What are your strengths?

Have you ever been asked in a job interview, "What are your strengths?"  I can tell you how the character Michael Scott from The Office would answer that question (here's the scene).  He would say, "Why don't I tell you what my greatest weaknesses are - "I work too hard.  I care too much.  And sometimes I can be too invested in my job."  And when asked by the interviewer David Wallace about his strengths, Michael responds with, "Well, my weaknesses are actually strengths."

It's probably best to avoid gimmicks like the one Michael Scott used.  For example, I've also heard some individuals respond to the question, "What are your weaknesses?" by answering with, "I am a perfectionist."  Again, we see the gimmick of answering a question about a weakness by talking about a strength.  But is perfectionism really a strength?  Perfectionists are usually highly motivated, conscientious, hard-working individuals who strive for flawlessness.  On the other hand though, perfectionists can also be seen as rigid, inflexible, and overly critical too.  Moreover, given that perfection is rarely achieved, perfectionists tend to experience high levels of stress, anxiety, and burnout.  So which is it?  Strength or weakness?

A group of investigators analyzed over four decades of research, involving 95 studies and over 25,000 working age individuals in a variety of contexts (see "Is perfect good? A meta-analysis of perfectionism in the workplace") and found that perfectionism is actually a much bigger weakness than most of us assume (see also their summary "The Pros and Cons of Perfectionism" in Harvard Business Review).  First, the results of their analysis supported that perfectionism does have significant benefits, as these individuals do tend to be more motivated, work longer hours, an be more engaged at work.  However, the results also suggested that these benefits come at significant cost, with perfectionists demonstrating higher levels of burnout, stress, and depression.

Importantly, there are likely to be two kinds of perfectionism.  Individuals with the first kind, which is called excellence-seeking perfectionism, tend to fixate on and demand excessively high standards, not only of themselves but of their co-workers too.  Individuals with the second kind, which is called failure-avoiding perfectionism, constantly worry about making failing to live up to their own and others' expectations.  Importantly, the "beneficial" effects of perfectionism are generally stronger for those with excellence-seeking perfectionism, while the "detrimental" effects are stronger for those with the failure-avoiding perfectionism.  Most importantly, the investigators of this study showed that in general, performance and perfectionism are not related - perfectionists are not any better nor any worse than non-perfectionists when it comes to job performance.  They conclude, "Taken as a whole, our results indicate that perfectionism is likely not constructive at work."

So there you have it.  Michael Scott was wrong all along!  I am as shocked as you are...

  

"You're OUTTA HERE!!"

When I think of Major League Baseball managers who had a reputation for getting ejected from the game for arguing with umpires, I think of the greats Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, and Lou Piniella.  So I was surprised to learn that the all-time leader in ejections was Atlanta Braves Hall of Famer Bobby Cox with 162 total ejections, which may be one of baseball's most unbreakable records!  Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famer Earl Weaver actually ranked fourth in the number of ejections, and Lou Piniella tied for thirteenth on the list.  Billy Martin, who managed the New York Yankees on five different occasions, wasn't even in the top twenty!  Oh well - perhaps I was just remembering some of the most epic manager ejections in history!

I realize that some managers just have a temper and cross the line because of it.  However, I also believe that some managers think that they are accomplishing something by getting ejected (for one of my all-time favorites, check out the scene from the 1986 movie Hoosiers where Coach Norman Dale for Hickory High School gets ejected on purpose so that his assistant can coach the rest of the game).  As a general strategy, I think yelling and cussing and losing your temper on purpose is flawed.  Or is it?  

A group of investigators from the University of Quebec analyzed over 153,000 pitches over ten Major League Baseball seasons (2010-2019) to see if there was any impact on the umpire's calls after someone, either the manager or a player, was ejected for specifically arguing about a called strike or ball (see "Verbal Aggressions Against Major League Baseball Umpires Affect Their Decision Making" published in the journal, Psychological Science).  They found that (1) umpires who experience verbal abuse resulting in an ejection do, in fact, tend to alter their decision-making when it comes to calling strikes versus balls; (2) the alteration in decision-making only occurs when the object of criticism involves whether a pitch was a ball or strike; and (3) the alteration in decision-making does not appear to be in an attempt to compensate the team for the loss of the ejected individual.

