Comic for April 12, 2013

via Dilbert Daily Strip http://feed.dilbert.com/~r/dilbert/daily_strip/~3/bvvXjkTRqV4/

Austerity's Big Bait-and-Switch

An interview with Mark Blyth, professor at Brown University and author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea .

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A written transcript will be available by April 18.

via HBR.org http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2013/04/austeritys-big-bait-and-switch.html

The Science of What We Do (and Don't) Know About Data Visualization

Visualization is easy, right? After all, it's just some colorful shapes and a few text labels. But things are more complex than they seem, largely due to the the ways we see and digest charts, graphs, and other data-driven images. While scientifically-backed studies do exist, there are actually many things we don't know about how and why visualization works. To help you make better decisions when visualizing your data, here's a brief tour of the research.

The Early Years of Understanding Data

While the early days of visualization go back over 200 years, actual research to understand how it works really only started in the 1960s. Jacques Bertin's Sémiologie Graphique (Semiology of Graphics), published in 1969, was the first systematic treatment of the different ways graphical representations encode data. Bertin coined many terms of the trade, such as the mark , which is the basic unit of every visualization, like a bar, line, or circle sector. He also defined a number of retinal variables, which are the visual properties we use to express the data; these include color, size, location, etc.

In the early 1980s, Bertin's work was picked up by researchers in statistical graphics and the nascent field of visualization (which didn't quite have its name yet). William Cleveland and Robert McGill performed experiments to find out which of Bertin's retinal variables were best suited for particular types of data, while Jock Mackinlay built a system that put Bertin's and their work to use to create visualizations from data.

Thanks to Cleveland and McGill, we know that our perception is the most precise when it comes to understanding the location of a mark, followed closely by our ability to perceive length. We're even less adept at perceiving area and orientation, and our ability to distinguish colors is even worse. We can see tiny differences in direction between lines that are almost but not exactly parallel, but we have a hard time quantifying an angle to say how many percent it represents in a pie chart. We can tell fewer than a dozen colors apart when their hues are very distinct, and can precisely compare shades of colors next to each other; but move them apart and surround them with very different ones, and it all goes out the window.

This may all seem interesting, but its practical uses are not obvious. To turn the theory into practice, Mackinlay built a system that assigned data fields to visual variables automatically in a way that optimized readability. Most visualization tools today still don't offer that kind of intelligence, though Tableau's Show Me! feature is built on a very similar idea.

More Knowledge, More Questions

A lot has happened since the 1980s, but there seems to be a bit of a standstill when it comes to understanding the basics. There are many open questions today, and we also realize the gaps and problems with some of the work performed.

As a case in point, Cleveland promoted an idea that he called banking to 45 degrees. The idea is simple: in a line chart, the average slope should be 45 degrees. That makes intuitive sense, since very steep charts tend to look overly dramatic and very flat ones make it hard to see any change in the data at all. Cleveland's recommendation was based on research on how well we are able to compare the slopes of lines. He found that the highest accuracy was achieved when the lines being compared had an average of 45 degrees inclination.

But it turns out that that is not the entire truth. There were some limitations in Cleveland's study that made 45 degrees look like the best option, but it seems that shallower angles are actually better. This was shown in a research paper that Justin Talbot, John Gerth, and Pat Hanrahan published in October 2012 at the annual VisWeek conference. The left line graph below is closer to 45 degrees on average, but the right one, while shallower, has fewer areas that produce large errors (which are indicated by the dark red color).

There is more. My former student Caroline Ziemkiewicz and I found that there is a potential interaction between the visual metaphor used to show data and the linguistic metaphor used to ask a question. We found this when looking at visualizations of trees, or hierarchies. The two most popular visualization techniques for this type of data, treemaps and node-link diagrams, differ in the way they show the hierarchy. Node-link diagrams use levels (or "above-ness"), while treemaps use nesting. A question asked using a levels metaphor ("Which of the nodes below node D ...") is easier to answer using the node-link diagram, which uses a compatible metaphor, than one asked using containment ("Which of the directories inside directory D..."), which works better with treemaps. The different metaphors are illustrated below, with treemaps on the left and node-link diagrams on the right.

