Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1461

You Might Give a Wrong Answer Just to Demonstrate Your Truthfulness

When research participants were asked to publicly identify words shown on a screen, those whose vision had been blocked nevertheless sometimes disagreed with those who had been able to see the screen–in fact, they disagreed at least 27% of the time, says a team led by Bert H. Hodges of Gordon College and the University of Connecticut. Why did they intentionally make statements that everyone knew to be wrong? Out of a desire to honestly communicate their own ignorance, the researchers say. The findings demonstrate that human interactions aren’t always guided by simplistic parameters such as accuracy or even conformity; sometimes, people make surprising choices in order to convey such internal values as truthfulness.

How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To

There’s that project you’ve left on the backburner – the one with the deadline that’s growing uncomfortably near.  And there’s the client whose phone call you really should return – the one that does nothing but complain and eat up your valuable time.  Wait, weren’t you going to try to go to the gym more often this year?

Can you imagine how much less guilt, stress, and frustration you would feel if you could somehow just make yourself do the things you don’t want to do when you are actually supposed to do them?  Not to mention how much happier and more effective you would be?

The good news (and its very good news) is that you can get better about not putting things off, if you use the right strategy.  Figuring out which strategy to use depends on why you are procrastinating in the first place:

Reason #1   You are putting something off because you are afraid you will screw it up.

Solution:  Adopt a “prevention focus.”

There are two ways to look at any task.  You can do something because you see it as a way to end up better off than you are now – as an achievement or accomplishment.  As in, if I complete this project successfully I will impress my boss, or if I work out regularly I will look amazing. Psychologists call this a promotion focus – and research shows that when you have one, you are motivated by the thought of making gains, and work best when you feel eager and optimistic.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Well, if you are afraid you will screw up on the task in question, this is not the focus for you.  Anxiety and doubt undermine promotion motivation, leaving you less likely to take any action at all.

What you need is a way of looking at what you need to do that isn’t undermined by doubt – ideally, one that thrives on it.  When you have a prevention focus, instead of thinking about how you can end up better off, you see the task as a way to hang on to what you’ve already got – to avoid loss.   For the prevention-focused, successfully completing a project is a way to keep your boss from being angry or thinking less of you.  Working out regularly is a way to not “let yourself go.”  Decades of research, which I describe in my book Focus, shows that prevention motivation is actually enhanced by anxiety about what might go wrong.  When you are focused on avoiding loss, it becomes clear that the only way to get out of danger is to take immediate action.  The more worried you are, the faster you are out of the gate.

I know this doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, particularly if you are usually more the promotion-minded type, but there is probably no better way to get over your anxiety about screwing up than to give some serious thought to all the dire consequences of doing nothing at all.    Go on, scare the pants off yourself.  It feels awful, but it works.

Reason #2     You are putting something off because you don’t “feel” like doing it.

Solution: Make like Spock and ignore your feelings.  They’re getting in your way.

In his excellent book The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman points out that much of the time, when we say things like “I just can’t get out of bed early in the morning, “ or “I just can’t get myself to exercise,” what we really mean is that we can’t get ourselves to feel like doing these things.  After all, no one is tying you to your bed every morning.  Intimidating bouncers aren’t blocking the entrance to your gym.  Physically, nothing is stopping you – you just don’t feel like it.  But as Burkeman asks,  “Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it?”

Think about that for a minute, because it’s really important.  Somewhere along the way, we’ve all bought into the idea – without consciously realizing it – that to be motivated and effective we need to feel like we want to take action.  We need to be eager to do so.  I really don’t know why we believe this, because it is 100% nonsense. Yes, on some level you need to be committed to what you are doing – you need to want to see the project finished, or get healthier, or get an earlier start to your day.  But you don’t need to feel like doing it.

In fact, as Burkeman points out, many of the most prolific artists, writers, and innovators have become so in part because of their reliance on work routines that forced them to put in a certain number of hours a day, no matter how uninspired (or, in many instances, hungover) they might have felt.  Burkeman reminds us of renown artist Chuck Close’s observation that “Inspiration is for amateurs.  The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

So if you are sitting there, putting something off because you don’t feel like it, remember that you don’t actually need to feel like it.  There is nothing stopping you.

Reason #3   You are putting something off because it’s hard, boring, or otherwise unpleasant.

