Tag Archives: advice

September 18, 2014 · 11:13 am

Polymaths

An item came across my inbox this morning that concerns what college kids are studying.

English: Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. R...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No, not their phone screens. Instead:

A new study from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences on course-taking patterns of undergraduates finds a significant lack of crossover by majors in the humanities and majors in STEM fields. According to the data, engineers earned approximately 11% of their credits in humanities courses. Meanwhile, humanities majors completed just 8% of their credits in STEM fields.

That’s from the folks at Phi Beta Kappa and the rumor is they’re pretty smart.  STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  What this is telling us is that something is happening in colleges that, frankly, seems to be happening to society as a whole.  Kids are tuning in to what is of primary interest and tuning out almost everything else.  That’s a shame.  What if Leonardo daVinci had stuck with one or the other?

Higher education is the one chance that those who are lucky enough to experience it have to explore everything.  That’s not happening:

  • Students who received undergraduate degrees earned more credits in humanities subjects than in STEM. Humanities credits represented approximately 17% of the total credits earned by the typical graduate, while the STEM share was 13%.
  • Approximately 37% of credits earned by humanities majors were for humanities courses.
  • Both in terms of absolute numbers and share of all courses taken, engineering students earned the fewest humanities credits (11% of median number earned by these students in all subjects) while social scientists earned the most (equaling 22% of all credits).
  • Humanities majors tended to earn fewer STEM credits than STEM majors earned humanities credits.

College should breed polymaths – a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. Such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.  In other words, they’re well-rounded.  They have critical thinking skills and a broad range of knowledge from which to draw conclusions.  Those are the sort of people I want when I’m hiring (or making friends).  You?

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September 17, 2014 · 10:38 am

Telephone

Everyone has played the game of telephone.  Not telephone tag in which you and someone else keep exchanging voicemails: telephone.  You whisper a sentence to someone next to you who repeats it to the person next to them and so on until the message comes back to you.  Inevitably, what you said is not what someone heard.  In fact, it’s quite possible that the message is completely different when it comes full circle.

You don’t need to be playing that game to have this happen.  What we say isn’t always what people hear. You may not have malice, you might be telling a joke. They might hear it as threatening or as disgust.  When the cook asks you how you liked supper and you smile and say “it was pretty good” they might be hearing “I didn’t like it at all but I want to be polite.”  When you tell a salesperson that you don’t think you need what it is they’re selling, the good ones hear “I can convince you” instead of the firm “no” you were unable to say for some reason.

Listening is a critical business skill.  That said, people are often distracted as we speak to them.  Maybe the phone buzzed; maybe they are thinking about their last email or meeting.  Because of that, making sure that the message we meant to convey to the listener is what they heard is just as critical a skill.  We must think about how what we’re saying or presenting could deliver an unintended message.

For example – Malaysia Airlines recently ran a contest in which they invited travelers from New Zealand and Australia to answer the question, “What and where would you like to tick off on your bucket list, and explain why.” It offered them the chance to win an Apple iPad or return trip to Malaysia.  Message received?  Well, since a “bucket list” is composed of things one wants to do before one dies and the airline has lost two planes recently, any association with death is probably not the message you want people to hear.  You say win something; they hear that you are insensitive.

One trick I’ve learned when I have any doubt about if what I’ve said was heard as meant is to ask someone to repeat it back to me.  Obnoxious?  There is that risk, but in my mind the risk of being misunderstood is far greater since we’ll never know until the message comes back around.  Speaking and writing clearly are table stakes in business.  Getting people to hear you clearly is part of those skills.

Clear?

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September 9, 2014 · 12:42 pm

Stand By Me

Every once in a while something happens that restores my faith in how smart businesses deal with their customers.

Wüsthof

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is such a day and the company is the folks at Wusthof.  Let me relate the particulars and hopefully it brings a smile to your face as it did to mine.  More importantly, hopefully there is a business point that’s helpful in your business.

As you might know if you read the screed, I like to cook.  One very important part of the effort for me is having sharp knives.  Over time I’ve actually convinced the other cooks in my home that keeping the knives sharp makes cooking easier and accidents less likely.  While the knives get honed all the time, every so often they get a real, professional sharpening.  Today was one of those days.

The Mrs. took many of the knives in our collection to the local Wusthof outlet which does sharpening.  Most of our knives are that brand and we’ve been assembling the collection for the last 20+ years.  She gave them to the salesperson who looked them over and said that she wouldn’t sharpen some of them since the handles were beginning to crack and they ought to be replaced.  Since we never put knives in the dishwasher this must have been from normal use (although frankly I never noticed anything).

This is where my faith was restored.  The salesperson informed my wife that Wusthof stands by their knives and she was going to replace all the ones in question.  For free.  After having the remaining knives sharpened, my wife walked out with 5 new knives – easily worth a few hundred dollars – and a shocked smile on her face.  She never asked to have them replaced – we never even noticed anything was amiss other than they needed sharpening.

What is the official knife of me?  What brand will I be recommending?  Duh.  But this is how customers should be treated, whether it’s a high-end knife or something else.  Brand loyalty is a two-way street.  It’s earned before it’s given and you have to stand with the customer, not oppose them.  To any of you who will be receiving gifts from me in the near future, expect something sharp.  To those of you trying to create fans, you can use all the social tools and run all the ads you want.  Nothing can do so as well as one customer having an amazing experience and telling the world about how great your brand is.

Got it?

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