Before Knowing comes Jottings

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Trusted

With trust levels at a 50-year-low, is it possible to rebuild it? Research done by professors at the University of Queensland and University of Toronto gives us a vital clue. They share seven studies to provide evidence for a “small = trustworthy” heuristic, showing that people perceive numerically smaller groups as more benevolent in their character and intentions. As a result of this, individuals in trust-sensitive contexts are more likely to approach and engage with groups that are relatively small than those that are relatively large. Think about an immediate application: our media. In the last 10 years, because of the advertising model shifts, publications have reduced the coverage of local stories; at some point, the people in local communities don’t know the people, or understand their intent. Hence, lower trust. So if you’re a leader trying to rebuild trust, know you need to think of ways to connect in small groups. (Research source: https://www.academia.edu/32353281/In_Small_We_Trust_Lay_Theories_About_Small_and_Large_Groups)

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There is no question that jobs that require little creativity and decision making get low pay. There is no question that jobs like truck driver (#2 biggest job across low educated people) is also the #1 job in red voting region. There is also no question at all that there is no going back, to be great “again” because trade and other factors are a fact of life. So, what is the question? How do we create work that taps into people’s creativity instead of asking them to be drone-like. Because only then can those people actually do good work, and only then will those jobs be worth saving.

Chart from Washpo article, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/who-exactly-is-the-white-working-class-and-what-do-they-believe-good-questions/?utm_term=.5b369362f41b&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

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Three of the standard explanations of inequality —capital shares, skills, and technology— are myths. The real cause of elite inequality is the lack of open access and market competition in elite investment and labor markets

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2016/03/25-make-elites-compete-why-one-percent-earn-so-much-rothwell

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Statistically Impossible

The underrepresentation of women on speakers’ lists doesn’t “just happen,” despite many conference organizers’ claims that it does."

Enter the mathematician Greg Martin, who has devised a statistical probability analysis that even amateurs can (mostly) understand. Working with a “conservative” assumption that 24 percent of Ph.D.s in mathematics have been granted to women over the last 25 years, he finds that it’s statistically impossible that a speakers’ lineup including one woman and 19 men could be random.

His explanation of the formula is a rollicking one involving marbles and a potentially suspicious roommate. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/the-odds-that-a-panel-would-randomly-be-all-men-are-astronomical/411505/?utm_source=SFFB

And the speaker diversity calculator http://aanandprasad.com/diversity-calculator/?groupName=women&numSpeakers=20&populationPercentage=10

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Tech leaders routinely ask “where are the women” when they are THERE. Just because they don’t see them doesn’t make women invisible.

I’ve grown up in Silicon Valley, literally picking the apricots in the orchards in which Apple built its first building. For a group of people who think of themselves as SO FRICKING smart, and ahead of the curve, they are anything but. On gender representation in their industry... they are nearly dead last. ~about equivalent to the Oil industry, those innovators.

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SF tops income inequality. Oddly, this is a place that once considered itself the hub of the revolution. Graphic from here: http://uk.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-top-5-of-earners-are-insanely-rich-2015-3?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20%28Wednesday%20Friday%29%202015-03-20&utm_content=BISelect?r=US

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You are not a node. You are a frequency.

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With a $10Billion dollar talent crisis, Workforce planning is going to pass up financial systems in terms of strategic importance. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rawnshah/2015/01/05/can-technology-save-us-from-the-10-trillion-talent-crisis/

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"There were certainly barriers. But I have to be African-American, and I have to be gay. That’s what I am."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/fashion/elton-john-and-darren-walker-on-race-sexual-identity-and-leaving-the-past-behind.html?referrer=&_r=0

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Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams. (Emerson.)

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The rise of contractors and freelancers is a trend that will continue. And the question is how does this affect prosperity when the social "contract" is undefined.

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Racial Bias. Exists. Everywhere. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-.html?referrer=

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Five million jobs in the retail sector were lost as a result of automated  systems. Humanoid robots to replace majority of human workers: "as inevitable as airplanes" by 2055. Link: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brain20141222a#When:22:30:00Z

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Why do women make less money than Men? A new study finds that it's not just an employee's gender that matters in determining salary: The gender and age of the employee's manager also is important. In fact, the pay gap is widest when older men manage young women. The study also found that the reverse is true: Men working for women earned less than women working for women. The findings support the thesis that getting more women into manager roles could have a powerful trickle-down effect on closing the pay gap.

http://wapo.st/1scMP08

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More than 92 M Americans — 37% of the population aged 16+ — are outside the work force. Modern economy, leaving people behind. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/14/more-and-more-americans-are-outside-the-labor-force-entirely-who-are-they/

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Inventing Products is Less Valuable Than Inventing Ideas: In a paper published last year in the Academy of Management Review called "The Second Face of Appropriability: Generative Appropriability and Its Determinants," Ahuja makes distinctions between two types of value: "primary appropriability," or a company's' ability to exploit the opportunity of an invention by turning it into a product, and "generative appropriability," a firm's ability to capture the later value inherent in the idea.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7647.html

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Research shows how to let performance trump gender bias by evaluating candidates in groups, rather than one by one.

http://bit.ly/1xhAFRd