2010-07-29T14:37:42Z

Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren't

With innovation, entrepreneurship and significantly smarter fiscal policies, America should eventually escape its "hireless recovery." But what won't hasten new hiring — and might even dampen job prospects — is the mythical belief that higher education invariably leads to higher employment and better jobs. It doesn't. Foolish New York Times stories notwithstanding, education is a misleading-to-malignant proxy for economic productivity or performance. Knowledge may be power, but "knowledge from college" is neither predictor nor guarantor of success. Growing numbers of informed observers increasingly describe a higher education "bubble" that makes a college and/or university education a subprime investment for too many attendees.

Are they right? I don't know. But painfully clear to many employers are serious gaps between elite educational credentials and actual individual competence. College transcripts spackled with As and Bs — particularly from liberal arts and humanities programs — reveal less about a candidate's capabilities than most serious employers need to know. Even top-tier MBA degrees often say more about the desire to have an important credential than about any greater capacity to be a good leader or manager. The curricular formalities of higher education — as opposed to its informal networks of friends and connections — may be less valuable now than they were a decade ago. In other words, alumni networks may be more economically valuable than whatever one studied in class. "Where you went" may prove professionally more helpful than "what you know." That certainly undermines "value of education" arguments. While higher education itself isn't marginal or unimportant, its actual market impact on employment prospects may be wildly misunderstood. In "Econ 101" terms for job-hunters: time spent cultivating your Facebook/Linked-In network(s) may be a better investment than taking that Finance elective.

Eduzealots have done a truly awful thing to serious human capital conversations and analyses around employment. By vociferously championing higher education as key to economic success, they've distorted important public policy debates about how and why people get hired and paid well. They've undermined useful arguments about "street smarts" versus "book smarts." Treating education as the best proxy for human capital is like using patents as your proxy for measuring innovation — its underlying logic shouldn't obscure the fact that you'll underweigh market leaders like WalMart, Google, Tata and Toyota. Dare I point out that Microsoft's Bill Gates, Dell's Michael Dell, Apple's Steve Jobs, Oracle's Larry Ellison and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg are all college drop-outs? The point isn't to declare a college degree antithetical to launching a high-tech juggernaut but to observe that, perhaps, higher education isn't essential to effective entrepreneurship.

We have a huge branding issue. Pundits and policy-makers jabber about the need to educate people to compete in knowledge-intensive industries. But knowledge doesn't represent even half the intensity of this industrial challenge. What really matters are skills. The grievously undervalued human capital issue here isn't quality education in school but quality of skills in markets. Establishing correlations, let alone causality, between them is hard. (Michael Polanyi's classic "Personal Knowledge" brilliantly articulates this.) A computer science PhD doesn't make one a good programmer. There is a world of difference between getting an "A" in robotics class and winning a "bot" competition. MIT's motto isn't Mens et Manus (Latin for Mind and Hand) by accident. Great knowledge is not the same as great skill. Worse yet, decent knowledge doesn't guarantee even decent skills. Unfortunately, educrats and eduzealots behave as if college English degrees mean their recipients can write and that philosophy degrees mean their holders can rigorously think. That's not true. Feel free to comment below if you disagree....

As Atkinson's anecdotes affirm, there's no shortage of "well- educated" college graduates who can't write intelligible synopses or manage simple spreadsheets. I know doctoral candidates in statistics and operations research who find adapting their superb technical expertise to messy, real-world problem solving extraordinarily difficult. Their great knowledge doesn't confer great skill. Nevertheless, you would find their research and their resumes impressive. You should. But focusing on their formal educational accomplishments misrepresents their skill set outside the academy. Academic and classroom markets are profoundly different than business and workplace markets. Why should anyone be surprised that serious knowledge/skill gaps dominate those differences?

