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Month: October 2009

Do you have the courage NOT to be happy?

Published October 23, 2009 by Jo Jordan

If you came here saying “Yes!”, you probably also sat up straighter, jutted out your jaw just a little, and felt more determined.

We need one defensive pessimist on every team

You are probably what psychologists call a ‘defensive pessimist’.  You are essential to business and family life.  You think ahead and make sure things get done!

But do you really dare not to be happy?

What if I told you that happiness lights up different parts of your brain?  And in your steely resolve, you are shutting down processing power that you need, badly?

In short, you are running, well limping, like a computer that needs to be cleaned out sooner rather than later.

An organized person finds time to be happy

If you really are as organized and determined as you say, then you WILL find 5 minutes at night for some quiet time to reflect on the day.  You will have time to tick off everything that went well and you will have time to ask yourself a simple question: Why did I do so well?

So often, you’ve done well because you think ahead, because you are reliable and because you are persistent.  Carry on doing that!

Be organized.  We need you.  And be happy too.

Ask “Why did I do so well?” and marvel at how much better you sleep, how much you begin to enjoy hearing the birds sing, how much your appetite levels off (not too big or too small), how much you don’t have to push so hard but you get things done anyway.

You don’t believe me?

I thought you were the thoughtful one!  You can’t tell me I am wrong until you have tried.

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Getting wise to printing costs: 5 steps for comparing printer costs

Published October 22, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Computing and printing costs in an office

In my early days as a young academic and energetic and ambitious psychologist, I had many spirited discussions with the Director of our Computing Center.  A full Professor of Chemistry, he favored computing power.  Like many psychologists, I wanted better peripherals.

When we use computers in business, the cost of

  • inputting data and
  • printing reports

is far more expensive than an extra ten minutes or so every week on number-crunching.

Our costs come from

  • The peripherals for putting in data
  • The time to tap in data
  • The time to check the data
  • The time to print reports
  • The costs of peripherals otherwise known as printers
  • The costs of consumables

And for that matter –

  • The cost of checking out the best deals
  • Designing an efficient system and training people to use it.

A good inexpensive black-and-white office printer

This week someone asked me to recommend a printer and I’ve looked around for the best printers available right now.

Brother are still making their ‘disposable’ printers that are well worth looking at.

The cost structure of a printer goes like this:

#1 Do we need color printing and any additional facilities like copying?  If not, look for a MONO LASER printer.

#2  Search for the best deals locally and on Amazon

  • The two will give you a good comparison of cost prices and Amazon has good reviews.
  • Amazon will help you consider what extras you should buy.
  • You can also compare the cost and time of driving to your neighborhood big box store with buying from Amazon.

#3 Now think how much printing you do

You have three things to think about: how fast you must print and how often you print and how much you print each year.

  • I’ve found 15 to 20 pages per minute (ppm) quite fast enough, but some printers promise 30 ppm and are horribly slow.  So keep an eye out for complaints on the reviews.
  • Every printer has a limit to what you can print per month without overworking it.  200 to 500 pages is typical for an entry level machine.  That is a lot of paper – half to one ream! Do you do more than that?  Will you make your machine distinctly unhappy?
  • Your annual print is 12x your monthly print, of course.  This number is important for costing your printing and planning ahead.  So read on!

#4 Laser printers come with five costs: the printer itself, a drum, toner, a USB cable and shipping

  • The USB cable is cheap – a few British pounds.  Just make sure you have one. Printers often ship without one!  If you are discarding an old printer, you may have one that is in good repair.
  • Some printers combine drum and toner.  The advantage of Brother machines is that they separate the drum and toner.  Here is where it gets interesting.  The drum is almost as expensive as a printer.  Hence, when the drum is ‘kaput’, you throw away the whole printer and buy another one!

The drum comes with an expected life in pages, say 12 000 pages!  Yay! You can plan ahead.  If you print 500 pages a month, give-or-take, your printer will last you for two years!  If you are chancing the monthly print rate (see above) and printing 12 000 pages a year, your printer will last you, say, one year.

