Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for November 2022

Are Layoffs Your Best Strategy Now?

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We’re in a demand slump; if you think downsizing will cut costs and shore up the bottom line, consider the unexpected consequences of layoffs.

Hefty severance pay, outplacement services, and other direct costs can add up quickly, and indirect costs can be substantial. E.g., losing experienced employees can precipitate lasting damage to your business. The direct costs can wipe out any short-term financial benefit if new hard-to-find employees are to be hired and trained within six to twelve months when the downtrend stops.

Then there’s the trap of believing that things will get better soon and downsizing the smallest number of people in anticipation of a quick turnaround. And when that expected miracle doesn’t materialize, you’ll wind up making successive cuts. That’s awful for the morale of the employees spared. The best employees won’t feel indebted to soldier on and may start casting around for new offers, terrified that they will be among the next to be cut.

Idea for Impact: Layoffs may not be the best strategy for grappling with hard times. Examine not just the cost of labor but also the value created by labor. Consider the trade-offs and try furloughs, pay cuts, job sharing, and scaled-down hours instead, depending on when you foresee business rebounding. You’ll spread the pain of the downturn more broadly, keep talented employees, earn loyalty, and better position your company for recovery.

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Inspirational Quotations #973

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The essential ingredient in politics is timing.
—Pierre Trudeau (Canadian Statesman)

I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that’s not really there.
—Donna Tartt (American Novelist)

An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.
—Theophrastus (Greek Philosopher)

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
—Anne Bradstreet (American Poet)

I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity.
—Elfriede Jelinek (Austrian Author)

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.
—Matsuo Basho (Japanese Poet)

If one benefits tangibly from the exploitation of others who are weak, is one morally implicated in their predicament? Or are basic rights of human existence confined to the civilized societies that are wealthy enough to afford them? Our values are defined by what we will tolerate when it is done to others.
—William Greider (American Journalist)

Good men prefer to be accountable.
—Michael Edwardes (British Business Executive)

It is at night that faith in light is admirable.
—Edmond Rostand (French Dramatist)

It is necessary to relax your muscles when you can. Relaxing your brain is fatal.
—Stirling Moss (English Motor-Racing Driver)

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
—Mikhail Bakunin (Russian Anarchist)

Pray to God, at the beginning of all thy works, that so thou mayest bring them all to a good ending.
—Xenophon (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row.
—Alice Paul (American Suffragist)

You can either grow old gracefully or begrudgingly. I chose both.
—Roger Moore (English Actor)

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.
—Elizabeth Murray (American Artist)

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the beginnings of the great mother life, the sea.
—Rachel Carson (American Biologist)

No Need to Send a Thank-you Card for a Thank-you Card

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As a rule of thumb, feel free to send a thank-you note whenever the impulse strikes you. But a thank-you card (or a thank-you gift) sent to you is already a token of appreciation, so putting in yet more effort into thanking somebody for thanking you is purposeless, irritating even. It’s kind of morally superfluous.

Now, failing to acknowledge a thank-you note is a universal annoyance. By all means, you can text them, “Got your note. I’m glad you had a good time,” or inform them the next time you run into them in the hallway. However, no need to perpetuate a recursion of thank-you notes.

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How to … Avoid Family Fights About Politics Over the Holidays

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The simplest and most pleasant thing to do is just to agree not to talk politics. There’s no need to stoke the flames, especially if you know these conversations are likely to teeter on the edge of discomfort and may end up hurting people’s feelings. In today’s particularly charged political climate, even trivial differences in opinion have the potential to turn into a nasty fight. If members of your family can’t deliberate charged topics without losing calm, then stay out of debates. Talk to the key players—the strong personalities—beforehand and request them to tone it down for the evening. Have conversation starters and activities at the ready.

Don’t expect to change minds. Sure, they’re your blood, and you love them, but it ain’t your responsibility to make them understand how wrong they are. Political judgments are value-based, and these values are very hard to change. People have contempt for ideas that they disagree with, and, when presented with information that goes against their beliefs, some people not only snub their challengers but also double down on their original viewpoints (“the backfire effect.”)

Idea for Impact: Bringing together family and friends with different political views can make holiday gatherings painful. Just be realistic about getting past opposing viewpoints and keeping the peace this holiday season.