Higher education institutions do decently with knowledge transmission. Unfortunately, they do dismally transmitting skills. Pun intended, that's — apparently — not their job. That's also why "human capital" debates and investment policies going forward should weight skills over knowledge. When I look at who is getting hired, purported knowledge almost always matters less than demonstrable skills. The distinctions aren't subtle; they're immense. How do they manifest themselves? These hires don't have resumes highlighting educational pedigrees and accomplishments; their resumes emphasize their skill sets. Instead of listing aspirations and achievements, these resumes present portfolios around performance. They link to blogs, published articles, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts and webinars the candidates produced. The traditional two-page resume has been turned into a "personal productivity portal" that empowers prospective employers to quite literally interact with their candidate's work.

Unsurprisingly, this simultaneously complements and reinforces the employer-side due diligence that's emerged during this recession: firms have both the luxury and necessity to find the best possible candidates for open positions. Yes, they're looking for appropriate levels of educational accomplishment but, really, what they most want are people who have the skills they need. More importantly, they want to actually see those skills — be they written, computed, designed and/or presented. Professional services firms I know now don't hesitate to ask a serious candidate to demonstrate their sincerity and skills by asking them to show how they might "adapt" a presentation for one of the company's own clients. Verbal fluency and presence impresses headhunters and interviewers. But the ability to virtually demonstrate one's professional skills increasingly matters more.

This is part of the vast structural shift in the human capital marketplace worldwide. Firms have the ability and incentive to be far more selective in their hires. But project managers and professionals also have the bandwidth and desire to showcase their skills. The resume is rapidly mutating away from a documentary string of alphanumeric text into a multimedia platform that projects precisely the brand image and substance a job candidate seeks to convey. Did they teach you that in college or grad school? Of course not. Will you learn that by hanging around LinkedIn or Facebook? Probably not.

Is this how human capital markets will become more efficient and effective tomorrow? Absolutely. You've got to have skill to show off your knowledge.

2010-07-29T13:54:16Z

Bouncing Back from a Negative 360-Degree Review

Unlike traditional reviews and other types of feedback, 360-degree reviews include input from a comprehensive set of people: peers, managers, direct reports, and sometimes customers. One of the most valuable aspects of this tool is that the opinions are voiced anonymously, which encourages a higher level of honesty than you might normally get. However, the truth is not always pretty, and receiving a negative 360-degree review can be upsetting, especially when the opinions are echoed at many levels. But with the right attitude, you can still create a positive experience. How you handle a bad 360-degree review is far more important than the content of the review itself.

What the Experts Say
Before you begin the 360-degree review process, it's important to have an open mindset. Remember that no one is perfect and every manager, no matter how seasoned, has room to improve. "The best leaders aren't those who don't have a lowest score on a 360. The best leaders have standout strengths," says Susan David, co-director of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching, founding director of Evidence Based Psychology LLC, and a contributor to HBR's The Conversation blog. It's your job to figure out what to do about those low scores. Larissa Tiedens, the Jonathan B. Lovelace Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Business School and co-editor of The Social Life of Emotions agrees. "Being reflective and changing after a negative review is often more impressive than getting positive reviews from the start. Thus, a negative review is an opportunity to show that you can listen and learn," she says. Here are several principles to follow if you receive a less than stellar 360-degree review.

Reflect before reacting
After you receive the feedback, let the results sink in before you do anything. "Sometimes people want to respond too quickly before they have sufficiently reflected upon it," says Tiedens. Try not to be defensive. "Receiving feedback can bring our most vulnerable and self-critical parts to the fore," says David. Counter this instinct by asking questions and being sympathetic with yourself and those who gave feedback. "The stance that is most helpful in receiving feedback is when you consciously try to draw on your curious and compassionate parts — those aspects of you that genuinely want to learn, hear, and understand," says David. Once you've taken time to process it, ask yourself whether the feedback rings true. Does it echo what you've heard in past reviews or from other people in your life, including those outside of work? Sometimes it can be helpful to talk with a colleague, your manager, or a mentor and get an additional perspective from someone you trust.