Solution:  Use if-then planning.

Too often, we try to solve this particular problem with sheer will:  Next time, I will make myself start working on this sooner.  Of course, if we actually had the willpower to do that, we would never put it off in the first place.   Studies show that people routinely overestimate their capacity for self-control, and rely on it too often to keep them out of hot water.

Do yourself a favor, and embrace the fact that your willpower is limited, and that it may not always be up to the challenge of getting you to do things you find difficult, tedious, or otherwise awful.  Instead, use if-then planning to get the job done.

Making an if-then plan is more than just deciding what specific steps you need to take to complete a project – it’s also deciding where and when you will take them.

If it is 2pm, then I will stop what I’m doing and start work on the report Bob asked for.

If my boss doesn’t mention my request for a raise at our meeting, then I will bring it up again before the meeting ends.

By deciding in advance exactly what you’re going to do, and when and where you’re going to do it, there’s no deliberating when the time comes.   No do I really have to do this now?, or can this wait till later? or maybe I should do something else instead.   It’s when we deliberate that willpower becomes necessary to make the tough choice.  But if-then plans dramatically reduce the demands placed on your willpower, by ensuring that you’ve made the right decision way ahead of the critical moment. In fact,  if-then planning has been shown in over 200 studies to increase rates of goal attainment and productivity by 200%-300% on average.

I realize that the three strategies I’m offering you – thinking about the consequences of failure, ignoring your feelings, and engaging in detailed planning – don’t sound as fun as advice like “Follow your passion!” or “Stay positive!”  But they have the decided advantage of actually being effective – which, as it happens, is exactly what you’ll be if you use them.

Companies Still Couldn’t Care Less About Climate Change

Not Industry, That's For SureWho Says Industry Is Awakening to Climate Change Threats?Sloan Management Review

Late last month, The New York Times published a piece about businesses finally opening their eyes to the realities of climate change. Don't get too excited, though. It makes sense that Coca-Cola and Nike, the companies featured in the article, would be taking proactive positions: Their value chains are heavily affected by commodity costs and the global economy. But most companies aren't making much headway. The vast majority of respondents in a new Sloan and BCG survey say climate change isn't a significant issue (11%) even though 67% agree that it is real (which is still a pretty sad number in 2014). And of the 27% who acknowledge that climate change is a risk to their businesses, only 9% say their companies are prepared for the risk. How to bump that percentage up? Sloan points to peer pressure and louder calls to action coming from important voices. In the end, "the more quickly industry does awaken to the threats of climate change, the better chance companies will have to prepare." C'mon, companies. 

Pretty in Pink SneakersCan Wendy Davis Have It All?New York Times Magazine

Wendy Davis has been a lot of things — a trailer-dwelling single parent, a Harvard law student, a Forth Worth city councilwoman, a Texas state senator, and a darling of progressives for conducting an 11-hour filibuster (while wearing pink running shoes) against abortion limits. Now, in her drive to become governor of Texas, she’s presenting herself as a modern-day Supermom. Which raises a question: Does every high-profile female politician still have to cover her flank by touting her credentials as an exemplary mother? As writer Robert Draper puts it, “no one ever stopped Clinton, Bush, or Obama in his biographical tracks to say: ‘Wait. If you were out there conquering the world, then you could not have been here, with your family.’” But that’s the kind of objection female politicians run into every day. 

The Supermom tactic isn’t entirely about sexist expectations, however. It’s also a way for Davis to deflect attention from the divisive abortion issue. As a Democrat running for the top job in a Republican state, she’s probably smart to ask voters to focus more on her character and history than on her political views. She knows the Harvard degree will resonate with one segment of voters, and the trailer home will resonate with another. “Political narratives are necessarily reductive,” Draper says. “They tell two conflicting tales at the same time: I’m absolutely amazing and unique, and I’m just like you.” —Andy O'Connell 

Toxic TweetsInside the Brief Life and Untimely Death of Flappy BirdWired

It was just nine months ago that Hanoi resident Dong Nguyen uploaded a new game to the iOS App Store — a simple little thing with the awkward name of Flappy Bird. It became insanely popular, and soon he was earning $50,000 a day from advertising. But, as Ryan Rigney writes in Wired, its very popularity helped bring it down, in a bizarre story of obsession, conspiracy theories, raging tweets, and death threats. Finding the game to be highly frustrating, players took to social media to express their eternal hatred for it and its creator, who was plunged into doubt about the value of what he had made. "I am not sure it is good or not," he tweeted pathetically. This past weekend, he took Flappy Bird off the market. He wants people to leave him alone and stop playing his game. Only in the internet age is success strangely indistinguishable from failure. —Andy O'Connell 

