Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

How Much Does That Institutional Degree Really Mean?

“If we were both competing for that position, you’d get it and I wouldn’t because you have a degree and I don’t.”  I overheard that little nugget at the divisional Christmas party, and it struck me as  a little odd because that was shared between two young admin assistants.  What the hell does any university degree have to do with how well you do the job in a clerical role?

One of my favorite cookbook authors is Anthony Bourdain.  The man has attitude and he speaks his mind.  I may not always agree with his point of view, but by golly there’s no mistaking what his point of view is.  I read a short biography of the man and he states over and over that the most important thing in a line kitchen is dependability.

“In this business, it doesn’t matter if you are a fire-starter, bed-wetter, drug addict, or psychopath, as long as you show up at work on time.”

No matter where he’s working, his rules for hiring are simple: you can play as hard as you like when you’re off duty, but when you’re on duty, you must first and foremost be reliable.  Whether or not you’re trustworthy is more important than where or even if you went to cooking school.

[from If You Can Stand the Heat by Dawn Davis]

The piece of paper that an institution gives you says, “This person whose name is indicated here knows something about ____.  He/She has basic competency in this field up to the standard you would expect from this institution.”

That’s really all it says.  It doesn’t say “This person will produce for you!” or “This person will stick through the thick and thin in your business!”, much less, “This person has the right mix of skills and character to strengthen your team, not weaken it.”

There is nothing about that piece of paper that says anything about a person’s character, values, motivations, ability to work with others, and all the other things outside of the world of academia that matter when you’re looking for someone to recruit onto your team.

A very good friend of mine is working hard as a dental resident at a Toronto hospital’s emergency department.  It’s a very prestigious team that he’s with, and he got the spot not because he was the best in the class with top marks – he got it because the interviewer and the “tour guides” (the previous year’s residents) saw something in his character and his manner that they liked and figured would match what the team wanted and needed.

To take another quote from Anthony Bourdain:

“Who do you want in your kitchen, when push comes to shove, and you’re in danger of falling in the weeds and the orders are pouring in and the number-one oven just went down and the host just sat a twelve-top and there’s a bad case of the flu that’s been tearing through the staff like the Vandals through Rome?  Do you want an educated, CIA (Culinary Institute of America) trained American know-it-all like I was early in my career?  A guy who’s certain there’s a job waiting for him somewhere else?  Or some resume-building aspiring chef?

To graduate from the CIA – or any other major culinary school – ensures basic, standardized knowledge of history, terminology, and procedures of our trade.  A CIA diploma should, and does, mean a lot to potential employers; it represents the accumulation of valuable classroom experience and impeccable standards.  But it is no guarantee of character.  It speaks nothing of one’s heart and soul and willingness to work, to learn, to grow – or one’s ability to endure.

As I’ve said many times, I can teach people to cook.  I can’t teach character.”

[from The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain]

That is the bottom line.  In any business, you can teach the newbie how to do something, but you cannot teach character and you cannot change a person’s motivations.

What the hell does a university degree have to do with clerical work?  If there’s analytical work to be done later on when the person might advance to a different position, then you can help the person prepare for that new position.  But the skills one associates with a university degree have no bearing on the admin position in question.

Be honest with yourself when you’re recruiting people and evaluating your candidates.  What is the bare minimum level of competency a candidate must have, that you simply cannot teach or cannot afford the time to teach?  Anything above that ought to be taken with a grain of salt and be subordinated to an evaluation of the person’s character, values, and motivation.

In order to get there, you’ll have to trust your gut instincts.  You’ll have to structure the assessment process to tease out and give weight to subjective evidence about what each candidate is like as a person.

Paper only tells you so much.  And an institutional degree, that coveted piece of paper that says this or that person is a hotshot, only tells you so much.  But from the way HR departments tend to design hiring processes, and from my conversations in the past with HR majors, you’d never know it.

Dancing in a Restaurant (La Mexicana)

Have you ever seen patrons in a restaurant spontaneously dancing because they like the music there?  No?  Well, I finally have!

I should say that I know them, though.  These people are my friends and dance pals.  So, yes they know how to dance well!

The other patrons at the restaurant – La Mexicana, at 838 Yonge Street near Downtown Toronto – certainly enjoyed the dance performances, as did the staff!

Every Summit is a Success – Is That True?

Every summit is a success.  Some are more successful than others.

That, apparently, is the official line on every major summit that happens – G8, G20, Copenhagen, and others.  I heard that at a meeting earlier this week.  No matter how much, or how little, gets accomplished at each of these summits, they are officially and invariably considered successes.

Obama isn’t perfect, but he seems to speak more sincerely than many other politicians do – certainly more than our Canadian Prime Minister and Environment Minister do.  Obama came out from Copenhagen, yes, saying that things went well and that we now have a meaningful and unprecedented international agreement.  That’s the political side of him speaking.  But he also said that while the agreement is not entirely what any individual party wanted to see, that everyone involved is at least slightly disappointed with it, it is a first step.  He said to the world, to his citizens, and to his voters, that what we ended up with was disappointing.  That’s a strong streak of sincerity.

