91–100 of 135 posts
Strange - I usually associate "soft skills" more with leadership, people skills etc. And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.
> And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. Why can't you teach them directly?
For the same reason that you can't learn riding a bicycle from a book.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another thing I've noticed is that no matter how compelling the argument it's also near impossible to get people to take action to change things that are deeply entrenched even if they agree with you.
I have seen this too. I have a theory about it. Most organizations only recognize negative intercessions as praiseworthy, and categorize positive intercession as "business as usual" to be expected, even if sometimes the positive intercession is much harder. "No!" moments are much valued in corporate culture these days. People think this promotes the propagation of critical thinking across an organization. Perhaps iro…
In fact, expressing doubts about the wisdom of pushing ahead with a project, even one already failing, is seen as very poor behaviour, like you have just farted in front of everyone. Likewise, identifying risks is often seen as negativity, rather than a foundation principle of review.
People who subsequently roll out one of these failed ideas are often publicly rewarded. In contrast, the people who develop the alternate system that is actually used tend to be ignored.
There seems to be a trend in management towards an unwarranted belief in the effectiveness and importance of superficial quantitative analysis, and two complementary myths that go along with the trend: a) any number you can assign to something is significant; b) anything you cannot assign a number to is not significant. Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical thinking, nor likely to…
What gets measured gets managed.
Strange - I usually associate "soft skills" more with leadership, people skills etc. And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.
> And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. If you can think critically are you going to get past the HR filters and convince them you are the recruit willing to take a deal that will descend into just a little worse than unemployment? (So your empty shell of a life after they spit you out is devoid of any unused benefits.) If you want to openly think critically in corporate employment,…
It is a hard lesson, but no-one is irreplaceable. Even if it means an entire product/group fails, if you are inconvenient you are gone. Organisations are not rational actors.
> following directions like a total Svejk
I love that book. It would be nice to seen a version in a corporate setting. Instead of a war it could be some behemoth company doing a massive pivot to the cloud, rewriting every bit of business logic in ruby, etc, and its lowly minion who is forever avoiding work with mandatory training courses, and who never pays for lunch because they appear at the smallest meeting which has corporate catering.
Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasiv…
In my experience, there is a specific experience threshold at which critical thinking switches from being an annoying trait of a young and garrulous employee to the most valuable asset a more senior person could have.
There seems to be a trend in management towards an unwarranted belief in the effectiveness and importance of superficial quantitative analysis, and two complementary myths that go along with the trend: a) any number you can assign to something is significant; b) anything you cannot assign a number to is not significant. Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical thinking, nor likely to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work for a >10,000 employee health care system as a physician. What I have seen is that the front line workers are considered disposable, and should be grateful for a job. The superstars ( always nice, compassionate, and excellent at their jobs) are not recognized by management and so when raises are given, everyone gets them, including the lazy ones. This disappoints the worker bees, and leads to incredible turnov…
> Not sure what the solution is, but it's just an observation. You're constrained (enabled) by the competitive strategy your HCS employs: cost leadership (e.g. Wal-Mart), differentiation (e.g. Apple), or focus (e.g. Southwest Airlines). [0] Strategic focus allows companies to better align their incentives with culture, and it seems to work better. If your HCS doesn't fall in one of these categories, compensation's ev…
Of course, they're the world's largest retailer by market cap, so they can afford to do both. And usually I don't even look elsewhere for a product, because I figure that they have either the lowest price or close to the lowest, and will deliver it the fastest. So I guess more differentiation?
There seems to be a trend in management towards an unwarranted belief in the effectiveness and importance of superficial quantitative analysis, and two complementary myths that go along with the trend: a) any number you can assign to something is significant; b) anything you cannot assign a number to is not significant. Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical thinking, nor likely to…
I mean, how many times have you heard "Well, sure, it's not exact, but it's better than what we have" in reference to some model that was made up from a pile of assumptions? No, no, no, it's not better than the alternative, it's exactly the same, that's the entire point! Just because you threw some statistics at it doesn't mean you're any better off than you were before.
Do the personality tests most companies rely on during the hiring process even account for critical thinking?
Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasiv…
Creativity and critical thinking. In subordinate position it gets you labelled a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot. In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc. You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing.