Social networking and health

A article based on research into personal happness was published a couple of months ago in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).Most peope are searching for personal happiness in their lives and this piece might give us a lift  and show us where to find it in these days of slowdown, credit squeeze and recession.

The concept of the self-management of “mood” and it’s effect on colleagues in the workplace appears to be supported by this study comments Billy Linehan of Celtar management consultants.

And of course a cynic might say that you have to find a happy person first?

Happiness really does rub off-a person’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected.

Happiness is not just an individual experience or choice, but is dependent on the happiness of others to whom individuals are connected directly and indirectly, and requires close proximity to spread, say the authors. For example, a friend who becomes happy and lives within a mile increases your likelihood of happiness by 25%.

Professor Nicholas Christakis from Harvard Medical School and Professor James Fowler from the University of California, analysed data collected in the Framingham Heart Study to find out if happiness can spread from person to person and if clusters of happiness form within social networks*.

In the Framingham Heart Study** 5,124 adults aged 21-70 were recruited and followed between 1971 and 2003, to examine various aspects of their life and health. Participants were asked to identify their relatives, “close friends,” place of residence, and place of work to ensure they could be contacted every two to four years for follow-up. The authors found 53,228 social ties between the 5,124 participants and a total of 12,067 people. They focused on 4,739 people followed from 1983 to 2003.

Additional data on mental health, collected using a depression rating scale during the original study, recorded agreement or disagreement with four statements “I felt hopeful about the future,” “I was happy,” “I enjoyed life,” “I felt that I was just as good as other people.” In this BMJ paper, the authors defined happiness as a perfect score for all four statements.

Using statistical analysis the researchers measured how social networks were correlated with reported happiness. They found that live-in partners who become happy increase the likelihood of their partner being happy by 8%, similar effects were seen for siblings who live close by (14%) and neighbours (34%). Work colleagues did not affect happiness levels suggesting that social context may curtail the spread of emotional states.

Interestingly, it is not only immediate social ties that have an impact on happiness levels, the relationship between people’s happiness can extend up to three degrees of separation (to the friend of one’s friends’ friend). Indeed, people who are surrounded by happy people are likely to become happy in the future.

Importantly, they report that close physical proximity is essential for happiness to spread. A person is 42% more likely to be happy if a friend who lives less than half a mile away becomes happy, the effect is only 22% for friends who live less than two miles away, and this effect declines and becomes insignificant at greater distances.

The findings suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.

The authors say: “Changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals.”

They conclude: “Most important from our perspective is the recognition that people are embedded in social networks and that the health and wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others. This fundamental fact of existence provides a fundamental conceptual justification for the specialty of public health. Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals.”

Other views

In an accompanying editorial, Professor Andrew Steptoe from University College London and Professor Ana Diez Roux from University of Michigan School of Public Health, say that the study is “groundbreaking”: “If, [as these findings suggest] happiness is indeed transmitted through social connections, it could indirectly contribute to the social transmission of health”, and has serious implications for the design of policies and interventions.

However, in another research paper, Jason Fletcher from Yale University and Ethan Cohen-Cole from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, caution that the methods used to detect social network effects in Christakis and Fowler’s study are subject to “potentially large biases…that might produce effects where none exist.”

They examined whether network effects can be detected for three health outcomes-headaches, skin problems, and height. They found that, for example, a friend’s acne problems increased the likelihood of an individual’s acne problems and that the likelihood that an individual had headaches also increased with the presence of a friend with headaches. But after controlling for environmental confounders these social network effects disappeared. They conclude: “These methods might produce premature claims of social network effects in health outcomes.”

Notes

*The basic idea in social network analysis is that behaviours may spread over time from one person to another through immediate and more distant social contacts.

**The Framingham Heart Study, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, began in 1948 and is still running. Much of what we know about the effects of lifestyle and treatments on the risk of heart disease has come from this longitudinal study . Started by the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the study has continued in collaboration with Boston University since the 1970s.

Research paper: Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis of the Framingham Heart Study social network
BMJ Online

Research paper: Detecting implausible social network effects in acne, height and headaches: longitudinal analysis
BMJ Online

Editorial: Happiness, social networks and health
BMJ Online

British Medical Journal

The Chinese symbol for crisis contains the symbols for danger and opportunity. With the global economy in turmoil most people are sitting around holding their breath; hoping and praying they will be able to survive the threat. There is no question that this time of change is threatening for us all.

But, this is also a period of great opportunity; one of which is the opportunity to get to know your customers better and to strengthen your relationship with them. Another is to stand out from the crowd, be different in your business proposition – attract interest in your product and service offerings.

