Tools of the Trade: Digital replaces reel-to-reel

The motion picture industry isn’t what it used to be. Film reels have gone the way of cassette tapes, 8-tracks and floppy drives: collecting dust and filling landfills.Gone are the days a projectionist spliced features by blade and bonding. Gone are the days it took two-plus employees to carry a four-foot-wide film platter upstairs. Gone are the days technicians chased the streaming tail of a broken 35-milimeter film as a projector’s whirling motor ate it by the [...]

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Tools of the Trade: Digital movie projectors now industry standard

The motion picture industry isn’t what it used to be. Film reels have gone the way of cassette tapes, 8-tracks and floppy drives: collecting dust and filling landfills.Gone are the days a projectionist spliced features by blade and bonding. Gone are the days it took two-plus employees to carry a four-foot-wide film platter upstairs. Gone are the days technicians chased the streaming tail of a broken 35-milimeter film as a projector’s whirling motor ate it by the [...]

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Don’t Be the Kobe Bryant of Your Office

I recently came across a collaborative research paper that caught my eye. The authors posed an intriguing question: Can business learn anything from the world of professional basketball when it comes to worker productivity?

I was hoping to find out that I’d be a better worker if the lights were dimmed and they played pump-up music every time I walked into my office. Or that my creative output would double if we hired an assistant to hand me a Gatorade every time I was parched.

Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll have to keep up my regular trips to the water cooler. But the study, co-authored by Peter Arcidiacono of Duke University, Josh Kinsler of the University of Georgia, and Joseph Price of Brigham Young University, did reveal some research that could help me become a more productive, and possibly better compensated, employee.

Spillover

The authors used novel and complex statistical analyses to determine how big of an impact NBA players have on their team as a whole. Traditionally, fans and media alike have considered the highest scoring players to be the most valuable, and the most deserving of astronomical salaries. Scoring was considered the most important skill, so it was assumed that gifted shooters like Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony determined the fate of a team.

Their study attempts to turn that idea on its head, largely by quantifying what social scientists call “spillover.” This is the idea that workplace productivity can spillover from one employee to another, often in ways that are intangible and hard to measure.

Luckily, the NBA presents an environment where spillover can be measured. The authors studied data for more than 650 NBA players from 2006 to 2010 to see whether their teams performed better or worse when they were on the court.

When player statistics and salaries are examined through that lens, the picture it paints is not quite what your average basketball viewer would imagine. In fact, the results should make all the unsung heroes in offices everywhere stand up and cheer.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

To sum it up, the players who were most valuable to their teams were not the flashy, high-scoring types. Once spillover was accounted for, notoriously gifted but selfish scorers such as Kobe Bryant plummeted down in the player rankings. I’m from Los Angeles, where I think I can be legally imprisoned for denigrating the Almighty Kobe — but the numbers speak for themselves.

So, who ends up looking pretty good under the spillover microscope? Team players. The guys who set up their teammates for shots, grab the tough rebounds, and play solid defense. These guys — like Deron Williams on the Mavericks, for example – aren’t usually the ones who end up shooting State Farm commercials. But according to the paper, they have a huge impact on their team’s success. We’re talking about a 63% improvement in team success when a high spillover player is substituted in for the standard player.

While that’s fascinating to a sports nerd like myself, things get interesting when you start envisioning how this knowledge can be applied to the business world as a whole.

The Big Data Revolution

“Big Data” is a term you’ve probably heard. It refers to the idea that almost every industry collects vast amounts of data, and that eventually computer algorithms are going to be able to find trends and relevant information by parsing through all of it. The authors realize that “peer effects, particularly heterogeneous peer effects, are notoriously difficult to measure, in part because of the data requirements.” But Big Data is set to change all that.

Peruse a job board in Silicon Valley, and it seems like half the startups are committed to doing such data mining. The full impact of a team-first employee is currently hard to measure, but soon that will no longer be the case. The Big Data revolution should result in fair compensation for workers who provide the most value to the team as a whole, regardless of each individual’s perceived productivity.

As with basketball players, money should start flowing not only to the one closing the deal, but to the people who helped it happen along the way. As the authors of the paper put it, “Given the large role spillovers play in team production, we would expect significant returns in the labor market to the ability to help others.”