One cost – the administration cost of buying your printer – has just plummeted because you can plan ahead!

  • The toner usually has a lower rating – say 1500 pages.  Toner is not cheap, so it is a good idea to cost it for the lifetime of the printer – or the drum, in this case.  Divide the toner rating into the drum rating and work out what ink will cost you for the life of the printer.  You can buy enough toner for the life of the drum.  If you don’t print a lot, you can bear in mind that toner does have a shelf life and there can be other reasons why a printer may not last several years (coffee, theft, lightning strikes), so maybe buy enough toner for a year ahead.  Also consider whether the model is new or nearly obsolete and whether toner will be on the market in two year’s time.
  • And then there is the cost of the printer itself.  Usually entry-level mono lasers cost as little as a good inkjet and ship with the drum and a small toner cartridge worth 3000 pages or so. The documentation is usually vague on this but you can ring up the local store and ask!

#5 Work out your printing costs!

  • Now you can cost your printer – purchase cost (plus tax) + USB cable if you need one + shipping or trip to the store + drum (no cost because it comes with the machine) + toner for one year.

Brother HL- 2037

As at end of October 2009, Brother has a machine selling through Amazon with the following costs:

  • Printer including drum worth 12 000 pages – GBP70.00
  • Cable – GBP3.00
  • Shipping – GBP0.00
  • Toner – 1 included, but good for unknown pages. A new TN1005 is good for 1500 pages (3 reams) that sells anywhere between GBP55.00 and GNP35.00
  • The machine should be good for a further 6 lots of toner using up the 12000 page life of the printer.

I am going to recommend this printer and wish I had bought one for myself.  I used a similar version when I was teaching.

I bought one at the start of each year and bought enough toner to last the life of the drum.  It worked perfectly (though as an academic I used one with longer drum life of 25 000 pages which lasted roughly one year.)

For a lot of small businesses, 12 000 pages will last many years.  S0 it is important to buy a new model and the Brother HL-2037 is the newest.

Amazon Associates

I am also going to use this to check the Amazon Associates scheme so if you want to “buy me a cup of coffee”, you can follow this link!


In Association with Amazon.co.uk

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Found on a British train! The lost art of slick administration

Published October 21, 2009 by Jo Jordan

I learned from the masters of administration!

I went to a university where we moved through a degree programme in lock-step.  In year one, we took 2.5 subjects, 2 compulsory papers from each of the first 2, and one paper from the third.  In year two, we took 4 papers from one of the first two subjects and 1 from the second.  And the same in year three, but a different set.

The sum of variation allowed was changing the order around 5:0 and 3:2, or if you were really smart, taking a 6th paper.

The university waited for no one

Not even babies!  The university took a simple view that examinations were taken once and once only and deferred only for matters totally outside our control.  Sporting matches, babies that after all arrive on quite a predictable schedule, family celebrations – were all deemed matters under our control.

Even being detained without trial by various rogue governments wasn’t deemed a reason to vary the schedule!  The university made a slight concession and brought you exam to your in jail!

Good administration leads to assured output & a productive life

The net effect of this policy is that the university opened and shut on time. People began degrees and finished them. The simplicity of the administration in that university was just stunning.

All requests had to be made before the event. Nothing was considered retrospectively. All decisions were made on facts marshalled on one piece of paper.  Decisions were made against clear criteria that were public and you knew what you could request from whom and on what grounds. All decisions were reviewed at the next level up where they were considered against new criteria.

A lecturer (professor) graded your paper and the lecturer’s colleagues approved the mark. Those marks were put together and an inter-Department committee approved your GPA/class of degree. An inter-Faculty committee checked that the Faculty committees weren’t being too lenient or too hard.  An eminently logical, rational, fair and transparent environment.

Lock-step systems can be inefficient when misunderstood

Lock-step systems don’t always produce efficiency or fairness, though.   I came out of that system quite well, and I am not unhappy that I studied psychology, sociology and anthropology. But I had actually wanted to study psychology, economics and mathematics – which I was very good at.