Blank Checks The Rising Cost of Not Going to CollegePew Research Center

Even as the cost of a four-year college degree continues to soar, so does the cost of not having one, a new study from the Pew Research Center suggests. Pew’s nationally representative survey of 2,000 Millennials between the ages of 25 and 32 shows graduates with a BA or higher degree earning an eye-popping 50% more than their counterparts with some college or a two-year degree (the median income of the latter group is only 7% higher than that of holders of just a high school diploma, sad to say). Almost half (46%) of employed Millennial college grads, versus just 31% of those who haven’t gone to college, say their education has been “very useful” in preparing them for their current work and for their future careers. Seven out of 10 of those under-33-year-olds surveyed who’d earned a BA or higher degree report having no college debt. And among the two-thirds who’d borrowed to pay for all that schooling, more than eight in 10 (86%) say their degrees have been worth it, or expect that they will be in the future. —Andrea Ovans 

Make Job Hunting Less Awful The Secret to Shortening Long-Term UnemploymentBloomberg

In America (and elsewhere, really), long-term unemployment is a major problem. There's plenty of debate about how to improve the situation, and it all too often comes down to this question: Do extended unemployment benefits mainly help people stay afloat during a tough time or do they dissuade people from applying for jobs? Although U.S. unemployment benefits come with a requirement to keep searching, the effect of that requirement is uneven. First there's an initial application rush; but for people who can’t find jobs right away, searches lag. Is that because unemployment checks make them too comfortable to go out and search? Hardly — it's because looking for a job is extremely unpleasant and, more often than not, isolating.

Research from a duo of economists found that searching for work ranks "highest on stress and anxiety, and lowest on happiness." And while anxiety can be motivating in certain situations, most people don't especially enjoy indulging in that feeling day after day. So they spend less time on the thing that makes them miserable, and — affected by many other factors related to bias and long-term unemployment — they're less likely to get back to work. 

BONUS BITSWhat I Couldn't Fit Into the Above Section That You Should Make Time to Read

My Baby and AOL's Bottom Line (Slate)
Making the Economic Case for More Than the Minimum Wage (Businessweek)
The Evolution of Understanding How to Get a Job (The Billfold)

Recruit Better Data Analysts

In the big data talent wars, most companies feel they’re losing. Marketing leaders are finding it difficult to acquire the right analytical talent. In the latest CMO Survey, only 3.4% senior marketers believe they have the right talent. Business-to-business companies have a bigger gap than business-to-consumer companies, as do companies with a lower percentage of their sales coming from the internet.  And yet analytic skill is a must for effective marketing.

Results indicate that companies with above-average marketing analytics talent experienced significantly greater rates of marketing return on investment (MROI) than companies with below average analytics talent (+4.18% vs. +2.51%). When it comes to profits, the same pattern emerged—companies that are above average on analytics talent experienced profitability increases of +4.69% compared to companies below average on analytics talent +2.71%. In short, while using any analytical skill truly is better than none, strong analytical skills are measurably better.

So how do you find those people? Given how tight the market for analytical talent is – and how critical it is to a business growth – companies have to adopt different strategies for hiring and keeping people.  Some large companies have taken to acquiring start-ups or developing “research labs” jointly with academic institutions or organizations. But there are a range of tactics companies of any size can use to improve their analyst recruiting.

The first is simply using more specific language. At one top retailer, the analytics team was looking to fill a direct marketing measurement position but was not satisfied with the direct marketing experience in the CVs the recruiting team was sharing with them.  So the analytics and recruiting teams came together to redefine the characteristics of the ideal candidate.   This collaboration led to searching CVs for a more targeted set of keywords (not generic “measurement” skills but advanced “segmentation” and “predictive analytics” capabilities). The new approach led to the discovery of dozens of qualified candidates. Similarly, at General Mills, recruiters looking for senior marketing analytics managers found that using more precise and discerning language cut search times in half.

A second strategy is to use an “always on” approach to recruiting. As John Walthour, Director, Growth Insights & Analytics at General Mills, noted, “We know these positions will continue to be in demand at General Mills and so we no longer wait for a specific position to arise.” Still other employers search constantly in stealth mode for the best talent. For example, Beth Axelrod, SVP of Human Resources for eBay, works with companies such as Gild, which identifies prospective employees on the hard-science side of marketing analytics by examining the quality of their open code.

A third component is beefing up management’s analytical skill. We find that senior executives often don’t have a clear sense of what’s needed from the analysis and, therefore, don’t ask questions that lead to helpful answers. Senior managers need to be educated to understand the basics and be able to ask good questions, such as probing the quality of the statistics being used or asking about how to incorporate new types of data types.

Finally, in order to hire the best analysts, hiring managers may need to recognize that some softer business skills won’t come in the same person. Instead of holding out for the perfect total package, one banking company solved this issue by creating a mixed team of hard-core statisticians and marketers who together mined the data, analyzed the results, and developed marketing campaigns based on those results. After three months, the team was delivering better analytical insights, and both customer activity and revenues were nearly 10 times higher.

Whatever the strategy, however, acquiring the right array of marketing analytics talent is critical to turning big data into a powerful capability for companies.

When a Vacation Reduces Stress — And When It Doesn’t

I thought it was simple: Vacations are fun, Americans are stressed, and happiness raises productivity and sales. Therefore, people should take more vacations, right? But research doesn’t hold that line of thinking up. Not every vacation is equal.

According to a 2013 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the U.S. is the only developed country that does not legally require a single paid vacation day. The government declares holidays for federal employees, but there is no law saying that employers have to pay for “vacation days.” The EU, on the other hand, legally requires 20 paid vacation days as a minimum. France requires 30. If you want to get more jealous, Austria, Belgium, and Denmark actually pay employees more when on vacation to offset the costs of travel. Seriously.

But don’t get too frustrated because, statistically speaking, the average American reading this is not taking all of their vacation days anyway. According to a 2013 Expedia survey, Americans left half a billion vacation days unused last year. That’s four days of vacation per person (a whole week when paired with a holiday) that you could have taken off but chose not to.

Is that a problem? Maybe not. In 2010, the journal of Applied Research in Quality of Life published a study where researchers in the Netherlands found most people were not happier after a vacation. Approximately 1,500 adults were questioned about their happiness before and after travel, and for the average vacation, people reported no change in happiness. Why spend all the time, money, and energy if vacations do not have a return on that investment? Do vacations make us more stressed?

A closer examination of the Netherlands data shows that there is no happiness gain after vacation if there was moderate to high travel-related stress. Stress involved with managing transportation, trying to deal with details while on the trip, unfamiliarity with the location, and lack of feeling safe all contributed to travelers feeling less happy and more stressed, and they had lower energy at work after the average vacation. But not all travel is equal. Could a less stressful trip result in higher happiness and energy at work? Is there a vacation from work that scientifically leads to greater levels of happiness and energy, and lower stress?

In December 2013, I partnered with happiness researcher Michelle Gielan from the Institute of Applied Positive Research to conduct a study based upon a 34-item survey of 414 travelers. From this survey, a clearer picture has emerged about the connection between travel and happiness, and the effect of travel upon stress and energy.

The overarching finding was that taking time off from work can make you happier, healthier, and more productive when you return, but only specific kinds of travel produce these results. Travel does not lower happiness when you return to work — travel stress does. All trips are not alike. We found a statistically significant and strong correlation between happiness and stress on a negative trip (r= -.68). We also found a significant correlation between happiness on the trip and energy at work after a stressful trip (r=-.41).

In other words, most of the happiness gleaned from vacation is dependent upon the stress level of the vacation. Poorly planned and stressful vacations eliminate the positive benefit of time away. The less the stress, the more likely you will experience a positive benefit from the time off. A positive, well-managed vacation can make you happier and less stressed, and you can return with more energy at work and with more meaning in your life.

Positive vacations have a significant effect upon energy and stress. In our study, 94% had as much or more energy after coming back after a good trip. In fact, on low-stress trips, 55% returned to work with even higher levels of energy than before the trip. Here are some key tips to help you create positive vacation.