We only scratched the surface on this, there are many other metaphors that are used in visualization, whether obvious or not. Barbara Tversky and Jeff Zacks found in the early 2000s that lines imply transitions whereas bars imply individual values. The seemingly simple choice between a bar and a line chart has implications on how we perceive the data.

Bizarrely, so does gravity. In our work on metaphors, Ziemkiewicz and I found that people interpreted round shapes as unstable because, they said, they might roll away. But to roll, there must be a force that causes the movement. After studying this effect some more, we found that the points in a scatterplot attract each other, and that they are seemingly pulled down by gravity. We remember points not where they are in the plot, but shift them towards clusters in our memory, and let them drift slightly downwards.

Findings and distinctions in visualization can be subtle, but they can have a profound impact on how well we can read the information and how we interpret it. There is much more to be learned about how visualization works and how best we can represent, analyze, and communicate data.

Visualizing Data

An HBR Insight Center

• Tell Better Data Stories with Motion and Interactivity


• Visualizing Hip-Hop Lyrics as Cultural Indicator


• When Creating Visualizations, Question Everything


• Telling Stories with Visual Data: A Glimpse into the Future of Narrative

via HBR.org http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/the_science_of_what_we_do_and_dont_know_about_data_visualization.html

What Ron Johnson Got Right

Ron Johnson's 17-month tenure as J.C. Penney's CEO was a catastrophe — an assessment captured in the reactions to his ouster this week: "Former Apple Retail Guru Dumped;" "How Ron Johnson Made JCPenney Even Worse;" and my favorite: "I Am Become Ron Johnson, Destroyer of Worlds." It's true. Under Johnson's leadership, Penney's share price plunged by half and the company lost $4 billion in sales.

Pundits have ascribed Johnson's debacle to hubris, incoherent pricing, drive-by leadership, overpromising, reckless haste, inept deal-making (ask Terry Lundgren), and failing to listen to customers. Surely all of those factors, and many others, fueled the inferno. But let's zoom in on the last one: listening. It's come up again and again in the coverage. Johnson didn't seem to care about what customers thought they wanted, and he didn't ask them. Johnson reportedly rejected the idea of testing his calamitous pricing strategy before an all-store rollout, telling a colleague, "We didn't test at Apple."

Hubris, right? At a time when marketers are ravenous for customer intelligence, Johnson seemed to be indifferent. That's just negligent. Or is it?

Harry Gordon Selfridge, who founded the eponymous London-based retailer, did the unthinkable when he opened his first store in 1909, taking merchandise out from behind the counters so that customers could actually touch it. His character, played by Jeremy Piven in the Masterpiece miniseries, instructs his newly hired managers to scour the earth for irresistible stuff. "I want merchandise that people will desire. I want merchandise that people won't even know they will desire until they see it right in front of their eyes! We are going to dazzle the world!" The quote is invented, but the sentiment isn't; Selfridge famously introduced London shoppers to the idea that shopping could be sensual and fun. To that end, as chronicled in Lindy Woodhead's "Shopping, Seduction, and Mr. Selfridge" he plied customers with "thrilling new luxuries" from signature perfumes to a restaurant with an orchestra.

Fast forward 90 years and we find Steve Jobs, Johnson's former boss, doing the same thing, brazenly — many said recklessly — trusting his gut about what people wanted, but didn't know they wanted. In his best-selling biography of Jobs, Walter Isaacson describes how Jobs green-lit the first iMac's bondi blue case on an impulse — a radical and risky design choice that would define the iconic product line and inspire consumer product design for a decade. "The cost of each case," Isaacson wrote, "was more than $60 per unit, three times that of a regular computer case. Other companies would probably have demanded presentations and studies to show whether the translucent case would increase sales enough to justify the extra cost. Jobs asked for no such analysis." When Apple's head designer Jonathan Ive soon came up with "four new juicy-looking colors," Jobs excitedly summoned other executives to the design studio and announced "We're going to do all sorts of colors!" Recalled Ive, "In most places, that decision would have taken months. Steve did it in a half hour."

