Getting reacquainted with the nightmare that is commuting

I have to admit in the last few years I have become incredibly spoiled. Since 2010 or so, for the most part I have been a 'work at home' person, (when not on the road at really tough duty places like Las Vegas, Chicago, or the San Francisco area). I have not had to deal (much) with what the below chart shows, that about 95% of the rest of the American working population put up each day with the commute to and from their workplaces.

Here's the chart I am talking about (hat tip to the NPR Planet Money blog), and I'll have some comments after the break...

Source - US Census Bureau

Notable in the Census Bureau stats on commuting is the decline over the last 50 or so years in the percentage of workers that work at home and the percentage that are using public transportation. The Census folks think that the  'work at home' dip over that time horizon is mostly due to the dramatic decrease in family farmers, (who mostly worked and lived on their own farms). The drop in public transport is chalked up to the rise of the suburban lifestyle which combined to put people farther away from the traditional pockets of employment in the city centers, and are simply not served with as many, or any, public transport options.

Regardless of where you reside across the spectrum of commuting options, it seems to me that one thing is almost universally true - most of us loathe, dread, and hate our commutes.

I thought to post about this today for two reasons, one, I had seen the NPR piece yesterday and found it interesting, and two, I've had to leave my cushy basement home office each of the last three mornings to take my son to a summer camp/program this week.  So instead of my usual groggy stumble down one flight of stairs to the coffee pot, followed by a slightly less groggy stumble down a second set of stairs to the office, I've had to join the other 84% or so of folks out on the road each morning, dealing with traffic, (admittedly not much), traffic lights, and everyone who is not as accomplished a driver as me, (everyone).

And I have been reminded how horrible commuting is, even when it is 'good' by national standards, (the camp location is about 9 miles away, probably 20-25 minutes each way).

What's the point of all this? 

I guess to share the stats in the chart above as they were kind of interesting and surprising. Sometimes we 'work at home' folks socialize and collaborate with so many other work at home folks that we get deluded into thinking way more people also work at home than actually do. If you are working at home, even in 2013, you're the outlier.

And second, to think about some ways we can make life a little better for the 84% in their cars, alone each day. Whether it's flexible starting/ending times to get people out of rush hour a little more, the chance to skip the road all together once a week or so and join us weirdos that work at home, or even some kind of little perk like onsite car washes, oil changes, tire rotations - that kind of thing. It seems to me that 84% of your workforce is likely starting the workday ticked off about something that happened on the road on the way in. That can't be good for those 8:00AM staff meetings.

Commuting is horrible, even when it is easy, and even when you don't have to do it all that often.

I could not imagine going back to that grind every day. 

What can/are you doing to make your commute a little more bearable? Hit me up in the comments.

More proof that lots of us are horrible people who haven't grown up

The things we did at the age of 12 or 14 or even 18, while potentially cringe-worthy when thinking back on them, we like to think are safely left in the past and can be chalked up to and rationalized away by some combination of youth, peer pressure, insecurity, and simply not knowing better. We all did dumb or cruel or even borderline criminal things at some point. But most of us, we think, have left that nonsense behind as we've grown up, become educated, pursued our careers, and maybe even had kids of our own, (who surely, won't make the same mistakes we did).

And I think that is mostly true. Even if you were a part of the 'cool kids' group in school and made fun of or hassled, or even just ignored the 'non-cool' kids, ('cool' and 'non-cool' being completely elusive and situational concepts, but I am sure you know which group you were a part of), you've moved on. Because the things or attributes that defined 'cool' and 'non-cool' when you were 15 are certainly not really relevant or meaningful in the adult world, and particularly in the workplace.  How someone dresses, their hobbies, even their physical attractiveness - all pretty important things in the social order in high school - don't really factor in to the day-to-day at work. Or at least they shouldn't.Ready-to-wear, Stuart Davis 1955

But perhaps they still do, in more ways than we care to think about, and in ways we'd prefer to ignore. 

Check the details from a recent study on the influence of attractiveness on what is termed as 'Counterproductive workplace behaviors' by professors at Michigan State and Notre Dame:

People who are considered unattractive are more likely to be belittled and bullied in the workplace, according to a first-of-its-kind study led by a Michigan State University business scholar.

“Frankly, it’s an ugly finding,” said Brent Scott, associate professor of management and lead investigator on the study. “Although we like to think we’re professional and mature in the workplace, it can be just like high school in many ways.

”While plenty of research has found that attractive students tend to be more popular in school, the study is the first to link attractiveness to cruelty in the workplace. The results appear in the research journal Human Performance.

The study surveyed a group of workers at a health care facility about their experiences with counterproductive workplace behaviors like being made fun of, being treated cruelly, or having hurtful things said about them. Then a set of unrelated people evaluated the worker's 'attractiveness' on a sliding scale. Mashing up the data the researchers found that "the unattractive workers were treated much more harshly than attractive employees even when other key factors were taken into account, including age, gender and how long they had worked at the health care facility."

Not all jobs are fun. Most jobs are not all that noble. Not many jobs pay as well as we'd like. That's life and that's work. And there isn't much we can to to make a cashier job at the Walmart all that more appealing.

But every job, or rather every person that shows up to work, deserves an environment where they won't be subject to the kinds of cruel treatment that more and more we are not even tolerating from teenagers or kids.

Take ten minutes this week at your shop - once you get past the transactions and documents and emails and all the stuff that seems to keep coming at you in relentless waves - and think about this one point - if people in your organization are being treated poorly at work simply because of the way they look, you can be sure it didn't suddenly start when they came to work for you.

No, it is a pretty safe bet they have been picked on, pushed around, and belittled for a long, long time. Maybe even their entire lives. Maybe they thought, or hoped, that once they 'grew up' that the jerks would grow up too, or at least they wouldn't have to be forced to deal with them.