What I found particularly interesting about this study was that after ejecting a manager or player, umpires tended to call fewer strikes for the offending team (i.e. the one in which a manager or player was ejected) and more strikes for the opposing team!  The investigators suggest that the offending team (i.e. the team in which a player or manager was ejected) is responding to a perceived injustice, believing that the umpire is making the wrong call.  They further suggest that umpires change their decision-making in order to avoid further social punishment from the offending team.  What's also interesting is that the offending team argues in most cases is correct about the perceived injustice - in other words, prior to being ejected, most of the umpire's calls are going against them (and are actually the wrong calls).  

While the sport of baseball is a unique situation, the investigators do suggest that their findings can be generalized to other contexts.  Managers (not the baseball kind) and decision-makers should be cognizant of the tendency to bias their decisions after being aggressively criticized.  Managers should not reward bad behavior by changing their approach to decision-making, solely in an attempt to avoid further aggressive criticism.  It's an interesting perspective and an important suggestion, even if it's one that is difficult in practice.  

“Lest we forget…”

It's Memorial Day, so my post today is a repeat of an old favorite.  Here is one of my favorite poems, one that I learned a very long time ago.  It is called, "In Flanders Fields" and was written by a Lt. Colonel John McCrae during World War I.   Lt. Colonel McCrae was a physician in the Canadian Army and wrote the poem for the funeral of a friend and fellow soldier, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in May, 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres.  One of the poem's lines, perhaps its most famous one, references red poppies, which has led to the practice of the remembrance poppy.  It is a great poem, and I will leave it here for you today, to honor all of those who have fallen in the service of their country:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place, and in the sky, 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly, 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe! 
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high! 
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

"These go to eleven..."

One of the classic scenes from the 1984 mockumentary film "This is Spinal Tap" involves Rob Reiner (playing the documentary director Marty Di Bergi) and Christopher Guest (playing guitarist Nigel Tufnel) talking about guitar amplifiers.  Nigel proudly shows Di Bergi the band's amplifiers, which all turn up to eleven.  Here is the sequence (watch the clip here):

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

It's a great scene!  It's an incredibly funny scene, because Nigel and his bandmates actually think that their amplifiers are louder than any other band's amplifiers - "These are special."  I think of this scene whenever I hear someone talking about giving an 110 percent effort.  

Hall of Fame baseball player Yogi Berra said, "You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game.  If that isn't enough, in the second half, you have to give what's left."  Yogi was famous for these kinds of quotes, which have been called "Yogi-isms" (perhaps his most famous one is "It ain't over 'til it's over") - this particular one is a "Yogi-ism" because, as everyone knows, it is impossible to give more than a 100 percent effort.

The quote by legendary UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden is perhaps more accurate, but certainly not as witty.  Coach Wooden once said, "Give me 100 percent.  You can't make up for a poor effort today by giving 110 percent tomorrow.  You don't have 110 percent.  You only have 100 percent, and that's what I want from you right now."

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... = ?

I’ve already told you that I don’t really fully understand mathematics.  With that in mind, I came across a mathematical series known as the Ramanujan Summation the other day.  It’s named after the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and states that if you add all the natural numbers to infinity, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6…, you will find that it is equal to -1/12!  That seemed impossible to me, so I kept reading further.  The proof makes sense, even as someone who is not mathematically inclined. Please allow me to elucidate!

In order to build the proof for the Ramanujan Summation, I first need to convince you of the following mathematical proofs (trust me on this - you will see why at the end):

1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 … = ½

1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 … = ¼

Okay, are you ready? Let’s prove that the first infinite series above is equal to ½, which seemed fairly unlikely to me (at least until I read the proof).

Let A = 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 …

Now, let's use a trick from algebra and subtract both sides of the equation from 1 (we can do that if it's done on both sides of the equation):

1 – A = 1 – (1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 …)

Now as my math teacher wife always tells her students, "When in doubt, simplify!"  Simplifying the above equation results in:
 
1 – A = 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 …
 
See that?  The series on the righthand side of the equation is actually our original series A.  Through a mathematical sleight of hand, we have shown that 1 – A = A.  Now, use simple algebra to simplify the rest:
 
1 – A = A
 
1 – A + A = A + A
 
1 = 2A

 
½ = A
 
In other words, we have shown that the sum of the original infinite series (which we called A) is ½, which doesn’t really make intuitive sense to me, but hey that’s mathematics!  Apparently this infinite series is named after the Italian mathematician Luigi Guido Grandi and is called Grandi’s series.
 