Focus on the details. In our study, 74% find the most stressful aspect of travel to be figuring out the details: travel uncertainty, transportation, wasting time figure things out on the trip, and being unfamiliar with the location. Instead of suffering, ask for help. Find a good travel agent to plan some of this for you.
Plan more than one month in advance. Ninety percent of our respondents had planned the details more than one month before going on a good trip. For the negative trips, 28% were still figuring out details at the last minute or even on the trip itself. The earlier you plan, the better.
Go far away. An average vacation creates no positive effect on happiness or stress. But 84% of the best trips over the past five years were to locations outside of country. This reconfirms the Twitter study findings that the happiness level of users increased the further the post was geotagged from the user’s home. And 94% found traveling during the vacation to be more meaningful than a “staycation.”
Meet with someone knowledgeable at the location. The biggest stressors on the trip were managing travel details, not feeling safe, and lack of knowledge of the location. On the best trips, 77% knew and met with a local host or had a knowledgeable friend, which was 35% more than on the worst trips. If you don’t know someone personally, companies like Monograms specialize in providing travelers with a local host to ensure that they have social support and local knowledge on the trip to lower stress. 

If happiness is an advantage and we need to find a way to lower stress at work, don’t get tripped up: take a vacation, but do it the right way. Create a positive vacation so you can return recharged, less stressed, and happier.

This is the second post in a blog series on taking control of stress. Shawn Achor is a contributor to the HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work.

Read the other post here:

Post #1: How Couples Can Cope with Professional Stress

Executives’ Biggest Productivity Challenges, Solved

Robert Pozen knows a little something about thriving at the top — he’s the former chairman of MFS Investment Management, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and the author of the book Extreme Productivity. I recently asked him about how demands on executives — and CEOs in particular — have changed over the years, and how today’s leaders can best navigate their busy days. An edited version of our conversation is below.

What are the most pressing productivity issues executives are facing today, and how can they tackle them?

For executives who aren’t part of the C-suite, I think the two most pressing issues are meetings and email. They consume a ridiculous amount of people’s time, and a lot of it isn’t well spent. But they’re both solvable problems.

On email, my suggestions are pretty simple. First, don’t look at it every minute; look at it every hour or two. Second, try to discipline yourself to read only the subject matter in order to discard 50% to 80% of your emails right away. We all get so much spam. Third, practice what I call “OHIO” — Only Handle It Once, immediately deciding what to do with each email. Concentrate on the emails that are important and answer them right away. And don’t put them into some sort of storage system, because by the time you’re ready to finally tackle them, you’ll spend another half an hour trying to find them.

As to meetings, I’ve really been clear in my book about what makes a good meeting. First, you ought to have the materials and agenda sent out in advance. Second, the person who’s presenting the issues should speak for a short amount of time, 10 or 15 minutes, and not consume the whole meeting. Third, you need to have a real discussion and debate. Fourth, you should end the meeting with clear to-do’s — what are the next steps, who’s going to follow through on them, what are the time frames? And fifth, you should end the meeting at the very latest in 90 minutes, and try for 60 minutes.

But there are slightly different issues CEOs and the C-suite are facing, right?

A lot of the critical issues that I see from advising CEOs, and being one myself, stem from how to allocate your time.

There are two classic errors CEOs make. One, they often schedule their whole day up, every hour and every day. I believe you need to leave time — an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon — for thinking, and for things that come up, for emergencies.

And the other error, which is much more fundamental, is that many CEOs are asking themselves the wrong question: since four main functions need to be done, who’s the best at doing them? Many top executives often come up with the same answer in all four areas: Me, me, me, and me. Which leaves them with a lot to do.

But the better question is, what can I and only I as a CEO do? That’s a very different question.

For instance, CEOs might have come from the advertising or marketing side of the company, so they may be very well the best person to put together a new ad campaign, in terms of skill set. But that’s not a good use of their time, because it’s a very delegable task. On the other hand, if a company executive has to meet with a top regulator, the CEO may be the only person that has the clout to get the meeting. Or if someone needs to deal with the board, the CEO may be the only one who can do this effectively.

It is imperative that CEOs make the best use of their time — their scarcest resource. But many CEOs wind up spending huge amounts of time doing things that are really delegable and not enough time on the things that are really critical to being the CEO.

