for not doing it now, as Technalysis Research founder and analyst Bob O'Donnell points out. "There's the cost, and anytime you add an additional radio to a device, it's a hit on the battery, so they'd have to deal with those issues," O'Donnell says.
Creative Strategies' analyst Ben Bajarin believes Apple wants to build its own LTE chip, instead of sourcing one from Qualcomm or Intel. Bajarin says Apple may want to tightly integrate the LTE chip with the Watch's processor (also made by Apple). If true, that could tack on even more time.
Kuo expects the Watch 2 to show up late this year, presumably in time for the holiday season.
The analyst adds that Apple will continue selling the first version of the Watch, but with a faster processor inside and no GPS radio. He says Apple will probably cut the price of the original Apple Watch by as much as $100, which would drive down the cost of the low-end Sports model to under $200.
If it sounds like I'm giving a bad review to a product that hasn't even been released yet, I am. But Kuo's inside information about the Watch 2 is consistent with voices we've heard within the Watch ecosystem, and it sounds truthy. It sounds downright rational. It sounds like Apple.
At any rate, Fast Company will be on hand at the press event early next month. We will have news coverage and commentary about the Watch 2, and eventually a full product review.
Hovering isn't terribly helpful, but hands-off management can hurt the team even more.
No one likes to be micromanaged. But when it comes to leadership, going too far in the opposite direction can be just as bad.
That's the conclusion Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson reached in their new book,Stop Spending, Start Managing. By examining various wasteful habits that lead organizations to spend lots of money on consultants and lots of time on needless meetings, the authors identify what they call "The Macromanagement Trap." This involves "assuming your employees don't need your direction."
This hands-off approach is perhaps more dangerous than micromanagement, says Menon, a professor at Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, because people don't necessarily perceive it as a flaw. Indeed, "A lot of the words that go along with it sounds so good," she says. No one will ever admit to micromanaging, but managers will say proudly that "I empower people, I believe in participation, I'm all for freedom."
The problem is that "all these things end up translating into too much freedom, chaos, and not doing the work of management," she says. People get annoyed by hovering, but workplace research shows that "what's most psychologically painful of all is uncertainty, confusion, and not being able to predict what's going to happen." A study from Arizona State University reached a similar conclusion that hands-off leadership could derail employees.
As a leader, you need to find a balance between the two extremes. To do that, first recognize which direction you are tilting. If you're asking to be cc'd on every email, you're probably in the micromanagement camp.
Macromanagement problems, on the other hand, often manifest themselves in overworked employees. Teams spin their wheels. They produce results that are miles from what you envisioned, and not in a good way. Teams experience conflict over processes and expectations. There's a lot of frenzy before deadlines. "You're putting a whole lot of work and effort into things and not getting any results," notes Menon.
If that's the case, recognize that more intensive management isn't about not trusting your employees. Indeed, "smart individuals need more management in a sense," says Menon. They'll work hard and fast in any direction they're pointed, so if they're not pointed in the right direction, they'll travel farther from the results you need than a more lackluster team.
Also, it's a fallacy that "great individuals lead to a great team." For evidence, consider the 2004 U.S. men's Olympic basketball team. Despite a roster of stars including LeBron James, Tim Duncan, and Allen Iverson, they finished with a disappointing bronze medal and lost a few embarrassing games.
Instead, the function of a good manager, like a good coach, is to set group norms and structures. "If you get a whole bunch of people in a brainstorming session without ground rules, you get chaos," says Menon, a fact that other research bears out. A hands-on leader can help teams figure out how they will deal with conflict between members, and what they will do if they get stuck. "A leader must be comfortable stepping in and helping the group get through these kinds of crises," she says.
So think of yourself as a coach managing group dynamics. Check in on progress. And to avoid having anyone feel like you're micromanaging, ask for guidance. Good ways to approach staff include: "Where can I give you more clarity?" or "Help me know how I can help you."
The goal is to remember that "collaboration is like a good party," as Menon's coauthor, Leigh Thompson, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, puts it. People show up at the right time, wearing the right thing, and bringing the right things, because the host has established norms. The macromanagement trap involves hoping for the best. With good leadership, on the other hand, you establish an environment where you know people will flourish.
