A Crisis Doesn’t Bring Colleagues Together

A crisis occurs; layoffs ensue. Colleagues are gone. The rest must adapt. But how? Does the shared crisis bring people closer together? Sadly no, new research by Pedro Neves of the New University of Lisbon suggests. Rather, supervisors vent their frustrations by bullying the most vulnerable of the employees in their charge. Data from employee surveys at 12 large to medium-sized Portuguese companies in industries ranging from financial services to construction showed a clear pattern: Individuals with lower self-confidence and fewer coworker allies received more abuse (as indicated by their agreement with assertions like "My supervisor blames me to save himself/herself embarrassment" and "My supervisor tells me my thoughts or feelings are stupid").

What to do? Apart from recommending that organizations hold supervisors more accountable, Neves suggests that the vulnerable take steps to protect themselves by making friends — since it’s the expectation that no one will come to their aid that makes them targets. —Andrea Ovans

Forgetting Is a Virtue The Case for an Absent-Minded Internet The Boston Globe

The human brain is fantastic at forgetting. As The Globe's Leon Neyfakh writes, "scientists have definitively shown that forgetting unnecessary information is a crucial component of learning." What if the internet worked the same way? Neyfakh explores emerging thinking around the idea that, as one researcher put it, "forgetting should be more integrated into digital systems." There are several strong arguments and methods for this. One of the first is from Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, who in 2009 argued that we will eventually live in fear of being judged on everything we've ever done or said. Meg Ambrose, an assistant professor at Georgetown, argues that the courts should handle requests that information be taken down. Intel's David Hoffman proposes a regulatory body for such things. Martin Dodge, a University of Manchester lecturer, says computer memory should be designed to be patchy and gradually lose information. And, finally, researchers in Germany have created ForgetIT, software that looks for "unimportant content" to set aside, condense, or delete — what they call "managed forgetting," in which the software learns what a user deems important.

So Many Layers of Meaning Adding Female Characters to New 'Assassin's Creed' Would 'Double the Work,' says Ubisoft The Verge

Video game companies are no strangers to complaints about a lack of female characters. But the explanation Ubisoft gives in this case is particularly troubling: "Technical director James Therien said female assassins were on the company's feature list until 'not too long ago,' but were cut as a matter of 'focus and production.'" Because the game focuses on a male character, Arno Dorian, he became the "common denominator" when it came to design. "It's not like we could cut our main character," says creative director Alex Amancio, "so the only logical option, the only option we had, was to cut the female avatar." It is, in many ways, a very relevant way of talking about gender at work. No doubt, those creating the game were probably under the gun. But it's worth remembering that what seems at the time like a good management decision can say a lot about how your company views the world and who is at the center of it.

There's an App for That Sore Throat Does Oscar Sound Cooler Than Aetna? New York Magazine

When health care start-up cofounder Joshua Kushner had a sore throat, he didn't call a doctor. Instead, using an iPhone app, he sent a request to his doctor, who called back within 15 minutes and asked him to check to see whether there were white spots on the back of his throat. There were, and the doctor prescribed Amoxicillin. Behold Oscar, the digital-first health insurance company that has 16,000 subscribers and an estimated year-end revenue of $72 million. It features membership cards that arrive in an iPhone-like box, a medical information "Facebook," health provider rankings, and penetrable bill information. It is, as writer Matthew Shaer notes, "a harbinger of health care as it is likely to exist in the era of Obamacare: aggressively marketed, conspicuously consumerist, bristling with 'functionalities' that digital natives understand and appreciate."

Far from wholly celebratory, however, Shaer also explores some of the company's unsettling implications: putting health histories into the cloud, the Silicon Valley ethos of sharing and openness, the possibility that data could be monetized, and the company's cobbled-together foundation.

Step Right Up Tickets for Restaurants Alinea

Eateries can take reservations over the phone, online, or using software like OpenTable. So why would Alinea, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Chicago, turn to an unproven ticketing system called Next? Turns out it was wildly successful — and Nick Kokonas took to his restaurant's blog earlier this month to explain why. One of his big takeaways is that it created a transparent process and built loyalty because most reservation strategies "are predicated on two people lying to each other" about available tables (you know you've been upsold drinks in the bar). The same is true for the online system: How many times have you clicked "make a reservation" only to have a screen pop up that says "there are no tables within 2 hours of your requested time"? With Next, customers see all the tables available from the start, and they can buy tickets based on what's available.

There are many more business lessons in this piece, ranging from pricing best practices and the pluses of creating direct connections between a restaurant and a patron (instead of through third-party software). And Kokonas shares some compelling data, most notably a drastic drop-off in no-shows after Next was implemented.

BONUS BITS Dads

Working Dads Need "Me Time" Too (HBR)
Father's Day Cards Are Out of Touch with the Modern Man (Quartz)
The New Dad: Take Your Leave (Boston College Center for Work & Family)