Ron Johnson chose the wrong store — regarded by some as a retail backwater frequented by coupon clippers — to roll out his brazen strategy, and his execution was a disaster. But his concept was exactly right. Bricks-and-mortar retail was (and is) in a period of anxious soul-searching, and Penney itself was in deep trouble. The patient needed radical surgery. Johnson didn't have the time or temperament to dicker. When I interviewed him in 2011, just after he'd taken the reins at Penney, I asked whether it wasn't a risky proposition to completely reinvent the department store. "The opposite is what's risky," he told me. "Over the past 30 years, the department store has become less relevant... largely because of decisions the stores have made... They didn't think about the future so much as try to protect the past." The problem, he explained, wasn't the stores' size or location or marketing power or physical capabilities, "It's their lack of imagination — about the products they carry, their store environments, the way they engage customers, how they embrace the digital future."

That's not crazy talk. Johnson saw the problem clearly, he had an appropriate sense of urgency, he had a gut sense about how to get Penney out of its bind — and a belief, like Selfridge and Jobs, that customers needed to be led into the light. Johnson's instinct — some would call it arrogance — had served him well in the past. It's easy to forget that Apple's now-overrun Genius Bars, which Johnson created, were a failure at first. As he told me, "Nobody came into the Genius Bars during those first years." They even stocked Evian in refrigerators to try to attract customers. "But despite that," Johnson said, "I had a belief — a conviction" that the Bars were the right idea.

Must every business decision be backed by big-data and predictive analytics and a slavish deference to the voice of the customer? Is there no place for instinct in strategy anymore? Johnson's debacle will go down as one of business history's epic fails. But I think he was right about one thing: "To do things that haven't been done before," he says, "you need to trust your intuition."

via HBR.org http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/what_ron_johnson_got_right.html

Case Study: The Ex-CEO Contemplates a Coup

It's after midnight, and Myra Wanandi is writing in her journal in the Jakarta home she shares with her husband:

I'm tired, but I have to concentrate. My father is relying on me for one of the most important decisions of his life. What's scary is that I'm sure he'll take my words to heart. He always does. But this time I'm really stuck. I pray that an insight will come to me as I write. He's expecting an answer tomorrow.

The situation is simple. My father, Jaya Tan, retired three years ago as the CEO of our family's business, the Martapura Group, relinquishing control to a nonfamily CEO to ensure that the company would regain its strength and grow. But the business is having a harder time recovering from the recession than anyone expected, and some of my cousins have now asked my father to resume control. He's tempted. Retirement turned out to be a bore, and when he talks about returning, his eyes gleam. But Ricky, my brother, is shocked that my father would even contemplate a "coup." He says the family is obliged to follow the governance rules it created. Otherwise the business will fail.

I wish I knew which side was right.

(Editor's Note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers. If you'd like your comment to be considered for publication, please be sure to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and email address.)

Nutmeg and Palm Oil

My grandfather and his brother started their business in Indonesia shortly after World War II. Times were hard, but after the rise of Sukarno their little business selling vegetables began to grow. They were soon shipping food to Singapore and Australia. My grandfather ran the exports, while my great-uncle managed the palm plantation.

My father began working in 1961, at the age of 12. He says his childhood smelled of nutmeg — he carried it by the boxload onto the boats. He was at least as strong as his two brothers — one older and one younger — and soon proved to be the most capable businessman of his generation of Tans. In the 1970s he pushed the company to expand into palm oil and helped create a chain of food stores.

My bookish eldest uncle was in line to succeed my grandfather as CEO, but he had enough self-awareness to sense that he wasn't well suited. This uncle favored my father. The youngest uncle, who took a casual approach to his job as vice president, was opposed to my father's getting the job — he worried he would shake things up. The question festered until 1979, when my grandfather summoned his sons, along with the other family members. Sitting in his living room, he brought out a "constitution" he and my great-uncle had written. It stated that family members must work to maintain love, forgive one another when differences arise, and put the company's interests above their own.

