Will two people watch different shows on the same TV at the same time?

From the NY Times:

"...

Microsoft has created a prototype for an auto-stereoscopic display that viewers needn’t adjust by hand to find the sweet spot. Instead, an unusual lens paired with cameras in the display keep track of where the viewer is, then steer separate, narrow columns of video to each eye, said Steven Bathiche, director of research for Microsoft’s applied sciences group. In the future, he said, the light-steering technology can be used for 3-D televisions, laptops and mobile phones.

TO build the prototype, the researchers bought a 3-D television that refreshes at 120 hertz rather than the typical 60 hertz of a standard TV, so could provide a refresh rate of 60 hertz for each of the two video beams. At a rate of less than 60 hertz, and the eye perceives flicker.

“We threw out the glasses, took the TV apart and replaced the backlight with our lens, camera controls and L.E.D.’s,” he said. Light from the L.E.D.’s is sent bouncing through a thin, wedge-shaped lens created by Adrian Travis, a member of the group.

“The L.E.D.’s are programmed to send out the light in relation to where the head-tracking cameras say you are,” he said.

The team is now working on a 240-hertz version with four beams of light, so that two people, for example, can watch 3-D shows. They will even be able to watch separate shows on the same television, he said, as the display steers one channel to one viewer and the other to the second. In the future, the same concept can be applied to games, he said, with each person having a private full-screen display."

Full NY Times Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/technology/04novel.html?th&emc=th

Howie Leadership

Howie Leadership

I gave a talk recently to a room full of soon-to-graduate MBA students. We discussed the choice between behaving as a manager or being a leader.

If you want to improve from acting like a manager to becoming a leader, then here is the instant formula: Every utterance from your mouth is a question containing “how” and “we”. Before you speak a sentence out-loud, say it in your brain first. The reason you want to do this is because a leader listen first, thinks second, and speaks third. Every sentence you utter, first in your brain and then out-loud, will be a question containing the word “how” and either the word “let’s” or the word “we”.

The Howie Leader	The Manager
How can we get back on track?	This was your responsibility, why is it late?
Let’s figure this out, how can we prevent this from happening again?	Why didn’t you bring this problem to me earlier when I could have fixed it?
How can we find out what the customer really wants?	What do you think the customer wants?
How can we make sure that we are on the same page for what needs to be done and in what order?	I don’t care what anyone else said, it’s you’re job to get the priorities right. Do I have to hold your hand through every decision?
How could we anticipate what the competition will do after we launch our new line?	Tell me what you think the competition is likely to do after we launch?

Can you ask a Howie-like question and still behave like a manager? Sure! The clever manager might ask “How can we determine why you’re such an idiot?” But, while he’s being clever, he still just a manager.

Leadership is a choice, make the choice.

Engagement depends on doing useful work.

Daniel Ariely recently spoke with Robert Siegel on NPR about his new book The Upside of Irrationality. In this interview he talks about an experiment in which he asked people to put together Lego robots.

With one group, the experimentors had the subjects build as many robots as they wanted from fresh parts. And they discovered that people who said they enjoyed Legos tended to build more robots.

With the other group instead of providing an endless supply of parts they only had parts to assemble two robots. To supply parts for subsequent robots, the experimenters took apart each finished robot. They did this in front of the subjects as soon as the robot was finished. This second group built fewer robots. And, perhaps most interesting, is that under these conditions the people who reported that they enjoyed Legos, did not build more robots than the people who didn’t share enthusiasm for Legos.

In the book Advantage: Business Competition in the New Normal, I point out that one pillar of engagement is the link you create as a leader between the work an employee does and their sense of self worth. “If the work allows people to prove their worth to themselves, you have a winning formula.” By taking apart the finished robots, the experimenters took away this sense of worth, obviously the finished product had no worth, since it was immediately disassembled.

The same thing happens in companies that employ tools like a stage-gate process that “puts discipline around vetting ideas”. A stated purpose of a stage gate process is to kill most ideas, letting only the ‘best’ ideas forward. (Of course, we know that the certainty we have around the ‘best’ ideas or the ‘stupid’ ideas is every company’s Achilles heel.)

