Greg Schott of MuleSoft: Beware the Threats to a Positive Workplace; New York Times, 8/29/15

Adam Bryant, New York Times; Greg Schott of MuleSoft: Beware the Threats to a Positive Workplace:

"You worked at a number of tech companies before becoming C.E.O. of MuleSoft. What lessons did you learn about culture along the way?

I learned that it can take years to build a great culture and you can tear it down in very short order. It’s like a building — you can spend years building a beautiful building and then it can just collapse.

The problems I’ve seen have been lack of communication, which can lead to a lack of trust. If people don’t feel connected to the leadership and they don’t feel like they understand where the company is headed, people will fill in the blanks, and often not with positive things. It’s just human nature.

Another one is when you get leadership that looks like they’re out for themselves. People pick up on that when decisions are made that are not necessarily with everybody’s best interest at heart. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but it’s an attitude.

Factions are also a problem, and I’ve seen this in the tech world as companies grow quickly. There tends to be an old-timer group — the ones who have been around forever, which in technology is three to five years — and the new people who were brought on board later.

If there’s any kind of different treatment, like the folks who have been there since the beginning are treated as if they’re the only ones that can really figure things out, or if the new ones are considered the saviors of the company, that sends a terrible signal. We’re all here together to make it work."

Architect Sought for Obama’s Presidential Library Complex; New York Times, 8/26/15

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, New York Times; Architect Sought for Obama’s Presidential Library Complex:

"The foundation overseeing the development of Barack Obama’s presidential library began a global competition on Wednesday to select the architect who will design the elaborate Chicago complex.

The start of the selection process is the latest step in Mr. Obama’s quiet but painstaking planning for his post-presidential initiatives, which his advisers say could cost as much as $1 billion.

The library, to be located on the South Side of Chicago, where the president had his political start as a community organizer, will be the crown jewel of the effort, a high-technology take on the traditional archival presidential library that will include space for innovation labs, a community garden and sports...

“We think there’s a real value to having a diverse group of participants in every element of this process,” Mr. Nesbitt said in a conference call Wednesday. “We feel really good about the group that has been invited to respond.”

The firms have until Sept. 16 to submit statements of interest in the project, including company profiles, résumés of their staff members, photographs and drawings of past projects, and examples of their diversity efforts."

Sara Baron on librarianship, universities and being Pittsburgh bound; Duquesne Duke, 8/26/15

Seth Culp-Ressler, Duquesne Duke; Sara Baron on librarianship, universities and being Pittsburgh bound:

"On Sept. 1 Sara Baron will begin her new position at Duquesne as head librarian for Gumberg Library. Baron comes to the Bluff with a wealth of librarianship experience, most recently as the dean of the university library at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Consider this her formal introduction to campus, as well as an invitation for all faculty and staff to welcome her with a good old Duquesne greeting when she arrives...

Q: It may be a bit early for this, but do you have any plans in mind for Gumberg Library?

A: Naturally I’m going to have to get there and really talk to people and meet people and really have some conversations before I can come up with a specific plan. But I can tell you that I think the Gumberg Library team already works with excellence. I think they’re already doing a lot for students and for the local campus community. So for me I just want to help them do that even more. I think there probably needs to be some space enhancements. I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but I do think there’s always opportunities to make library spaces more conducive for students, for student work, for group work, for collaborative work. Those are some initial thoughts, but of course I can’t say anything specifically until I get there and actually talk to people and get a real sense of what the needs are. Ultimately, though, students come first. So the library has to meet all the needs of the students and really things they aren’t even expecting. I like to surprise students, so when they walk in they say ‘Wow, this is a great place, this is somewhere I want to be.’"

The Closing of the Canadian Mind; New York Times, 8/14/15

Stephen Marche, New York Times; The Closing of the Canadian Mind:

"THE prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it.

He has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public venues, like the scholarly Munk Debates and CPAC, Canada’s equivalent of CSPAN. His own campaign events were subject to gag orders until a public outcry forced him to rescind the forced silence of his supporters.

Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.

Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance."

How libraries became the front line of America’s homelessness crisis; Washington Post, 8/19/15

Richard Gunderman and David C. Stevens, Washington Post; How libraries became the front line of America’s homelessness crisis:

"Helping homeless and mentally ill clients is a challenge that libraries all over the country are grappling with, but library science curricula don’t seem to have caught up.