You’ve been analyzing this topic for a long time, both as an academic and as an executive. What big changes have you seen over time?

A lot of the same issues continue to be there; the crucial difference is technology. And technology is both a big positive and a big negative. It’s a big positive in the sense that now you can, as a CEO, use your time very efficiently. That is, you can speak to people by phone from almost anywhere. You can get information instantaneously — CEOs can accomplish a huge amount from the back of the car.

On the other hand, because it’s so easy for people to reach you, it’s hard to have thinking time. And if you let yourself be a person who is giving detailed directions all the time, your reports are going to ask you for directions all the time.

So it’s about setting up boundaries.

Yes. Before a lot of this technology, you could be a little sheltered. Now there aren’t any constraints on the amount of information you can be sent or the number of people who contact you, or where you can go quickly. That’s the negative part of technology. The potential is there for you to go everywhere, try to read everything, and be totally overwhelmed.

What are other coming challenges you see, aside from technology?

Almost all companies have gone global. In the large companies, many derive 50% of the revenues from abroad. And even in smaller companies, they have to export. Doing business globally requires a very different skill set than distributing domestically.

But there are many executives who are very U.S.-centric. They really haven’t spent much time overseas. Being a leader today requires that you have lived overseas, or have spent a lot of time overseas.

So how do you handle the demands of international business travel?

You as the CEO actually have to show up at your high value-added offices around the world. And that takes a lot of time and effort. When I was running Fidelity’s investment arm, we had offices in London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. We also had distribution offices all over the place.

I tried to visit, at least once a quarter, those investment offices because they housed our prized contributors: portfolio managers and analysts. They needed to meet me regularly and have a chance to talk through issues. When you run a global operation, it’s hard to maintain a global esprit and an integrated approach. And the CEO has an important role in leading those.

And what about the relationship with their board?

The nature of corporate boards has changed significantly over the last 20 years. When I joined my first board over a decade ago, a friend called me up and said, “We need an American on our board, would you consider it?”

I said “sure.” He sent me some material on the company and told me that the CEO was coming to town in a few weeks and asked if I would have dinner with them. So this director and the CEO and I had dinner. At the end of the dinner, the CEO asked, “OK, are you ready to join the board?”

By contrast, when I joined the Medtronic board, the lead independent director came to my office and interviewed me first. Next I had to meet with a number of the independent directors on the governance committee, and then, at the end, I saw the CEO. It is probably true that if the CEO really hated me, the board might not have gone forward, but I was 90% on board before seeing the CEO.

Now CEOs have shorter tenures than they used to, and the notion of the imperial CEO is no longer accepted by most directors. They want a much higher level of accountability and a much higher level of transparency. And the CEO who doesn’t realize that has probably made a bad career decision.

With these shorter tenures, how can CEOs deal with the inherent pressures that go along with them?

I believe that being a CEO is a lonely existence, so I think CEOs need personal coaches — preferably somebody who’s been a CEO — to help with overall strategic thinking and also somebody just to talk with about company matters.  A CEO really can’t talk openly to anybody else in the company.

If being a CEO is increasingly lonely, how should CEOs sort of seek and maintain connections with family and friends, especially when they’re so busy?

Families are very important, so CEOs should carefully protect their family time. It’s easy to say, “Oh, I cannot possibly get home on most business days until 10 p.m.” The demands on the time of most CEOs are so great that they easily do that. But I insisted on getting home to eat dinner with my wife and children at 7:00 p.m. and to share two or three hours of quality time.

Family time is critical. If 10 years later your kids are grown up and you haven’t really spent much time with them, there is no way to recapture those years. Moreover, family dinners were healthy mental breaks for me. There were many times when I was struggling with a difficult problem, stopped thinking about it for three hours at dinner, and then suddenly the answer would hit me.

So what should — and shouldn’t — executives do when they get home?

You don’t want to come in the door, and then immediately receive phone calls or answer your email. Before I walk in the door, I will literally sit in my car and finish all my emails and all my phone calls; I won’t walk in the door until I’m out of work mode.

If you come home for dinner, and immediately get a phone call or start checking your email, then you really undermine the notion of “quality family time.” In the end, you will retire from your business, but your family is forever.