There wasn't a lot of love between my father and his younger brother after my grandfather's next words: "My middle son, Jaya, will succeed me as CEO."

After a long pause, my youngest uncle congratulated my father.

Family Friction
Growing the business was easy — my father vigorously expanded the company, acquiring firms that exported plywood and rubber — but following the guidance about family harmony proved more difficult.

My youngest uncle seemed to think the Martapura Group existed solely to serve the family. My father wanted it to become the best in the world in each of its businesses. As a result, he insisted that Ricky be treated like everyone else when it came to promotions. But my youngest uncle worked behind the scenes to make sure that his sons, Fred, Roy, and Bill, were given executive positions in the operating units despite their obvious shortcomings.

Most of the time my father tolerated this behavior. But when the head of the grocery stores division died unexpectedly, leaving Fred in line to succeed him, the blatant nepotism could no longer be ignored. My father acted swiftly to replace the full leadership team, enraging my cousins and their father. My father called a family meeting. My grandfather was there too, ill and pale but still formidable. My father explained that his actions were for the common good and asked his relatives for understanding. My grandfather's presence had a powerful effect, and my youngest uncle caved and gave his approval.

Fred, Roy, and Bill never rose as high in the company as Ricky, who is now the chief operating officer. My eldest uncle's sons have also been unable to break into leadership positions. As for me, I'm happily uninvolved! When I was getting my MBA at Stanford, I met and married the wonderful Daniel Wanandi, and we now run a language school in Jakarta. I'm content to be on the sidelines, with my father relying on me for advice. Some of his friends tease him for listening to his daughter, but he just laughs back.

Bold Action
After my grandfather passed away my uncles became closer, and there were rumors that my youngest uncle had convinced his oldest brother that my father's value as CEO had run its course. I'm sure both uncles were thinking about their sons, who were looking for positions of greater authority. And Southeast Asia's financial crisis was crippling Indonesia's growth; perhaps my uncles sensed vulnerability.

One afternoon my father sat in my courtyard and poured out his worries about the rumors and the economic downturn. I pointed out that he had never gone wrong by taking bold action. He liked hearing that and became excited thinking about how to take advantage of the crisis. Over the next three hours I helped him formulate a plan to place the company on a more professional footing so that it would last "seven more generations." I can't remember who came up with that phrase, but he loved the poetry of it.

The Martapura Group would be listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange, which would require transparency and accountability. All the companies in the conglomerate would have to measure themselves against global industry benchmarks. My father would put more professional managers in key positions.

Anticipating opposition, he established a board of directors. He also promised to retire in eight years. I laughed at that one. I couldn't imagine him retiring that soon, nor did I think it was a good idea. But the provisions worked: The prospect of being on a board and seeing him give up the CEO position was irresistible to my uncles, and they agreed to the whole package!

Dramatic growth followed. As the economy improved, the company expanded into machinery and chemicals imports. Nonfamily managers were elevated to executive positions and invited to become shareholders, although family members still owned the majority of shares. My father won the Star of Mahaputera for service to Indonesia.

I truly think my father was so immersed in his work that he didn't realize when eight years — then nine, then 10 — had passed. I think his relatives and employees were secretly grateful that he had stayed on, because he was doing an excellent job. It was only in 2008, when the worldwide recession started, that my uncles, and then their sons, started complaining.

Again my father came to me. Foreseeing a deeper downturn this time, he said he couldn't, in good conscience, leave the company just then. I felt strongly that he should adhere to the rules and step aside; if a nonfamily CEO couldn't manage the firm, he could always return. To counter any accusations of hypocrisy, he could argue that he had made a good-faith effort to abide by the new governance system. I reminded him that bold action was his trademark. He smiled.

