Toady we celebrate the birthday of one of elitefts’ most professionally successful and intelligent contributors. The MBA Meathead, who has been an elite powerlifter for four years, has worked for almost two decades with Fortune 500 companies.
His column merges his hobby and career to encourage success in both realms. To celebrate his birthday, here’s some of his best work:
Sabotaged by HR and Surgery
“Virtually all employees end up rating themselves above average. Not only do they want a higher raise, but also no on wants to admit he is mediocre or worse. The boss then has to start talking everyone down so that the department averages a five. Regardless of how that group performed relative to others, everyone has to average to a five. Although the group could have a dozen superstars and have kicked ass all year, that's no matter. On average, they are a 5. Meanwhile, another department down the hall has barely shown up to work and there is not a single outperformer in the group. Want to guess what their average employee rating is? Yep, a five. So the superstars are artificially downgraded while the gaggles of idiots are upgraded to the magic five. How’s that for motivation?”
Results Don’t Matter and Your Percentages are Stupid
“The reason these lowly standards of journalism flourish is that humans have an overwhelming need to fit outcomes to storylines. Every cause must have an effect. It helps us maintain some feeling of control and understanding over what are actually highly random events. So what if a hoops game went to overtime and the home team banked in a three-pointer at the buzzer to win what was, by all accounts, an evenly contested game. We want to fill in the blanks after the fact as if the victory was pre-ordained based on the home crowd noise, the off-court adversity that a star player battled, or (even better for the talking-heads) the laziness, lack of chemistry, or any other negative pall that can be cast upon the loser.”
Strategic Decision-Making
“I cringe when I hear the old standby that a something can’t be quantified because it is strategic. What beautiful logic– the strategy is strategic and needs no justification. This is an absurd crutch used by people who don’t understand what they are doing. Everything can be quantified. The question only becomes to what degree of certainty. The spread of that confidence interval will depend on how well, either through research or experience, the person proposing said strategy understands the underlying system in play.”