Novices need guidance not on the system but how the system will serve their goals

To achieve that combination, someone with knowledge of the system needed to sit my 17 year old self down and ask me what I wanted to do.

The answer would have been for me to enrol in the Arts Faculty for a B.A , to read psychology (2 papers) & economics (2 papers) in the Faculty of Social Studies, and Mathematics (2 papers) in the Faculty of Science!

Apart from being too complicated for a noobe to find, that solution would have made me a little insecure because a BA (General) has a lot less status than a B.Sc. (Hons) and I wouldn’t have read Sociology (upsetting my father).  I would have studied though what I wanted to study and created the choice of transferring in second year to a straight Honours in any of the three subjects, or continuing with a more general mix including picking up Sociology in second year.

Would I have been better off if I had taken this road? Who knows!  What I do know is that the system was more concerned with its lock-step, which was very efficient, than making sure I developed to my full potential.

Lock-step systems require highly qualified front-line staff who understand the values and goals as well as the plan

I quite like lock-step systems because they give people a clear model of what to do.  We need to ‘see ahead’ when we are a ‘noobe’.

But we can waste resources and time too easily when we don’t distinguish values from goals from plans.

  • We had three values in our case– broad first year, Honours (meaning specialize) in 2nd and 3rd year, and finish neatly in three years.
  • The plan is the lock-step system I described at the top of the post.
  • The goal was my goal – to study psychology, economics and mathematics.  That got lost.

To make sure that the (usually) naive client pursues their goal, we need good frontline staff who can find out what my goal is – or what the client’s goal is.  That is paramount.

  • We only use the model to communicate the values concretely. It shouldn’t be a strait-jacket.
  • Then we make a plan that fits our streamlined system, adheres to our values, and allows the client to pursue their goal directly in the comfort of our well run service.

Most systems in Britain are plan-led.  Lock-step supersedes common sense.

I see so much in Britain where the plan seems to override the goal.

We’ve borrowed 175 billion this year to keep going. That is 3000 pounds per man, woman and child. Not that much, hey?

I bet we could simplifiy our services to cost less and achieve heaps more by having

  • much simpler models (a lock-step model to convey the idea)

  • spending more time finding out the goals of individuals

  • and lastly creating an individual plan to navigate the system.

This wouldn’t put people out-of-work, it would just allow a lot more to be done at a fraction of the cost, allowing the country to make more money to pay the bills!

We the unhappy punters would feel better and get more done. We would spend less time on the phone talking to call centres and officials whose main job it does seem is to fill in meaningless bits of paper for meaningless procedures whose ultimate destination is a a database left on a train.

P.S. The people who thought up the systems at the well-run uni were Scots.  We have the expertise.  We just don’t seem to be using it.

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Pay professionals – data slurpers – data visualizers – wanted

Published October 20, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Do you believe that executives are worth their pay?

85% of people voting on The Economist debate beginning today vote NO.

You can vote as well! 

Yes or No?

Do you have a professional interest in pay?

If you are a

  • work & organizational psychologist
  • HR manager
  • union official
  • manager
  • politician
  • political activist

I encourage you to log in to the debate and read the comments.  It is free.

I usually skim over the contributions from the public because I doubt anyone is reading.

But this time, the comments from the public on executive pay provide invaluable data.

Would you like to join a research team on the executive pay debate?

This is an unusual opportunity to document the pay debate and to establish a reputation in compensation management.

Could you help with

  • recording the comments (or slurping them off the net)?
  • listing the arguments by parsing and analyzing them with software or by hand?
  • summarizing which questions were asked & answered?
  • writing up the report?
  • preparing compelling visual presentations?
  • marketing & distributing the report?

Please let me know what you can do, and I will put together a team.  If you aren’t particularly internet-literate, that is fine too.  We could do with people who contribute substantive questions and who review and edit the project as it proceeds.