Researchers find that sports reporters often refer to female athletes as "older" and "unmarried" while men are "strong," "big," and "great."
After winning a match at the Australian Open tennis tournament in 2015, Canadian tennis star and Wimbledon runner-up Eugenie Bouchard buried her head in her hands following an unusual request by the male interviewer.
"Can you give us a twirl and tell us about your outfit?" he asked, during the on-court interview.
"A twirl?" repeated the then-seventh world ranking female tennis player, smiling uncomfortably.
"A twirl, like a pirouette, here you go," he said.
In spite of the monumental achievements of individual athletes and female athletics as a whole, the way in which they are presented in the media remains drastically different than the way their male counterparts are portrayed.
That discrepancy is on full display at the Olympics in Rio, and on television sets, radio broadcasts, and web browsers around the world. As the world's top male and female athletes compete side by side, it becomes difficult to ignore how the coverage they receive is anything but equal.
In fact, a recent study by the Cambridge University Press analyzed the language used to describe athletes in the media, and found significant discrepancies.
"Notable terms that cropped up as common word associations or combinations for women, but not men, in sport include 'aged,' 'older,' 'pregnant,' and 'married' or 'unmarried," the report explains. "The top word combinations for men in sport, by contrast, are more likely to be adjectives like 'fastest,' 'strong,' 'big,' 'real,' and 'great'—all words regularly heard to describe male Olympians."
The study concludes that women are more likely to be referred to as "girls" while men are rarely referred to as "boys" by the newscasters tasked with covering their sport.
"When it comes to performance, it seems as though men also have the competitive edge: We see 'men' or 'man' associated with verbs such as 'mastermind,' 'beat,' 'win,' 'dominate,' and 'battle,' whereas 'woman' or 'women' is associated with verbs such as 'compete,' 'participate,' and 'strive," adds the report.
The study analyzed over 160 million words used within the domain of sport in the Cambridge English Corpus, the University's multibillion-word collection of written and spoken English often used to explore how language is used in the modern era.
"The breadth of sources we've analyzed means we're able to give a unique insight into the language used to describe women and men within the context of sport," said Sarah Grieves, a language researcher at Cambridge University Press, in a statement about the study.
"It's perhaps unsurprising to see that women get far less airtime than men, and that their physical appearance and personal lives are frequently mentioned. It will be interesting to see if this trend is also reflected in our upcoming research on language used at the Rio Olympics."
Such subtle gender biases in language are common far beyond the world of sport, and have been identified in arenas ranging from tech-industry recruiting emails to Wikipedia entries. In fact, women are judged on their appearance twice as much as men, both in sport and in business. When it comes to performance reviews, double standards for language abound. Women are often labeled "abrasive," while men rarely if ever hear that word to describe their manner.
Some argue that Hoda Kotb's blatant objectification of Pita Taufatofua—the taekwondo competitor and flag-bearer for Tonga—during NBC's Olympic coverage might have leveled the playing field. However, it's tough to change behaviors when 45% of participants in this year's Games are female, but only 21% of those covering the Rio Olympics are women.
As the study noted:
While some sports may have made strides toward equality, with tennis now offering the same prize money for men and women, research suggests we will be discussing the length of Heather Watson's skirt, rather than her chances of winning the first U.K. women's gold medal in tennis since 1908. Language around women in sport focuses disproportionately on the appearance, clothes, and personal lives of women, highlighting a greater emphasis on aesthetics over athletics.
Related Video: Emmy Winner Katie Nolan Explains What Makes Her Sports Show "Garbage Time" So Special
Bob Messerschmidt sold his company to Steve Jobs and went to work building the Apple Watch in 2010. He saw a lot during his three years at Apple.
Meet Bob Messerschmidt.
