John Standerfer

People’s willingness to share and discuss their opinions on an issue is inversely proportional to the importance of the issue.

Take note of how many times you encounter this in your interactions with other people tomorrow, especially in business environments.

A classic example of this is the weekly status meeting.  A few years ago I was in one where we had two new items on the agenda to discuss – a new marketing newsletter and how to handle one of our largest clients who was demanding a refund and threatening legal action.

The first item up was the marketing newsletter.  Within minutes, the conversation had grown into a full blown debate of the merits of putting the full content of the newsletter in the email versus with links to the web, whether to include images or not and a million other nuances.  The VP of Sales was arguing vehemently for sending out a newsletter once a month while the Director of QA felt strongly that twice a month was ideal.

Next was the client legal issue, the CEO brought up his initial thoughts on the matter and then – nothing. Silence.  No one had an opinion, no one disagreed, no one wanted to debate or even pontificate.  Despite the fact that there was a substantial amount of revenue at stake, not to mention the potential damage to our reputation, no one wanted to even explore another option.

I believe the vast discrepancy between the level of interest in debating these topics all rests on a single tenant – “if my opinion is accepted, how much damage could it do if i am wrong?”

In the case of the marketing newsletter, assuming the company did not begin emailing daily videos of the CEO in a Nazi uniform talking about his love for Adolf Hitler, the final decision was extremely unlikely to have a material impact on the company’s business or the company’s perception of the individual person whose suggestion was accepted.  Even if every two weeks is the ideal timeframe for a newsletter, no one is going to think less of the VP of Sales for settling on once a month, after all – he’s paid to sell not to do marketing.

Contrast this with the touchy client situation where if the VP of Sales takes a hard line and says “they paid us that money, let them try to sue us” and it backfires.  It will have a negative impact on both the company and the VP of Sales as he is supposed to know the clients better than anyone.  Whereas simply agreeing with the initial suggestion of the CEO, regardless of personal opinion guarantees that no matter what happens, it’s no one but the CEO’s fault so there is no personal risk.

So the next time you find yourself in a room full of arguing coworkers, take a step back and evaluate what they’re actually arguing about because odds are if everyone is interested in debating, the issue at hand is far from critical.

Interesting article in the New York Times yesterday providing additional examples of many of the scenarios I described in my article on how the loss of jobs is rapidly progressing from a cyclical issue to a structural one.

Every now and again I meet someone in a professional setting who is terrified of the internet.  Now these are mostly highly technical individuals who use the internet for news, entertainment, etc.  Most are even capable of building their own computers from scratch.  However, the fear is around what the internet could do to their career.

Everyone has heard (or more likely seen online) a story about some 20-something not getting a job or being fired from a job due to things they found out about their past on google/facebook/twitter.  There are two ways to handle this possibility, one is to play not to lose and try your best to keep the internet clear of any mention of you.  The second is to go on offense and make sure that when someone does search for you, they find your online presence.

What the media never covers is how many people have gotten jobs because of their internet presence.  How valuable is it when a potential employer googles a developer candidate and sees a link to their blog chock full of valuable programming techniques?  Or their numerous contribution to open source projects?

Put yourself in the employers shoes, you receive two java developer resumes of equal quality and immediately look for them on google/facebook/twitter.  Candidate one has almost no presence at all.   Candidate two has numerous hits related to previous java programming work and blog posts containing thoughts on trying to develop an iPhone App.  A further search on facebook also shows him doing keg stands with numerous young co-eds at a frat party two summers ago.

Which would you hire?

Now that the markets have closed near the lows of the “flash crash” day, thought it would be a good time to revisit my theory on the real “reason” behind the crash.

Interesting thoughts by Stephen Hawking on what would happen if we did make contact with aliens -

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

You’re about to…

Full column is here

The NFL understands that despite what fans say on talk radio about a season’s purpose being to determine the “best” team, that what actually keeps fan watching is the large role that randomness plays in the NFL versus other professional sports.  By having the entire playoffs be sudden death, it virtually guarantees there will be scenarios where the “better” team loses.  Contrast this with MLB where seemingly every season the winner of the AL Central will get lucky and take game 1 of a series against the Yankees/Red Sox only to be eventually overwhelmed by the superior talent of the favorite.  This scenario does not exist in the NFL and for good reason.  Would anyone remember  the Giant’s David Tyree’s amazing catch against the Patriots in the Super Bowl if they’d been playing best of 5 or 7?  Does anyone think the Giants could have defeated that Patriot’s team in a best of 7?  Whenever you watch an NBA or MLB game 7, the announcers always talk about the magic of a game 7 due to it’s finality and how every play’s impact is magnified, with the NFL, every playoff game is a game 7.

New column of mine on  HuffingtonPost –  Greed is Good – Why Punitive Taxes don’t Work

Love this blurb by Nate Silver on how our over reaction to these botched terrorist attempts increase their value to those who commit them -

no cost is too high, they say, to prevent the next 9/11. But if history is any guide, the next attack will probably not be like 9/11—it will be like NWA 253, something which threatens the lives of dozens or hundreds of people, not thousands. To the extent we overreact to these incidents—allowing them to disrupt our economy and our way of life—we do little but increase the value to terrorists of committing them.

Full article here, Nate’s website here.