The Skills of the Future

I, for one, await the data revolution with open arms. The business world needs to recognize that often the person who closed the deal at the client meeting couldn’t have done it without significant help from colleagues.

At a collaborative firm, much planning and correspondence would have led to that meeting. It’s possible that the the true hero of the deal was the person who deftly brought a company email chain back on track after it came dangerously close to devolving into a series of cat memes, or worse, a political debate.

So, what attributes are likely to be valued once we can measure and truly quantify the spillover effect? Here are three key areas where you might want to focus:

Hone Your Social Skills

It doesn’t matter how productive you are if no one enjoys working with you. Steve Nash, a former NBA player that the researchers found to be particularly valuable at making his teams better, was famous for constantly high-fiving his teammates. There’s never been a direct measure of a “high-five to productivity ratio,” but doling out praise and encouragement seems to be indicative of creating a high-quality team culture, which in turn increases performance.

Kobe Bryant, on the other hand, is famous for excoriating his teammates on the court, publicly demanding his owners trade underperforming players, and not passing to open teammates. As talented as he is at scoring, the in-depth analysis is pointing toward this kind of behavior being even more detrimental to team success than once thought.

Put your best effort toward becoming a friendly, optimistic, team-oriented employee, and it should pay dividends – particularly once the Big Data revolution kicks in.

Be a Facilitator

A facilitator is the kind of person who helps get projects done without caring if they ultimately get the credit. A good example comes from the world of patents, where researchers are often trying to create their own novel patents while also serving as sounding boards for others in the office.

If you’re the type of person who freely helps others make the best product they can, you’re likely to reap the benefits once that kind of behavior is easier to measure. The authors believe these types of employees are going to be highly valued, stating, “As facilitation skills become more easily measured and rewarded, then incentives to invest in these skills also increases.”

Think About Asking for a Trade

The researchers who wrote the spillover paper found that NBA performance is highly dependent on who your teammates are. A change of scenery often brought about a tremendous increase in a player’s value. The same could absolutely be true in the business world.

The authors note that, “Most firms have various teams within their organization and have the ability to reassign workers across teams.” If you’re feeling like switching teams might make for a better work environment, approach your manager and explain your position.

Summing Up

It’s common sense to build up the basic skills it takes to succeed in the workplace. Hard work and effective time management never go out of style. But it’s also a good idea to supplement those skills by focusing on ways to help your colleagues – because in the near future, the overall impact you have on your team may be quantifiable, and rewarded with a raise.

Related Articles:

• Why Being a Pro Athlete Made Me a Terrible Investor
• What I Learned From Working Remotely, and Why I Decided to Stop
• Six Simple Skills Everyone Can Learn to Improve Their Earning Potential at Work

The post Don’t Be the Kobe Bryant of Your Office appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Asking for a Raise? Science Says Using These 7 Offbeat Tactics Could Help

It seems everyone wants to get better at salary negotiation… but we all hate talking about money.

That’s not hyperbole.

A Society of Human Resource Management poll found nearly 80% of people dislike discussions about money or employment terms, reports U.S. News & World Report.

So let’s try to make it more fun!

We found seven fun salary negotiation tips — and research shows they actually work.

1. Ask for a Ludicrous Amount of Money

Starting your salary negotiation with a good joke could help you earn more money, the Association for Psychological Science reports.

We’re not talking “Knock-Knock” jokes or opening with “Take My Wife…”

Crack a joke about your desired salary.

“Incorporating a joking comment about implausible salary expectations may be a relatively easy way for job candidates to establish a high anchor and minimize negative reactions from employers,” University of Idaho psychological scientist Todd J. Thorsteinson told Inc.

Setting that standard is a trick psychologists call anchoring. You throw out the first number, and the other person tends to work around that.

Think you’re worth $35,000? Mention $100,000, and let the conversation go from there.

In Thorsteinson’s experiment, a $100,000 mention lead to an average offer of $35,385, compared to $32,463 for the control group.

Just hone your joke-writing chops before you head into the negotiation, so they don’t think you’re a nut.