But killing an idea has the same effect as disassembling robots. It completely undermines the flow of more ideas. That is why in Advantage I suggest companies employ tools like the Risk-Gate™ process so that you never need to kill an idea. With the Risk-Gate™ process, each idea sorts itself out under the management of its creator. But nobody ever needs to kill an idea. The process allows people, who come up with an idea, to set it aside and go after a new one.

Proof: Higher employee engagement results in better financial performance.

Yesterday I sat down with an executive in transition over coffee and in the course of our conversation he described a study he’d participated in at a former employer -- a national fast-food chain. This well known chain maintains great data on the financial performance of each of its stores across the nation. It also tracks all kinds of other performance indicators having to do with road traffic patterns, demographics surrounding the stores, competition in the immediate area, foot traffic in the stores etc.,. Finally the chain performs regular employee engagement and satisfaction surveys at the individual store level.

But, as with many large organization these data sets were tracked by different departments on different systems -- the finance guys tracked financial performance, the marketing guys tracked demographic data, and HR tracked the engagement data. The systems were independent of one another and the HR piece was mostly held in the systems of the external vendor who executed the surveys. Eventually, some wise guy thought it might be informative to combine the data to see what patterns emerged. Using the marketing information to create grouping of similar businesses they compared financial result to employee engagement. It turned out that within every marketing group the pattern repeated that above average financial results correlated with above average employee engagement results.

Now you could claim the correlation was purely coincidental. Or you could claim that better financial results drove higher employee engagement. Or you could claim that higher employee engagement drove stronger financial results.

To sort out these claim, they went back and looked at historical trends within the marketing segments. It turned out that where employee engagement went up, stronger financial result followed. Those of us who deal with innovation and competitive advantage already know this is true. But it’s nice to know that someone out there has good data proving the case.

New Press Release

Teaching Emotional Intelligence

I received two email announcements related to Human Resources yesterday that sparked this blog post. One post announced that an HR magazine is launching a new feature to recognize outstanding HR Problem Solvers. Whatever the problem and solution are, HR needs to have been the principal driver of the program or initiative.

The second email from an HR association announced a speaker, a Dr. Bakal who claims the good news about Emotional Intelligence is that everyone can learn these skills.

HR has such a poor reputation that one could contemplate that Dr. Bakal might be recognized as a HR Problem Solvers. He has solved the problem that some people lack Emotional Intelligence. They just need training.

Emotional Intelligence (EI), skills help a person to know how to read their own internal cues as well as the social styles of others.

The notion that everyone can learn these skills is nonsense. Moreover a company that invests in training designed to solve this problem is barking up the wrong management tree. The fact is, some people cannot learn these skills. Certainly, people who are Autistic will not learn these skills. But evidence suggests that there is a continuum between neurotypicals and autistics, like there is a continuum of gradient between blue and yellow. At one end are those who naturally possess high EI skills, at the other are those who naturally lack them.

While it is true that at the top of corporate organizations you will likely find people with the ability to understand other people, to work well with others and to influence people, HR would serve the company better by understanding that not every valuable employee needs to be that kind of person. Great leaders know how to maximize other people’s potential. Great corporate leaders also know that the company’s greatest asset, and the thing most necessary to competitive advantage, is diversity of mind. Being able to lead individuals who each think differently is the key corporate leadership asset. Hire CEO’s Presidents, and Division Heads that can do that, and you’ll have a healthy bottom line. (See the book Advantage: Business Competition in the New Normal)

The right problem to recognize is that the geek in the engineering department delivers incredible value to the company as a thinker, but won’t see any relevant value to becoming more emotionally intelligent. When it comes to effective use of training dollars, train those in leadership roles to deal with the reality that a healthy company is made up of both high and low EI types, by creatives and methodicals, by artists and administrators, and each has a valuable contribution to make.

Press Release