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Feeling shy as a junior manager? Or got a clumsy boss . . .

Published October 20, 2009 by Jo Jordan

The embarrassment of supervision

I’ve just had a meeting with someone who had to evaluate my work, even though he is much less experienced than I am and was dazzled by my qualifications. He had the grace to apologise and did so with considerable charm and ease.

I might add that he holds important community positions outside work. In the course of the meeting I learned that he chairs his football club. There was no hubris about this either.  A mature man.  Did I say that he was younger than me too?

The rareness of big people

It is rare to find people who are comfortable overseeing others. Do you remember you first supervisory position? Do you remember how awkward you felt? In my first few weeks as a prefect at school, I actually practised some stern eye contact in the mirror.

It was such a nonsense, of course. This man’s genius was to acknowledge the awkward ‘social’ situation. Then he was able to walk through the evaluation criteria, some of which were manifestly laughable. But the job got done and in the process he earned my respect and importantly, though no one will thank him for it, he earned my loyalty to his organization.

Why don’t we train managers better?

It really is important to train managers before exposing them to scrutiny of their subordinates. Yet, it seems few firms do and managers wallow in their own insecurity.

Minimally, future managers need to role play likely scenarios. It is a bit like driving a new route. When you’ve driven it once or twice, you don’t have to think about directions. You can concentrate on the other traffic on the road. Then managers need training in giving instructions.

What the army teaches young lieutenants

A young infantry lieutenant is taught two things. First, how to plan the movement of troops through enemy territory. Second, how to prepare troops to move.

Taking the second, first, because it is shorter. While the lieutenant is preparing the order, they alert their subordinates that an order is coming “prepare to move out”.  This saves time when they have to get going, and gives the soldiers some feeling of control over their own lives.

The order itself is based primarily on whether they expect to be “in contact” with the enemy or not. The categories of situations would be different in other industries but a similar idea would apply.  What are the major situations that the team deals with?

Then lieutenants decide how to move their three sections, each headed up by a sergeant, in a leap frog fashion, one on high ground covering another that is moving to take another advantageous position.

When the lieutenant gives the order three more rules apply: First, show people the positions they must take. They should be able to see the positions. Second, give the whole order at once with everyone listening so they understand how their work fits into the whole. Third, take questions.

Always take questions.  The last points is so important and relates to the point I began with. Sergeants are normally much more experienced soldiers and leaders than lieutenants. As the King Abdulla of Jordan said when he addressed the House of Lords: he learned three things at Sandhurst: Listen to your sergeants. Listen to your sergeants. Listen to your sergeants.

Starting out as a manager

If you are starting out as a manager and are feeling self-conscious, put aside your awkwardness.  This isn’t about you.

Think of the task that needs doing by the whole team.  Begin with thinking about the conditions they will encounter (will they meet the enemy), look at who you have in your team, set targets for the whole team to move through the space and while about 1/3 of the team is under pressure, have the other 2/3 cover them.  Get everyone to the other side safely.

  1. Give people advance warning that a change is coming.  Get them together when you are ready and tell them the job.
  2. Where do you want to move to, when and why?
    1. What is happening – where is the enemy, what are the weather conditions, etc. (or the equivalent)
    2. How will the job be divided up?  Who will take the group forward and in what order?  How will we cover and support each other?
    3. What arrangements are in place if there is an emergency (the equivalent of air support and medical evacuation)?
  3. Remember to show people what you want. Keep it concrete.
  4. Ask for questions.

If you have followed this, I bet you no longer feel self-conscious and shy?

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Spread your know-how with (un)classes

Published October 19, 2009 by Jo Jordan

(un)classes is a brilliant idea and they deserve to take off.  But they are not going to take off in London unless we all the founders a nudge.  A bit collective nudge!

Would you email them asking them to stop allocating London, England, to Guildford, Surrey!  I’ve explained to them that this won’t do, but I think they need to know that a  lot of us “over here” would use their service if they fixed the glitch.

What is an (un)class?