Now let’s tackle the second infinite series above.  We will follow the same method that we used to prove Grandi’s series:
 
Let B = 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 …
 
Let’s now use A to help us out.  We subtract both sides of the equation from A (remember that we can do this as long as we do it on both sides of the equation), as shown below:
 
A – B = (1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 …) – (1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 …)
 
A – B = (1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 …) – 1 + 2 – 3 + 4 – 5 + 6…

Using more mathematical sleight of hand, we can rearrange the above equation to:
 
A – B = (1 – 1) + (-1 + 2) + (1 – 3) + (-1 + 4) + (1 – 5) + (-1 + 6)…
 
The above equation simplifies further to:
 
A – B = 0 + 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 …

A - B = 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 …
 
Note that the series on the right side of the equation above is actually our original series B.  So, substituting B where appropriate yields the following:
 
A – B = B
 
A – B + B = B + B

A = 2B

But wait!  We know that A = 1/2 (proved above).  Let's substitute 1/2 for A in the above equation, which yields:
 
½ = 2B

Now all we have to do is solve for B:
 
¼ = B
 
Tuh-dah!  There’s not a fancy name for this infinite series, but that’s okay.  It’s also apparently very well-known and commonly used throughout the fields of mathematics and physics.
 
Okay, let’s get back to the original point of this entire discussion, proving that the infinite series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 … = -1/12.  Let’s start again by defining a new series:
 
C = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5… 
 
Let’s now subtract C from B (similar to what we’ve done in the previous two proofs) and simplify using more mathematical sleight of hand:
 
B – C = (1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 …) – (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6…)
 
B – C = (1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 …) – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6…
 
B – C = (1 – 1) + (-2 – 2) + (3 – 3) + (-4 – 4) + (5 – 5) + (-6 + 6)…
 
B – C = 0 – 4 + 0 – 8 + 0 – 12 …
 
B – C = -4 – 8 – 12 …
 
Alright, that’s not what you were probably expecting, but it’s still a long way off from our result of -1/12.  Or is it?  Note that all the numbers on the righthand side of the equation are multiples of 4.  We can use simple algebra to factor the 4 out as follows:
 
B – C = -4 (1 + 2 + 3…)
 
Whoa!  Now we have our original series C on the righthand side of the equation.  We can now simplify further:
 
B – C = -4C
 
B = -3C

Again, we know that B = 1/4, so we can substitute and then solve for C:
 
¼ = -3C
 
-1/12 = C.
 
Voila! It seems impossible to me that the sum of all natural numbers up to infinity can equal not only a negative number but also a fraction!  However, the “proof is in the pudding” so to speak, and hopefully you can follow the intuition above.  Apparently the Ramanujan Summation is used throughout mathematics and physics, but that's for another day (okay, the likelihood that I will be writing anything more about the Ramanujan Summation is fairly low, so you will have to just research it yourself, if you are so inclined).  However, according to Wikipedia, a mathematician from the University of Alberta, Terry Gannon, calls the Ramanujan Summation "one of the most remarkable formulae in science" in a monograph on - wait for it - moonshine theory!  Who knew that mathematics and moonshine can be used in the same sentence!?!

Once again, things aren't always as obvious as they seem.  Just like the High Reliability Organization principle of Reluctance to Simplify!  The simple explanations are usually the wrong ones, particularly when it comes to complex systems.  The answer may be hidden beneath the surface.  Dig deeper.  Always take the next step. 

A National Treasure

My wife and I attended a book tour event last night with the Presidential historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin sponsored by Chicago Humanities as part of their 2024 Spring Festival.  The event was hosted by the author Jonathan Eig who won the Pulitzer Prize for his most recent book, King: A Life.  It was actually the first time that we've done something like this since we moved to Chicago a few years ago.  We actually heard Ms. Goodwin speak a few years ago at an event in Cincinnati, and we both thought that she was incredible then.  She was just as incredible now!  She talked about her most recent book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960's, which was released about a month ago.  The book is part memoir, part biography (of her late husband Richard Goodwin, a writer and former aide and speechwriter to President Lyndon B. Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy), and part history of one of the most turbulent decades in our nation's history.  Of course I purchased a copy of the book at the event, but it will have to wait until I finish one of her other books, Leadership in Turbulent Times, which has been waiting on my nightstand for several months now.