Avoid a witch hunt
While 360-degree reviews are intended to be anonymous, it is sometimes easy to tell who said what from the comments. It may be difficult to resist doing this type of deciphering, however, you should resist the temptation to reach out to your reviewers and address their input. "Typically, the respondents provide their feedback with the understanding that they won't be sought out to discuss their individual comments, so you risk harming the process and the general level of trust if you try to discover the individual source," says Tiedens. Rusty O'Kelley, a partner at Heidrick & Struggle's Board Consulting and Leadership Consulting Practices who has conducted hundreds of 360-degree reviews as part of his work on CEO succession planning and transition management, echoes this point. "It's important to protect the people who gave you feedback so that they can be honest. Where 360s often fail is when people are diplomatic instead of straightforward," he says.

Decide what to respond to
Remember that the review is made up of opinions. This means you don't have to react to everything. A 360-degree review is different from a formal review by your boss in that you aren't obligated to address the feedback. Instead, be selective about what you are going to change. Responding to every piece of feedback would be a colossal waste of time. "Just as you wouldn't rush out and replace your car because someone didn't approve of it, it isn't necessary to rush out and try to change yourself and doctor your personality or behavior because of a piece of negative feedback on a 360," says David. Instead, she suggests that leaders use three criteria to decide when to attend to a low score:

1. Is this a consistent problem? Has it come up in previous reviews and from different raters?
2. Is the problem a fatal leadership flaw? Does it point to lack of integrity, authenticity, or honesty?
3. Is it incongruent with your values? Does it conflict with the type of leader you want to be? "Your values are your anchor and they should inform the leadership principles that you try to live up to," she says.

Many 360-degree review tools cluster feedback according to its source, whether it comes from direct reports, peers, customers, etc. Take note of what level the feedback is coming from. "In some ways, it is even more important to be responsive to what you hear from those lower in the hierarchy," says Tiedens. "Subordinates took a bigger risk in raising these issues and have fewer avenues to discuss them with you, which suggests that these things are really bugging them and may mean they are even more confident of their views."

Commit to change
When making a plan to change, focus on the future. Don't start immediately altering things that will make you feel better now. Often this won't help you achieve your goals in the long term. "While the pull of bad is stronger than good, if you are choosing an area to develop you might be better served by attending to an average score rather than your lowest score," says David. It is unlikely, even with a great degree of work, that you will be able to move a low score to an off-the-chart strength. "Think about concrete behaviors you can engage in that would be responsive to negative feedback," says Tiedens. David suggests creating mini-experiments where you choose one or two focus areas and create opportunities to try out a new behavior or way of being. Ask yourself: What's the smallest thing I can do that will make the biggest difference? Then, once you've done that small thing, assess how it went. "Start developing proof points that show it will work," says David. This is the foundation for change.

Talk with your manager or team
"The instinct is to hide and not talk about it, but since everyone participated, they are anticipating that some things will change," says O'Kelley. Talk with your team and share an overview of the feedback you received. "You don't need to give them every data point, but a general characterization of what the feedback said, both positive and negative, can be very useful for your team to hear," says Tiedens. Make a commitment to your team or your manager as to what you are going to change and how. To keep you focused and to include them in the process, invite them to call you out when you aren't living up to your promises.

How to handle outliers
Sometimes it's clear from your 360-degree review that only one or two people had a certain negative opinion. Instead of completely dismissing that feedback, it's important to reflect on it. It's possible that others agree with the feedback but were afraid to express it in the assessment. If you have an outlier critique, do more research and try to assess whether it holds any truth. Then apply David's three criteria from above to decide whether it deserves a reaction.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Remember that feedback — positive or negative — is an opportunity to see your leadership in new light
• Ask yourself what the value of changing a behavior is before you spend time and energy on it
• Commit to what you're going to change and how with your team or manager

Don't:

• Try to seek out your detractors for more information
• Attempt to change every negative behavior — be discerning about which ones to focus on
• Instinctively focus on the negative — most reviews contain both good and bad feedback

Case Study #1: Deciding when not to react
When Aimee Fieldston's* small strategy firm was acquired by one of the big consulting companies, she received a much-deserved promotion to partner. About six months into her tenure, she was offered coaching and a 360-degree review as part of a development program for new partners. When she met with the coach before the review, she asked that he interview specific people. Aimee knew she had many fans in the organization but she was more curious to hear from some of her new peers and potential detractors.

