workplace

22 April 2018: Management, Spring Meetings, ODA

Posted on April 22, 2018 Leave a Comment

I got excited about this article and that podcast which align with my wish for human-centered management cultures to replace policy-centered ones. The Harvard Business Review’s “Co-creating the employee experience” shows how IBM uses design thinking, crowdsourcing, and prototypes to develop HR policies because “people are much less likely to resist the change when they’ve had a hand in shaping it”. Tom Peters’ “Excellence dividend” [H/T Kathleen Edison] shows why investing in people and their development is the only necessary strategy companies should truly pursue. That quote sums it all: “If it is not incredibly cool and fun and energizing for the boss to walk at 1am in the distribution centre with the front line people who are doing the work, do the world a favour boss: resign tomorrow!”

It was the week of the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings. What caught my attention came mostly from the IMF. Managing Director Christine Lagarde unpacked the trade tensions that were the main backdrop of the Meetings in her Hong Kong speech. In her Beijing speech, she flagged the debt and broader fiscal challenges that the Belt and Road Initiative faces in its expansion phase, and launched the China-IMF Capacity Development Center to train Chinese diplomats. The World Economic Outlook chapter on “Manufacturing jobs” debunked the long held view that development requires moving from agriculture to manufacturing to services. It documents the shrinking contribution of manufacturing to job creation at the global level and shows that some developing countries have skipped the manufacturing stage by rapidly developing service sectors with high productivity (eg telecom, transportation, financial intermediation).

My graph this week is from the OECD 2017 Official Development Assistance (ODA) figures. ODA stabilized at 146.6 billion in 2017 with two trends in reverse gear: (i) a decrease of in-donor spending (i.e. money spent on refugees in rich countries), and (ii) an increase in funds going to poorest countries. ODA remained mostly disbursed in the form of grants but the share of loans grew (+13% from 2016). The broader trend, pointed to by World Bank President Jim Kim, is that since the 1990ies, the ODA share of financial flows going to developing countries has dropped significantly to reach 9% today, reflecting the shrinking financial power of development organizations.

My quote this week is from Zuckerberg in his Ezra Klein interview: “It’s just not clear to me that us sitting in an office here in California are best placed to always determine what the policies should be for people all around the world.”

3 November 2017

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It is always good to have a quick read through the OECD DAC high level meeting communique. Two specific points caught my attention this year. One, the club of 30 richest countries agreed on the accounting rules for in-donor refugee spending. Certain costs can now be reported as official development assistance (ODA) during the first year of refugees in host countries with no cap on expenditure levels (Annex II). Provision of food, shelter, healthcare and education, rescue at sea, and voluntary resettlement costs are eligible. Spending associated with detention, border control, return and resettlement following asylum rejection is not eligible. Two, DAC members decided to explore the possible “reverse graduation” of rich countries affected by natural disasters or humanitarian crises (paragraph 41). This decision was triggered by the U.K. seeking ODA eligibility when supporting their Overseas Territories in the Caribbean following hurricane Irma. This is important as there has been, up to now, no rule for high income countries experiencing crises-induced GDP drops to be re-instated as aid recipients. As these two developments have implications for the redirection of ODA away from the poorest countries, these conversations are worth monitoring and, I would argue, engaging with. For the second-time in 40 years of its existence, the DAC high level meeting allowed civil society participation and NGOs issued common statements – a possible entry point.

In “It is time to end the opacity and secrecy of social media” Ghonim and Rashbass suggest to develop standardized public interest APIs (application programming interfaces) to improve the transparency of social media. The idea is to create “public good” algorithms to scan and surface problematic content and sponsors on digital platforms. I found this interesting because it does not only look at the symptoms of the on-going social media crisis. As we have argued before, the root causes of the problem have to do with the ethics of digital platforms design and what drives their expansion (money, not societal progress). But, of course, there are also limits in using tech to fight tech.

My graph this week is from Heidrick and Struggles in “To understand whether your company is inclusive, map how your employees interact”. It shows the results of a network analysis done with employees of a large professional services firm to understand whom they trust and turn to to ask for help with decisions. In that particular example, we see that women (red dots) have less connections than men (blue dots); that there are more same-gender ties than cross-gender ones; and that women are less central than men in the innovation network. This type of evidence is key to understanding diversity and inclusion at a deeper level than counting the number of staff from different groupings.

My quote of the week is from Pekka Kuusi’s “Social policy for the 60s: A plan for Finland” (H/T Ronald Wiman) referring to the universal child grant system introduced when Finland had a GDP per capita equivalent to that of 2015 Namibia: “A heavenly gift to a country where there was scarcity of everything – except of number of children”.