Do not be put off by your colleagues, other business people and the general media view – economies and budgets have shrunk to 2003 levels (and it wasn’t too bad then).

Billy Linehan February 2009nehan

A recent piece by Ken Blanchard and Terry Waghorn in Forbes.com states that we live in a time when three powerful forces – demography, sociology and technology – are creating a perfect storm for accelerated change. It’s a good read and provocative also.

 Billy Linehan mentor and business adviser

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

The Net Generation is coming of age and making its presence felt. As consumers, they want to be prosumers – co-innovating products and services with producers. As citizens, they are transforming how politicians are elected and govern. As employees, they are approaching work collaboratively, which is collapsing the hierarchy and forcing organisations to rethink how they manage and innovate.

That collaborative mindset has become all-pervasive. Individualistic we may be, yet awareness is growing that united we stand and divided we fall. The crude oil fueling this ‘agequake’ is a new generation of technology creating a giant leap in how we communicate and connect. On the new, level playing field, we all have access to the same information at the same time.

Consider how these forces influence our relationship with our governments. We are rapidly coming to the end of the phase we think of as representative democracy. For centuries, we elected people to represent us in far-off forums and then judged how well they did whenever an election came around. That was before the Internet, e-mail, IMing, Facebook and Obama. He, more than any other politician, has leveraged these disruptive forces to his advantage.

Evolving from obscure state Senator to the president-elect of the United States in just a few years, Obama launched a campaign that reinvented democracy. We are finally seeing the flowering of Lincoln‘s government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” And how has Obama done this? By appealing to the youth vote; by the pronoun we – as in “change we can believe in” rather than “believe in me” – and by leveraging the tools of social networking: e-mail, blogs, text messages and more. The result was a top-to-bottom organisational cohesion that powerfully connected Obama with his supporters.

Now, consider how these forces affect how businesses are run. Again, a revolution is underway. You can see it in how companies interact with customers: the old, “we make, you buy” mentality is rapidly giving way to one of co-creation and collaboration. You can see it in how executives interact with employees – systems are becoming more open and transparent; power is being distributed more widely, hierarchies are inverting and there is a growing sense of shared ownership and responsibility.

Let’s take the strategy development process as a simple example. In the past, strategy formulation in most companies was a closed process, one that was typically performed by a group of top executives who sequestered themselves somewhere for a few days, did some brainstorming and then—presto – the next year’s strategy was born.

Today, more enlightened leaders try to involve as many people in the process as they possibly can. This inclusive process might take the form of people at all levels generating new ideas and opportunities. Or, it could be as simple as a front-line worker participating as one of the many random voices in a company’s online chat room. Either way, the effect is the same–everyone gets an opportunity to help shape the future.

One company putting this democratic notion into practice is IBM, which has made a concerted effort in recent years to leverage technology to engage its entire organisation in its strategy discussions. All 319,000 IBMers around the world were recently invited to participate in an open 72-hour online “strategy jam” about the future direction of the company.

Another example of this democratic leadership can be seen in how companies innovate. Rather than relying on the creative few living out in a disconnected silo (i.e. research and development, new product development, incubators), progressive company leaders are making innovation everyone’s responsibility.

To insure that people are willing and able to participate in innovation, these leaders are making the necessary changes to processes and systems. This includes seeing that people have been properly trained, that they all have access to the same information, are given the time to experiment, have access to resources and are recognized and rewarded for their efforts, even if things don’t turn out as planned.

Procter and Gamble’s A.J. Lafley exemplified this new innovation leadership when he launched “Connect & Develop,” an online portal that fosters a community linking P&G employees with anyone else in the world seeking to pitch, promote and discuss potential products and services. Through this portal, P&G has created an engine of innovation by finding a way to solicit new ideas from outside the company’s walls.

A similar strategy was described by Aideen Waters of Allianz at the recent Innovation Forum in Croke Park where she explained her responsibility as the delivery of an Allianz global strategy to use innovative thinking gathered from all countries and all levels of the business as a means of putting the customer at the heart of the organisation.

In short, the world’s best companies, like democracy in the US, are evolving. Tomorrow’s leaders like IBM and P&G have already begun using technology to turn their organizations upside down – sharing decision making power with its members on the front lines. These organisations represent the future. Companies that fail to adapt in this way, like the traditional form of government we have grown accustomed to, will simply fade away into the history books.

From Forbes.com

Incite 61

We see a generational gap in many organisations, often highlighted by poor communications and team work. If it is hard to get people from various generations to reach any agreement, it is even harder to do so within a company. Cristina Simón, professor at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, has identified and analyzed the four generations that currently make up the corporate workforce.

