Persuasion – Page 5 – understand-culture

Overqualification

According to a recent study, almost half of all employed Americans with college degrees are overqualified for their jobs. In 2010, 15% of taxi drivers had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 1% in 1970, and 25% of retail sales clerks had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 5% in 1970.

In fact, U.S. overqualification has become such a large problem that in 2013, The Globalist published an article titled “The U.S. Overqualification Crisis: Why the United States is looking to Germany for answers on higher education.”

Now, many degree programs encourage American students to avoid doctorates and/or other certifications because having these will make it harder for the students to find jobs. Engineers are warned not to get certified as Professional Engineers (PEs,) because companies typically hire only a handful of licensed PEs, but hire many more unlicensed engineers.

American employers have several reasons why they avoid hiring people who are overqualified for a position. Some of their biggest reasons include:

Higher salary expectations – someone with more qualifications is likely to expect to be paid more money.

Promotion expectations – someone with more qualifications might accept a job that’s “beneath them” only because they expect to be promoted quickly to a job that’s more deserving of their higher skills.

Upstaging – someone who has more qualifications and/or experience than their boss might have difficulty following orders.

Short term – someone who is overqualified is likely to lose interest in their position, and won’t stay for very long.

Strategy Consultants

The approaches used by strategy consultants – also known as management consultants – are advanced versions of those taught in business schools: data-driven analysis with some degree of attention given to the non-quantifiable human factor. The goal is the standardization of best practices within client companies, drawing also on insights gained from other clients.

The management consulting sector has grown dramatically since the 1930s, when the Glass-Steagall Banking Act was passed, limiting affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. Management consulting grew out of the demand for advice on finance, strategy and organization. In 1980, only five consulting companies existed, and each had 1,000 consultants worldwide. By the 1990s, however, more than thirty firms entered the market each with at least 1,000 management consultants.

In 1993, McKinsey had 151 directors. This figure dramatically increased to 400 by 2009. From 1993 to 2004, McKinsey revenues more than doubled with 20 new offices and twice as many employees. McKinsey grew from 2,900 to 7,000 consultants scattered across 82 offices in more than 40 countries. In 1963, Boston Consulting Group had two consultants. By 1970 1980, 1990, 2000 BCG had 100, 249, 676, 2370 and 4800 consultants on its payroll respectively.

Native American Oral Tradition

When European explorers and settlers first arrived in America, there were hundreds of different American Indian nations. Although these tribes had different languages and cultures they shared a rich oral tradition.

The stories that these nations passed down recorded everything from history to cultural beliefs and even to science and technology. Studies by anthropologists David Pendergast and Clement Meighan have shown clear evidence that Native American oral traditions contain real history, and Stephen J. Augustine, the Hereditary Chief and Keptin of the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, has said about the oral tradition that

“(The Elders) did joke with each other and they told stories, some true and some a bit exaggerated, but in the end the result was a collective memory. This is the part which is exciting because when each Elder arrived they brought with them a piece of the knowledge puzzle.

They had to reach back to the teachings of their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. These teachings were shared in the circle and these constituted a reconnaissance of collective memory and knowledge. In the end the Elders left with a knowledge that was built by the collectivity.”

Many of the newcomers to America came from cultures that preferred written factual documents over spoken storytelling, and contact with the natives soon blended the two traditions. Now most education and oration in the US contains both forms of information: anecdotal and factual.

Richard P. Feynman

Richard Feynman was an American physicist who is best known for his work on QED (quantum electrodynamics, and a pun on the Latin phrase ‘quod erat demonstrandum’). He also developed the now-standard Feynman diagrams and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Feynman was a strong advocate for simplicity and explaining things so that the average person could understand them. He believed that anyone who understood something should be able to explain it to a layperson.

In fact, he believed this so vehemently that once, when he was asked to explain why spin one-half particles obey Fermi Dirac statistics, Feynman initially said that he would prepare a freshman lecture on the subject.

Later he admitted “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” It’s also believed that Feynman said “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t really understand it.”

State of Research

State of research: the state of knowledge at a specific point in time, as found in scientific or academic literature, including all agreement and disagreement. The first step in the study of any subject is to understand the current state of research.

Feynman on Simplicity

Feynman-thoughts on simplicity:

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right – at least if you have any experience – because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. Sympathetic Vibrations

When I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I wasn’t upset; rather, I was relieved that there was a much simpler phenomenon to explain how so many children all over the world got presents on the same night! The story had been getting pretty complicated. It was getting out of hand. What Do You Care What Other People Think?

We can’t define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: “You don’t know what you are talking about!”. The second one says: “What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?” The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I, 8-2

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. The Character of Physical Law

KISS

The acronym for “keep it simple, stupid” is attributed to Kelly Johnson, an engineer at the U.S. weapons company Lockheed. Although there are several other variations, the principle states that systems work best if they are kept simple.

Complexity should be avoided. Johnson had given a team of design engineers a set of tools, then challenged them to design a jet aircraft which can be repaired by an average mechanic under war conditions with these tools only.

There is nothing original about KISS, however. See the statement attributed to William of Ockham that “among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected”; to Leonardo da Vinci that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”; to Mies van der Rohe that “less is more”; and to Antoine de Saint Exupéry “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away“.

Business Schools

American business schools offer degrees in business administration. The focus is primarily on analyzing quantifiable factors. The predominant subjects are finance, accounting, statistics. The methods are data-driven, structured and rigorous. The goal is to be as scientific as possible.

As of 2012 there were 662 business schools in the United States. Out of 436 schools reporting, over 168,000 students were enrolled in Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) programs in 2012 alone. From 2008-2009, 347,985 Bachelor’s degrees, 168,375 Master’s Degrees and 2,123 Ph.D.s were conferred in Business and Management. Many Americans believe in the the discipline of business administration.

Ten Slides

Imagine the same task given to ten different Americans, in ten different companies, in ten different business sectors. A thousand people. They’re asked to use a maximum of ten slides in a presentation in order to persuade an audience of fellow Americans about the virtues and value of their product, service, idea, concept, recommendation.

On average, how many slides would the Americans use to explain the present (current situation), the past (how the present was arrived at), and the future (the desired situation)?

Break with Tradition

America is a nation of immigrants. Their forefathers and -mothers left everything they knew behind: country, language, customs, family, friends, traditions. Because they broke with the past – their own very personal past – they have less inhibition to further break away from traditions in order to plot a new course.

Between 1881 and 1920 two of the largest waves of immigration hit the United States. In those years more than 23 million immigrants arrived, the majority of them were from eastern and southern Europe. They were a long way from home.