Apple quietly acquired Messerschmidt's startup in 2010 (after Messerschmidt sent Steve Jobs an unsolicited email, but that's another story). Afterwards, Messerschmidt was placed on the Apple Watch team, where he led a group charged with architecting new sensor technologies for the device. The heart rate sensors on the Apple Watch we know today are the creation of Messerschmidt and his team. Because health and wellness are perhaps the main use cases for the Watch, Messerschmidt played a central role in the Watch's overall design, and had regular interaction with the vaunted Industrial Design Group led by Jony Ive. Messerschmidt has since gone on to found his own company, Cor (which you'll hear more about below). He agreed to talk to Fast Company about the lessons he learned about design, collaboration, secrecy, the Vision Thing, and the Apple Way during his three years at Apple. This is what he said, in his own words. Only minor edits were made, for clarity and continuity.
I was an architect. I was functioning in the role of developing candidate technologies that could go into such a product. My group and I were the people who saw basically first light of an idea. We would say "we think this is possible." And then it would get deployed into teams of many, many more engineers with specific skill sets. They would try to productize it.
Bob Messerschmidt
A lot of the early ideation of the Watch was, and had to be, about user experience. What are people going to do with this product and what makes it useful? It became the sort of thing where we had to be more creative as technologists because of what we were hearing about the user requirements.
I was responsible for doing the architecture of the heart rate sensors, so these are mine (points to the sensors on the underside of his Watch). It was not trivial to get these to work given the design constraints. That's what's kind of special.
One great example is [when] I went to a meeting and said I'm going to put sensors in the watch but I'm going to put them down here (he points to the underside of the Apple Watch band he's wearing) because I can get a more accurate reading on the bottom of the wrist than I can get on the top of the wrist. They (the Industrial Design group) said very quickly that "that's not the design trend; that's not the fashion trend. We want to have interchangeable bands so we don't want to have any sensors in the band."
Then at the next meeting I would go "we can do it here (on top of the wrist) but it's going to have to be kind of a tight band because we want really good contact between the sensors and the skin." The answer from the design studio would be "No, that's not how people wear watches; they wear them like really floppy on their wrist." That creates a set of requirements that drives you toward new engineering solutions.
That's kind of what we had to do. We had to listen to them. They are the voice of the user. There's the whole field of Industrial Design that focuses on the use case, the user experience.
Engineers left in a vacuum might say "well, that's maybe not so important; we can get a better signal by doing it the other way so let's do it that way." So, left to their own devices, that would be the way the product would end up. So you have to have a really strong voice supporting the user. I think the idea of focusing on that is uniquely Apple. In an optimistic sense you have to say that still exists at Apple. It does.
I'm so proud of my contribution to the heart rate sensor because it's generally discussed as the most accurate sensor that Apple has ever put in a product. It had to be, because you look at the trials and tribulations of a company like Fitbit. Fitbit is great, don't get me wrong, but they are wading through lawsuits right now about the accuracy of the heart rate sensor. They didn't put enough thought into the use cases.
At Apple I learned that design and user experience is everything when it comes to consumer products. It's not so much the technology. It's the design of the product that creates that sense of happiness in the user.
If you look at products like the iPhone or the iPad there aren't too many totally new technologies included in those products. The real elegance and differentiation doesn't have a lot to do with the technology idea itself; it's about the packaging and the value add it gives to people. Those big (new technology) ideas generally happen elsewhere, and they happen earlier.
Virtual reality is a good example. Why hasn't Apple jumped into VR? It's because nobody really knows whether there's really a "there" there. I don't. Apple's interested in products where everybody's going to get some benefit out of it.
Remember all the hype around 3D television? It was going to be the next big thing in how we all view television. We were all going to wear these 3D glasses and there were movies being filmed in 3D. You had to change so much to make that a reality. And it was accompanied by a world of hype, like "This is the new thing happening now, this is the big thing for this Christmas" and all these new movies were going to be coming out, and nothing happened. Nobody bought into it. And Apple's still on the sidelines with that one, just like VR.
Good enough is not good enough. The product has to be right in every dimension otherwise it will fail. I remember at Apple some people kind of misunderstood. Some people learned the wrong lesson. I used to hear at Apple from engineers the distillation they got from Steve Jobs's approach was that you have to pay attention to everything equally. If you have a development plan and there are a thousand different things to worry about some people would say you have to worry about those thousand things equally. That's a complete bastardization of SJ's approach. It's not all equal. It has to be exactly right but there are some things that are more important, and that gravitates toward the user experience and the design aspect. It's basically the process of someone using your product—it has to be delightful. (Although Messerschmidt told me he never heard Jobs use the word "delightful.")