In an interview Simón explains the differences between groups of workers, which she identifies as “traditional workers,” “baby boomers,” “Generation X” and “Generation Y.” She also suggests key steps for enabling a 21st-century business to successfully overcome the generational duel that takes place between traditional workers and more recent arrivals.

How many generations are currently employed by companies, and what are their special characteristics?

Simón: Although there are differences from country to country, we can generally identify four generational groups that are currently active professionally:

–Traditional workers (born before 1946): They value loyalty and discipline, and they respect authority and hierarchy. These workers played the key role in their companies when economic development was strong.

–Baby boomers (1946-1960): Their critical years for joining the workforce – between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1970s – were a period when most European countries enjoyed significant progress. This led to great expectations of success. Currently, this group occupies positions of higher corporate responsibility and has the largest proportion of workaholics in history. This is also the generation that gave birth to the yuppie phenomenon.

–Generation X (1961-1979): This generation has the best academic training and international experience in history. They have begun to make a break with traditional patterns of behaviour, demanding a more informal environment and abandoning hierarchical authority in favour of a more horizontal and flexible structure. They have pioneered policies that involve flexibility and conciliation. This generation is rich in entrepreneurs because personal initiative predominates within a context of scepticism toward large enterprises.

–Generation Y (starting from 1980): Generation Y is the first in history to have lived their entire lives with information technology. It is not easy for them to understand the world without it. Like members of Generation X, their childhood was comfortable and prosperous. They are more individualistic than earlier generations and demand autonomy in their opinions and behaviour. They emphasize personal activities above social and labour considerations.

What social factors define the character of each of these groups?

Common life experiences more clearly define each generational group. For example, traditional workers were born during the war [World War II] and the post-war period. As a result, they were raised in an environment of scarcity, which led to the fact that they value austerity. They defend such social goals as peace and national prosperity.

Baby boomers, on the other hand, spawned a series of social phenomena based on their strong reaction to their parents, such as the hippie movement, feminism and divorce. Both X and Y groups have had less social impact, I believe, because they emerged more recently and have not been analyzed sufficiently.

What are their main differences when it comes to focusing on work in a business? What is each generation trying to find in the company?

To put it as simply as possible, we can say that traditional workers are pragmatic and disciplined, and are motivated by loyalty. In contrast, baby boomers are more optimistic and more self-motivated. Generation X is the most sceptical when it comes to organizations, and it is trying to find balance and flexibility, above all. Finally, in Generation Y there is a shortage of loyalty to the generation. Nevertheless, Generation Y puts a great deal of importance on intense relationships with co-workers and supervisors.

How does each generation understand the concept of “corporate loyalty?”

With the arrival of each new generation, the concept of loyalty has been steadily losing ground. Beyond change in the hierarchy of values, this steady decline in loyalty is due to the fact that it is impossible for companies to continue to offer job security. The company then replaces stability with “employability.” That changes the motivational focus of professionals away from the company and toward themselves. All these changes mean that the appeal of loyalty has continued to weaken, although inertia is still strong among traditional workers and baby boomers.

In which generation are the differences between men and women greatest?

When it comes to social values, women in every generation are more oriented toward other people, and they have a greater sense of dedication and service. Men are generally more individualistic. When it comes to professional preferences, although women put more emphasis on flexibility, the newest generations, especially Y, care more about traditionally “masculine” work values, such as income levels and opportunities for promotion.

What are the main values that characterize Generations X and Y?

As I noted earlier, both X and Y grew up in a comfortable environment in their years of childhood and adolescence. When these people enter the labour market, they have a harder time than their predecessors did. It was much easier for earlier generations to find work, become independent from their families and so forth.

As a result, there is a sense of frustration and scepticism that logically extends to the way they view the working environment. Don’t forget that the working environment in our society has a lot of impact on social activity, starting with the period when marital couples and families are formed and on to the growth of social networks.

Is there a conflict between the working environments of the four generations?

Often when these topics are discussed with HR managers and other professionals, people make comments that reflect those differences. I don’t know if they can be characterized as “conflicts,” but they have an impact on the dynamics of working relationships. Organizations also have these sorts of experiences.

The current generation of managers is dominated by baby boomers and the older members of Generation X. Those are the levels at which corporate cultures are defined, along with corporate modes of behaviour. From this perspective, we could say that some of the failures of young people in their working environment stem from the fact that they sometimes have very different hierarchies of value.

Are HR departments prepared for understanding the generational differences? And do they know how to deal with them?