Thriving at the Top

An HBR Insight Center




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Why You Spend More Hours at Work When Your Relationship Is Going Well

Do people in bad relationships escape to the relative sanctity of the office and devote more time to work, as has been hypothesized? Just the opposite, says a team led by Dana Unger of the University of Mannheim in Germany. People put more time in at work when their intimate relationships are going well, cutting back in order to invest in their relationships when things aren’t smooth at home, the researchers found in a diary study of 154 dual-earner couples. A healthy relationship at home gives people emotional, cognitive, and physical vigor, which allows them to put in more hours at work.

Four Reasons to Believe in a Second American Century

Despite evidence to the contrary, Americans like to think our nation is about to be eclipsed. When I was a boy, people worried the Soviet Union would bury us. (How’d that work out?) Early in my career, a lot of commentators were sure Japan was on its way to becoming number one. Now it’s China’s turn to pull ahead.

I have nothing against China, or any other country. But overtake the United States? Not for a while. I’ve been watching the global economy for decades, and it seems to me that growth in the United States is about to speed up, while growth in the emerging markets is slowing down.

I make that statement in light of four powerful forces which are at work in the United States and which no other country can duplicate. American creativity remains unsurpassed. Manufacturing is undergoing a renaissance, building on a strong base. New technology has turned the U.S., however improbably, into the world’s largest energy producer. And capital is abundant.

American Creativity

If you doubt the force of America’s creativity, take a walk through the Kendall Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the shadow of MIT, there are dozens of large biotech and life sciences companies, and many dozens of startups. The neighborhood has become one of the most dynamic research centers in the world for the biosciences.

Because of Kendall Square’s concentration of talent, and its infrastructure, Novartis, the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company, moved nearly its entire research center here from Switzerland. When the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi bought Cambridge-based Genzyme, for $17 billion, it made Cambridge the Paris-based company’s most important research hub. These commercial companies are surrounded by academic research centers at MIT and Harvard and by a complex of private, non-profit research centers like the Broad Institute, the McGovern Institute, and many others, all working to transform medicine and extend the frontiers of science.

Other countries would love to have a cluster of research institutions like those located in Cambridge. And the fact is, Cambridge is just one of several such clusters in the United States. There is the Bay Area, encompassing the Universities of California at San Francisco and Berkeley as well as Stanford; the area around San Diego; Research Triangle in North Carolina; the area around Austin and Houston Texas; the I-95 corridor in New Jersey; as well as Seattle and many other areas of the country.

Manufacturing Renaissance

Americans are also fond of telling each other, “we don’t make anything here anymore.” The need to renew manufacturing was a big issue in the Presidential election of 2012. It might surprise you to learn that the United States remains the world’s preeminent producing nation, responsible for about 20 percent of the world’s goods – a little more than China produces.

China leads the world in low-margin electronics assembly, textiles, and some types of machinery; the United States, on the other hand, is a high-end producer. The average person assumes we don’t make anything because we don’t make a lot of what a typical consumer buys. Instead, we make jet turbines, helicopters, sophisticated airliners and business jets, electric generators, radar, chemicals and plastics, satellites, and all kinds of weapons.

Despite years of flat or declining budgets, the United States has retained its lead in space. Private companies like SpaceX are building some of the world’s most sophisticated and efficient rockets (and will resume launching people into space), while Orbital Sciences and the United Launch Alliance retain the lead in satellites.

Evidence abounds that even more manufacturing is coming to the United States. A new wave of it began before the crash in 2008, stopped while the world caught its breath, and is now resuming. The domestic automobile industry is in the midst of upgrading its manufacturing plants, foreign auto companies are expanding in the U.S., and companies like General Electric are making more of their white goods domestically. And what’s behind America’s return to manufacturing? Two things …

An Energy Bonanza       

First, America’s energy bonanza has changed the equation. This makes the United States, for many chemical companies, the preferred place to manufacture. Germany’s BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, has been investing $1 billion a year in the United States to expand its facilities and take advantage of America’s cheap natural gas to use as a feedstock. Dow Chemical is expanding its investment in the U.S. for the same reason.

How cheap is America’s natural gas? Over the past year, it has on average cost around $4 to buy a million BTUs worth of natural gas in the U.S. The same amount of natural gas cost about $14 in Europe, $15 in China, and about $16 in Japan. Not only can natural gas be used as a feedstock for chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, paints, plastics, and cosmetics, in 2013 the Cummins Corp. an engine manufacturer, began building an engine for long-haul trucks optimized to run on natural gas.

