Shift Happens

Neat slideshow on technological and political shifts. It just won the "World's Best Presentation Contest" at SlideShare.

How Do You Really Feel?

While on the subject of Stanley Milgram, there is another very interesting experimental technique he pioneered which I think is directly relevant to product managers and marketers. The issue is: how can you determine how people truly feel about something? Asking them (e.g. via surveys or focus groups) can be problematic and all sorts of biases may be introduced. For instance, how you frame the question has a strong impact on the results (nice little example of framing bias by Paul Kedrosky here).

While market analysts can adjust for these biases in some cases, things become particularly troublesome when the questions are more personal and/or sensitive. People tend to respond in accordance with a social desireability bias, which basically means they will tell you what they believe to be a more socially acceptable response, rather than what they really think. How do you estimate the amount of popular support for white supremacy or neo-Nazi groups? Almost no one who holds such a view will own up to it. Election polls in many countries severely understate the support for extremist political parties for the same reason (including the famous 2002 French election in which the extreme right winger Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the preliminary round of voting - a shocking result. In the United States, a rough analogy would be if David Duke won the Republican primary).

Milgram devised a particularly clever experimental technique that attempted to deal with these types of issues. It was called the "lost-letter" technique, and it worked as follows. Milgram would address letters to a fictitious group whose affiliation would be clear from its name (e.g. "Society For The Advancement of White Supremacy"). The letters would be stamped and addressed to a Post Office box that Milgram set up ahead of time. Hundreds of these letters would then be placed at selected locations, looking like they had somehow got lost and just needed to be placed in a mailbox to be sent along its way. He then monitored the Post Office Box to see how many letters came in.

Milgram guessed that a degree of sympathy for the organization mentioned on the envelope would make it more likely that someone would actually send the letter on its way rather than ignore it. And the anonymous and indirect nature of the transaction would make it a lot easier to act on your true feelings about an issue, not just a socially accepted feeling. To factor out the "noise" from non-responses and other random events, Milgram would do the same thing with another set of letters, this time addressed to a completely neutral sounding organization (e.g. "Industrial Corp, Inc."). This would be the control data against which the responses from the sensitive letter could be measured. The greater the response, the more the support for a particular viewpoint.

The responses to the various sets of letters he tested with were not particularly revelatory. It's the technique that was his real accomplishment, not the results of the experiment.

Stanley Milgram and The First Social Network

I just finished reading a very interesting biography of the pioneering (and controversial) social psychologist Stanley Milgram. He is most famous for the Obedience to Authority experiments, whose aim was to measure the willingness of people to obey authority figures, even when those orders are in direct conflict with their own moral sense. A detailed article about the experiment can be found here, but a quick summary is this: the subject was brought into a laboratory-like setting and told to administer progressively stronger electric currents to a "victim" (actually an actor), all for the advancement of science. In an unexpected, and somewhat depressing, result, Milgram found that a full two-thirds of all subjects would administer even lethal does of the current when told to do so by the "scientist" (also an actor) even when the victim was in obvious physical distress. We are far more susceptible to manipulation by authority than we are aware. The numbers broadly hold in many variations of the experiments, and in many different countries.

More relevant to technology and development, Milgram was also a pioneer in social networks. Many decades before orkut, myspace or linkedin, Milgram researched the Small World Phenomenon, which says that the world is much more connected than people think, and any two people can be linked together by a relatively short chain of acquaintances. In fact, he first came up with the famous "six degrees of separation" idea when he found that the length of the chain connecting two pepople is, on average, six. Milgram conducted his experiments in the sixties. Today, with the rise of online social networking tools, mobile communications and cheap transportation, I wonder whether we are actually at "five degrees of separation" and trending lower.

To see the six degrees idea in action, check out the Oracle of Bacon. Type in any actor's name (past, present, any country, any language) and it will show you how they are connected to the actor Kevin Bacon. It's really hard to find a more than three links, and almost impossible to find more than four links. A generalized version is here: you specify both actors and the links are calculated for you.

Milgram is a fascinating character and a brilliant observer of the human condition. I am still processing some of his insights. More to come.

Long Bets

The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900 contained an article listing predictions for the year 2000. The author writes:

These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.

Some of the more remarkable themes:

• Telecommunications: "Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span."
  

• Spy satellites: "Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below."

• Genetically modified food: "peas as large as beets" and "strawberries as large as apples."

There were some exercises in wishful thinking, such as the view that we would all be athletic and fit in a hundred years:

Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling."

We'll try to get there in 2100. And my favorite, the somewhat mystifying prediction:

There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.

The full article is available here.

How Not to Get a Job

Some time ago, I blogged about connecting with your passion to find the best job opportunity for you, and also about innovation in recruiting techniques that enable companies to find these passionate people.

In an interesting, and unintentionally humorous, example of what *NOT* to do, a colleague actually received this cover letter from a job applicant today:

To Whom It May Concern:

This is an opportunity I've been searching for. I carefully have been selecting what Company’s to send my Resume. I’m honored to send my resume to your Company and possibly be considered as a team member. My skills along with personality make a perfect match for what you’re seeking. I look forward to meeting with you to discuss my future with your company. I'm confident, coach able, persistent, and consistent in achieving success independently or with a company that has a positive direction. Please call me so we can discuss a time to meet.

While I have no idea what this person's situation is, or how qualified he is for the position, this is a letter that is guaranteed to lead to failure. What was astounding was that it came through a recruiter! How could this have made it past even the most cursory due diligence? While this is obviously an extreme example, I've seen more polished cover letters that say essentially the same thing. Where's the passion?

Cultural Context in a Global Era (Part 1)

A few weeks ago, there was an interesting article in CIO magazine, advising American tech leads how to manage relationships with their Indian vendors. While there is no question that the values and work ethos of an increasingly globalized elite are converging, these cultural differences are real, and should not be underestimated. The article starts out with a very broad generalization:

...it helps to look at the cultures of India and the United States in broad strokes. India is a deeply traditional group-oriented society; tightly knit extended families place a premium on harmony. Survival depends on interdependency, on keeping each other happy. “Your first goal is to make sure nobody is upset by what you say,” says Storti. “If the group is not strong, if it is upset by confrontation, you are in trouble.”

Compare that with America’s fractured families scattered throughout the country, an ethos of individualism and lore filled with Wild West cowboys and a promise that anything is possible if you work hard enough. The United States is a land of grab-for-it. Subtlety is the exception, in both speech and manner. And when an American talks, it’s usually to get his point across, not to create harmony.

While obviously very broad and sweeping, this strikes me as a pretty accurate representation about how business in conducted in either place. Anyone looking to work with an Indian service provider would do well to read this article. In my last post, I talked about the importance of social networks (the physical kind) in conducting business. I pointed out one reason for this: as a way to bypass non-functioning institutions in the redress of problems. The more general reason is brought out in this article: the difference between group-centered and individual -centered cultures.

Articles of this sort tend to go in one of two extreme directions: either dismiss any differences at all as an outdated concept for knowledge workers in the information age, or emphasize the differences to such an extent as to "exoticize" the other. This article has struck the right balance in accepting the global nature of work, while acknowledging the tribal nature of human relationships.

This article obviously begs the question: what cultural advice could you give Indian vendors working with US companies? More to come on this topic.