An (un)class is like an (un)conference. It is an informally organized class organized in a big city by whoever would like to teach a class!

The software allows students to arrange classes too, and ask for a teacher.

There is no obligation to pay, but students can voluteer to pay and teachers can ask to be paid.  Students could also tip the teacher!  That is all left to the teacher and the students to work out among themselves.

Put your bio up

I’ve put mine up and I am waiting for them to fix the glitch!  Please email them for me  .  .  .

My Bio on Unclasses August 2009
My Bio on Unclasses August 2009
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At last, it’s here! The positive psychology of marketing!

Published October 19, 2009 by Jo Jordan

We are perishing for a want of wonder not a want of wonders.

G. K. Chesterton

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Brand Marketing and Brand Management, Ogilivy, speaking at TED.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audakxABYUc]

For social media types, check 15:30 for the positive psychology value of social media.

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Up there in the BEST elevator speeches ever!

Published October 19, 2009 by Jo Jordan

“In the next five minutes, my intention is to transform your relationship with sound . . .”

So said Julian Treasure at TED.   This 5 minute video is worth watching . . . for the sake of your health . . . and as a example of a great elevator speech.

In 5 minutes we find out what Julian Treasure can do for us. Oh how we wish we could sum up what do quite so neatly!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRepnhXq33s]

If you are serious about developing your business plan and your pitch, you may find these slides useful from Simon Stockley of Imperial College Business School. I found the slide on the order in which VC’s read business plans particularly useful for understanding what people want to hear when they think about a business.

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3 ways to help your group live happily during hard times

Published October 19, 2009 by Jo Jordan

A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace. (John 3:16-21)

As a youngster, I was baffled by the Biblical advice that there is a time for all everything under the sun. A time to be born. A time to die. It seemed perfectly obvious to me. But then I was a literal child.

Positive psychology and the seasons

A big message coming out of the positive psychology school and the poets like David Whyte, who write about work, is that we must take each season of our life in turn.  It seems though that even positive psychologists struggle to understand the ups-and-downs of life.

Let me try by using the seasons.

It is autumn now in the UK

Summer officially ends in the UK this week. The trees have already turned. The paths are strewn with leaves of all colors and it is cold inside – because it is not cold enough yet to turn on the heating. If we were still farmers, our crops would be harvested and stored, and we would have fodder in the barn for the livestock to survive the winter.

Live life on its own terms

It is here that we find the message. We have to live in summer on summer’s terms. We plant and we reap and we store to provide for the winter.

And we must do the same in winter. We must live winter by the merits of winter.

I am still a ‘noobe’ in the northern hemisphere so let me talk about winter where I came from. Our winter was all of three weeks and days were a short 11 hours! So we lit a log fire in the evenings and gathered with friends and went to bed early to get warm. On weekends, we gathered again to have barbecues in the gentle mid-day sun. We might take advantage of the rainless days to do some maintenance. But mainly we didn’t. Winter was a time of rest and recovery before the growing season came around again.

Up here in the northern hemisphere, I think we are expected to be a lot more productive here. People use summer to play and the long winter nights to work.

Ups-and-downs of contemporary life

The old agricultural seasons help us understand the ups and downs of life and what it means to explore each for what it is.

Of course, we hate the downs. We don’t want them to happen. We are terrified they won’t end.

And the ‘ downs’ are real. I hate it when people tell us they are in our mind. People die. Economies collapse. We aren’t stupid or insane. These are real events. Very real. Very distressing. I hate the Nietzsche expression that what does not kill you makes your stronger. I don’t hate a lot of things but I really hate that.  Downs are real. Please, don’t insult me by telling me they are in my mind.

Winter is not the absence of summer

But they downs need to be understood in their own terms for what they are.  Just as we understand winter as winter not the absence summer. Winter comes before summer, and after summer, and must be respected for itself.

Happiness is respecting the winter of our lives

That is happiness. Happiness is respecting the quieter times, and the harder times, and seeing them as part of the pattern of life.