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Inspirational Quotations #972

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The richest man in the world is not the one who still has the first dollar he ever earned. It’s the man who still has his best friend.
—Martha Mason (American Memoirist)

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.
—John Major (British Head of State)

Nothing is impossible for those who act after wise counsel and careful thought.
—The Thirukkural (Indian Tamil Literary Classic)

Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.
—Dorothy Day (American Journalist Reformer)

It’s afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn’t necessarily prove that you loved him.
—Marguerite Duras (French Novelist, Playwright)

So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.
—Baha’u’llah (Persian Religious Leader)

Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one’s provisional consent.
—Stephen Jay Gould (American Paleontologist)

Constancy is the complement of all other human virtues.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Revolutionary)

I could prove God statistically.
—George Gallup (American Statistician)

Life flows on within you and without you.
—George Harrison (English Singer)

Intuition isn’t mystical.
—James D. Watson (American Biologist)

Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It’s become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.
—Malcolm Mclaren (British Impresario, Musician)

Thou shalt not get found out is not one of God’s commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.
—Leonard Bacon (American Preacher, Writer)

Half uttered praise is to the curious mind, as to the eye half veiled beauty is more precious than the whole.
—Joanna Baillie (Scottish Dramatist, Poet)

Life is a means of extracting fiction.
—Robert Stone (American Novelist)

Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.
—Karel Capek (Czech Novelist)

And the Theranos Board Walks Away Scot-Free

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Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes has finally been sentenced to over 11 years in prison. Too bad our corporate law is too narrow to attribute some criminal liability to the company’s board of directors. Such luminaries as former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, Marine Corps General James Mattis, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, once famously portrayed as “the single most accomplished board in U.S. corporate history,” should be partly culpable for Holmes’s malfeasance.

When Holmes explained away her underlying technology as “a chemistry performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel,” all the board had to do was demand, “Show me.” Determining how a device or service works—exists even—as purported, is the essential obligation of a board member. A truly engaged overseer may have preserved $945 million in investors’ capital and kept a naïve, immoral, and feckless entrepreneur from bullying the press, intimidating her employees, and gambling with the patients’ lives. (Read WSJ reporter John Carreyrou’s excellent chronicle, Bad Blood (2018; my summary.))

The board individually and collectively failed in their responsibilities as trustees of investors’ interests. Undoubtedly drafted as trophy directors to reinforce the company’s standing such as it was, not for any knowledge of blood testing, they now walk away with nothing more than a blot on their illustrated careers.

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At the End of Every Meeting, Grade It

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After steering a consensus at the end of every meeting, allow two minutes to grade it.

Have the meeting’s chairperson go around the table and ask every attendee to give the session a letter grade. If someone doesn’t characterize it as an A, ask them to pinpoint what would have made it an A.

Through this initiative, your team can recognize the factors that influence the success of your meetings. The attendees are responsible for making future meetings an A and cutting barriers to achieving your organization’s objectives.

Few managers do this, but it’s a game changer. Close every meeting on a tone of achievement.

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Change Your Mindset by Taking Action

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While it is helpful to be motivated and get into the right mindset to, say, exercise, it’s far easier to just show up at the gym and get started on a small quest, even when you don’t really feel like doing it. You’re likely to habituate to new behaviors in a way that circumvents your innate resistance to change.

Minor adjustments can add up and make a big difference. As Harvard psychologist Susan David writes in Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life (2016,)

Traditional self-help tends to see change in terms of lofty goals and total transformation, but research actually supports the opposite view—that small, deliberate tweaks infused with your values can make a huge difference in your life. This is especially true when we tweak the routine and habitual parts of life, which then afford tremendous leverage for change.

Idea for Impact: Waiting for the right mindset to “show up” can be a losing strategy. Taking action is often easier than controlling your mental state. Don’t overly focus on the very thing that’s harder to control. Take the next baby step forward.

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Risk More, Risk Earlier

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Some of the best careers are crafted by those who use their initial working years to gain diversified on-the-job business education.

The compounding returns of vetting opportunities wisely and taking sensible risks are particularly valuable today. Business is more complex than ever, and competition for top positions is intense.

Idea for Impact: Take on as much risk as possible early in your career. You may have less to lose than you think—and a great deal to gain. Your older self will not have the energy, time, autonomy, or temperament that you contentedly have now. Plus, you’ll have more time to make up for mistakes.

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Books in Brief: “Hell Yeah or No” Mental Model

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American entrepreneur and blogger Derek Sivers popularized the “Hell Yeah or No” mental model (YouTube Synopsis): unless you’re super excited about something, don’t commit to it.

If you’re ready to say ‘yes’ to the things that aren’t that great, you won’t have time, energy, and focus for the “hell yeah” stuff in your life. Sivers has summed up,

We tend to say yes to too many things. And because of this, we’re spread too thin. We’re so busy doing average things that we don’t have time for the occasional great thing.

So instead I propose raising the bar as high as you can, so that if you’re feeling anything less than, “oh, hell yeah, that would be amazing,” then just say, no.

By doing this, you will miss out on many good things, but that’s okay because your time will be quite empty. So then by saying no to the merely good things, you’ll have the time and the energy and the space in your life to throw yourself in entirely when that occasional great thing comes up.

Recommendation: Read this insight-dense book. The “Hell Yeah or No” mental model will reframe how you control impulses and consider life’s big decisions.

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