7 July 2017

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Jackson G. Lu and al’s “‘Switching On” creativity” provides new and counter-intuitive evidence on how to boost creativity. While many focus on the negative impacts of multi-tasking, this paper demonstrates that frequent back and forth between tasks can increase one’s capacity to produce novel, unique, and useful ideas. This is because task-switching prevents “cognitive fixation”, i.e. getting the mind stuck on one path or a dead end. People do not typically select task-switching as a work method. And they don’t naturally realize when they reach cognitive fixation. So, task-switching for increased creativity needs scheduling. This is useful evidence as creative thinking is an increasingly big asset in the workplace. But as we embrace task switching, let me add two personal notes: (i) not all assignments require creativity, and (ii) the positive benefits identified by this research are valid when switching between two creative tasks (not between one creative task and [insert social media of choice]).

Maria Popova’s “10 learnings from 10 years of Brain Pickings” distills the substance of her blogging decade into 10 lessons. I am sharing these because I often find her blog inspiring: Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind; do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone; be generous; build pockets of stillness into your life; when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them; presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity; expect anything worthwhile to take a long time; seek out what magnifies your spirit; don’t be afraid to be an idealist; don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively. Each lesson is unpacked with accompanying book recommendations that make a good summer reading list.

My graph this week is from the World Unplugged study. It summarizes how 1000 students in 10 different countries felt after unplugging for 24 hours. Note the super high levels of negative emotions. This is old news as the data came out of a 2010 survey. But as we enter the summer season, it is a good reminder of the need for regular digital detoxes.

My quote is from Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad which is on my summer reading pile: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime”.

23 June 2017

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Youseff Mahmoud et al’s “Entrepreneurship for sustaining peace” is the curtain raiser for one of the International Peace Institute conversation series on prevention and sustaining peace. Mahmoud is argues that the UN refocus on prevention be accompanied by a shift away from deterring conflict towards sustaining peace. Conceptually this means moving away from a highly politicized and securitized approach to prevention. Operationally this means moving away from crisis management tools only. Adopting the sustaining peace approach, this article looks at how economic opportunities contribute to peaceful societies by offering more dignified lives and countering sentiments of marginalization for entrepreneurs, their families, and their communities. It uses two examples to illustrate how that works: Colombia and Tunisia. It highlights the unique potential of youth entrepreneurship by pointing to the correlation between positive peace and the Youth Development Index and arguing that the demographic dividend could also contribute to sustaining peace. And it provides 3 operational recommendations for UN field operations and country teams: map existing entrepreneurial initiatives that have explicit peacebuilding benefits; develop an integrated entrepreneurship development strategy; and encourage host countries to create environment supportive of youth-led social entrepreneurship as part of peace operations.

Several people shared the IOM’s “UN-biased” video with me this week. It speaks of decision biases in the work place and how they affect hiring decisions, in the United Nations. Some numbers. Where equally qualified candidates are considered, mothers are 79% less likely to be hired. Women take 5.4 years to be promoted to a P4 level whereas men take 4.6 years. In performance reviews, women receive 2.5 times more feedback about aggressive communication styles than men. Overall 62% men work in hardship duty stations, and while 30% of applicants are women, they are not selected. At senior level, 16% of males versus 40% of females are more likely to be divorced, separated or single. The video also suggests 5 very practical recommendations to counter biases in recruitment. Just take 5 minutes and watch it. Go IOM!

My graph this week is from CBInsights’ “Google is ramping up pharma activity” and shows that google has made as many pharma deals (6) in the first half of 2017 as it did during the 2010-14 period. While all eyes are on Amazon investing in the food industry, google is moving in the healthcare space with expectations of transforming the sector. What strikes me is tech giants strengthening their monopolies with one hand while growing their philanthropic arms with the other: over the same week Amazon Bezos bought Whole Foods, he also crowdsourced ideas for how to spend his billions.

My quote is from Mark Zuckerberg’s opening speech at the Facebook’s first Communities Summit because, as flagged earlier, it marks another step in how the social media platform is being transformed into a new type of global governance entity: “The idea behind our new mission is to bring the world closer together. Ending poverty, curing diseases, stopping climate change, spreading freedom and tolerance, stopping violence: there is no single group or even country that can take these things on alone. So we have to build a world where people come together to take on these big meaningful efforts. This is not going to happen top down […] We want to help one billion people join [Facebook] meaningful communities and bring the world closer together.”