Then, and only then, do we have the heart and the courage to explore them, not to love them, but to do what is required of us, respectfully and gently, and patiently.

Then we can be in them without rushing them to end.  It is pointless to try to make them end. They will end in their own time, just like winter.

We’d do better to accommodate ourselves to their nature and live within them. And live well within them.  Just as we don’t have frolics in the sun during winter, we may not be bubbling with joy in the hard times. But demanding they end does not end them sooner. It just makes them harder.

The trick is to live winter on winter’s terms.  I am pretty clear that it is easier to do if you understand winter as something that precedes summer and follows summer.

Does the analogy of the seasons apply to our non-agricultural, frenetic, confused modern lives?

When it is less clear that our suffering “is not our fault,” or when it is not clear when our suffering will end, I’ve found it helps to find a mentor who might explain the objective situation.   It also helps to live through hard times in a group. Because much of our fretting is really a cry of “why me?”, when we are all in it together, at least we do not have to protest that the hard times are part of our personality.

When we are leading a group in times of suffering and distress, I’ve found 3 things help.

  • Bring together people who suffer in the same way.

    When they hear each other’s stories, they’ll sort out in their minds what is a feature of the situation and what is in their minds. But don’t tell them to cheer up or that it will all be alright!  Dismissing their hardship is insulting and confuses them more.

    • Assure them that you will be there for them and live your promise.

    Listen. Engage eye contact. Be interested in their story. When they hear themselves telling their story and they see you still listening, they’ll calm down, a lot. Life will still be hard but you won’t have made it harder. They know they have you at least.

    • And celebrate what goes well.

    Don’t pick on one small thing and say that the life cannot be hard if that one thing went well! That is also very debilitating.  They do not need their reality dismissed or tell feel an impossible distance from you.  Just give them the space to talk about what is going well.  That reinforces your relationship and you will hear more about what goes well. See! Easier for you too. 🙂

      Be a warm, companionable log fire in the winter of our lives?

      Understanding why bad times is part of happiness is tough, and living through hard times happily is tougher

      I hope using seasons helps you understand the issue.  And that the 3 forms of aid for your group are helpful. They are classical prescriptions from positive psychology.

      And of course we can ponder why we made happiness so hard to understand in Western thought when we began with the right advice in the Bible!  The philosophers can help us with that!

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      Gloom-and-doom is catchy! Ask 3 questions to find a positive spot in the recession

      Published October 18, 2009 by Jo Jordan

      An example of a social network diagram.
      Image via Wikipedia

      Back on February 6, when it was snowing, I made a list of 5 “recession speeds”.  In February, people were angry but not really doing anything constructive about restructuring their businesses.

      1. I am lucky. My business is OK.  People need us no matter what.
      2. This crisis is outrageous.  I take every opportunity to tell decision-makers.
      3. I have cut out all luxuries.  I’ll see this through by keeping my head down.
      4. I’ll wait and see.  I am optimistic that everything will work out all right.
      5. I am systematically reviewing my business looking for new opportunities and new alliances.

      Mid-October, 8 months on, people are much clearer about how the recession will effect them.  At least, that uncertainty has resolved.

      But few people seem to have any idea how to restructure.  They are just “hanging-in” or “working harder”.  The odd firm is booming but is not quite clear why!

      Social networks affect on our attitude to the recession

      In February, I also asked 3 questions about our social networks.

      I want to ask these questions again because in the last 8 months, the media have publicized the network effects of happiness.  We all now know that we are more likely to be happy or sad, fat or slim, if our friends are.

      And if our friends’ friends are -even if we don’t know them!

      How much is your attitude to the recession affected by your friends?

      • Who are the 3 people on whom you most depend?
      • What is their recession speed?
      • How much does your recession speed help them, and how much does their recession speed help you?

      I know I am positive because the business associates on whom I depend most are thriving.  Others are being resolute.  And I can avoid negative people with relative ease.

      I’d love to know you situation and if these questions help you clarify any of your plans?

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