Maybe they thought or hoped that 'going to work', while no picnic all the time, would at least be somewhere safe or maybe even pleasant.

Is it 'your' job to protect or at least stand up for these people?

Yes it is. It is all of our jobs. 

Everything Zen #1 - The obstacle is the path

Way back when I wrote about one of my favorite books that I've ever read called Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership, a collection of Zen stories about leading people, organizations, and personal development. I've carried that little book around with me for ages, and even after all this time still occasionally leaf through the lessons and am usually surprised both by how simple and on-point most of the ancient lessons remain today.

So on a sluggish Wednesday where I'm still shaking off the after-effects of the SHRM Annual Conference, I figured I needed a little inspiration to dive into the Inbox and voice mail, so of course I turned to a little Zen. And then I figured since I dig these Zen sayings and stories so much, (and I need some more 'theme' series around here for these kinds of days), let's call today's post the first in the Everything Zen series, a semi-occasional look at how these lessons can help us to get over on what seem like modern problems, but mostly are pretty much the same ones the ancients wrestled with themselves.

So here goes, Zen Lesson #1 is simple - 'The obstacle is the path'.

The obstacle isn't something standing in the way, it is the way itself.

That's it. 

I know, not very profound. But if you think about it a little, and open up to the concept that the barriers that exist between you and where you are going or what you are trying to accomplish aren't distinct from the task or journey itself, that they actually are the task and journey too, then it kind of frees you and empowers you to approach and attack them differently.

They become less daunting, less intimidating, and maybe your attitude towards them can subtly shift from fighting with them, (and getting angry or frustrated or bitter), towards seeing and dealing with them as just another part of the path you're already on.

I know, deep thoughts.

So that's it from me today, time to face the unread messages in the Inbox, (takes a deep cleansing breath).

The obstacle is the path...

VIDEO: The robot would like a sidebar, please

How do you balance the demands of the modern workforce for flexibility around schedules, locations, and desire to not cut back on that white-knuckle ride on the daily commute, with many organizations desire to foster a collabortive and innovative environment that to many leaders only comes from workers 'physically being together?'

Meet your future colleague Ava 500, or rather, the robot that your future colleagues will be driving around the office or plant or store if the vision of the folks at iRobot and Cisco comes to pass.  Ava 500 combines the mobility and navigation capability from iRobot, with Cisco's teleprescence technology into a robot technology that can be used to teleport anyone in the organization regardless of their physical location to any other location that is equipped with an Ava 500.

Check the video below from iRobot to see Ava in action (Email and RSS subscribers may need to click through)

Pretty nifty, right? And did you catch that little feature with the 'robot' drags a couple of the meeting participants out of the room for a little private time? 

I think the long-term key for these kinds of telepresence robots to actually move past novelty and into more widespread use is that they have to seem less, well robotic, and more natural. They need to be able to move fluidly, be aware of their environment, and maybe have a little personality. 

The workers that teleport into Ava have to come across to their colleagues as close to 'normal' as is possible, and using the high-end Cisco telepresence tech is one way to try and achieve that. No one is going to want to interact with a person piloting an Ava 500 if the video feed resembles a dodgy Google Hangout from someone's dreary basement home office.

One thing the video didn't show, perhaps purposefully, is depict two different Ava 500's interacting with each other. In a way, if using a technology like Ava would be so fantastic for connecting one remote worker with their colleagues, then why not 2 or 3 or 20? 

Maybe the workplace of the future will be one that ends up being largely uninhabited by any people, but rather a fleet of telepresence robots that move from meeting to meeting while different workers take turns teleporting in from all over the world.

What do you think - is the Ava 500 coming soon to a workplace near you?

Past performance is not indicative of...

Quick shot for a Wednesday that feels like a Tuesday in the middle of what I promise you will feel like a really long week instead of a short one come Friday.

Recently Business Insider ran a piece on the retirement and parting thoughts of Gerard Minack, formerly at Morgan Stanley. In Minack's last investment note, the long time investment pro offered his take on why professional investors and advisers usually do better at 'beating the market' than do amateur, or retail investors - also kind of unusual when careful investing in broad market index funds offer the amateurs among us a pretty decent alternative that will generally at least match market returns.Triangles

Here's Minack on why the pros possess an advantage over the amateurs:

The good news for the professionals is that many amateurs persist in trying to beat the market and, in aggregate, they seem to do a significantly worse job than the professionals.

The biggest problem appears to be that – despite all the disclaimers – retail flows assume that past performance is a good guide to future outcomes. Consequently money tends to flow to investments that have done well, rather than investments that will do well. The net result is that the actual returns to investors fall well short not just of benchmark returns, but the returns generated by professional investors.

In the investing context that's was of interest to Minack, amateurs tend to overweight funds and stocks that have been doing well, and underweight, (or even miss entirely), those funds and stocks that are poised to do well in the future. And to him, the mantra of past performance being a good indicator of future performance, (or even the best indicator), was the main reason.

It makes sense in this context. Just because Apple stock kept going up and up and up seemed to indicate it couldn't go down. Until it did. And took a lot of investors with it on the way down, (admittedly many of the same ones who rode it up as well).

But outside of finance and investments, I wonder too, if lots of us fall victim to the 'past performance --> future outcomes' bias too often as well. It's easy to feel that way I suppose. It feels safe. It's hard to argue against usually. When you don't know what will happen next, or know what a person will do next the easiest thing, (and sometimes the only information you have), is too examine what just happened and assume it will continue.

I once wrote something about being a true visionary or innovator means imagining the future as something wildly and incredibly different and not just an incremental shift of the past. But that is really hard to do, as Minack's observations about investing remind us.