February 11, 2016 at 4:07 am
I've met many people with a list of degrees and qualifications as long as your arm, who also have the common sense of a potato...
February 11, 2016 at 5:38 am
TheFault (2/11/2016)
I've met many people with a list of degrees and qualifications as long as your arm, who also have the common sense of a potato...
Quite right. There's a big difference between education and experience.
There's also a big difference between intelligence and common sense. I believe it was Lowell's son who said "Common sense is not so common. In fact, it's so rare that it should be considered a superpower" or something to similar.
February 11, 2016 at 7:34 am
Ed Wagner (2/11/2016)
TheFault (2/11/2016)
I've met many people with a list of degrees and qualifications as long as your arm, who also have the common sense of a potato...Quite right. There's a big difference between education and experience.
There's also a big difference between intelligence and common sense. I believe it was Lowell's son who said "Common sense is not so common. In fact, it's so rare that it should be considered a superpower" or something to similar.
I like the quote.
I would describe it differently. I used to work in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. At the time it had the highest homicide rate in, I think, the country. Certainly in Chicago, which of course is competing with Baltimore and LA right now for the top spot. 🙁
The kids that grew up in that neighborhood developed common sense from an early age. They knew things that kids growing up in the suburbs had no skills in at all. To kids in the suburbs, common sense is to pick up your socks or mom might just smack you. It is a completely different environment, and as a result, what is common sense to one group makes no sense in another.
The manager there, a bit of an idiot I admit, would occasionally hire black kids in the neighborhood to work during the summer. When he did, he had them pick weeds in the parking lot. When he hired white kids from the suburbs or other neighborhoods, he never asked them to pick weeds. He lived in one of the most affluent suburbs on the Northwest side of Chicago. To him, this was just common sense - don't waste skilled labor doing things unskilled labor can do. To the rest of us, we hopefully acknowledge that this would be perceived as racist treatment. Just common sense to us.
Personal note - while in my mind his actions were racist, I have to acknowledge that he didn't intend it that way, he just had "no common sense".
Dave
February 13, 2016 at 9:40 am
Ed Wagner (2/11/2016)
TheFault (2/11/2016)
I've met many people with a list of degrees and qualifications as long as your arm, who also have the common sense of a potato...Quite right. There's a big difference between education and experience.
There's also a big difference between intelligence and common sense. I believe it was Lowell's son who said "Common sense is not so common. In fact, it's so rare that it should be considered a superpower" or something to similar.
I think "Common sene is not so common" is a little earlier than that, since Voltaire's Philisophical Dictionary (published 1765) wrote 'On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare."' (people sometimes say "common sense is very uncommon") and a bit over 100 years before that Descartes wrote something like "Common sense is what everyone thinks he has plenty of, usually being mistaken" (i can't remember the French well enough to search for the quote and get the words right, so it obviously wsn't exactly that).
I tend to agree with the idea that, if by "common sense" we mean the ability to see logical consequences of things, common sense would be a good thing, and that people with long strings of qualifications and degrees who didn't have it would be less capable of doing things right that people who did have it; but I don't think that's actually what "common sense" means, because the vast majority of things which are said to be common sense are actually utter nonsense - and that's because the majority of people who claim to possess common sense are not capable of thinking logically.
So perhaps the important thing to remember about "common sense" is what Chase (engineer, accountant, and economist, studied at MIT and Harvard) had to say about it: "Common sense is what tells us the world is flat". I tend to agree with him.
Of course I imagine Chase's memory is unpopular in today's USA, so his good advice regarding common sense will fall on deaf ears there.
Tom
February 13, 2016 at 10:38 am
djackson 22568 (2/8/2016)
mike.gallamore (2/8/2016)
I love how "total motivation" only includes 3 of the 6 factors. Management doesn't like to think that people are economically motivated because that means they might have to pay people better and/or give meaningful raises as you become better at your job (even without a promotion). Instead they'd like to do the easy things like have a games room or buy everyone a couple $3 beers at the end of the week and have a "friendly" culture.You need both. Money might not keep you motivated but when it is missing it is very motivating (to leave). The other two missing motivations are more negative I suppose and easier to do away with but I think part of it is the wording. Inertia: your work might involve things that aren't so fun every once and a while still getting out of bed and getting it done sometimes is what is needed.
Emotional pressure: I have and suspect most others have those family members that are always getting fired, living on welfare, always complaining about work etc. It isn't necessarily a bad thing to tell them sometimes "hey smarten up you have responsibilities".
Man, you nailed it!
We all see managers at various levels making claims about how great things are because of X, Y and Z - when those things aren't at all relevant to anyone. People work to make a living. They deserve to be respected. Differences are a good thing, and nobody should be harassed due to having different ideas.
Yet a friend of mine works at a company that actually asks people what they feel needs improvement, and consistently responds that the top three items everyone complains about every year are off the table. Seriously. "Please tell us what we need to improve on. Oh, I see you picked those same annoying things again, well we refuse to talk about those. Pick something else."
Fourty years ago when I was being trained about motivation and its importance there was a concept of two distinct sets of factors: hygiene factors and Motivator factors. A failure to provide adequate hygiene factors results in dissatisfaction, but improving these factors beyond the point where they cease to cause sissatisfaction doesn't much increase satisfaction. To get an increase in satisfaction beyond that point, one has to imcrease the motivator factors.
That sound a bit like what HBR are saying, but it was quite different because there were far more that 3 factors of each type (7 motivator, 8 hygiene). And failure in a hygiene factor didn't just increase dissatisfaction, it reduced (and could completely destroy if it was failed badly enough) satisfaction (the HBR system of course allows it to so that, according to their formula, but their blurb seems to suggest it can't - maybe they need to improve the motivation of their writers?). One of my concerns about this (and the HBR scheme) was that it doesn't allow for factors that act both ways - like location, for example. And management willingness to listen and discuss was recognised as a motivator (clearly nissing from the HBR scheme), although I think it ought to be seen as a genuine both-way factor.
Tom
February 15, 2016 at 6:59 am
Motivation is often talked about but rarely acted upon. Automatic fail.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
March 8, 2016 at 7:00 am
Gary Varga (2/15/2016)
Motivation is often talked about but rarely acted upon. Automatic fail.
I think you are wrong there. Motivation (when there is any) is often acted on. It is rarely talked about. What is often talked about isn't motivation, but rather means of improving it and policies for improving it; and it's those discussions that are rarely acted on.
Tom
March 8, 2016 at 7:29 am
TomThomson (3/8/2016)
Gary Varga (2/15/2016)
Motivation is often talked about but rarely acted upon. Automatic fail.I think you are wrong there. Motivation (when there is any) is often acted on. It is rarely talked about. What is often talked about isn't motivation, but rather means of improving it and policies for improving it; and it's those discussions that are rarely acted on.
Probably unintentionally, but I think that you are splitting hairs Tom. I meant the whole discussion around motivation. Either way, I agree.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
March 8, 2016 at 4:35 pm
"The mark of a good manager is that they find ways to treat each employee differently, in a way that suits them best, while maintaining a core set of values and rules for the entire organization."
What a great statement.
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