Tone - in writing and with interacting in organizations

I want to make some observations taken from reading through your blog posts that might help you later in other interactions. 

Many of you are at or near graduation, have been on the job market or will be there soon.  In that situation it would seem you want to be professional and act accordingly.  The question is, what does acting professional mean? 

If I switched this from how you communicate to how you dress (not my comparative advantage but it is easier to make the point that way) then there are some businesses which prefer formal attire while other businesses have gravitated to business casual.  Formal attire conveys a certain solemn nature to the work.  Business casual conveys a more relaxed view. 

The same goes for the writing.  Formal writing (such as in the course projects) is more solemn.  Blogging, which is more informal and often represents early thinking on whatever the person is writing about, should convey a relaxed tone, especially if done well.  I want to note that both types of writing are serious and require real effort.  They are different, however, in that formal writing usually happens after the thinking is done - to write up the results - while informal writing is done while the thinking is ongoing - a work in progress, if you will. 

Many students in the class seemed quite "measured" in their writing of the blogs, as if they feared to make a mistake. Being measured conveys that you've thought about what you say, but it also seems that you are not relaxed in saying it. 

If you've gotten to know me at all over the semester, I like the combination of informal and thoughtful.  I think it is appealing to others when it is delivered well.  So we should ask, how do you get from where you are now to where you might be with this a few years out?

I may have told this story already in class, but in case not I will repeat it.  My first semester at the U of I, fall 1980, I taught intermediate economics and was petrified about having to do so.  It wasn't that I didn't know the economics.  I was competent that way.  What I didn't know was whether I could communicate about the economics in a way where the students would grasp it.  As it turned out, the fear I had was rational.  I didn't communicate with the students well at all and I bombed in teaching that course.

It's 37 years later and now the fear isn't there.  I hope for you it doesn't take that long to become relaxed when writing or speaking in front of an authority figure.  For that relaxation to happen, you need practice.  Some of that will be stressful, but the fact of the stress doesn't lessen the need for the practice. So know that you do get better at this over time and consider our course as place where you started down this path.

Reactions to the most recent blog posts

One of the challenges for me in reading your posts is to determine whether you are saying things in a genuine way or if instead you are writing about what you think I want to hear.  The former is what I hope for.  The latter is a kind of opportunism, one I'm afraid too many students learn as their default behavior from all the classes they take.  Instructors have power over students that results from the ability to assign grades.  I really wish I didn't have that power, yet that we were nonetheless engaged in this blogging activity.  This is impossible to pull off, given the realities of the system.  So here I will content myself with describing the ideal.

Earlier in the semester I mentioned an important work skill that you all need to acquire - the ability to write a cogent memo to some higher ups in the company where you work.  Here I want to mention a different life skill that you need to to master as well, one that I have yet to talk about in class.  You need to self-direct your own learning based on following your interests, your opportunities, and your current skill set.  You might think of this as coming up with your own prompts and then writing to them.  Sometimes you can do this in your head without typing anything out.  Other times you have to process the ideas in a variety of ways to internalize them.  In doing this you need to please yourself, which is what all self-directed learners do.  What that means might be vague now, but over time you develop a sense of taste of what is pleasing.  Developing that sense of taste is an important part of the the learning.

For a specific subject matter, of course, there is benefit to acquire insight from someone with expertise, who can get you deeper into the subject than you might with your own explorations and/or who can get you up to speed in a much shorter period of time than you would otherwise be able to do on your own.  But this is a two-way street.  There is the matter of why the expert will talk with you.  What do you bring to the table?  How will you use the information after the conversation occurs?  Being self-directed in your own learning will help answer those questions.

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The two most common terms from our course that students brought into these posts were opportunism and transaction costs.  Nobody mentioned gift exchange and collegiality, what we talked about during the very first week of the class.  (If you added the class after that there is some reason why you may have not mentioned it, but do note there is presentation material you could have reviewed on this.)  Likewise, nobody mentioned complexity, the use of buffers to manage uncertainty, and that in general we come up with rules of thumb for making decisions (we satisfice) rather than optimize.  In other words, you connected what you said in the blog posts, but you didn't connect with other things we talked about in class. 

The reality is I can't write a prompt on everything we consider.  So even if you are writing on my prompt rather than on your own, the more connections you can make with class themes - including from the Excel homework or from class discussion - the richer will be your take away from the course. 

Finally, I want to mention a paper I stumbled upon a few years ago while I was researching something else.  It is by Kenneth Bruffee and is called Learning and the "Conversation of Mankind" and which might be a bit much for you to read through.  It definitely isn't about economics, so I will give you a very condensed version here.  Thinking, writing the blog posts, and class discussion are all conversation in some form.  That class discussion is conversation shouldn't be surprising.  That thinking is conversation might be a new thought for you.  Bruffee calls it internalized conversation.  Then, writing is also an imagined conversation, with the hypothetical reader (who is in your head).  You always have the reader in mind when you write.

I try to teach this way, even though we are an Econ class, not an English class.  I wonder if you had this sort of course as a first-year student (perhaps it would take several classes like this) whether the lessons I mentioned about learning self-direction would have taken hold with you earlier.  I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about that.

Student Enrollment on Campus

This is meant to complement your posts on Illinibucks.  What things can grow with student enrollment (so they are no more crowded than they were 20 years ago) and what things get more crowded as the number of students increase?  The graph below is taken from the DMI Web Site. 

Providing Context in Your Blog Posts - My Typos - A Specific Grammar Lesson - Generalist Reading

Now that you've had the experience of writing a few of these posts, I want to discuss an issue that many students seem to have with the blogging.  The problem is that the reader (in this case the reader is me) wasn't there along with you during the particular episode you are describing.  You are an eye witness to the events that you participated in.  Some of you are writing as if you are discussing the matter with another eye witness.  That simply won't work.  You need to consider whether the person who wasn't there can understand things armed only with what you have written.  And in doing that you need to be a bit skeptical about your own powers of explanation.  To convince yourself that you've told the story in a way another who wasn't there can still understand takes some effort and some patience.  If you are dashing off your posts quickly (as I gather some students do who are submitting these posts late) you will likely come up short on this goal. This is something that many of you need to work on in subsequent posts.

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I make errors when I write.  I try to correct them by proofreading.  I have noticed the errors cropping up in the comments that I have written on your blog posts.  I apologize for those mistakes and I will try to improve my performance that way in the future.

Here is one particular reason for the errors.  The comment box doesn't enable a lot of text in it, unlike the box where you make your posts, which is ample in size.  In older versions of the software, there was a comment preview function and I got used to previewing my comment before posting it.  It seems that newer formats have gotten rid of the preview function.  That has altered my routine.  I need to proofread directly in the comment box.  I haven't been doing that, but I will in the future.

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I have gotten on some of you about distractors in your writing.  Here I want to mention a particular distractor that so many in the class seem to be making.  It is so common in your posts that I thought I bring it to the attention of the full class.  This is about the misuse of the word "myself."

proper use of myself - tribunedigital-chicagotribune via kwout

Can I get your meaning from what you write even if there are distractors in the writing?  The answer to that question is, yes I can.  The follow up question, then, is to ask - why do I need to avoid distractors?  The answer is that you communicate many different things with your writing, some of which you may not be aware that you are communicating.  One of those is whether you care about the writing (and indirectly whether you care about making a good impression on the reader).  Having distractors in your piece may show you don't care, especially when English is your native language.  Alternatively, it shows you were poorly educated about proper English.  Neither of those things are desirable to communicate.  

* * * * * 

Here is one suggestion for how you can self-educate and improve your chances of rising in the ranks of management at wherever company you find gainful employment.  This will help, in particular, in making the leap from middle management to senior executive.  You need to spend a significant amount of time each week reading high quality generalist writing meant for an intelligent audience.  This will expose you to ideas that are well thought through and expressed in writing that is high quality.  I am talking about reading one of the major newspapers on a regular basis and/or reading well respected magazines.  You would do this in your leisure time.  Some of your leisure time needs to be devoted to self-education in this way.   If you find yourself commuting - taking a train into work - this sort of reading is a fine activity to do on the ride.

Of course, you won't do this unless you find such reading enjoyable.  After all, leisure is meant  to provide enjoyment.  Like many activities, we get enjoyment from things where we've developed the habit already.   If you are not doing this yet, the first several times you read such pieces it may not be enjoyable at all.  It may seem like work, rather than play.  That is to be expected.  You have to get past that phase.  You get better with practice and the enjoyment comes when it isn't such a struggle.  

Now I will make one other point.  I find our news quite depressing these days and even well written pieces on news topics are hard for me to digest.  So, perhaps, you don't want to bludgeon yourself with bad news.  You then need to pick and choose the pieces you read so you can get at interesting ideas that are more uplifting.  They are out there, though you might have to spend some time looking for them.  

Something You Might Find Interesting to Read

Below is a snip from a post on my blog that I wrote back when I was still working full time (so quite a while ago).  The intended audience was not students.  It was learning technology professionals.  They don't get practical ethics training.   There is university ethics training now but it is entirely unsuitable to help somebody work through the issues they will confront.  Judgment is needed, not just adherence to rules. So in the post I tried to do a think aloud about the ethical issues.  If you read this you will see repeated mention that where to draw the line between productive activity and corruption is very hard to do.  It is.  Also, in the lead up part there is mention of corruption in a variety of different contexts.  In particular a movie called The Insider with Russell Crowe and Al Pacino is mentioned.  If you haven't seen it, I recommend doing so both for the entertainment value and for illustrating the underlying issues.

Lanny on Learning: Gift Exchange or Corruption via kwout

An Observation About The Substance of Student Posts This Week

I thought you'd get a kick out of this quote, as many of you reported experiences with a manager that were less than stellar.

Quote Details: Peter Drucker: So much of what... - The Quotations Page via kwout

It remains to ask why there are many managers who don't do their jobs well.  I thought we'd discuss it some in class on Tuesday, as well as to consider whether the observation is consistent to organizations functioning in an efficient manner or not.

Perhaps the most famous explanation, meant a bit tongue in cheek, is the Peter Principle.

Quote Details: Laurence J. Peter: Everyone rises to their... - The Quotations Page via kwout

Some Blogging Factoids

Photo of your alias

If you find a photo image of the economist who gives the first part of your alias, you can download that and then re-upload it to your Blogger profile.  There is a section for profile image.  If you include that image, then all your most current post listed on the class site will have a thumbnail of the image, as will any comments you make.

This is not necessary, but it is a nice touch that will personalize our site more.


Hyperlinks in posts

Unlike what you may be used to in other online environments, if you simply paste a link into your blog editor it will publish the text of the link, but the link itself will not be live.  To make a live link, you need to select the link tool from the toolbar.  Also, the custom is to highlight some text and link that rather than to insert the url into your text.


Hyperlinks in comments

There is no toolbar for making comments.  Comments do accept basic html commands.  So if you are comfortable with that you can use those commands to put in a link or to format your text.  If you are not comfortable with that, ignore this.  It is not necessary.  I really don't know if it is a skill that people need to have after they graduate.  Ten years ago I would have said it was.  Now, I'm not sure.

Setting up a blog for class - part 2

This is the rest of the tutorial.   Once you've made a test post, please email me the link to it.  I will then subscribe to your blog and list it on the class site.  Having subscribed to it, I will automatically see updates to your blog.

Setting up a blog for class - part 1

As an alternative to the instructions below, you can use the campus blogging service at publish@illinois.  Then you log in with your NetID and password.  You can adjust your screen name to your alias, to protect your privacy.  But I don't know whether you can access the site after you graduate.   Also, for commenting on the class site you will either do that anonymously or use your real name.  If you use Blogger and make your alias your screen name, then your comments to posts will also be given by your screen name.  (That assumes you are logged into your blog.)

As still one other alternative, you can have a blog in Moodle, which is then not publicly available.  Truthfully, this is much less convenient than the other alternatives.  But it protects your privacy the most because the the rest of the world doesn't have access to the Moodle class site.  If you want to pursue this alternative you must contact me about it.  I have to set it up for you.

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The instructions below and in the next post are aimed at setting up your blog so that you post under your alias - nobody outside the class will know who you are - and make sure that everybody understands this is a blog of a student, not of the person from whom the alias was constructed.

The video below was made for the class from a few years ago.  It is applicable still, though Blogger has changed a bit since.  Also note, that it assumes you are making a new Gmail account just for this use.  As an alternative, you can use your non-university Gmail account equally well, if you are not already using Blogger with it.  Do not use your campus email.  That will not work.

Note that in video where it says My Econ 490 Alias, your alias is of the form Famous Economist Econ 490 fall 2017.  Also that that for the url of the blog, you should take the spaces out, but for the name of the blog and your screen name, you should leave the spaces in.  (And for the screen name, the name of the famous economist suffices.  The rest is redundant.)

The main thing is to use the Blogger Profile, not the Google Plus profile.  The Blogger Profile is what allows you to post under an alias.  See the image below.  You can find this on your blog dashboard under Settings, then User Settings.