The feedback report was primarily positive but included some useful areas of development around building a more commercial approach and developing a stronger team. The review also included some harsh feedback about Aimee as a person, indicating that some of her reviewers thought she had an irritating style. The coach noted that this was something he heard from a very small number of people. Aimee was taken aback as these were criticisms she hadn't heard before. "It just wasn't aligned with my sense of who I am," she said. She was upset but rather than reacting right away, she took the time to reflect on it and consulted a more senior partner who had given her some frank, career-changing advice in the past. He agreed that the feedback didn't resonate and asked her to think about whether there was any truth in it. If there wasn't, he advised her to let it go. "Feedback sometimes is a gift that comes with a gift receipt," he said.

Not responding was hard for Aimee. "I believe in feedback and I believed in this process," she said. Ultimately, she chose to work on the things in the report that had ringed true for her.

*Name has been changed

Case Study #2: Listening to your team
In 2004, Torrey Cady, a Battery Commander, was mid-way through a tour in Iraq. In accordance with the Army's culture of feedback and continual improvement, Torrey decided that the tour midpoint was a good time to take the temperature of his roughly 100-person organization. Torrey had been in service for almost 20 years and had done several Command Climate Surveys (CCS). The CCS, the Army's version of a 360-degree review, surveys all soldiers in a unit on issues of morale, leadership, and performance.

The results of Torrey's CCS surprised him. His soldiers indicated that they thought he was unapproachable and was too busy speaking with Iraqi mayors and sheiks to spend enough time with them. This negative feedback was especially difficult for Torrey. "One of the strengths I thought I had, because I came up through the ranks, was being approachable, easy to talk to, and down to earth," he said.

While his initial reaction was shock and disbelief, when he read the comments, he understood more about what was going on. Every day Torrey and his men went out on patrol so that Torrey could meet with an Iraqi official about rebuilding the country. His team would wait outside, patrolling the area to keep Torrey and themselves safe. When the meeting was done, Torrey would hop back in the Humvee and say, "Ok, let's get going," and they'd head back to base. He rushed them back because he wanted to keep his soldiers safe and give them as much time off as possible. The sooner they got back to base, the sooner his team could eat, call their families, etc. But it turned out that they wanted to know what had happened in Torrey's meetings and why they had to wait in the hot sun all day. "From their perspective, I hadn't done a good job of explaining what it was I was doing and why," he said. "I realized that I was so task-oriented and mission-focused that I was ignoring the very people who were helping me achieve the mission."

After taking in the feedback, Torrey sat the team down and shared what he had heard. He explained that while it had not been intentional, he now knew that his behavior was having a negative impact on them. Starting then, at the end of each patrol, Torrey committed to debriefing his team (not just his supervisor) on the meeting and how it went. He also made a concerted effort to spend more casual time with his soldiers. Three months later, Torrey did another CCS and the difference was drastic. His team clearly appreciated what he had changed and they now felt included in the mission.

2010-07-28T20:22:20Z

Ben Franklin's MBA Oath

Is it necessary for us to agree that management is a profession before we can have a meaningful discussion about creating a "code" of business ethics?

Maybe not. Consider America's first code of business ethics, that contained in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Written in fits and starts over the years leading up to Franklin's death, the Autobiography does not chronicle the life and times of the famous Philadelphian in exhaustive detail. Instead, it focuses on his early years as a runaway apprentice turned successful small businessman. Franklin believed that these years would be more valuable to his readers for, he says, they show how he rose from "Poverty and Obscurity" to "a State of Affluence & some Degree of Reputation in the World." Indeed, he presents his life as an object lesson to his readers, a rags-to-riches story that, he claims, is "fit to be imitated."

As such, Franklin's Autobiography is a prototype for the "How to Succeed in Business" books that keep printing presses running the world over. It includes a colorful cast of characters, especially the villains — Keimer, the vulgar, disorganized shopkeeper; David Harry, the dandified, dissolute apprentice; his brother James, the mean spirited, abusive boss — all of whom provide models of bad business behavior. The hero, of course, is Franklin, who made such a fortune in the printing business that he was able to retire at 42 and devote the rest of his life to the activities for which he is still celebrated: writing, inventing, and serving the public good.

