Stop Googling. Let's Talk.

An NYT article on “what has happened to face-to-face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk.”

Friends at Work? Not So Much

An NYT article on interactions in the workplace.

We may start companies with our friends, but we don’t become friends with our co-workers. “We are not only ‘bowling alone,’ ” Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford, observes, “we are increasingly ‘working alone.’ ”

What will make workplaces less transactional? Research suggests that social events aren’t always effective: People don’t mix much at mixers, and at company parties, they mostly bond with similar colleagues.

Rethinking Work

An NYT article on why 90% of us don’t enjoy work.

One possibility is that it’s just human nature to dislike work. This was the view of Adam Smith, the father of industrial capitalism, who felt that people were naturally lazy and would work only for pay. “It is the interest of every man,” he wrote in 1776 in “The Wealth of Nations,” “to live as much at his ease as he can.”

… the ideas of Adam Smith have become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: They gave rise to a world of work in which his gloomy assumptions about human beings became true. When you take all opportunities for meaning and engagement out of the work that people do, why would they work, except for the wage?

The VP of Devil's Advocacy

A Techcrunch article by MG Siegler where he talks about avoiding group think and the tenth man’s duty to say no.

The Brainstorming Myth

A New Yorker article on the history of brainstorming from 1940s Madison Avenue advertising firms to Steve Jobs planning the layout of Pixar’s new headquarters:

Jobs soon realized that it wasn’t enough simply to create an airy atrium; he needed to force people to go there. He began with the mailboxes, which he shifted to the lobby. Then he moved the meeting rooms to the center of the building, followed by the cafeteria, the coffee bar, and the gift shop. Finally, he decided that the atrium should contain the only set of bathrooms in the entire building … He really believed that the best meetings happened by accident, in the hallway or parking lot.

Chattering Classes

The rules for verbal exchanges are surprisingly enduring.