Social Scientists Wade Into the Tweet
Stream, an
articlein the September 30, 2011
issue of Science, is
a stimulating read (subscription required. Republished by University of Vermont here). The author shared recent studies that mined Twitter data for
insights into human behavior.
Peter
Dodds and colleagues from the University of Vermont, for
example, applied a novel method to analyze years of tweets from around the
world. The Twitter data suggest a global decay in mood, a decrease in “average
happiness” level, which they determined by comparing the relative usage of common words associated with positive or negative
moods. Their results indicate that the world is not as happy today as it
was in 2009!
A few weeks ago I had a kickoff at a client site with a
project team that included the regional HR staffing director and corporate
training manager. In a side
conversation, we had an opportunity to talk shop about other projects and they
brought up their recent budget planning and how it had always seemed they were
jockeying for each other’s slice of the pie.
“How would you
distribute our budget percent between our departments, Adam? Are great employees born or made?” This clearly was not a question I thought
would bode well for me. When possible,
in the world of consulting, you try to deliver win-wins, as every contact is a
potential ally down the road. After
cracking a few jokes about knowing the limits of my scope and moving on, I gave
it some thought on the flight home.
Brent J. Lyons, Doctoral Candidate Organizational Psychology Michigan State University
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Recently, I gave ideas to a journalist writing how applicants can demonstrate they are concerned with the bottom line. Granted, people will be concerned about customer service, teamwork, and doing an overall good job. However, the journalist’s angle was informing job seekers how to be seen as bottom-line applicants. Examples he provided were an employee whose role is computer work, but helping other departments by using a forklift, and a CEO modeling good behavior by using public transportation. However, I think this mindset misses a few crucial points.
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