A summit’s success can only truly be determined by relating the outcome to the goals set for it in the first place.  The trick that I think is played almost every time is that there are no clearly stated goals for these summits.  You can call anything a success if there’s nothing against which to measure your results.

Politicians play games.  That’s what they do.  That’s why most voters hear what they have to say with varying degrees of suspicion and distrust.  What we need – what we have always needed and continue to need – are statesmen and leaders.  We need people in positions of power who will call a duck a duck, admit when they or other world leaders are failing.  They will readily toot their horns when they do things right, don’t worry about that.  What’s missing from the games that politicians play is the other side of the picture.

Canada’s Minister of the Environment says things went hunky-dory with Copenhagen.  We ended up with an agreement stating what Canada wanted for the past several years.  It was a success.

Well, what do you think of that?  Do you think it was a success?  Do you think every summit is a success?

If not, then think carefully about who you vote for.  Think carefully about what you write to your PM, MP, Premier, MPP, mayor and councillor.  Otherwise, we’ll all continue to have people in power who call anything they do a success.

Punjabi Jingle Bells

I think the title of this post says it all!  If you like Indian music – or heck, just know what it sounds like – you’ll get a fun kick out of this

Can the Brain Differentiate between Real & Vicarious Experiences?

Our experiences shape who we are, but to what extent is the brain able to differentiate between real experiences in our lives and vicarious experiences we’ve lived through movies and other entertainment?  I think that our entertainment does a lot to shape us precisely because the brain can have difficulty differentiating between memories from real experiences and fictitious, vicarious experiences.

“Every idea that you hold passionately has a background in your personal experience.  […] things learned through actual experience and personal observations have more power to form our future than ideas learned by abstract examination.”  -Terry Pearce, Leading Out Loud

I remember writing a research essay early in my university years where I argued that violence in entertainment does not lead to violent behaviour.  While I still believe that there is no definite causal link, that is not because entertainment media lack power, but because most violent entertainment lacks the key to truly embedding themselves in our memories: emotional power.

Memories are best retained when they are associated with strong emotions.  You don’t remember your experience brushing your teeth 3 days ago because there’s no emotional importance attached to it.  Essentially, who cares?  Likewise with most entertainment out there – TV shows, movies, or video games – they’re utterly forgettable because they have no emotional impact.  They do not touch and resonate with anything deeper in you.  Once again, who cares?

But there are shows, movies, and games that can reach in and touch us.

Sometimes these are the masterpieces – works of skilled artistic teams, beginning with the writer(s) and continuing through the actors, director, editor, and composer.  These are the films and shows that move us.  They bring us to tears, raise us to magnificent heights of joy, or stoke the fires of anger.  They tug at our heartstrings of compassion, stroke our egos, fan the flames of patriotism, or feed our greed, prejudices, or hatreds.  Masterfully-created entertainment takes us through the whole spectrum of human emotion.  That is why they are so enjoyable, and that is what makes them so memorable.

Sometimes the entertainment that moves us is far less commendable.  Pornographic entertainment pulls on basic psychological levers in the minds of its consumers, who only reinforce its effects if they take their own bodies through the sexual response process to climax.  There are strong emotions associated with the body’s sexual response – or at least strong processes at work in the brain.  These vicarious experiences can embed themselves in the mind even if they are not consciously memorable.

If there is doubt about how the brain, at some level, cannot distinguish between real memories and vicarious memories, consider the practice of “visualization.”  This is a technique that athletes, public speakers, and other individuals focused on high personal performance will use to “practice perfectly”.  They will visualize themselves doing something perfectly – whether that is a particular move or play for their sport, or a particular speech that they are giving, or anything else they have set their minds to.  They will do this over and over.  They will deliberately inject the emotions of joy or triumph to anchor the memory.

Visualization is a technique that high performers continue to use because experience indicates that it works.  The brain has difficulty telling the difference between the individual having done the action perfectly in real life or merely imaged and visualized it.

Now, of course the conscious mind has a lot to do with this.  You can watch Superman and not jump off the balcony later on to try to fly.  That is too far out of what your mind conceives as the realm of possibility.  But what about the underlying messages in the movie?  If the movie is done well, you may not meaningfully internalize anything from Superman flying here and there, but if the storyline moves you emotionally, maybe something about his heroism, or how he or the villain behaves, something more subtle, remains embedded in your mind.

I’m just throwing some thoughts out there.  I don’t have empirical evidence on-hand for this.  But I read about and think about personal performance, personal values, and personal development.  When I came upon the quote by Terry Pearce up above, the first thought that came to my mind was, “The movies I have seen are probably interpreted by my brain as personal experience.”

I know that some movies that I have seen really moved me emotionally.  I also know that those movies have embedded themselves in my memory.  I am sure that they have had an effect on who I am and what I value.

How about you?  How has the double-edged sword of entertainment affected you?  It might be an interesting question to consider.