2. Let Them Talk About Themselves

Instead of making the conversation all about you, ask questions. Encourage employers to talk about themselves.

Talking about oneself can cause someone to feel as much pleasure as food or money, according to a study by Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir. Cha-ching!

If you put someone in a good mood, you should have an easier time asking them for something. And they’ll probably be more likely to acquiesce.

An added benefit to this approach is you’ll have a chance to learn what your boss cares about. Understanding their goals and the company’s will help you see — and convince your boss — how you fit into them.

3. Talk About Your Personal Life

You may think work is no place to air your personal laundry. You may even find it annoying when co-workers do this in your office (ahem).

Still, a personal touch could help you in a salary negotiation.

In an experiment with Kellogg and Stanford students, those who shared unrelated personal details over the course of a salary negotiation ended up getting significantly better results, Business Insider reports.

Opening with personal information helps you appear more trustworthy.

What kind of information should you share? Stay away from a story about your recent colonoscopy. Focus on something like children, hobbies or your hometown.

Give them something they can relate to… without wincing.

4. If You’re a Woman, Flirt — But Only a Little

A little flirtation could go a long way in salary negotiations, according to a study of “Feminine Charm” by Berkeley professor Laura Kray.

Striking the right balance between friendliness (which the study defines as displaying a concern for the other) and flirtation (in comparison, a concern for self, i.e. desire) may be a woman’s secret weapon for a successful negotiation.

While the effect is significantly greater on men, the study shows feminine charm can give you a boost in negotiations with women as well.

“Feminine charm is a strategic behavior aimed at making the person you are negotiating with feel good in order to get them to agree to your goals,” Dr. Kray told The Independent.

5. Drink Coffee

Yeah, like you needed permission.

When you drink coffee, you’re more likely to stick to your guns in a negotiation, according to a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

The experiment showed the attitude or ideas you form after consuming caffeine are more resistant to persuasion against them.

So down that shot of espresso — and remind yourself why you deserve higher pay!

6. Stand Like Wonder Woman

Yes, we’re talking about the “power pose.”

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy made a splash in the conversation about working women with her 2012 TED talk that let us know looking confident might actually make us more confident.

It was based on her 2010 research suggesting your posture can actually affect your brain chemistry.

So, Wonder Woman doesn’t only look badass with her wide stance, hands on her hips and head held high. She truly is badass, because, science.

The stance boosts testosterone, which increases your confidence, and reduces the stress hormone cortisol. In other words, it sets you up to totally rock a negotiation.

7. Surprise Them

Showing passion and being a little unpredictable in the conversation could give you a leg up in negotiations.

A study from Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky found that emotional inconsistency from negotiators leads to greater concessions from the other party.

In the experiment, negotiators fluctuated between incongruent emotions like anger and happiness. The other party felt less in control of the situation and was more likely to concede.

Without coming across as a lunatic, maybe you could harness this kind of unpredictability by wearing your heart on your sleeve. If you’re angry, don’t hold back. If you’re happy… clap your hands?

Keep your boss on their toes, and you could maintain control of the negotiation.

If You Just Don’t Want to Talk About Money

If all else fails, and you absolutely hate talking about money, here are two bonus tips to consider:

Talk About Benefits Instead

If you want to stay away from money altogether, negotiate for other valuable things.

Can you work from home, make your own schedule, get extra vacation time, have the company pay for travel or get a parking stipend?

Beyond that, consider how this job can help your greater career development.

Maybe your company will pay for your membership in a professional organization, days off to volunteer, guest speakers, mentor opportunities or even a sabbatical.

Your career and life goals will be way more fun to discuss than dollars and cents, right?

Work for an Awesome Company

To be honest, I hate talking about money, and I haven’t negotiated a salary in my life.

Instead, I’ve sought thriving companies that demonstrate obvious respect for their employees.

Working at The Penny Hoarder comes with benefits I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for and pay I wouldn’t have guessed I deserved.

When a company’s base benefits are awesome, you’re on the right track.

Your Turn: What salary negotiation tips have you used to make more money?

With research from Haley Gonzalez, a writing intern at The Penny Hoarder.

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).

The post Asking for a Raise? Science Says Using These 7 Offbeat Tactics Could Help appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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