According to one newly minted librarian who received her master’s degree in library science a few years ago, contemporary library education typically includes no coursework in mental illness. It focuses on the techniques and technology of library services, especially meeting the needs of patrons for access to information.

Learning strategies to assist mentally ill and homeless patrons might not be on library curricula, but the American Library Association has long had policies in place emphasizing equal access to library services for the poor, and in 1996 formed the Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty Task Force.

Across the country, libraries have developed helpful strategies for serving homeless and mentally ill patrons. One, at least for large libraries with sufficient numbers of personnel, is to designate a member of the staff as a specialist in these matters, who serves as a resource person for other employees.

At the metropolitan library we visited, one of the more civically oriented librarians acts as a liaison between various local mental health agencies and homeless shelters. She has cultivated a relationship with a mental health crisis clinician at the county hospital, who has organized workshops to educate the library staff about mental health and substance abuse."

Is Donald Trump an American Putin?; Washington Post, 8/18/15

David Ignatius, Washington Post; Is Donald Trump an American Putin? :

"Putin, like Trump, seems to understand that power and showmanship are inseparable, especially for a nation that is traumatized by military and economic losses. It’s a confidence game. “Within the system, Mr. Putin has developed his own idealized view of himself as CEO of ‘Russia, Inc.’ In reality, his leadership style is more like that of a mafia family Don,” write Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy in their book, “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin."...

What’s surprising about Trump is that he has attracted such a wide following. He’s Reagan without Reaganism, running a campaign nearly devoid of ideas. Americans have had flirtations with demagogues, from Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. But the bullying authoritarian personality — the Putin style — usually doesn’t work here. This summer has been an exception, but history suggests that it won’t last."

Data-Crunching Is Coming to Help Your Boss Manage Your Time; New York Times, 8/17/15

David Streitfeld, New York Times; Data-Crunching Is Coming to Help Your Boss Manage Your Time:

"A new generation of workplace technology is allowing white-collar jobs to be tracked, tweaked and managed in ways that were difficult even a few years ago. Employers of all types — old-line manufacturers, nonprofits, universities, digital start-ups and retailers — are using an increasingly wide range of tools to monitor workers’ efforts, help them focus, cheer them on and just make sure they show up on time.

The programs foster connections and sometimes increase productivity among employees who are geographically dispersed and often working from home. But as work force management becomes a factor in offices everywhere, questions are piling up. How much can bosses increase intensity? How does data, which bestows new powers of vision and understanding, redefine who is valuable? And with half of salaried workers saying they work 50 or more hours a week, when does working very hard become working way too much?"

Depiction of Amazon Stirs a Debate About Work Culture; New York Times, 8/18/15

New York Times; Depiction of Amazon Stirs a Debate About Work Culture:

"Amazon recently surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the country. It is ceaselessly inventive, unafraid to try something and fail. Its ambitious goal: sell everything to everyone everywhere. It is also figuring out how to extract the most from its employees, whose dedication and obsession is the real engine behind the company’s success.

A recent article in The New York Times —“Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace” — offered a glimpse into what could be described as a workplace that is both bruising and thrilling. It gave accounts of workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises who said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover in Amazon’s intense and fast-paced workplace.

The reaction to the story was voluminous and spirited. On websites like Reddit and Hacker News, tech workers, Amazon employees and friends and relatives offered thoughtful and detailed reflections of their experiences at the company. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, also weighed in."

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace; New York Times, 8/15/15

Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, New York Times; Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace:

"But just as Jeff Bezos was able to see the future of e-commerce before anyone else, she added, he was able to envision a new kind of workplace: fluid but tough, with employees staying only a short time and employers demanding the maximum.

“Amazon is driven by data,” said Ms. Pearce, who now runs her own Seattle software company, which is well stocked with ex-Amazonians. “It will only change if the data says it must — when the entire way of hiring and working and firing stops making economic sense.”

The retailer is already showing some strain from its rapid growth. Even for entry-level jobs, it is hiring on the East Coast, and many employees are required to hand over all their contacts to company recruiters at “LinkedIn” parties. In Seattle alone, more than 4,500 jobs are open, including one for an analyst specializing in “high-volume hiring.”

