These days, I write for a living. Rather weird, considering I work in ‘marketing analytics’. But it’s true. “The word is mightier than the digits”. And in my trade, communicating what our customers want into clear and articulate documentation is part and parcel of what I do.

I also write for myself. Some time back, I was on holiday. Walked into a bookshop, down at Batemans Bay. A title caught my eye. “Creative Journal writing” was its’ name. Stephanie Dowrie its’ author. I grabbed it. Flicked its pages. Looked at the table of contents. Read a few pages. I was hooked.

Since then, I have been writing my own journal for a while. I guess that is why I had not posted back again in this blog for a while. I still write my journal. Not every day; I did yesterday though. And today I decided it was time for writing more in my blog. Give back to my small but loyal readership. Get back into it.

As I was writing in my journal, Microsoft word corrected a number of spell-check errors as I typed. A very useful feature, but after a while, I realised one that comes at a price. I noticed some words I always mis-spell. Those pesky ones where a ‘double-m’ can and sometimes does show are the most prominent examples. And I almost always get it wrong. But MS Word does its efficient correction, and I am in the clear.

So why am I worried? I guess because my pen does not have auto-correct on it. Neither does facebook, the customer service website I used yesterday, or my mobile phone’s email client. And I am pretty sure that I make plenty of mistakes in those electronic and normal communications I go through every day. MS Word has made me ’spellcheck-lazy’. It’s not its’ fault. It’s not even mine. Call it a ’secondary effect’ of using “productivity improvement” tools in our everyday life.

Then I started thinking. If that’s how it is affecting me, how is it affecting others? I have over 20 years of accumulated experience (‘duoble c’s are another tricky one for me) in writing without spell-check crutches. Others, like my children, have none of that. Will it make them not just spell-check lazy but spell-check illiterate? Who knows. Only time will tell.

This reflection reminded me of the endless arguments we had with our algebra (and later on calculus) teachers at high school. They argued we should not be allowed calculators in tests. We argued that the test was about our knowledge of the theorems and other mathematical knowledge, not a test of our ability to compute manually. But maybe they were right. Maybe they knew that maths literacy depends on some basics, and if you don’t know them well; don’t exercise them, you loose those abilities. You may be able to establish how to calculate the first derivative of a function, but your maths will still be awful if your ‘core maths’ skills always rely on crutches. Or at least that is the old argument.

Not sure who is right. I guess I will get a better idea as my children grow older. But based on the fact that young people around us are starting to use SMS-speak in their normal written life, we may have some strong evidence of the direction things are taking.

Image: It takes a long time to grow young by nattu

There’s been a lot of talk lately about training our people for success; and about our desire to significantly raise our level of performance in the business. Interestingly enough, these 2 words (training & performance) can be tracked to the sports arena. I wonder what we may learn by looking into some of the theories of sports training, and how they affect performance levels for elite athletes?

An interesting discussion relates to interval training. The book “The power of full engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, explains how “Russian sports scientists resurrected the concept [of interval training] in the 1960s and began applying it with stunning success to their Olympic athletes”. By pushing yourself to your limits for short periods of time, and resting between these periods of high intensity, you allow your body to recover sufficiently for the next bout of high performance. According to this theory, failing to rest will lead to “a measurable deterioration of performance”.

What would be the consequence of this training approach to the corporate arena? Loehr’s and Schwartz’ book actually encourages the application of the concept to 4 areas of our every day life: Our physical self; Our emotional self; Our spiritual self; and our intellectual self.

However, what could happen to an individual who has longer periods of performance and rest in his corporate life? One possibility is that he is seemed as not dependable. Consistency in high performance, many say, is the key to good appraisals and high bonuses at the end of the year. It is not good enough to demonstrate high levels of performance, it must be done day in, day out.

The problem with this is that in a culture that value diversity, we should account for, allow, and recognise, that different people will have different “training intervals”. For some individuals, the periods of high performance and rest could be measured in hours, or even minutes. For other individuals, it may be weeks. In a few rare ones, it could be months, or even years.

How can organisations have a fair performance appraisal system, yet account for the natural variance in these periods (at least for those people for whom ‘interval training’ at work actually works well for)?

A team of individuals that all think the same way usually does not achieve the level of ‘high-performing team’. This is dictated by Intellectual Darwinism, which stipulates that to have a rich intellectual environment, we need diversity of ideas, experience and skills.

But a team so diverse that its individuals have perspectives, ideas and opinions with “too much diversity” can quickly become a group of people that can’t agree about anything. Such a group rarely becomes high-performing.

Common wisdom says that there is no I in Team. Yet reality says that a good team is one where there is a balance between diversity in individuals , and the ability to put the team’s interest and purpose ahead of individual passions. In another words, we need to have many aligned I’s in a high-performing Team.