February 2024 - on business and addiction, the slow pace of change, and asking better questions
issue #61
Happy Leap Day!
Because it actually takes Earth 365.242190 days to orbit the sun…
Ted Gioia on the state of Culture, 2024:
The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction. Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.
The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
It’s a huge business, and will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok—an aptly named platform for a business based on stimuli that must be repeated after only a few ticks of the clock. (…)
This is more than just the hot trend of 2024. It can last forever—because it’s based on body chemistry, not fashion or aesthetics.
Our brain rewards these brief bursts of distraction. The neurochemical dopamine is released, and this makes us feel good—so we want to repeat the stimulus. (…)
So you need to ditch that simple model of art versus entertainment. And even ‘distraction’ is just a stepping stone toward the real goal nowadays—which is addiction.
Here’s the future cultural food chain—pursued aggressively by tech platforms that now dominate every aspect of our lives.
The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers.
Addiction is the goal.
They don’t say it openly, but they don’t need to. Just look at what they do.
It is an excellent piece of writing. As is most of his Substack.
Rebecca Solnit on slow change:
Someone at the dinner table wanted to know what everyone’s turning point on climate was, which is to say she wanted us to tell a story with a pivotal moment. She wanted sudden; all I had was slow, the story of a journey with many steps, gradual shifts, accumulating knowledge, concern, and commitment. A lot had happened but it had happened in many increments over a few decades, not via one transformative anything.
People love stories of turning points, wake-up calls, sudden conversions, breakthroughs, the stuff about changes that happen in a flash. Movies love them as love at first sight, dramatic speeches that change everything, trouble that can be terminated by shooting one bad guy, and other easy fixes and definitive victories. Old-school radicals love them as the kind of revolution that they imagine will change everything suddenly, even though a change of regime isn’t a change of culture and consciousness.
I think managers like them too. A change, a new plan… We made sure the desired outcome was S.M.A.R.T. so we expect for the change to occur swiftly. Just like the movies in which the story of a lifetime is told in 90 minutes.
But it often doesn’t. Things take time. People implementing the change need time. Time to process, time to understand, time to figure out how to implement, time to implement, time to await the response to implementation —the feedback—, time to respond to the feedback, etc.
I wonder how many initiatives of improvement or change do not yield the outcomes we hope for because we are impatient.
A contrarian take by David Autor - AI will not be a job destroyer:
A recent Gallup poll found that 75% of U.S. adults believe AI will lead to fewer jobs.
But this fear is misplaced.
The industrialized world is awash in jobs, and it’s going to stay that way. Four years after the Covid pandemic’s onset, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen back to its pre-Covid nadir while total employment has risen to nearly three million above its pre-Covid peak. Due to plummeting birth rates and a cratering labor force, a comparable labor shortage is unfolding across the industrialized world (including in China).
This is not a prediction, it’s a demographic fact. All the people who will turn 30 in the year 2053 have already been born and we cannot make more of them. Barring a massive change in immigration policy, the U.S. and other rich countries will run out of workers before we run out of jobs.
It’s about expertise. That is what will be redefined. Well worth reading the whole piece.
Jennifer Ouyang Altman on where better questions come from:1
The goal is to be empty.
Be empty. I recognize “feeling empty on the inside” has a negative connotation, but stay with me for a moment. What would going into a meeting being empty feel like? To me, being empty means releasing preconceived notions of what the answer is, having a relaxed curiosity, swinging freely. To me, being empty means I am NOT forcing an agenda, NOT tense, NOT trying too hard, NOT fixing, saving, or correcting.
What kinds of questions stem from being empty?
Empowering: Truly empowering questions don’t have a solution stuffed in them.
Stuffed question: Do you think we should send an email out?
Empowering question: How does everyone get up to speed about the new process?Expanding: Expanding questions help develop someone’s thinking vs constricting it
Constricting question: Can you do X?
Expanding question: What would it take to X? What would you need to have or eliminate in order to X?Elevating: As a senior leader you have a unique position to help lift your team above the trees and see the forest vs getting stuck in the weeds
Weeds question: How do we backfill this role as quickly as possible?
Elevating question: Is this still the role we need?Questions can have the same INTENTION, yet the IMPACT is miles apart. What might work better than “Why would we do X?” Empty questions like:
What have you explored? How did you choose this path? What do you see the issue is here?
By asking better questions and listening, you’re better equipped to discover attitudes, motivations, world views of the other person. Knowing their values and their feelings will help forge an effective relationship.
We work on improving the quality of questions in all of my programs and workshops. What Jennifer points to here is a disposition that is a prerequisite. And that is something a manager can work and improve.
The folks at First Round Review asked the members of their community for their favorite questions to ask during reference calls. Several things stood out for me:
Calling references provides a gold mine of insights on the candidate when done properly;
How important it is for hiring managers to do those calls themselves (I would file this under “Team creation is way too important to leave it up to HR”);
They organized the answers around different themes: How the candidate stacks up, Probing growth mindset, Role fit, Real-life work scenarios, and the Manager-Report relationship.
Before you go
When was the last time you took the leap? You know, that thing you yearn for. The maybe-tomorrow, when-I-have-more-time, as-soon-as-[blank] thing. Today is Leap Day. Go for it! Take the leap!
See you next month.
Richard
hat tip to Ed Batista.