Apple is a little bit different than other companies in the Valley. It can actually be a little frustrating at times because if you're an engineer and you don't get that—that design and product are really what matters, and elegance and beauty—if you're a regular engineer who doesn't get that it can be really frustrating. There are 12,000 engineers working at Apple just in Cupertino, so obviously there's a lot of idea flow. So think about how many of those ideas get translated into products; it's a very low ratio. So a lot of people get frustrated by that. You know: "I have the greatest idea in the world but people keep saying no to me."
That was really the beauty of SJ [Steve Jobs]; it was the ability to say no, unless it was absolutely a blow-the-doors-off, knock-your-socks off product. That's one of the things I learned: Say no until it's just right.
There is really a contingent at Apple that has resorted to the tools of secrecy. SJ wanted secrecy for very specific reasons. He wanted to be able to make the big splash at the product announcement. And that's almost as far as it went. There's definitely a contingent at Apple that wants secrecy because it helps them maintain an empire, in a sense. It helps them create a sense that they're doing more important things that they really are.
If you talk to an engineer at Apple they would say "we make all the decisions and marketing has no power." And "there's really no marketing at Apple," they would say. Then there was this whole building, one of the Infinite Loop buildings, that was full of marketing people. And I thought "that's interesting; I wonder what those guys do." Then I would have meetings with some of the marketing people and they would say "You know it's interesting; we make all the decisions at Apple—the engineers make none of the decisions at Apple."
And you can attribute this to SJ, that he recognized engineers don't get along with marketing people; marketing people don't get along with engineers. They're different mindsets, right? I don't have any evidence of this, but I would like to think that he consciously set up that structure where there was very little interaction between marketing and engineering. Everything went up and back down through the central committee, through the E-team (executive team). So there was a structure that allowed both of them to think they were running the show.
And neither of them were getting listened to at the E-team level. They both had a really low batting average as far as getting ideas heard. And then every once in a while there would be this magic idea and there would be massive resources available instantly.
There were no business units at Apple. There was only one profit center. So what that means is there aren't 10 different people trying to make some number—their revenue number or cost number or whatever the number is. That's totally different (from other tech companies). So nobody has to compete for resources, really, because it's all the same bucket of money.
Engineers were not necessarily too burdened with coming up with budgets. They'd just say what they wanted to do and the answer would come down. It was more modulated by the number of people you were able to add to the team, the head count. You would put in a requisition saying you want to hire five new people and then when the annual budget would come around it would say you're going to get two new people. Or you're going to get 10 new people; it could be even more than you were asking for.
Actually, when you think about a startup, a startup has that same structure. So Apple maybe figured out a way to be a big company but still behave a little bit like a startup. Because you don't have different business units in a startup. Everyone is kind of answering to the same number.
If you went to Harvard Business School and said you're going to operate a company with that much annual revenue with one profit center, they'd say "no, that's not going to work" [laughs]. It flies in the face of what's being taught at business schools, but it does work. It has worked. I believe in the structure. They [Apple] definitely have more turbulent times than they had before, but I believe the structure can allow them to succeed. I don't think the alternative structure would work.
There was an effort to encapsulate what it is that makes Apple Apple. It was after he knew he was going to be going. (Jobs died in 2011 of complications from pancreatic cancer.) There were a lot of people who were trying to distill that down. People were looking to encapsulate those lessons in order to train future executives. To some degree, if I were being cynical today—which maybe I am—I would say most of them missed the point. You want to think you can train people up to think that way, but I think that's the biggest thing they get wrong. It's not teachable.
You may remember that right after he died there was all this stuff about "can Apple go on?" Could anybody have the capacity to do that job (Jobs's)? All I can say at this point is that the jury is still out, but so far I think the signs are kind of pointing to "No." It's definitely not the same place.
Messerschmidt left Apple after three years to start his own company, Cor, which makes a device that draws a tiny bit of the user's blood, analyzes it, and delivers a battery of health information back. The device is now on Indiegogo.
