Monthly Reading List: January 2022

Here's a quick rundown on some of the ink I've digested over the past month and my initial thoughts! Note: This is a more comprehensive version of the list that's first presented (without commentary) in my traditional monthly newsletter.

Articles:

An article from the NYTimes on salary negotiation

I’m a big fan of the notion of offering up your future salary expectations when asked for salary history. And I’m also a big fan of banning salary history questions.?

An article from HRDrive on the idea of required minimum PTO

Minimum required time off is an interesting concept. The organization featured here not only requires a minimum amount of time off but also doesn’t cap PTO, which together seems a decent recipe for success. When I’m involved in strategic conversations about time off and the possibility of a forward-looking approach such as minimum required or unlimited PTO comes up, it’s often met with the skeptical response “that just won’t work here.” Everyone thinks they have unique, good reasons for assuming so. If you find yourself responding this way to the notion of a progressive time off policy, it’s worth reminding yourself that nearly everyone thinks “it won’t work here” and ask yourself if that rationale is really a smokescreen for other fears (hint: loss of perceived control).

Academic article summary on the benefits of team building exercises

The finding that ‘voluntary is better’ is hardly revolutionary, but this short article (if not the study itself) is worth a glance.?

Blog article featuring a list of questions to ask while conducting a reference check

This is a really good list! Not only are many of these questions excellent and far more valuable than the typical reference-check questions, but many of them can be slightly modified into great direct interview questions as well. Here are a few of my favorites:

• What are they better at than they think, and, on the flip side, worse at than they think?
• If you could change something about them, what would it be?
• If they hadn't been at your company, how would your company have been different?
• What's the easiest thing for them to communicate? And the hardest?

Business Insider article about the software company Trainual, which presents employees with a financial “offer to quit” after two weeks on the job.??

I absolutely love outside-the-box approaches to talent retention and compensation. The idea is that by offering people a financial incentive to quit that they have to turn down, they really opt-in. Cool! That said, my intuition here is that the specifics of how it’s executed leave a lot to be desired. Two weeks is well within the honeymoon period for a new employee – and while I suppose one could know right away that a place isn’t fit, is a $5,000 offer really enough to warrant quitting and restarting the job search? It’s hard to imagine they get many takers (indeed, the first time they tried it, none of the 38 employees took the quit-offer). What about a larger offer based on a percentage of salary (rather than flat $5K fee) after four or six months? Now you’re talking.?

Conference Board C-Suite 2022 Outlook Report

Thoughts: CEOs everywhere are worried about attracting and retaining talent. This is by far the most salient concern and it pops right out.?

Fast Company article on making change stick

I’m biased here as this was written by a friend, so I’ll have to limit my commentary. That said, I really like the end-in-mind approach, or questions that start with the ‘ideal effect’.

Books:

I'm going to try out a novel qualitative ranking system for books. I'll categorize books in one of four ways:

• Not worth reading
• Worth seeing if it's available at the library
• Worth making an effort to read
• Buy this and read it right now.

The Storm is Upon Us

Mike Rothschild details everything QAnon and poses interesting questions – is it a religion? What could it become? How do we help people escape the movement? As I spent a year of my doctoral program researching people who leave cults, I find the entire QAnon topic compelling and rather troubling. The book is very easy to get through quickly and well-written. I recommend it.

Verdict: Worth making an effort to read.

Mindhunter

This is the autobiography of renowned FBI criminal profiler John Douglas. It's the basis for the popular (terrific) Netflix show by the same name. It's also the most self-aggrandizing autobiography I've ever read – to the point where it's comical. I'm fascinated by profiling of all types and it was inevitable that I read this book. That said, the interesting nuggets are vastly outweighed by the self-congratulatory nonsense.

Verdict: Not worth reading (watch the show, though!)