Mercer’s Infographics on internal mobility

Infographic by Mercer Insights

Why Does Making a Rational Argument to Power, Fail?

Have you ever found a surprising insight through analysis about your business, prepared a set of slides with a solid argument, presented to the senior leadership, which dismissed it immediately?  I heard some head nods out there. You’re not alone… Sometimes that scenario is legitimate (“The leader knows that while your insight is likely true, they are about to change their business model and exit the business you’ve analyzed.”) But more often than not – especially regarding insights about people, they are following this golden rule:

“If your data matches my gut, then I am brilliant. Thank you for validating me. But if your data does not match my gut, your data is wrong, I’m right, and go away.”

I’ve been struggling  with ways to overcome that golden rule for a while – it’s an intractable, very human, and understandable reaction to things we can’t accept yet.  (There is a clinical name for this btw – it’s called Confirmation Bias.) I’m a big fan of Jonah Lehrer’s work on decision making.  and Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational and the Upside of Irrationality.) This weekend, Jonah wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal that strikes at the heart of the golden rule problem, particularly within power.  He writes about a set of experiments where one person is granted unthrottled power:

“This [study] suggests that even fleeting feelings of power can dramatically change the way people respond to information. Instead of analyzing the strength of the argument, those with authority focus on whether or not the argument confirms what they already believe. If it doesn’t, then the facts are conveniently ignored.”

Interestingly, those without unthrottled power can accept the rational argument – power can accept it less.  For those of us who analyze human capital data, I think this problem is harder – it’s about people- a topic that most in power have a strong opinion about.  I know I’m not ready to share a short, neat list of how to overcome this type of thorny problem (and open to your comments on how you’ve overcome it), but I know that good practices exist – we just need to come up with the list of “to dos” to help us all make our data more palatable to the people that need to act on it!

My Perspective to Mashable’s Post: HOW TO: Land Your Dream Job Using Google AdWords

Mashable posted a story about someone who landed an advertising job by buying keywords of the names of their prospective bosses.  At the risk of unleashing the wrath of Mashable fans, I’d like to illustrate why Mashable’sadvice that lots of people should throw Ad Words on their potential bosses name on Google is not a high-success strategy for most people.  First, here’s the ppt deck from the Mashable piece:

Done watching? Cool. Here’s why this is bad advice unless you happen to work in very specialized industries (advertising, PR, social media jobs are the least terrible industries for this strategy, but my gut would tell me only slightly less terrible than other industries).

Reason #1: The coincidence of a particular hiring manager googling themselves when you are looking for a job is exceedingly low (Now, quite possibly Creative Directors are a bit more interested in their own online presence, but I know a lot of CDs – they are working or playing, not glaming).

Reason #2: Because a few people had success in a particular technique, it does not follow that everyone should do it. There are loads of stories of how people got their jobs. Many of them are creepy. Some have involved felony charges.  Alex Bogusky from Crispin Porter & Bogusky has a “TV-MA” rated web show with great stories including cryptic hand written notes unsigned by an Art Director, and an Israeli team that kidnapped Alex’s Facebook fan page (Alex doesn’t have a fan page btw, it’s a funny story). Put on your headphones or turn down your volume if you’re in an office, colorful language within the first 5 seconds.

http://www.justin.tv/fearlessqa/b/258335738false#r=-rid-&s=li

They are very funny stories, but please, don’t do these things in real life.

Here’s what does work (and oddly enough, is what the Crispin video does really cover):

• Be true to who you are, what you love, and be original – no matter what kind of job you are looking to land.
• Gimmicks are not necessary – original thinking and self-knowledge is.
• Want to update something? Start with your LinkedIn page. Will a recruiter or manager admit they looked you up? Usually not. But they probably did. And yours could probably use a tune up.

Good luck job hunters. I’m rooting for you.  Anyone that wants to post their original ideas on how their job search worked for them – please do!