The recession was in full force by the time he decided to leave. The export and import businesses were struggling, and the palm-oil business was suffering under negative publicity from NGOs.

After a long search the firm hired Amin Tueni, a Canadian of Lebanese origin who had been the CEO of a Toronto-based food company. Upon Mr. Tueni's arrival, my father reminded him (as I had urged him to) that all executives were subject to replacement if they didn't meet expectations. Mr. Tueni said he understood perfectly well.

Retiring from Retirement?
A month after my father retired, we took a glorious vacation — he and my mother, my husband, my children, and me. We visited places we had only read about or seen on television: Rome, Paris, Berlin. But back in Jakarta, my father found that he didn't have enough to do. He bought an expensive boat, but it didn't interest him.

Meanwhile he watched helplessly as the firm declined. Occasionally he would come over with a notepad and red Sharpie to sketch out recovery plans. But now he was just another shareholder. "I'll never have an impact unless I can get my brothers and nephews to vote with me," he said. "And that won't happen."

He was wrong. My cousins were upset that Mr. Tueni hadn't achieved the expected turnaround. As speculators in Hong Kong real estate, they were feeling the pinch of lower dividends and were worried about defaulting. Whatever my father's shortcomings (in their view), their dividends had been reliably high during his tenure. And Mr. Tueni's view of them was apparently even more negative than my father's, so they had been marginalized. "Professional" management hadn't worked out quite as the family had hoped.

Last night over dinner at my house Fred, Roy, and Bill made their case to my father. They realized, they said, that the company had grown so large and complex that only a person with his extraordinary strength of mind could manage it. My father beamed. He had waited a long time for such a compliment from them. They added that Mr. Tueni seemed cautious and indecisive. "He is no Jaya Tan," they said. Finally they put the question to my father: Would he consider coming back?

I was thrilled. My father needed to be back at work, and the company needed his talents. And hadn't I suggested that his retirement might be temporary?

He told my cousins he would consider their suggestion. But after they left he turned to me in frustration. "They make it sound simple," he said. "I walk in, thank Mr. Tueni for his hard work, and take over, backed by enough family members for a majority of shares. But it's not so simple. I can't be objective about this, Myra."

He said we should meet again, on Thursday — which is tomorrow. "I want you to think about it — think hard — and tell me what I should do," he said. He looked at me warmly. "I trust you."

A Second Opinion
Today Ricky visited me at my school, accompanied by Amin Tueni, whom I had met just once before, at a dinner in his honor. Seated in my otherwise empty boardroom, Mr. Tueni seemed much less impressive than he had at the reception.

Ricky explained that my cousins' proposal was already common knowledge. They were trying to build support for it among other family members, and many seemed amenable. "But you must persuade him not to accept," he said.

"He makes his own decisions," I hedged.

Mr. Tueni spoke. "Jaya Tan is revered in this company, and for good reason. But we face challenges on all sides, and we must move forward, not backward."

"My father has plenty of ideas for moving forward," I said, remembering the red Sharpie. "Sell the palm-oil business. Divest a few other underperforming assets."

"I've heard all that," Mr. Tueni said. "And I appreciate his ideas. But midrecession is no time to divest. The businesses would have to be sold at rock-bottom prices. Our markets have taken a beating. But once they recover we will be well positioned."

He had a point about divestitures, of course. But I could almost hear my father saying that standing still is no strategy.

"It's also a governance issue," Mr. Tueni continued. "In Canada, and in Indonesia too, there are branches of government that keep one another in check. Your father established a system that keeps the family in check, balancing its wishes with the judgment of professional managers."

"It's not a system, really," I said. "It's just a family constitution that says we should live in peace and harmony."

Ricky jumped in. "Myra, for the past 14 years the firm has been run according to one idea: That it's a professional company with professional managers. Father's return would be a repudiation of all that. A coup could be devastating to our reputation with analysts and outside investors, not to mention the morale of nonfamily executives, who might question whether they have a future at the company."

Mr. Tueni nodded. "The professional managers don't want him to take over," he said. He added, sounding apologetic: "I include myself in that."