America’s energy bonanza is not a short-lived phenomenon. It could be with us for a century, perhaps even longer. As it develops, the U.S. will shift from energy importer to energy independent, then to net energy exporter. As that happens, the trade deficit will fall. Indeed, it could even turn positive.

Abundant Capital

The Great Recession did what recessions tend to do. It shifted debt from the private side of the country’s balance sheet to the public side. The result has been that the government has a lot of debt, while households are in better shape than in decades. Today, households use a smaller share of their incomes to pay off their credit cards, mortgages, and other debts than at any time in the last 35 years. Americans are saving money at very high rates.

While households have been trimming down their debt, the value of people’s savings, investments, and retirement accounts has recovered from the recessionary low. In addition, since falling during the Great Recession, home prices are recovering, too.

Partly as a result of the slowdown, partly as a result of increases in productivity, and partly as a result of renegotiating their debt at highly favorable rates in the aftermath of the downturn, companies are flush with cash. Although estimates vary, American companies have between $4 and $5 trillion in liquid assets, a sum greater than the size of the German economy.

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America’s continued progress will be driven by creativity, manufacturing excellence, abundant energy, and large capital reserves. Whereas some countries might enjoy the effects of one or two of these forces, no country but the U.S. has all four going for them. For the first time since the Great Recession, the economic winds are at our backs.

I’m not suggesting that the U.S. doesn’t have problems. We certainly have our share. What I will say is that we now have resources available to fix those problems. While I’m at it, I’ll also note the good news that Americans are personally healthier than in decades. It’s enough to make you want to believe in a new American Century.

How the U.S. Can Regain its Edge

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the U.S. can remain a global leader only if it addresses issues at home. For more, read his latest book.

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Entrepreneurs Don’t Have an Optimism Bias — You Have a Pessimism Bias

It comes as no surprise that entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch. Research has confirmed as much, suggesting that entrepreneurs suffer from an “optimism bias,” one that is linked to both advantages and disadvantages. Optimism can help entrepreneurs persist in the face of a challenge, but it can also lead them to take imprudent risks.

But what if entrepreneurial optimism isn’t a bias at all — what if entrepreneurs simply hold more accurate beliefs about the world, and it’s the rest of us who suffer from a pessimism bias? That’s the contention of a recent working paper from Lund University in Sweden, which sought to measure optimism not in the context of entrepreneurs’ own businesses, but of the economy in general.

The researchers drew on survey data from 1996 to 2009 asking Swedish citizens whether the Swedish economy had improved from 12 months prior, as well as whether they believed it would improve in the 12 months ahead. Not surprisingly, entrepreneurs — defined as those self-employed — were more optimistic in both cases, and this relationship held even once gender, age, education, and income were accounted for.

To examine whether this amounted to an actual bias, the researchers then compared these answers to changes in GDP to assess the accuracy of respondents’ beliefs. “Entrepreneurs make smaller forecast errors than non-entrepreneurs,” the authors write, a finding that once again held when gender, age, education, and income were taken into account.

The takeaway, the authors write, is this:

In simple terms, our results suggest that entrepreneurs view the future as bright—but they are actually right. Our evidence thereby challenges the prevailing argument that entrepreneurs are irrational in how they form their beliefs about the future. Rather, it is non-entrepreneurs who are more irrational, because their beliefs are overly pessimistic.

It’s worth noting that GDP is only one measure of economic improvement, and so an increase doesn’t necessarily mean that someone who predicted conditions worsening is wrong. (One need only look to diverging GDP and wage data to grasp this point.) Yet, the researchers use two less ambiguous survey questions to verify their findings. Asked whether inflation and unemployment would be higher or lower in a year, entrepreneurs were once again more optimistic than others, and once again as a group made more accurate forecasts. In these cases, however, the effects were far more muted when education and income were taken into account.

Perhaps the biggest contribution of this research is the simple reminder that just because someone is optimistic, that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Though pessimists tend to claim the mantle of “realism” to justify their beliefs, in some cases it’s actually the optimists who deserve the title. There remains evidence that entrepreneurs are unrealistically optimistic when it comes to the fate of their own businesses, but in terms of the economy, their optimism has historically been justified.