TGIF – When Pickle Packers Pack Product

As the week winds down, we wind down with some tidbits for your information, education, health, and enjoyment.

Quote of the Week: “When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option.”  Steve Pavlina

Humor Break:

Bev: Al, what do you think is the worst job in the world?

Al: Being a clerk at the unemployment office.

Bev: A clerk at the unemployment office? Why that job?

Al: Because if they fire me I have to show up at work anyway.

Stat of the Week: 16% more product produced when individual output was identified (Faulkner & William, 1996). There is an important concept known as social loafing, which is the tendency of people to exert less effort toward a common goal in a group than when acting individually. In this one example, productivity increased by 16% in a pickle packing facility when individual performance was measured. It seemed to somewhat answer the age old question of “How many pickles can a pickle packer pack if pickle packers were only paid for properly packed pickles?”

Action Tip: While research suggests that social loafing is quite common, it does appear that work groups with challenging objectives, group rewards, commitment to the team and small in size can reduce free riders (people who benefit from the group but give little in return).

Self-Development Corner: There are some super-duper business management classes coming up next week on Coursera (the free online university). Check some of these out:

International Organizations Management (Sept 30, 5 weeks, University of Geneva); Surviving Disruptive Technologies (Sept 30, 7 weeks, University of Maryland); An Introduction to Operations Management (Sept 30, 8 weeks, University of Pennsylvania – Wharton).

Introduction to Logic (Sept 30, 8 weeks, Stanford University); Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: The First Step in Entrepreneurship (Sept 30, 6 weeks, University of Maryland); Asset Pricing (Sept. 30, 9 weeks, University of Chicago).

Climate Literacy: Navigating Climate Change Conversations (Sept 30, 10 weeks, University of British Columbia).

And finally, for our friends and readers in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan we are happy to bring you Introduction to Computers (Sept 30, 12 weeks, Peking University – in Chinese) and Bioinformatics: Introduction and Methods (Sept 30, 12 weeks, Peking University – in Chinese with English subtitles).

Happy learning.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.