Ms. Goodwin is 81 years old, which is surprising giving how much energy and passion she brought to bear to the event tonight.  She is a gifted speaker and one of our most brilliant minds - she is, to me, a national treasure.  What's also evident is that she dearly loved her husband and misses him terribly.  To hear her tell stories about her husband was absolutely awe-inspiring.  What impressed my wife and I the most tonight was her story about how her husband wrote a speech that President Johnson delivered to a Joint Session of Congress following Bloody Sunday, the violent police suppression of civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.  Goodwin had about 8 hours to draft the speech, the formal title of which was "The American Promise" but is commonly known as the "We Shall Overcome" speech.  The speech is considered Johnson's "greatest oratorical triumph" and led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Ms. Goodwin recited the opening and powerful first paragraph of the speech by memory - the words are powerful and poignant:

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.

I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

Read the text of his speech.  It's just an incredible speech.  It seems that people don't talk like that much anymore.  

I encourage you to read the books by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  I have yet to be disappointed.  I encourage you to watch her recorded talks that are widely available on the Internet.  I encourage you to watch her Master Class on Leadership.  My wife and I left the event with a new sense of hope and purpose.  As we walked to our car, my wife turned to me and said, "We should do more of this."  I agreed.  It was a great night listening to a great American.

  

"For the seafood lover in you..."

I just read that the casual dining seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 19, 2024.  Last week, in preparation for that filing, they closed nearly 100 restaurants in at least 27 states.  One has to wonder if Red Lobster will go the way of so many other retail stores and restaurants that I remember growing up.  While there were many factors cited for the bankruptcy filings, one of the leading root causes was a disastrous "endless shrimp" promotion (a "$20 all-you-can-eat shrimp deal") that apparently resulted in $11 million in losses. 

Following the closure of several restaurants earlier this week, CEO Jonathan Tibus said, "This restructuring is the best path forward for Red Lobster.  It allows us to address several financial and operational challenges and emerge stronger and re-focused on our growth."  A company spokesperson stated that they would continue to operate its over 600 restaurants (551 restaurants in the U.S., 27 restaurants in Canada, and 27 restaurants in other international locations) through the bankruptcy proceedings, which will be focused on simplifying operations, closing low-performing locations, and pursuing a sale.  

As you probably guessed, the "endless shrimp" promotion isn't the sole reason for today's bankruptcy filing.  Industry experts say that today's news is the culmination of over two decades poor management in the face of increasing competition from faster, cheaper restaurant chains such as Chipotle and Panera.  For example, the company apparently tried to lower prices as a way to compete with other chains by offering an "endless crab" promotion in 2003, but the company lost millions as the price of crab rose.  I guess the company didn't learn, as they tried a similar strategy with the same disastrous results with the "endless shrimp" promotion.  While they increased the number of people dining in their restaurants, more people opted for the all-you-can-eat promotion.  Unfortunately, the restaurant doesn't make enough of a profit margin on shrimp when the costs are factored in.  Aaron Allen, founder of the restaurant consulting firm Aaron Allen & Associates said, "The fact that they would have this kind of corporate amnesia is a fascinating case study in corporate food service."

Red Lobster achieved better success in the mid-2000's when they tried to reposition themselves as a more upscale restaurant by raising prices and renovating restaurants.  Unfortunately, they continued to struggle with rising lease and labor costs, as well as changing consumer tastes.  Since 2019, they've experienced a 30% decline in annual guest counts.  Allen suspects that Red Lobster will decrease the number of restaurants by about one-third to one-half as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.  And he suspects that "Most likely whoever buys it is not going to want to fix up Red Lobster."

The lessons here are (1) remember the lessons of the past, as history generally repeats (i.e. if a promotion failed miserably in the past, it will probably fail again in the future) and (2) it's hard to dig out of a 20 year hole, so don't try to do that using a gimmick like an all-you-can-eat promotion.  Organizations should always strive for operational efficiency (preferably using High Reliability Organization principles!).  bIt's sad to see another well-known company go under, but it's hard to argue that it's the right move when the company has been struggling for so long under what Allen describes as "a slow-moving train wreck that has been in motion for 20 years."