What was the secret to his success? In his early 20s, shortly after opening his printing house, Franklin embarks upon his "Project of arriving at moral Perfection." He settles on 13 principles that make up his colonial code of business ethics. Some of these principles will be very familiar to modern readers: Industry, Order, Sincerity, Justice. Others now seem a little quaint: Humility, Frugality, Temperance. A few — Cleanliness, Silence, Chastity — remind us how much has changed since Ben's day.

Franklin credits his code of business ethics with, among other things, the "Acquisition of his Fortune" and the opportunity to become a "useful Citizen" and gain "some Degree of Reputation" among the colonial elite. In these respects, it achieves the primary goal of a modern code of business ethics, namely, creating a set of principles by which the pursuit of private gain and the public interest seem not at odds with each other but commensurate, even indistinguishable.

This was certainly how Franklin saw it, and he tailored his code to the particular circumstances of his own world, a world of small-town trade where personal and professional associations were closely intertwined. Certainly, he thought these principles could be generalized — the Autobiography is not a personal history so much as a book of instruction — but the takeaway lesson of Franklin's code is not that the aspiring entrepreneur should take it for gospel, but that he should take account of his own circumstances and attempt to write a code that applies to them.

By this light, Franklin's code may not have not have much to add to the current debate over whether management can properly be called a profession, but for those who say the answer is "No," it does provide another way of thinking about a code of business ethics apart from the set conventions of a formal profession. It suggests that the goal may not be to write a code of business ethics, but to teach students how to write codes of business ethics, each student her own. This is an exercise that will not only teach business school students how to apply the tools of moral decision-making to the particularities of their own professions, but also to compare across codes and to learn from one another.

If they do, they will probably find that their views of what makes for "business ethics" aren't all that different from one another. The real question will be whether they can find the courage to implement them.

John Paul Rollert teaches leadership and business ethics at Harvard Summer School. He is a doctoral student at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and will graduate from Yale Law School in the fall.

2010-07-28T19:15:51Z

Start with an Idea

When I was 24 I moved from Boston to L.A. in search of a record deal. Never got one, but Edgar Winter did record a song I wrote called, "Stranger to Love," for a B horror movie called Netherworld. Those songwriting days taught me something important about new ideas, where they come from, when they surface, and how to relate to them.

Night after night I would go into my loft and bang away on my guitar, trying to coerce a song out of it. It would take me months to write each song. This method we might call How Not to Write Songs. I was going about it the wrong way, and I notice a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses doing the same thing. They create businesses without an idea, or without a strong idea (which is why you can't understand what the hell they're talking about when they describe it to you). They build form around the absence of an idea and call it a business.

Much smarter to build form around the substance of an idea.

Charlie Rose once asked Bruce Springsteen, "When do you write?" His reply: "When I have an idea." As opposed to when he doesn't have one. What a brilliant use of his time!

John Denver used to say (for you Millennials, he was RCA's second-biggest record seller after Elvis) that, "the songs come when they've a mind to." The idea for "Annie's Song," his biggest hit, came to him while he was on a chair lift during a day of skiing.

Springsteen and John Denver were both wise enough to know that you wait and watch for ideas, you don't force them into being. Well, actually, you can hear instances where each of them did try to force it — and got lousy songs as a result.

Steve Jobs was asked years ago about how he planned to compete with the Wintel monopoly. He said, "I'm going to wait for the next big thing." He didn't say "I'm going to personally create the next big thing." Neither iTunes nor the iPod was his idea. The iTunes idea came from a small company called SoundJam MP, and the genesis of the iPod was a design inside the head of Tony Fadell, a tech consultant who went to work for Apple. Steve Jobs's brilliance was in keeping his eyes open for the ideas, recognizing the moment, connecting the dots, and "creating" iTunes and iPod as a system that worked together, adding Jonathan Ive's designs, and marketing it all brilliantly. He wasn't sitting at his desk banging his head against the wall trying to force an idea out of the universe.