Given the nature of change in the labour market, HR departments are concerned about everything that can affect their retention of employees. As a result, they are looking into whether these differences are a possible cause for their failure to retain workers. In any case, where this analysis makes the most sense is in those companies that demand younger workers, whether or not those employees are sufficiently qualified.

In those kinds of cases, the function of HR must be to study basic processes in order to make them more attractive to workers from Generation Y. Above all, they must draw up a psychological contract with their employees and with those candidates who have the kinds of background they are looking for.

What strategies and policies do you recommend that companies apply?

Those companies that consider it critical to adapt to new generations of workers must take another look at their HR practices so they can refine their supply of jobs, as I said earlier. It is important to understand the relationships that exist between young people and technology, which often have an impact on social standards and dynamics. For example, best recruitment practices should include having a Web site that is attractive and easy to use, and which makes it easier and faster for long-term job candidates to interact with the company.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the natural tendency of young people is not to focus on commitment or loyalty to a corporate brand but to a combination of factors that make them feel good, on the one hand, and have personal value, on the other hand. From the viewpoint of selection, there is a double advantage to an approach that involves realistic interviews and tests.

This approach can diagnose the competencies of job candidates and let candidates know that the company is both creative and dynamic. These can be some of the keys to strengthening the selection process and minimizing the turnover of new employees who leave within months. That kind of turnover is both undesirable and costly.

Some studies show that young people prefer strong performance-based cultures where results count more than job seniority or personal appearance. This means that a company needs to create systems for performance-based compensation in which short-term variables count more than long-term results.

Especially in Spain, the concept of job turnover must be overhauled. Traditionally, when professionals leave a company, it has been very traumatic both for the company and the employee. There is a sense of betrayal because of the high value placed on loyalty, but that is currently on the decline.

Young people, on the other hand, leave a company because they find another opportunity elsewhere. They understand that these are the rules of the game, and they don’t discount the possibility of returning to the same company in the future if conditions are favourable. An intelligent strategy for leveraging young talent should rethink the issue of job turnover and consider maintaining this relationship with workers who depart, as a result.

What are the main challenges facing Generations X and Y? Are conditions easier for them than they were for their predecessors, or are things more difficult?

Each generation has had to confront its own challenges through the course of various changes they have undergone. Undoubtedly, the world of today’s young people is much more complex than that of their elders. But it is also clear that they are much better prepared and they have better tools for dealing with these challenges. Certainly, the supply of jobs is much more precarious in today’s labour market.

On the other hand, declining birth rates in recent years mean that fewer people will be applying for jobs compared with what happened during the baby boom. Many young people say that their elders have made it harder for them by providing them with a comfortable childhood. At the same time, social systems do not make it easier to become economically independent and achieve the same standards. This difficult transition will leave a sense of frustration that will certainly be hard for young workers to deal with in coming years.

“Generation Y and the Labour Market: Models for HR Management.” Cristina Simón and Gayle Allard, Instituto de Empresa, Spain

I have come across the company 37signals several times over the last few years, via recommendations from developers, clients and an article in Time magazine. They demonstrate a refreshing approach for smaller companies who successfully compete with corporates in technology and other sectors.

“I don’t have anything against big business,” Jason Fried says. “It’s just not for me.” So he quit and in 1999 started the Chicago-based digital design firm 37signals with three other designers.

But Fried’s jaunt as a corporate employee wasn’t his last experience with big business. Thanks to his firm’s innovative and simple approach to Web design, big clients soon were knocking on his door, and Fried once again found himself working for some of the biggest businesses around—but this time as a contractor and not as an employee.

Fried grimaces as he recalls his encounters with big business: “The decisions being made by these large corporate clients were just so irrational,” he says. “Big business loves mediocrity: They put process first and product second. As long as you go through this process and all these objectives are met along the way, then what comes out at the end is considered successful, no matter what. It doesn’t up set anyone, but doesn’t make them happy, either. It’s safe. I can’t deal with that.”

Still wary of the waste and brain drain of the corporate world, Fried started focusing on reducing his dependency on all things big business. Now his own firm is lean and mean, with only eight employees who are developing a new generation of online services, including the popular project-management software Basecamp.

Fried built his business with a philosophy he calls “Getting Real,” a way of thinking that inspires those with limited budgets and few resources to create successful products. While Fried’s simple, streamlined approach focuses on software development, the principles apply to any small business challenge requiring you to do more with less.

Fried’s mantra about how to be successful in business is simple: Less is more. Being a small business is better than being a big one. Having few resources is better than having unlimited resources. Having less time is better than having all the time in the world. Indeed, having less of anything is better than having more—except when it comes to happiness.

