Working Thoughts: Recent Comments

Comment on "EL GRANDE BIGOTE" Victory

Katie Bisbee — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:08:34 GMT

Love this post! I'm so proud of my hubby Mike and of all of the Mustache Growers and Mustache sponsors this year. AWESOME impact on local public school classrooms... http://www.tinyurl.com/CLTstache

Comment on Take a Moment and Ask "What Story Would I Tell about Myself?"

hr21Chloe — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:11:58 GMT

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Comment on Using a Multiple as a Compensation Distribution Model

Ben Leeson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:40:38 GMT

I appreciate comments like this because it's a healthy level of skepticism.

Would having a multiple be potentially easy to circumvent? Sure, but what compensation policy isn't? There are many benefits to installing a multiple system, but the main one is cultural. By making the lower level workers directly benefit from increased profit you motivate them to speak up more, thus eliminating the positive feedback loop (yes men).

Another benefit is stunting the growing divide between the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Having a strong middle class is vital to the US.

Comment on Using a Multiple as a Compensation Distribution Model

Joseph A Brown — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:48:25 GMT

I'm sorry, this won't solve the problem. It's too easy to circumvent (by, for example, spinning off the support staff into a separate company), and in any case it does nothing to prevent the whole organization from reaping excess profit. (See for example the salaries paid to Bernie Madoff's minions...)

Comment on Motivation, Dan Pink, and TED

Lydia Hirt — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:32:08 GMT

Hi Ben:

Thanks for posting Pink's video - we’re also inspired and motivated by the work and appreciate your interest in the man behind the groundbreaking bestseller, A WHOLE NEW MIND. I’m excited to remind you that December 29 marks the release of Pink’s latest book, DRIVE. I've pasted a quick synopsis below, but if you'd be interested in an advance reading copy for review consideration please email me!

Bursting with big ideas, DRIVE is the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:

*Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives
*Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

We hope Daniel Pink’s DRIVE will open your eyes and change the way you think in 2010!

Please visit www.danpink.com and www.riverheadbooks.com for additional details.

Best,
Lydia

Comment on Ten Years and Basically No Private Sector Job Creation

Robert Eastman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:09:51 GMT

Ben, interesting post that raises some interesting questions. I enjoyed in particular your reference to Pres. Kennedy pledging to put a man on the moon.

On February 8, 2009, I sent Pres. Obama this message:
"Please, Mr. President, be bold. Forty eight years ago President Kennedy made a bold challenge to the nation to put a man on the moon within 10 years. President Kennedy did not know how or whether it could be done, but he galvanized the attention of America. Today’s crisis demands nothing less! You made us believe “Yes, we can”. 'Saving or creating' 3 million jobs is not bold enough. Challenge the CEA, Congress and us to find a way to create 6 million new jobs. Respectfully, Robert Eastman

I think we will regret for awhile that we are not committing ourselves to creating jobs. President Obama referred several months ago to creating 'not just any jobs, but jobs that America needs'. If I am not mistaken, I think I heard President Obama say the other day that we will not consider the recession until the job losses level off...

This tells me that President Obama is not so much concerned with creating new jobs as he is with creating a new capitalism. Only time will tell.

Comment on Ten Years and Basically No Private Sector Job Creation

AZK Sanders — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:22:13 GMT

It should have been obvious to those promoting world trade ("globalization" that there would be consequences from our having to compete with people who earn 50 cents an hour when we pay $50 an hour (rough total cost including all fringes at GM) for jobs that can be learned in an hour or two (no previous education required).

It's not that I'm against globalization; it's just that we didn't prepare for it.

So it's not surprising that we're not creating new jobs.

Worse, almost all the jobs we are creating don't result in exports to pay for our imports. They merely satisfy domestic consumption one way or another-whether short-term like legal to settle disputes or better medical care or long-term like better housing. The result is ever-increasing debt owed to foreigners. This is not sustainable. Eventually our currency must deteriorate and the whole arrangement halt.

It is not obvious where we have an advantage in exports except in food. Or maybe high-technology (except that the dissemination of information is also part of globalization so others have become as good at hi-tech as we).

However, if we can't increase exports, we can reduce imports. The most obvious candidate is fossil fuel. Depending on the likely price of oil, imports can cost us anywhere from several hundred billion to a trillion dollars yearly. And, to get back to employment, perhaps millions of jobs were we generate this energy domestically from solar sources.

Already, because of progressive California laws, their utilities have signed contracts for several gigawatts of electric power--an enormous amount (the largest generating stations of any type are no more than about one gigawatt each). These are called tower-solar-thermal and involve thousands of mirrors aimed at a water boiler atop a tower that raises high-pressure, high-temperature steam to spin a turbine.

The job-creation will be magnified by the need for reinforcement of the electricity transmission network and eventual replacement of the current car fleet with plug-in electric cars like the forthcoming GM-Volt.

Additional benefits will be pollution reduction and mitigation of global-warming. Also an end to dependence on unreliable, even hostile, foreign sources of oil. Oil which is an increasingly scarce, increasingly expensive commodity.

So an electric economy offers many advantages besides the primary goal of job creation.

Comment on Is the Middle Class Gone?

HoosierJude — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:56:38 GMT

AMEN!

Comment on Is the Middle Class Gone?

HoosierJude — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:54:51 GMT

No one with any power or leverage cares.
The people that used to be middle class sure care!

Comment on The Impact of a Good Story is Greater than the Effort to Tell It

HoosierJude — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:45:41 GMT

Or, change the emphasis of your stories.
His first story implied a company that didn't CARE about its employees. Your suggestion showed that the emphasis on the work and not the worker was part of what made turnover so high.
Honestly, who WOULD make sacrifices for a company that treats you like crap?