Looking for a Leader for Your Organization?

Consider this advice offered by Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist David J. Linden in a recent piece for the New York Times.

“When searching for your organization’s next leader, look for someone with an attenuated dopamine function: someone who is never satisfied with the status quo, someone who wants the feeling of success more than others — but likes it less.”

He describes the

“psychological profile of a compelling leader — think of tech pioneers like Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Steven P. Jobs — is also that of the compulsive risk-taker, someone with a high degree of novelty-seeking behavior.  In short, what we seek in leaders is often the same kind of personality type that is found in addicts, whether they are dependent on gambling, alcohol, sex or drugs.”

Don’t believe it?  He then lists many well-regarded leaders and their addictive habits. 

Learn more about this link between the psychological profile of a compelling leader and compulsive risk-takers at  

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24addicts.html?ref=opinion.

Caught My Eye: Resume Don'ts

As noted in an earlier post, some people think the resume is history because people use LinkedIn instead but I expressed reservations about that, as did a commenter.

If for no other reason than as a backup, people should still prepare their resumes (called CVs in Quebec).

I found a great summary of issues to avoid when doing so at:
http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-resume-blunders-2011-5#

For those not in the mood to click on the link, here is my paraphrasing of things not to do:

(Except for the tip on the color of paper not to use, most of these tips apply as much to online resumes and LinkedIn profiles as they do to printed resumes.)

1. Make copyediting errors (misspellings, grammatical errors, and misuse of punctuation (stay away from colons--they're a trap)). That said, errors inadvertently slip through, even among experts.  For example, I once heard an editing manager announce that she wouldn't hire anyone who made a single error in their resume.  I guess she wouldn't have hired herself--she inadvertently misspelled her own name.)
2. Include photos.  (A no-no.)
3. Print the resume on paper other than white, cream or very light gray.  The article says colored paper, but I saw a study once (so many years ago, I can't remember where), that found that hese three colors were acceptable (though one--and I can't remember which--was preferred to the others.  
4. Provide TMI--too much information.
5. Name references.  The people named might not be the right people to answers the prospective employers' questions.
6. Saying "references available upon request." (I've been guilty of this.)  Of course they are--so no need to say it.  
7. "Us[e] buzzwords like results-oriented, team-player, and motivated."  The expressions are so over-used, they're vapid.  Besides, who would say on their application that they're anything less than a good performer who gets along well with others? 
8. Name your hobbies.  That's individually pursued hobbies, unless they can provide insights into skills and abilities that are relevant to the job . For example, 'committed Gleek' doesn't really say much about one's skills and abilities, but 'competitive rower' indicates that the applicant must take initiative, practices regularly, and works with teams.  
9. Use long sentences and long paragraphs.  The article says they're a pain to read; but that assumes that hiring managers would even go to that inconvenience.  
10. "Us[e] an unprofessional e-mail address" like sweetiepie55@service.com 
11. Forget your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.  If they can't reach you, they can't hire you.
12. "Address [the resume] to the wrong company."  That's like calling out someone else's name at an intimate moment.  Everyone likes to feel special.  

Caught My Eye: Can Harmony Hurt Team Performance?

In the academic course, Administration of Educational Technology Units, that I teach at Concordia and the Technical Communication Manager certificate program that I teach for the Society for Technical Communication, I include an exercise on hiring workers.

One of the scenarios in the exercise focuses on a situation in which a manager has the opportunity to bring a brash 25-year-old man into a harmonious department of primarily comprised of middle-aged women. In the scenario, most of the workers express concern that the young man won’t fit in but the person who would work most closely with the young man says that she’s comfortable working with him.

Most people respond that the manager should not hire him because the candidate could disrupt the harmony of the group.

But the point of the exercise is that the harmony might not be a “healthy” harmony, it could be group-think, because the managers of the department have tended to hire clones of the workers.

“Can Harmony Hurt Team Performance?” by Mark de Rond, Adrian Moorhouse, and Matt Rogan and recently posted on The Conversation blog of the Harvard Business Review online specifically explores this type of situation.

The authors suggest that harmony can hurt team performance when:

• “Competition is stifled for the sake of promoting interpsonal harmony,” adding that that competition does not disappear, it merely finds another outlet, usually in the form of office gossip.
• True “harmony is far more likely to be the consequence, and not the cause, of team performance.” Better than “harmony” is a situation in which workers feel they can safely say what they feel without hurting the overall dynamic of the team, an.
• “What can feel dysfunctional need not be dysfunctional,” suggesting that workers in the midst of a project might not be in the best position to assess the dynamics of the team working on it.

Check out the entire piece at:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/can_harmony_hurt_team_performa.html?cm_sp=blog_flyout-_-cs-_-can_harmony_hurt_team_performa.

