Off Topic: The Home Office of 2001

Even back in 1967, smart folks were thinking about work and life and how to balance the two. And as an aside, I get really annoyed when the work/life police go out of their way to constantly remind the rest of us that we shouldn't use the term 'balance', but rather something like 'fit' or 'blend' or essentially something they approve of. Quit it already. If the world wants to refer to the subject as 'Work/Life Balance' its you that need to adapt, not everyone else.

But to get back to the topic, or non-topic as the case may be, back in 1967 none other than the 'Most trusted man in America', news legend Walter Cronkite gave viewers a glimpse of what at least of the part of the future of work might look like, all the way in the distant future, the year 2001. 

Check the video embedded below for what Uncle Walter had to say about the home office at the turn of the century (Email and RSS subscribers will need to click through)

Some awesome points from the Kronk, (if you can ignore he is only referring to 'men' workers throughout the video). But think about it, back in '67 folks were already thinking about technology that would free the employee completely from the office. Throw in some connected computer terminals for news and weather reports, as well as one for catching up on your investments, (beats doing emails, right?). Mix in an odd-looking phone that connects to a video monitor to have video calls. Finally, yet another monitor for the business man of 2001 to see all the other rooms in the house, (and if you look closely, it seems like Walter is looking in on the Mrs. making the bed). 

The funny thing about the home office of the future as imagined in the video is it really doesn't speak much if at all to the business man doing any actual work. And it doesn't at all speculate that work itself might change dramatically, just that there would be fancier tools to assist in the effort. And lastly, it continues to assume, like probably lots of men did in 1967, that complex work that would benefit or even require all this cool technology would only be done by men.

Let's hope that those shortcomings or lack of vision from Kronk were just a product of a more old-fashioned way of thinking, and narrow point of view. 

Because we know that in 2013 and beyond, the technology of the future will not just make things easier and more convenient, it will help make the world a better, more open, more equitable, better place.

Right?

Have a great weekend!

Off Topic: This is how you sound when you talk about your 'Personal Brand'

It is, perhaps, the most inane concept of the last 10 years.

Source - Dinosaur Comics

As an aside, you should really check out Dinosaur Comics, it has one of the most interesting concepts for a comic that you'll ever see. The artwork - meaning the characters, panels, flow, etc. is exactly the same every day, only the dialogue changes. It sounds crazy but it works, and as evidenced by the comic above, often times it really hits the mark.

Have a great weekend everyone. And quit it with the 'personal brand' stuff.

Off Topic: When you run out of interview questions

Time for my semi-regular 'I have not done a sports post in a while, and I need to make sure the 2013 of The 8 Man Rotation E-book will have lots of SFB content.  Did you catch that, Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak? 

Any by the way, please congratulate The Professor and his family on the recent birth of twins - Mia and Micah!

Back to the point - or what will pass for a point on a Friday.

Book, can, drum, mirror, door. (I will come back to this later, but try and remember this list).

Recently, the National Football League, (where they play....... for pay), conducted its annual Scouting Combine - a several day long series of events, interviews, feats of speed and strength, etc. designed to give its member clubs a chance to assess and evaluate lots and lots of potential draftees, (job candidates), in one place, and under consistent and controlled conditions.Gary Hume, Girl Boy, Boy Girl

The hopeful candidates run 40 yard dashes, do the broad jump, perform bench presses, and in addition to these physical tests, (again, which provide a really solid way to compare the performance of players), also undergo some mental and cognitive assessments, (most notably the Wonderlic test).

But having the same information as all your competitors, (40 times, bench presses, etc.) doesn't really help a team gain a recruiting advantage - none of the information is powerful since it is completely open and free. For a team trying to decide which players to draft - they need to get past the size and speed and test scores, and really get some unique insight into the player. What motivates him, does he have passion for the sport, is he likely to be a 'good' teammate, and not be a 'me-first' prima donna.

And if you are the Cincinnati Bengals, you also want to know if the player can remember five random words in order. 

Check this excerpt from a recent piece on Deadspin, on the Combine experience of draft hopeful Lane Johnson - 

"One thing caught me off guard. I was meeting with Cincinnati, and I went in there and they told me to remember five things. They just listed five things like a bear, a flower, a tree, a man and like a dog. And they told me to remember those terms, at the end of the meeting to see if I could remember them. And from that point on, they listed numbers. They said, like, 9167, and then told me to repeat them in reverse order. So that was probably the weirdest meeting I've ever been a part of."

Nice. And classic Bengals in a way as well.

Now there could be some real validity in asking a question like this - a check on a player's concentration, their short-term memory, ability to pay attention to instructions, etc. that might have some validity and value in the assessment process. Maybe the performance on a question like this is highly predictive of future success as an NFL player. 