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

Today, 37signals and the Web-based applications it creates (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack and Ruby on Rails) have a near cult-like following among more than half-a-million users. More than 60,000 people regularly read the firm’s blog, Fried’s online, self-published book about his streamlined approach to software development—generated almost $200,000 in revenues during its first four months of publication. Fried is regularly invited to speak at top technology conferences and his design work and software products offer some of the most influential approaches in his industry. No list of “hot new tech companies” is complete without a mention of 37signals and Fried. Any review of the “next big thing” typically cites his firm or one of its products.

What’s ironic is that Fried never set out to become the next big thing. His Basecamp project-management system was born out of personal need. “We created it initially for ourselves because we couldn’t find a project-management product that worked for us,” he says. At the time, Fried and his team were scattered among four different cities on two continents. The solution they developed to manage their projects for large clients soon caught on with the clients themselves, who wanted something similar to manage their own work.

Now, projects at some of the world’s largest companies are managed with software created by a business that subleases a few desks in a warehouse district west of downtown Chicago.

Using Limitations to Your Advantage

After graduating 14 years ago with a finance degree from the University of Arizona, Fried returned to his hometown of Chicago. When he started 37signals a few years later, he decided to remain in the Windy City rather than move to Silicon Valley with the rest of the tech start-ups. Fried’s decision was a good one, since his path to success breaks much of the Valley’s conventional wisdom about start-ups. For example, he had no venture-capital backing, though more than 25 firms had offered to invest. Fried says he has no need for their money or connections because Basecamp is already profitable, in part because of Fried’s radically low overhead. “I can only speak about developing software,” he says. “Perhaps if you’re starting a manufacturing company, you need lots of capital to purchase machinery, but with our business, many of the cost barriers have been removed.”

Instead of spending lots of money on services his start-up didn’t need, Fried chose to keep it simple. For example, during the first year, Basecamp was hosted on a single server that cost about $150 per month. The products developed by 37signals were all created using open-source, free software.

And instead of requiring his employees to spend hundreds of hours of their time developing products, Fried obsessively controls the scope of projects. One key to his “Getting Real” approach (see below) is scaling back the number of features on a product so that it isn’t bogged down in unnecessary bells and whistles. “If you have all the time and money in the world, you become Microsoft,” Fried says. “And now, even Microsoft can’t deliver new products: There’s no urgency.”

Success in All Sizes

In reality, the “Getting Real” concept is a more real-world approach to small business than the often mythologised—and likewise, demonized—tech start-up model. Access to venture capital is a rarity in most Main Street retail and service companies. Capital is available for financing equipment, but it comes with plenty of strings and requirements attached.

Fried’s notion of doing more with less resonates with small-business owners who, like him, have discovered that you don’t have to be big to be great. They understand that success doesn’t only come in extra-large. As more businesses operate in a virtual world, small businesses can develop new and efficient products that allow them to compete head-to-head with the big guys — without becoming big guys themselves.

After all, successfully running an efficient business with a low overhead that makes the owner and employees happy is the goal that drives all of us in that huge part of our lives called work. It’s a goal that Jason Fried already has a handle on.

Back to the Basics: How to use your (lack of) size to your advantage

While developed with software companies in mind, Fried’s principles can apply to any small business that strives to do more with less.

Underdo your competition: Businesses get caught up in a cycle of adding more features and services. Great opportunities exist for those who create the same products, but with more simplicity and ease of use.

Create services you would use: Few great product and service ideas come as a result of groupthink and committee meetings. Democracy is great, Fried says, but in the product-development arena, it rarely leads to great results. Great products are the result of solving problems for yourself — and then offering solutions to others.

Fund yourself: The more money you have, the more you’ll waste, Fried says. He admits that outside funding is necessary for capital-intensive businesses, but for many service businesses—especially those utilizing technology or operating online—being able to turn your business concept into reality is getting less expensive by the day.

Take half: List all the features you’d like on your product and cut them in half, Fried advises. Then, cut that list in half. Being driven by time and budget rather than by your dream list of features will result in a much more solid, workable product that won’t break the bank.

Call off the meetings: Fried is not a fan of endless meetings or documents filled with specifications and details that no one reads. He’d prefer to focus on the essentials — and those don’t require a lot of meetings.

Interruption is the enemy of productivity: “Most companies are built to promote interruption, because they think that’s the same as collaboration. It isn’t.”

Don’t hire people: Is the work that’s burdening you really necessary? What if you don’t just do it? Can you solve the problem with a change of practice instead?

Founders: Jason Fried, Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura

Funding: Undisclosed sum from Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com, and the first outside investor in 37signals,

Employees: 8

37signals.com

Mybusiness.com

Guardian.co.uk