Work Matters

Tag: workplace

  • Creativity: Another Reason that Having a Drink — or Two — at Work Isn’t All Bad

    Last April, I had fun writing a guest column for Cnn.Com arguing that having an occasional drink with your colleagues while you are at work isn't all bad:

    In addition to its objective physiological effects, anthropologists have long noted that its presence serves as a signal in many societies that a "time-out" has begun, that people are released, at least to a degree, from their usual responsibilities and roles. Its mere presence in our cups signals we have permission to be our "authentic selves" and we are allowed — at least to a degree — to reveal personal information about ourselves and gossip about others — because, after all, the booze loosened our tongues. When used in moderate doses and with proper precautions, participating in a collective round of drinking or two has a professional upside that ought to be acknowledged.

    Now there is a new study that adds to the symbolic (and I suppose objective) power of alcohol to bring about positive effects. The folks over at BPS Research Digest offer a lovely summary of an experiment called "Uncorking the Muse"  that shows "mild intoxication aids creative problem solving."   The researchers had male subjects between the ages of 21 and 30 consume enough vodka to get their blood alcohol concentration to .07, which is about equal to consuming two pints of beer for an average sized man.  Then they gave them a standard creativity task 'the "Remote Associates Test", a popular test of insightful thinking in which three words are presented on each round (e.g. coin, quick, spoon) and the aim is to identify the one word that best fits these three (e.g. silver).'

    The tipsy respondents performed better on the test than subjects in a sober control group:

    1. "they solved 58 per cent of 15 items on average vs. 42 per cent average success achieved by controls"

    2. "they tended to solve the items more quickly (11.54 seconds per item vs. 15.24 seconds)"

    The reasons they did better and moved faster appear to be lack of inhibition ("intoxicated participants tended to rate their experience of problem solving as more insightful, like an Aha! moment, and less analytic") and, following past research, people with superior memories tend to do worse on this task — because drinking dulls memory, it may help on the Remote Associates Test.  The researchers also speculate that "being mildly drunk facilitates a divergent, diffuse mode of thought, which is useful for such tasks where the answer requires thinking on a tangent."

    I am not arguing that people who do creative work ought to drink all day — there are two many dangers.  As I warned in the CNN piece, booze is best consumed in small doses and with proper precautions.  And of course people who don't or should not drink for health, religious, or other reasons ought not to be pressured to join in the drinking.

    Yet,  this study, when combined when with other work suggesting that drinking can serve as a useful social lubricant, suggest that having a drink or two with your colleagues at the end of the day now and then, and kicking around a few crazy ideas, might both enhance social bonds and generate some great new ideas.  The payoff might include innovative products, services, experiences and the like — if you can remember those sparkling insights after you sober up!

    P.S. The citation is Jarosz, A., Colflesh, G., and Wiley, J. (2012). Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving. Consciousness and Cognition, 21 (1), 487-493

  • The Difference Between a Bad Job and The Wrong Job

    I was interviewed for a New York Times column by Phyllis Korkki on The True Calling That Wasn't, which appeared last Sunday.  In course of the conversation, I started thinking about what I learned from Richard Hackman (one of my mentors) about what kinds of jobs motivate people and about theory and research on identity in organizations.   In doing so, I realized that while much of what I write about focuses on bad versus good bosses, jobs, and organizations, that I ought to also be emphasizing that there are many perfectly good jobs out there held be people who are, nonetheless, quite unhappy because the kind of work they do, the mission of their organization, and a host of other factors simply do not mesh well who they are and what they would want to be. 

    Of course, one of the key dimensions here is whether a person is an extrovert or an introvert.  I had a little glimpse of this with my own family a few weeks back when we were on vacation in Mexico, and my daughter and wife started talking about what job they would most like at the resort.  My daughter loved the idea of being the bartender because there would so many people to talk to; my wife picked being one of the landscapers because the idea of working in silence and sustaining beautiful plants and grounds appealed to her sense of order and aesthetics.  In her case, I should add one of the main reasons that she loves her job is that helping girls grow into confident young woman with great skills and character counts so strongly in her value system, that doing all the extroverted things she does as CEO of the Girl Scouts of Northern California trumps her inner introvert.

    But some of us have jobs that don't fit who we are and we would be much happier doing another kind of work.  As the article says, in talking to Phyllis, I thought of three signs that someone is in the wrong job. These are:

    1. "People whose careers aren’t the right fit often feel like impostors, even if they are very skilled at their jobs."

    2. "Another symptom is constant annoyance with the demands being made of
    them, even though these are reasonable for the business they’re in."

    3. "An additional warning sign is a feeling that their current work doesn’t rank very high in their value system."

    This little list just begins to scratch the surface.  As we are — I hope — beginning to move to a time when many people who have decent jobs that don't fit their identity can find a better calling.

    I wonder: What are other signs that a competent person is in the wrong job?  And, when they are looking for a new job, what are signs it will be better for them?