Or maybe it's just a random question, full of weirdness and confusion, signifying nothing. But if you do find yourself at a loss for any more clever interview questions the next time you have a candidate in for a chat maybe you can try it out and see what happens.

Remember the five things?

The Secret Menu

If you are a fan of Chipolte, In-N-Out, or Starbucks, (that pretty much has to cover everyone I think) you might be aware of each of these chains so-called 'Secret Menus' - alternative items or more accurately variations of existing menu items while not typically on the menu, are sometimes ordered and served for some of the stores biggest fans.

These 'secret' menus are only secret to varying degrees - at In-N-Out the 'secret' menu is actually posted on their website and at Starbucks, well in most of the lines I have been in some knucklehead in front of me orders something to ridiculous and pretentious sounding (Triple-soy-venti-no whip-caramel-with ranch dressing on the side') that almost every order may as well be 'secret'.  Of these three chains, only Chipolte seems to be much more coy and sketchy about the existence of a secret menu - so much so that recently a writer from Fast Company went to pretty great lenghts to try and uncover the truth, which you can read about here in a piece titled 'The Secret Behind Chipolte's Secret, 1,500 Calorie Super-Burrito'.

Aside for the most avid Chiplote die-hard fans, whether or not there truly exists such off-menu concoctions like 'Quesaritos' really isn't that important, but what might be important is how the knowledge of these non-standard menu items are communicated and spread among and througout the restaurant employees.  Check this exceprt from the Fast Company piece:

While (a Chiplote spokesperson) maintains that the restaurant has no formalized secret menu, he admits that two off-menu items we see have become extremely popular, even in Chipotle’s own offices: nachos and quesadillas.  What’s particularly odd, however, is that the line’s machinery isn’t really customized to make either. Without a flat-top grill, quesadillas are typically made in the low-temperature tortilla press (and there are generally only one to three presses per Chipotle, which can lead to backups during busy hours). Without a broiler, nacho cheese can’t really be melted, but employees can get close by ordering the toppings so the cheese sits directly on top of hot beans.

Despite their popularity, neither nachos nor quesadillas are inside any Chipotle operations manual. Instead, employees teach one another the popular off-menu requests through a sort of “oral history.”

That last part, the bit about the Chipolte secret menu existing but not really existing, at least in the official training manuals or operations procedures for employees, and having that faux existence reliant on employees actually talking to each other, and interacting, and passing down that bit of institutional knowledge and culture is what makes this story interesting to HR and Talent folks I think.

Mostly organizations worry about this kind of undocumented institutional knowledge. They get panicky when they think about this kind of knowledge - usually gained from years of experience and often guarded carefully by long-term employees, walking out the door before it can be adequately documented and captured so it can be passed down.

The Chipolte approach to the 'Secret Menu' is the exact opposite of that typical reaction. It exists, but it doesn't exist. The newest worker on the burrito line can't find a reference to it in his or her training manuals. Maybe even some veterans don't know about it either. 

But instead of rushing to formalize the menu, to create procedures and processes around its preparation, and rules about how workers should discuss it with customers, the company seems to be leaving much of it to informal processes, and more importantly, to ones that seem to serve as a kind of bond between the company, its employees, and its biggest fans.

It truly is a tiny bit of mystery that just might have more value than if it was truly written down, captured, and categorized in some knowledge management system.

That's it for me - heading out for a burrito - have a fantastic weekend!

Off Topic: Infographics of the 1870s

If you are a data/design/visualization mark like I am, then I apologize in advance for the half hour or so you are about to waste on the amazingly cool A Handsome Atlas site.

The clever folks at Handsome Atlas have taken several old government and census documents from the late nineteenth-century, (primarily The Statistical Analysis of the United States, published from about 1870 - 1920), and breathed new life into them, by creating a user-friendly tool for viewing the old works close-up, and in high resolution.New York, 1870

Don't really get why this is cool?

Then spend a few minutes looking at this beautiful chart/infographic titled 'Gainful Occupations and also as Attending School' , a look at employment and education across the states taken from the 1870 census data, (a small snippet of this graphic appears on the right of this post).

The Handsome Atlas site is full of amazingly interesting and detailed data tables, charts, graphics, and visual analyses of demographic, statistical, and economic data that was compiled in the census and published in The Statistical Analysis of the United States. With a big assist to the technology and presentation developed at Handsome Atlas, this data serves to remind us that the current fad and fascination with infographics and data visualization have their roots in the past.

Infographics and other visualizations help us, mostly, to make more sense of the world - breathing life and creating dimension, contrast, comparison, and most importantly, interest in data sets. 

We want to better understand the world around us certainly, and that longing and need for understanding is definitely not only a modern phenomenon.

If you take a few minutes to play around on the Handsome Atlas site, please let me know what you think.

Have a great weekend!