Cristóbal Smartypants

I'm always impressed when someone is able to distill instinctively common-sense concepts into a concise response. My attempts often lead to something unwieldy ending in 'you know what I mean?'

Below excerpt is from today's NYT Business section, an interview with Cristóbal Conde, president and CEO of SunGard. Conde's BS is in physics and astronomy, and he's mentioned that he often interviews potential employees with engineering backgrounds. I like science-y people, and his concrete take on management dispels the myth that science backgrounds lack people skills and social insight.

"If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave.

If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement. Eventually, they get chased away, and then you’ve got to invest in a whole apparatus of micromanagement. Pretty soon, you’re running a police state. So micromanagement doesn’t scale because it spirals down, and you end up with below-average employees in terms of motivation and ability.

Instead, the trick is to get truly world-class people working directly for you so you don’t have to spend a lot of time managing them. I think there’s very little value I can add to my direct reports. So I try to spend time with people two and three levels below because I think I can add value to them."

Grit and Life Satisfaction

From What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley, in this month's issue of "The Atlantic":

"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. In the interview process, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about overcoming challenges in their lives—and ranks their perseverance based on their answers. Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

But another trait seemed to matter even more. Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students,” the study suggested."

Ambassadors

Tropisms by Ambassadors

"THE AMBASSADORS are… … Sam Harris, Casey Harris, Noah Feldshuh, and Adam Levin. They play very nice together and they find it hard to stop."

http://www.myspace.com/ambassadorsband

Parents

On the phone last night, SE and I were discussing a Christmas decor makeover. His new motif would be a color theme. In approximately his own words, 'the same kind of thing I used to make fun of my mom for.' I laughed as I said this is how we know we are grown up, we circle back and adopt the traits of our parents that we once made fun of. My mom prides herself in her razor sharp memory, and as age has necessitated that she write things down, I say that she is maturing into a better version of herself: me! I write everything down for fear of forgetting.

As I listen to Sandra Tsing Loh this morning, she is again telling a story about her incredibly cheap and eccentric dad. I feel she owes him a great portion of her career, I've listened to many a story about his hitchhiking and using a cereal box as a briefcase. Many people tell these types of stories about their parents. I tell the worst ones as a way of saying all this happened, but I turned out ok, right? You don't think my family's completely nuts, right? Asking for reassurance that I'm normal.

Maybe we tell these things to make peace with our childhoods. I did not know at the time that reciting my multiplication tables as quickly as possible, using the seconds dial on the dashboard of our Chevy Caprice Classic station wagon, was not a game. Though it sounds super dorky now, I know more of my 13 time tables than most people my age. If that is not something to be proud of, well, maybe we shouldn't be hanging out.

I love these stories because it shows me, that like our parents, age has softened me and taken some of the edge off of the memories; it's easier now to look back and laugh at that which may have upset or annoyed me. And just in case you were wondering, thirteen squared is 169.

Repeat One

I used to drive my college roommate crazy by listening to DMB's "Satellite" on repeat one. Good thing we don't share an office. I sometimes leave songs on repeat one for hours at a time.

From Himalayas to Helmand

From The Atlantic, a video by Anup Kaphle

"For almost two centuries, the Gurkhas have held a place among the fiercest and most loyal warriors in modern history. This group of young men, who come mostly from the rugged hills of rural Nepal, have fought for the British in almost every war since 1815. Today, members of the Royal Gurkha Rifles have a robust presence in Afghanistan's Helmand province. They play an invaluable role in training and mentoring programs for the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army, mainly because of the cultural knowledge they bring with them."

Life is a series of tiny miracles

This is a Post-It on my computer monitor at work. Life really is a series of tiny miracles. The process it takes to create ten fingers and ten toes is insane! Can you imagine how many chemical reactions have to occur at the proper moment in order to make a little person? A ball of eight cells divides correctly each time, replicates correctly each time, and differentiates into the correct type of cell at the correct time.

How does everything come together to this, to today? Thousands upon thousands of teeny, tiny miracles.