Caught My Eye: Hiring and LinkedIn

In his personal branding blog for Forbes magazine online, Dan Schwabel posits that LinkedIn will replace job boards like the Monster Board.

After all, LinkedIn already provides much of the same information about a candidate as a resume (or CV in Montreal).

Plus a new feature on LinkedIn lets applicants apply for jobs, thus opening their LinkedIn profile to prospective employers.

Although I'm no expert on recruiting, I'm not 100 percent sure about either prediction.

• As far as LinkedIn replacing job boards--I can see it providing stiff competition to general purpose job boards like the Monster Board and Workopolis. But as far as replacing special purpose job boards, like those of professional associations, I'm not as sure. Because such boards provide a screening function (for example, only people interested in training would look at the CSTD job board), they still serve a useful purpose.
• As far as the death of the resume goes, I'm not sure about that either. Although LinkedIn profiles provide a lot of information about people (and increasingly provide more), the resume has room for more information. In fact, the curriculum vitae (CV), which is a complete record of all activities and is not limited to 2 pages, may make a comeback precisely because it provides more detailed information.

What are your thoughts? I welcome your comments below.

Check out the original blog entry at: http://blogs.forbes.com/danschawbel/2011/06/01/linkedin-is-about-to-put-job-boards-and-resumes-out-of-business/

What? Money in Documentation?

A recent article in the business pages of the Montreal Gazette describes a successful local business that sells templates for standard business documents like policies, procedures, accounting reports, and legal documents.

Among the many issues making this application interesting is that the documents are created to work across companies, industries, and countries, and in many different languages. The challenge to designers is finding what’s common in all of that diversity.

This success story poses some challenges to professional communicators, however. The availability of templates like these could affect work opportunities for policies and procedures writers. Clip illustrations have had a huge impact on the opportunities available to illustrators, so it is likely that the availability of templates for standard operating documents has affected work opportunities for technical communicators.

Learn more about this success story at http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Documentation+made+easy/4825562/story.html.

The Failure Rate of New Hires

During the Technical Communication Manager certificate that I taught the weekend of May 14 at the Society for Technical Communication Annual Summit, I mentioned that about half of all new hires don't work out.

This morning, I saw some research from Human Capital Media, the publisher of Talent Management and CLO Magazines, which found that the percentage of new hires that don't work out is 46 percent. The study also found that the majority of the new hires did not work out for attitudinal reasons, rather than skills reasons.

If you would like to see a summary of the study, visit
http://www.leadershipiq.com/hiring-for-attitude-to-skyrocket-your-success-rate/?code=tm

Textbooks to Train Your Staff

Someone on the STC Management List asked about the best book to train new technical writers. I had some thoughts and posted them there, but thought I should also share them here.

Managers need to prepare workers through several stages of development as technical writers. Each one demands different books.

Preparation: Before workers are really ready to write an entire manual, they need to master the basic "components" of this writing and hone their professional writing style (which drastically differs from the academic and business-ese most are used to) to present information people will use.

So workers first need to learn how to write the "building blocks" of larger works, such as definitions, procedures, and procedures. Two types of books are useful at this phase:

• Books that explain how to write these building blocks. Any of the "big" textbooks on the field, such as Lay (Schuster) et al, Pfeiffer, Anderson, or Markel.

These are generalist books, but I've tried throwing new writers right into an entire manual and found that their lack of grasp of basics gets in the way of their handling more complex task.

• At least one grammar book. Strunk & White's Elements of Style continues to be a best-seller for a reason.

Initiation: after you're convinced they have the basics down, prepare workers to write a complete manual, help system or similar full-size project. At that point, you probably want two types of books:

• A primer on writing documentation. Price's 1985 book on writing a computer manual is probably THE classic. For the online era, his 2002 book with his wife Lisa is equally superb.
• A primer on the "work" of technical communication, such as Techniques for Technical Communicators (disclaimer--I co-edited it; I also recognize that it's old, but a lot of people have trained with it)

Expansion: To introduce more complex assignments and broaden their skills, such as writing in particular genres, and mastering particular parts of the process, such as visual communication, you'll need a different set of books.

• About genres--for writing instructional materials, Training Design Basics (disclosure--this is my book) or one of Bill Horton's books on writing instructions, or Jane Bozarth's More than Bullet Points
• 
  For particular aspects of communication--Slide-Ology (for writing Powerpoint slides), Bill Horton's book on illustrating computer documentation or Robin Williams' book on design for nondesigners, one of the many usability texts out there (Carol Barnum just published a new edition of her book--my students who have self-taught themselves usability found it very helpful), Ann Rockley's primer on content management, and Joann Hackos' books on management (I still prefer her 1994 edition, but the 2007 edition is more current)

This is just a starter list. Comments about other books would be welcome. I'll update the post with the feedback I receive.