I wanted to rattle off the names of all the highly regarded companies that are run by members of their founding families — companies like Purdue and SC Johnson. Although I suppose there are counter examples too. Isn't News Corp. trading at a discount because of the Murdoch fiefdom?

"Please, Myra," Ricky said. "Help him see that the best thing he can do for his beloved company right now is nothing at all."

This morning I was certain what my advice would be. I was looking forward to seeing my father get back to work. But tonight I'm completely confused. Why won't a clear answer come?

Question: Should Myra advise her father to retake the reins of the Martapura Group?


Please remember to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and email address.

via HBR.org http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2013/04/case-study-the-ex-ceo-contempl.html

To Strengthen Your Confidence, Look to Your Past

Confidence. It is an attribute we seek to have and look for in others, especially those in positions of leadership. Yet, time and time again, we meet executives who lack a confident presence. (We also encounter those who are overly confident — to the point that they are blinded by it — but that is a topic for another time). What many fail to realize is that confidence is dynamic and not a static emotion. Just like a physical muscle that needs exercise to grow stronger, a leader's confidence requires continuous attention.

Face the Facts: To strengthen your confidence, first face the facts. When you look to your past, you'll realize that successes often outweigh failures. And, more importantly, that you survived through the failures and gleaned priceless lessons along the way. Your track record provides an inventory of what has happened over the long run, which you can then balance against what you fear may happen in the short term.

Take for example, an executive we coached in a global marketing service — we'll call him Dave. Having recently been promoted to a senior vice-president position (the third person to take the post in two years), Dave found himself facing new challenges: turning around a low-morale staff, driving new initiatives, and rebuilding the reputation of the department. He also had a whole new set of relationships to manage; he was now part of the executive team and frequently sought for advice by the CEO. "I often feel like I am going to get caught — that someone is going to realize that they made a mistake by promoting me into this position," said Dave at one of our coaching meetings.

When Dave stepped into the executive suite, his confidence stepped out the window. After taking inventory of the various promotions that he had received throughout his career, Dave realized that he had successfully faced new, albeit different, challenges before. His track record served as a basis of truth against the uncertainty he currently felt. While a cliché of sorts, there is truth in the saying "confidence starts from within." Ultimately, confidence is the counter to the fears we face — fear of failure, fear of change, fear of inadequacy.

Focus: With your track record as a foundation, it is helpful to focus on your strengths while managing your weaknesses. Most leaders are very strong in a few competencies, average in the majority of competencies, and weak in a few. Successful leaders focus on leveraging their strengths and managing their average/weak areas so that they do not become a deterrent to their effectiveness. Dave accepted that he was not going to be great at everything (nor did anyone expect him to be). With the help of a 360 assessment, he identified his strengths in "managing others" and "creating vision." By focusing on what he knew he could contribute, Dave grew more confident in his ability to tackle the challenges ahead.

Faith: It is not by accident that the Latin root of the word "confidence" is con fidere, which translates to "with faith." The ultimate faith is a belief in the unseen. Leaders are called to create vision and change for the future out of uncertainty — fundamentally, they operate on a level of faith that helps give purpose, strength, and trust to the path that they carve out for their organizations. Dave's fear of failing obstructed his ability to succeed. By shifting his attention to the excitement of building, creating, and leading something new, he tapped into a deeper purpose, beyond his day-to-day successes and failures.

Confidence is a constant strengthening exercise. Like a well-conditioned muscle, it needs to be challenged and it also needs relaxation. Facts, focus, and faith each on their own may not get you there. But when you leverage all three in an integrated way, your confidence will absolutely grow.

via HBR.org http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/to_strengthen_your_confidence.html

Old-School Business Practices Worth Bringing Back

In general, the business community is obsessed with what Michael Lewis once termed the "new, new thing." It's that faith in a kind of kaizen -in-all-things that has led to innumerable technological, organizational, and social advances in the corporate world. It's why factories are now safer, hybrid cars are cheaper, board rooms are growing gradually more diverse, and instant communication via email and other technologies is becoming the norm. Progress is good, and the business community has made real advances over the last 50-60 years.

