It’s really starting to bug me. The incessent repetition of recycled presentations, cheap vendor give-aways, analyst kissing booths and “award ceremonys” ripe with the wink-and-nod of ballot stuffing inpropriety. Add to the scene a typical vacation destination and stir in the party-like atmosphere of an AA meeting gone bad. And what you do you get? You guessed it - the tradeshow blues.

Having attended well over 100 shows in the past few years, I’ve noticed a certain formulaic approach to each. Let me break it down and please tell me if this sounds familiar:

1) The Venue: Medium quality hotel with ready-made access to nearby themepark/historical site/golf course/scenery/casino. Group rates apply and please bring the family for a long weekend.

2) The Theme: Always original, we find focus on “extending”/”capturing”/”innovating”/”crossing” whatever chasm-like challenge is currently holding back the industry’s potential for growth.

3) The Keynote: An inspirational pay-to-play author/media figure/former public official/self-described industry expert/athlete invigorates the audience in the first general session by tying seemingly unrelated anecdotes back to the generalized theme of the event.

4) The Show Floor: 10×10 squares of lights and collateral which use booth bunnies/tchotkes/contests/theatres to entice the unsuspecting attendee into allowing for a badge swipe, the ultimate currency.

5) The General Sessions: Clients and vendors in a self-promoting frenzy of before-and-after photos relative to their transformation from pre-solution cocoon of ignorance to post-solution butterfly of enlightened success.

6) The “Evening Event”: Painful theme oriented ballrooms filled with the romantic glow of sterno-heated finger foods surrounded by conga lines of drink-seekers hoping the bar stays open past closing.

All I’m saying is that I’d like to see something original, something truly inspirational result from the incredible amount of time and expense that goes into these shows.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

In this month’s McKinsey Quarterly, Heino Fassbender opines on Europe’s productivity issues relative to the United States. The article is based on research for his upcoming book, Europe as an Economic Powerhouse: How the Old Continent Is Gaining New Strength.

Fassbender’s data shows that the gap between US and European productivity appears to be broadening, and not simply due to “Europe’s welfare state supposedly being the main culprit.” Instead, measures point to a per capita output gap of 32% relative to the United States. The data shows that:

Europe’s crisis is not only that it produces one-third less than the United States per capita but also that the gap between the two is not becoming notably smaller. There are three key explanations for the gap (exhibit). The most important is low labor productivity (16 percent less than that of the United States in 2004). The other two involve low labor inputs, which were 19 percent below US levels in the pre-enlargement European Union of 2004. In short, Europeans work fewer hours than their North American counterparts do. Many people exaggerate the role of the welfare state in Europe’s economic problems; in reality it accounts for little more than a third of the labor input gap. Overwhelmingly, Europeans have opted for more leisure.

So Europeans have opted for more leisure….in fact, his data quantifies the comparison of hours worked exactly - an average of 1,564 hours per year (European) versus 1,819 hours per year (the US). Assuming eight hour work days, that equates to nearly 32 days a year less. One could account for 20 or so of these days during the “August holiday” alone.

And what should Europe do to close the gap? Fassbender recommends four items:

1) Complete the single European market to build strength;
2) Regulate business more intelligently to control for productivity-impacting policy;
3) Create higher-value goods and services; and
4) Move state spending squarely toward research and education.

The bell for European change has effectively been rung with this and other publications. The question is, can the ringing be heard while vacationing?

Let’s keep the conversation going.

A friend of mine called the other day to describe a candidate she had just finished interviewing. She was seeking advice on how to appropriately convey her feelings to others on her management team. The candidate appeared to be competent on paper, had prepared all the right questions and clearly rehearsed responses to any question posed. However, it was my friend’s impression that this person would be an absolute nightmare to work with, making it impossible for her to recommend the hire.

Human Resource Executive published an article yesterday describing SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard’s philosophy on the workplace. Lars had published an online description of the type of behavior he didn’t want in his firm, namely “no politics, no parochialism, no silos, no games, no cynicism, no arrogance, and no jerks.” Keep in mind that “no jerks” was originally posted as “no assholes”, but they modified the text over concerns that folks might be offended (clearly I don’t have that concern). According to the article, Lars, his HR Director and the entire firm take this philosophical approach very seriously, even to the point of encouraging employees to call our their peers if they exhibit asshole-like behavior.

This issue over jerks harkens back to a wonderful piece in the Harvard Business Review published in July of 2005. Entitled, “Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire”, the article describes four different archetypes of colleagues:

1) The Competent Jerk - S/he knows a lot but is unpleasant to deal with;
2) The Loveable Fool - Doesn’t know much but is a delight to be around;
3) The Loveable Star - The uber-combination of likability and smarts; and
4) The Incompetent Jerk - Persumably the aforementioned a-hole that we’ve all had the pleasure of working with.

What I find most fascinating about this particular research is when people were asked to choose between the Competent Jerk and the Loveable Fool. One would think that people would choose competence every day of the week. Not so, according to the authors:

“We found that if someone is strongly disliked, it’s almost irrelevant whether or not she is competent; people won’t want to work with her anyway. By contrast, if someone is liked, his colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence he has to offer. And this tendency didn’t exist only in extreme cases; it was true across the board. Generally speaking, a little extra likability goes a longer way than a little extra competence in making someone desirable to work with. […]”

Who would you rather work with? Is likeability truly superior to competence? Does posing questions with no responses make me a likeable fool? *grin*

Let’s keep the conversation going.