Counter Intuitiveness is in Fashion, at least in Memory Recall

When I first read about doodling doing wonders to your memory recall in the Time’s February 2009 issue, it struck a little odd to me. However, I let it pass. But when I read about good memory recall after nodding off in meetings in Harvard Business Review’s issue of October 2009, I could not help but wonder : Was there more to it than met the eye?
What Time was essentially saying in its Feb 2009 issue is that if you doodled and fidgeted while attending lectures or classes, you are more likely to recall what was being taught than a ‘non doodler’ . To prove the point, Time quoted a bizarre experiment. Jackie Andrade of University of Plymouth fashioned an experiment to prove this hypothesis. What beats me is how the idea ever occurred to her in the first place. It is not everyday that you wake up with the idea that doodling is good for memory recall and then go along and design an experiment to prove the point. Was it that anything you prove that is counter intuitive will get you noticed? Here is an excerpt from that article which described the experiment:

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Afterward, the papers were removed and the 40 volunteers were asked to recall, orally, the place names and the names of the people coming to the party. The doodlers creamed the nondoodlers: those who doodled during the tape recalled 7.5 pieces of information (out of 16 total) on average, 29% more than the average of 5.8 recalled by the control group.

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Looks like one can prove anything under the sun. One only needs 40 volunteers.

Now, for the article in Oct 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review. The article is titled: The Simplest Way to Reboot Your Brain. Let me quote from it:

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On a day off, taking a nap is a small but heavenly pleasure. Dozing at your desk isn’t—especially if a colleague walks in on you—but sometimes exhaustion just takes over. The 2008 Sleep in America poll, conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, found that nearly one-third of adults who work at least 30 hours a week have fallen asleep or become extremely drowsy on the job—behavior that employers often frown upon. Should they lighten up? Perhaps. In a knowledge-based economy that depends on sharp minds, a few minutes of shut-eye could be good for business.

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Here is another counter intuitive memory recall phenomena at work. You doze off, yet you are better off for memory. Again, an experiment is quoted to buttress the claim. It says that a report in June 2009 Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences showed that a nap with REM sleep improves people’s ability to integrate unassociated information for creative problem solving. Touche!

If we combine the gist of these two articles, the summary makes interesting reading. You must nod off during lectures. Between your slumber -when you are awake and yawning- be sure to doodle and fidget for memory’s sake. Your memory recall will be second to none.

And healthcare for all?

The Corporate world likes to use military phrases profusely, if callously. There is the Project Manager who will tell you how she is always in the firing line; there is the team lead who will tell you how he is always with the troops in the trenches; there is the manager who will tell you how he hit the ground running in his new job. But you will never hear the Indian Military Academy’s motto from any corporate honcho’s mouth:

"The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time."

The reason is simple. Substitute company for country in this motto and the honchos’ belief will manifest in a bizarre, juggled order:

“Your own ease, comfort and safety comes first, always and every time. The honour of your company comes next. The safety, honour and welfare of the employees you manage comes last, always and every time.”

Anthony L. Komaroff’s writes on Executive Physicals in the Sep09 issue of Harvard Business Review about how companies can save money in Executive Physicals and I quote:

It makes good sense for companies to protect their top talent. Sometimes those who run the show can’t find the time to mind their health. That’s where executive physicals come in. With an eye toward prevention, these one- or two day examinations attempt to accommodate busy schedules while supporting the long-term wellness and productivity of a firm’s key players.

‘Executive physicals’ is an example where honchos are put ahead of lesser mortals. It reminds me of a scene from the movie Titanic in which as the ship starts listing after colliding with an iceberg, the women and children are first put on lifeboats and so to safety. A man appears on the scene and demands that the first class ticket holders be first put on lifeboats since they have paid more. The implicit argument is that the first class passengers’ lives are more important because they have paid more.

We are talking about saving lives through healthcare not about esoteric perks of private jets or mansions on hilltops. Isn’t everyone equal where lives are concerned? And in any case what key players are we talking about? These precious people are keys to which gate? We have seen how in the current recession, the so-called key players opened the gates of greed, avarice and mendacity and left their companies tottering on bankruptcy.

There are more things to learn from the military than fancy phrases. The way the military looks after the health of all its men and women is one thing companies can do well to emulate.

Killing me softly: soft skills, anyone?

In the June09 issue of Harvard Business Review, Mr Robert I. Sutton writes about How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy. His remedies for the Boss were predictability, understanding, control and compassion. He gives examples to further his argument about his remedies. While his explanation followed his remedy - it was predictable – his example on compassion had me bristled.

First, a little digression on compassion. These days we are bandying around compassion as a skill. As if it were something that one learns at the blacksmith’s or at the carpenter’s. It is our very innate nature, for God’s sake. It has nothing to do with managers or employees or with royalty; it is mine because of being a human being. It is our seventh sense. Don’t ever call it a soft skill. Compassion is not a good thing to have. It is the right thing to have.

Now, for that example on compassion. Let me quote Mr Sutton:

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Jerald Greenberg, a management professor at The Ohio State University, provides compelling evidence that compassion affects the bottom line in tough times. Greenberg studied three nearly identical manufacturing plants in the Midwest that were all part of the same company; two of them (which management chose at random) instituted a temporary 10-week pay cut of 15% after the firm had lost a major contract. At one of the two, the executive who conveyed the news did so curtly, announcing, “I’ll answer one or two questions, but then I have to catch a plane for another meeting.” At the other one, the executive who broke the news gave a detailed and compassionate explanation, along with apologies and multiple expressions of remorse. He also spent a full hour answering questions about why the cost cutting was necessary, who would be affected, and what steps workers could take to help themselves and the plant. Greenberg found fascinating effects on employee theft rates. At the plant where the curt explanation was given, the rate rose to more than 9%. But at the plant where management’s explanation was detailed and compassionate, it rose only to 6%. (At the third plant, where no pay cuts were made, the rate held steady at about 4% during the 10-week period.)

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It is unfortunate that he gives thieving of employees as an example to buttress his idea about compassion for employees. It would appear that researchers such as Mr Greenberg - as quoted by Mr Sutton - think that employees by nature are prone to thieving. Why else would one do such a gratuitous research?
I would imagine that Mr Greenberg's research hypothesis read:
This research establishes a correlation between increase of theft by employees and the abruptness of language used by CEOs conveying salary reduction news.
And from this research Mr Sutton got compelling evidence that compassion begets less thieving!
I think this is absolutely unfair to employees.