But are there elements of mid-twentieth-century business culture that may be worth preserving? Reading responses to my recent posts on the benefits of reading and of writing personal notes, I was struck by how many commenters waxed nostalgic for these (as many called them) "old school" practices. There was a sense that while progress has been made, certain practices of mid-twentieth-century business culture merit a second look in the modern workplace. That got me thinking — beyond reading books and handwriting notes, what other "old school" office habits might be worth resurrecting? At least five suggestions came to mind:

1. Dress well. One of our enduring cultural fascinations is with yesteryear's fashion — from Jackie Kennedy's Camelot attire to Mad Men-style tailoring and taste. But business culture (particularly in the U.S.) has grown increasingly casual over the years. Given recent studies showing that dressing well is associated with professional success, perhaps it's time to turn the table on that downward slide and revive of a culture of greater sophistication in office dress. This wouldn't necessary mean growing more superficial, spending more money, or even relapsing into an era of bespoke three-piece suits. But it might mean trading Dwight Schrute for Don Draper once in a while and aspiring to an occasional concern for aesthetics.

2. Make meetings distraction-free. Many meetings — even in-person gatherings — have descended into overdrawn affairs in which the majority of participants are merely listening in between smartphone messages and iPad email alerts. In a recent study, half of the respondents admitted to checking their phones in meetings, a finding other studies have confirmed. But meetings work better when everyone isn't dumbed down by distraction. Smart, modern workplaces, like Adaptive Path, have had to ban technology in meetings so that everyone acts as a full participant. Doing so can make meetings more focused and productive, and make presenters feel more respected. It can also shorten meeting length, as participants push for conclusion when they get bored rather than passing the time playing Angry Birds.

3. Lengthen lunch. The modern lunch break is an increasingly unhealthy affair. Many folks stay at their desks for lunch or quickly grab food on the go. That may be exactly the right approach some days for busy professionals looking to excel at work and find time for family after. But there may also be value to periodically taking longer, more leisurely lunch breaks. Experts claim that people who take lunch breaks are healthier and more productive. And finding time — even once or twice a week — for an overlong lunch with colleagues has the potential to create stronger relationships at work and make us healthier and more productive in the process.

4. Be punctual. It's become too easy to run late. When we book time with others, we often think it perfectly appropriate to push meetings back so long as we text or email in advance to warn the other participants. And, indeed, this ability to communicate is helpful when we're unavoidably detained. But there's something to be said for old-fashioned punctuality. Sixty years ago, it was important to keep commitments because there was often little opportunity to reschedule on the fly. But even with the advent of always-on technologies, being on time is important. It keeps us focused. It generates a perception in others that we're reliable. It shows respect for other people, and it can decrease the costly impact of wasted time. One study found that staff lateness costs the UK economy £9 billion per year. Perhaps old school punctuality can pay real and psychological dividends.

5. Take a real vacation. I recently took a trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and the place I stayed had no cell phone reception. At first I panicked at the lack of phone and 4G access, but as I took time to kayak, jog along the water's edge, and generally absorb my surroundings, I became grateful for the opportunity for my moment off-the-grid. Americans, South Koreans, and others are notoriously bad about taking vacation. Tony Schwartz and many others have written extensively about the benefits of taking vacations and disconnecting while doing so. But it bears repeating. If you left the office for a Caribbean beach trip in 1950, it was genuinely hard to stay in touch — no mail, phone calls, or email could reach you. Now it's far too easy for vacations to be consumed with email communication and conference call interruptions. Treating every vacation like a 1950s vacation might help those who need to truly relax.

Modern business is right to push for progress, but there are always some things from past eras worth retaining. And while the business community should constantly strive for improvement, we should also take care to hold on to those practices of prior generations that made office life more effective, engaging, and fun.

via HBR.org http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/old_school_business_practices_worth.html