Market-Based Management®

ZenHabits.com has posted this video as one approach to solving world poverty.  It's very well-done - it inspires, evokes an emotional response and helps show you the way to feeling really good about yourself and the world...  And it's unfortunately very flawed.

There's an old story of a couple of fish swimming through the water past an older fish who says, "howdy boys, how's the water?"  They politely say hello and keep moving on.  After a couple of minutes go by, one says to the other, "what's water?"  In our case (those of us whom are targeted by this video), the water is economic freedom.

If all it took to solve world poverty was money and education, it would have been eradicated eons ago.  Over the past 50 years, over two trillion dollars of aid has effectively been poured into a black hole with the result of many countries being worse off then before. 

I applaud the sentiment behind these kinds of efforts - and the videos are awesome bundles of eye candy and emotion - but think twice before you buy in...  I wish I could figure out how to make videos and marketing campaigns selling economic freedom that were this compelling...  maybe we'd actually make a dent in world poverty...  Can anyone help me?

Your Brain Wants a Scarf??

Yes, according to David Rock, who interviewed several leading Neuroscientists in the process of writing his book Your Brain at Work.  SCARF is the acronym for a model describing the goals our brains crave and constantly monitor in our social environment, activating the reward or threat responses that can drive much of our social behavior:

• Status - our perceived relative importance to others
  
• Certainty - our ability to predict the future
  
• Autonomy - our ability to control events
  
• Relatedness - our sense of safety with others
  
• Fairness - our perception of fair exchanges between people
  

It's an interesting perspective and, although I am certainly not a neuroscientist, there does seem to be some pretty compelling science to back the model up... 

When I am staying mindful (as opposed to mindless - which, unfortunately, seems to be my default tendency) I can use this model now to both monitor myself as well as others in social settings - with the result of tending to have more productive conversations.

If you can't read the book, which covers many other topics relating to how to improve your performance by understanding how your brain works, you might at least click on the links above and scan the articles to get a sense of this useful model.

Hayek, the Knowledge Problem and why socialism can't work.

Here is Friedrich Hayek in a 3.5 minute interview talking about the impossibility of socialism.  My favorite line: "Profit is the signal which tells us what we must do in order to serve people whom we do not know."

Knowing what v. Knowing why...

Brett Simmons asks: "Are you a spoon-fed leader?" 

What does this mean to you?  I am interested in your thoughts - please use the comment section!

"As soon as everything is important, nothing is important."

That's a quote from a GM manager in a very interesting New York Times article you might want to check out.

According to those quoted in the article, prior to bankruptcy, GM was paralyzed by bureaucracy.  No shock there...

What I found instructive were the anecdotes giving insight into the day-to-day management practices.  One manager says that his binder full of job expectations has now been replaced with a one-page set of goals.  Performance reviews used to be book-length and have since been reduced to a page.  A budget mind-set made any request for dynamic adjustments to plans in the face of unanticipated information or events a career limiting move and encouraged all kinds of other unhealthy behaviors. 

It seems there is a now an attempt to move away from prescriptive, detailed rules to an approach that emphasizes the more general - goals, values, results, norms of behavior, conditions - necessary for success and to start holding employees accountable to those, allowing them more freedom to determine the particulars.  If that is true, it's a good start.

Maybe they are reading The Science of Success?  If so, let's hope they keep reading.