Some companies, faced with such an overwhelming need for new bodies, might scale back their ambitions or soften their message.

Not Amazon. In a recent recruiting video, one young woman warns: “You either fit here or you don’t. You love it or you don’t. There is no middle ground.”"

Great Leaders Don't Have Followers: They Collaborate; Huffington Post, 8/10/15

Don Tapscott, Huffington Post; Great Leaders Don't Have Followers: They Collaborate:

"I was asked recently about my leadership style and what makes a great leader. As Peter Drucker said years ago, stable times require excellence and good management. As we transition to a new age, our organizations need more; they need leadership. So managers shouldn't just manage. Today they need to lead and think of themselves primarily as leaders rather than just managers.

In the past, tinkering could do the trick. These times require deep innovation and transformation, though, and that means leadership. However, leadership is changing too.

The type of leadership I embrace mirrors the digital revolution I've spent my life studying. The old model of technology was based on the mainframe; all intelligence was in the host computer, and mainframes communicated with peripherals down the hierarchical network.

Similarly, the old model of leadership was focused in a single, powerful individual. Great leaders were often those with the biggest brain or brain/mouth combination. They created a vision and sold it down to others.

Command-and-control leadership worked well with command-and-control computing and command-and-control business. That's not how technology is modeled anymore, and increasingly not how business is done. Why should we keep the old ideas about leadership?

My approach to leadership is collaborative. This approach is the antithesis of the old-style, brilliant visionary, take-charge, rally-the-troops type. In the past, Winston Churchill, Thomas Watson, and Lee Iacocca embodied the single dominant leader. Today, the leader is a collective, networked, virtual force and no longer necessarily embodied in a single individual."

Frances Oldham Kelsey, F.D.A. Stickler Who Saved U.S. Babies From Thalidomide, Dies at 101; New York Times, 8/7/15

Robert D. McFadden, New York Times; Frances Oldham Kelsey, F.D.A. Stickler Who Saved U.S. Babies From Thalidomide, Dies at 101:

"The sedative was Kevadon, and the application to market it in America reached the new medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration in September 1960. The drug had already been sold to pregnant women in Europe for morning sickness, and the application seemed routine, ready for the rubber stamp.

But some data on the drug’s safety troubled Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, a former family doctor and teacher in South Dakota who had just taken the F.D.A. job in Washington, reviewing requests to license new drugs. She asked the manufacturer, the William S. Merrell Company of Cincinnati, for more information.

Thus began a fateful test of wills. Merrell responded. Dr. Kelsey wanted more. Merrell complained to Dr. Kelsey’s bosses, calling her a petty bureaucrat. She persisted. On it went. But by late 1961, the terrible evidence was pouring in. The drug — better known by its generic name, thalidomide — was causing thousands of babies in Europe, Britain, Canada and the Middle East to be born with flipperlike arms and legs and other defects.

Dr. Kelsey, who died on Friday at the age of 101, became a 20th-century American heroine for her role in the thalidomide case, celebrated not only for her vigilance, which spared the United States from widespread birth deformities, but also for giving rise to modern laws regulating pharmaceuticals.

She was hailed by citizens’ groups and awarded honorary degrees. Congress bestowed on her a medal for service to humanity and passed legislation requiring drug makers to prove that new products were safe and effective before marketing them. President John F. Kennedy signed the landmark law that she had inspired, and presented her with the nation’s highest federal civilian service award."

How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill; Harvard Business Review, 4/28/15

Andrew Ovans, Harvard Business Review; How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill:

"Anyone trying to come up to speed on emotional intelligence would have a pretty easy time of it since the concept is remarkably recent, and its application to business newer still. The term was coined in 1990 in a research paper by two psychology professors, John D. Mayer of UNH and Peter Salovey of Yale. Some years later, Mayer defined it in HBR this way:

From a scientific (rather than a popular) standpoint, emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships; and to manage your own and others’ emotions. It doesn’t necessarily include the qualities (like optimism, initiative, and self-confidence) that some popular definitions ascribe to it.

It took almost a decade after the term was coined for Rutgers psychologist Daniel Goleman to establish the importance of emotional intelligence to business leadership. In 1998, in what has become one of HBR’s most enduring articles, “What Makes a Leader,” he states unequivocally:

The most effective leaders are all alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but…they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. My research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a great leader."