BEYOND THE CHECKLIST

A problem of many organizations is that they are aware of the needs of employees (impact, recognition, growth, fair salary, etc) but fulfill them as they would with a checklist: let's do this superficially, checked, done.

Some examples (& solutions) ↓

1/8 Example #1: recognition.

Many companies and managers know that employees want recognition.

But they fulfill this need in a very superficial way. With a small internal award, a certificate, etc. Top red flag: it's HR-driven and/or feels cringe.

2/8

Whenever we desire an outcome but not the actions that would make us achieve it, we end up with inaction, busywork, shortcuts, excuses, and, ultimately, frustration.

(a thread of highlights from the first chapter of my book "The Control Heuristic")

1/14 You probably do not have a decision-making problem, but an action-taking one

2/14

TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE DELEGATION

1) Minimize the chance of misunderstandings:

Explain:
– what's too little
– what's too much
– common mistakes 2) Explain why you need it done.

Not who asked for it. What it is for. What happens if it's not done. (And what happens if it's not done well enough.)

Tasks whose rationale isn't explained relevantly are done badly and/or at higher emotional cost

Footnotes are my favorite feature of my book Ergodicity (from which the screenshot below is taken).

In fact, there’s plenty of bolded text in the footnotes.

A few examples in this thread.

https://twitter.com/benkershner/status/1667196711373099009

The recent wealth tax increase in Norway was expected to bring an additional $146M in yearly tax revenue

Instead, an estimated $54B-worth of ultra-rich left the country, leading to a lost $594M in yearly wealth tax revenue

A net decrease of $448M+

(sources and calculations ↓) The Guardian estimates the wealth of the relocated millionaires at 600B NOK, or $54B. That would have been taxed at 1.1%, which means $594M in wealth tax lost

Norway raised NOK 16.1B = $1.46B in wealth taxes in 2019 (page 3 of the PDF below); increasing the wealth tax from 1% to… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Today is Autism Awareness Day, so here is an example to visualize autistic perception

(continues below, 1/6) A visual representation of perception on the Autism Spectrum (mild)

[2/6]

HIGHER EDUCATION IN 2023

As student debt reaches new highs every day, it’s more urgent than ever to look at ways to reduce the costs of degrees. Here are some ways to do that. First of all, we should shorten degrees when possible.

After all, isn’t it strange that most degrees have the same duration regardless of the complexity of the underlying field?

Some degrees can and should be shortened.

If you haven't read yet @patio11 on banking crises, you really should.

A few highlights in the thread just to get you interested, but I strongly recommend the full article: bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/bankin… A reminder that the crisis is over not when the fire is extinguished but when the flammables are secured

Last week, I published this paper.

Let me explain a key few points (thread) First of all, you can find the paper to download here

osf.io/sp5z3

Now, what are the paper's implications?

No: whether masks have a large effect depends on how many wear it.

If I always wear a mask but my wife never does, she will eventually infect me → numbers would show masks don't work.

If we both wear masks outside, we don't get infected → numbers would show masks work well.

https://twitter.com/KyleBumpus/status/1628264658351321089

It's a bit like closing half the holes on a sinking ship, then the ship sinks anyway, and finally declaring closing holes doesn't work.

It does work, and concluding anything different would be a disservice to sinking ships around the world.

PROMPT ENGINEERING… FOR MANAGERS

If you tried one of this new apps that have an AI generate images for you, you'll know that asking for the right thing doesn't matter; you also need to ask *right.*

The same applies to people management.

Here is how to ask to get things done: Many managers delegate too abstractly.

This gives a false impression that the delegated task is clear, until the delegee goes back to their desks and realizes that, in fact, they don't really know what they've been delegated in practice.

1/12

A good thread on eleven questions that the EU (which just banned sales of combustion cars starting 2035) should answer on the challenge of mass electrification.

Some underrated highlights:
– do we have enough copper, which isn't green to produce?
– relative outsourcing to China

https://twitter.com/_happycactus_/status/1626108842969899009

More importantly, I'm wondering if it's appropriate that a group of people who produced the GDPR banners and a botched COVID response should be in charge of deciding whether to issue *fast* bans of currently-pervasive structures.

Unintended consequences, are they understood?

Exactly. IMHO forcing the transition to electric cars without first having forced proper maintenance is a bad idea at best

and suicidal at worst, if the transition is forced too fast (the EU wants to finish in 12y), with concerns on the infrastructure needed to support it.

https://twitter.com/aledeniz/status/1625866153544278016

Transitioning to electric 100% of a country's vehicles is much, much harder and painful and costly than transitioning 30%-70%.

It means reaching places hard to reach, forcing customers with extremely bad tradeoffs, no backup in case of electric outage, etc.

During the recent Ergodicity Economics conference, I got asked a very interesting question: how can we quantify non-ergodicity?

A tentative solution would be to compute the ratio between the outcome of X participants performing an activity once and the outcome of one participant performing it X times (and perhaps apply a log to the ratio).

But this solution comes with problems.

"Aspirant calibration" seems under-invested by public education

How many great jobs are shunned because of false beliefs about them (and how many bad jobs are accepted because of the previous point)?

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1625112208412917760

When I was in high school, I didn't want to study engineering because I believed it would only lead to boring jobs.

Then, my English teacher organized an "alumni day" with former students a few years into their careers, and we got to ask questions.

Life-changing.

Under-done.

15 MANAGEMENT QUOTES

Clarity is not micromanagement, but lack of clarity is lack of management.

People only voice a fraction of their doubts. The rest shows up later as indecisiveness, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness. Employees love when their manager, while delegating a task, makes explicit what would be too little and what would be too much.

Don’t aim to be clear enough so that you can be understood, but aim to be so clear that you cannot be misunderstood. That’s superclarity.

Here is a great exercise for self-introspection:

1. Write an *ordered* list of your top 5-10 values (e.g., health, family, honesty, etc.) 2. Pick the top value and think of a time you compromised it.

If anything comes to mind, ask yourself which value you compromised it for.

It seems like incentives only work on some people.

Example: everyone is incentivized to get fit. Few exercise.

Why? In general, we only act on *experienced* incentives.

If your new boss says you'll get a bonus if you achieve a target, but you never got a bonus before, there's a chance you won't feel motivated.

If you have never been fit, probably you won't feel incentivized to exercise.

An interesting list of red flags, for those interested in corporate fraud and financial forensics

(even though, if you do are interested, I suspect you already follow Hindenburg)

https://twitter.com/HindenburgRes/status/1618077612680818688

Some red flags are relatively common, others are quite unique "[subsidiary] CEO served as director in 3 companies alongside a fugitive diamond merchant who allegedly stole U.S. $1 billion before fleeing India. Vinod Adani’s daughter married the fugitive diamond merchant’s son."

Audits shouldn't just be to spot the bad.

They should also be to spot the good
(and reproduce it elsewhere)

Here is how to do it: First of all, forget all you know about audits.

You might think they are long, tedious, and useless.
Some are. But they don't have to be all like that.

It's possible, and recommended even, to do frequent fifteen-minute mini-audits, where you look for both the bad and the good.

Cardiovascular deaths are 5.8% higher in 2020 and 0.4% LOWER in 2021, in case you wondered whether COVID or the vaccine are responsible for it.

(please share) 0.4 lower than 2020 but still considerably higher than 2018-19, because COVID is still around