In fact, to the extent that you are punishing yourself for the lack of an idea, or torturing yourself to come up with one, you may very well miss the idea that's right under your nose, waiting to be acknowledged.

There are two simple rules I have learned about ideation: Look and wait.

Look. For years my company struggled to come up with the right slogan for our AIDS Rides. "Challenge yourself and you will grow." Yuck. "The adventure of a lifetime." Yawn. The more frustrated we got, the more the answer eluded us. Then one day we said to ourselves, "These events are impossible. You have to ride for grueling distances. You have to sleep in a tent and raise huge amounts of money from your friends. Most people look at them and think, 'Impossible.'" Having admitted the truth, we stared at that word "impossible" for about an hour. And we noticed two words inside there. "I'm" and "possible." "I'mpossible." Our new slogan. It had been staring us in the face for four years. We just weren't looking.

And as for waiting...This is tragic but instructive. In 1999 someone very close to me committed suicide. My grief and aching sadness wanted expression, and they found it in music. Ideas for songs about the tragedy started coming to me in rapid succession. On long walks. In the car. Without me asking for them. They were asking for me. In about eight weeks I wrote 13 songs, each of them based on an idea, and each of them better than most anything I had forced while banging away on my guitar in my loft years earlier. And they became my first album.

On top of that, an idea came for a suicide prevention event — called, "Out of the Darkness" — that has now raised millions for the cause. That idea would never have come to us sitting in our conference room at Pallotta TeamWorks trying to force an event into being. It came from a confluence of tragedy and emotion and timing. And, as a result, it was authentic, not a contrivance.

The idea may not come when you want it to, but when it does, it will be right on time. And it will be true to who you really are.

So, my advice to you: Go get an ice cream. Go ride your bike, or whatever it is you like to do. Relax a little bit. You can't create the next big idea at will anymore than you can make the love of your life walk into the room in the next half hour.

Look. And wait. And while you're at it, have a little faith — in life, in God, in the universe, in whatever you believe in. The universe is pregnant with ideas. Your passion for them is enough. They don't go where they're not wanted. But ideas have lives of their own. They have their pride. And they don't reveal themselves to the impatient or the distracted.

That song I wrote, "Stranger to Love" — it was actually a good song. For one reason. It started with an idea.

2010-07-28T18:33:58Z

Fire Your Marketing Manager and Hire A Community Manager

Okay, maybe that's going too far. I don't really recommend firing your marketing manager. I do however believe that most companies will eventually need to hire or contract with a community manager, if they haven't already. A recent BusinessWeek article called "Twitter Twitter Little Star," describes social media as a booming industry which has caught the attention of corporations everywhere, and suggests the role of a "social media director" and what that person should do. I'd like to dig a bit deeper into why this core function is necessary to create to what's becoming known as social engagement. I'll call the role the community manager.

A community manager actively monitors, participates in and engages others within online communities. These communities can be on Twitter, Facebook, message boards, intranets, wherever groups of people come together to converse and interact with each other. A traditional marketing manager is likely to have little experience with this function. Historically, community management developed outside marketing, in areas such as community organizing (politics) or in niche verticals such as the video game or software industry, which are no strangers to digital outposts such as message boards.

A community manager acts as an ambassador for your organization, whether that person is an employee or contracted to manage your social web presence. A good community manager gives a human form to the faceless corporation. On Facebook Whole Foods, for example, community managers have created a forum that impels customers to respond to its posts. They also often informally engage their customers in the process.

A community manager must be a good or great communicator. He or she of course needs to be social, and understand the social mores of the communities served, and have a strongly developed sense of ethics. He or she should know, for example, when deleting a member's comment is wrong or justified and be prepared to explain why. Enthusiasm is also required. Finally, a good community manager will be well connected, forming relationships with the right people in your communities, the individuals and groups you want on your side.

No doubt companies are flocking toward non traditional job descriptions like community manager. If I were building my my all-star business team, I'd think about how community management works and why I might need a few good ones on my roster.

David Armano is a Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, the interactive arm of global communications firm Edelman. He is an active practitioner and thinker in the worlds of digital marketing, experience design, and the social web. You can follow him on Twitter.