9 June 2017

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The 2017 Millennial Impact Report just released “Millennial dialogue on the landscape of cause engagement and social issues” completing phase one of this annual study led the Achieve and Case Foundations. Although the study is US-focused and its first phase involves only a small sample of respondents, findings are interesting. Four main messages. One, millennials do not like to use “activists” to qualify their engagement. They prefer being called “advocates” or “allies”. Two, they do not have clear definitions for “cause” nor “social issue” but generally associate the former with action and the latter with politics. Three, interviewees are increasingly interested in causes promoting equity and impacting vulnerable and marginalized populations. Four, the cause engagement of interviewees has increased since end 2016.

Carmine Gallo’s “Google CEO does not use bullet points and neither should you”. Voila. That’s it. No more bullet point presentations. Share a piece of information and 3 days later people will remember 10%. Add a picture, they’ll remember 65%. I vaguely checked the credibility of this evidence and decided that it did not matter anyway. I have done bullet points and text-heavy presentations before, seen too many, and know that they make me dizzy.

My table this week is from Bruce Stokes’ “Global publics more upbeat about the economy but many are pessimistic about children’s future”. It presents results from a Pew Research Center survey conducted with 34,788 people in 32 countries from February to April 2017. The main message in the richest countries is that even when respondents perceive the economic situation as getting better, they still don’t think children will be better off financially than their parents. Results are not as bad in middle income countries. There is also a generational gap: young people (18-29) are more optimistic about the next generation’s financial prospects than middle age people.

My quote this week is from Amy Webb in her MIT Technology Review interview “How to think like a futurist”: “If there’s a way to make the future a little less exciting and a little bit more boring, that’s good for everybody because that means that we’re not continually shocked by new ideas, that we’re not continually discounting people on the fringe.”

26 May 2017

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Megan Roberts’ “The state of the world: report card on international cooperation” summarizes the main findings of the Council of Councils’ 2017 Report Card. It is depressing. The data come from asking the heads of 25 think tanks across the world to grade international cooperation efforts on global challenges. The 2016 overall grade is C minus, down from previous years in the aggregate as well as throughout specific issues from climate change to global health to global trade and conflict. The main driver behind this poor score is the global wave of nationalism coupled with the declining trust in institutions. The report card also ranks global risks and opportunities. Top 3 risks: conflict between states, transnational terrorism, and internal conflicts. Interestingly they are all security-related while the WEF Global Risks Report 2017 had three environmental risks topping its list this year. Top 3 opportunities: combating international terrorism, promoting global health, and advancing development. I cannot draw any comparison with the WEF report as it only looks at risks, contributing to the overall depressing feeling.

Andrew Mayeda’s “World Bank’s star economist is sidelined over war on words” recounts how the World Bank’s Development Economics Group staff mutinied against chief economist Romer and his rough demands to make research more straightforward. Romer requested that researchers connect their work to public debates, define clear purpose for each publication, and make emails shorter. He also had strong views on style, asking for less convoluted wording and more use of active voice while tracking frequency of “and” in reports (which he would not clear if above 2.6%). From this story it seems that requests were conveyed in a painful way. This aside, the rules seem pretty good to me. Especially as I recalled this World Bank research showing that while the Bank spent one quarter of its country service budget on reports, one third were never downloaded and only 13% were downloaded more than 250 times in their shelf-times.

A little extra this week as it is a long week-end for some of us and Bill Gates just shared his summer reading picks. I read two. Homo Deus which I recommended here as a good cerebral trip. It was no surprise to see it in the list as Gates had loved the prequel. What was surprising to me was to see Maylis de Kerangal’s The heart which is more of an emotional trip. de Kerangal is a great writer who can make a page turner out of the science of building a bridge. In The heart, which was entitled “mending the living” in French, you follow a heart being extracted from the body of a young man killed in a car accident to its transplantation in the body of a middle age woman dying of a heart malfunction. It is about grief and how every person around these two protagonists deal with it. It is powerful. I enjoyed it.

My map this week is from Fred Stolle’s “We discovered 1.8 million square miles of forest in the desert”. Stolle and colleagues counted trees on satellite images and found the equivalent of a whole Amazon worth of trees hiding in drylands and deserts. This is good news for the planet. But it also good news for the 2 billion people, most of whom very poor, who live in drylands and depend on these trees for their livelihoods.

My quote this week is from Dame Helen Mirren’s “Tulane commencement speech“: “We do need you to fix things, to make things right, to answer the big and troubling questions of this extraordinary modern world. How is it that we have figured out how to put everything from our resting pulse rate to every book or song we’d ever want to read or listen to on our iPhones – and yet for six years we haven’t found a way to stop little children in Syria from being murdered by poisonous gas?”