<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>College cafeterias are notorious for their sad salad bars and cardboard pizza.Malcolm Gladwell would like to keep it that way.On a recent episode of his new podcast, <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/about">"Revisionist History,"</a> a 10-part series in which Gladwell reinterprets pieces of the past, the best-selling author argues colleges with fancy dining options drain money from financial-aid budgets.The consequence: In serving the students who can afford sky-high tuition, universities end up robbing bright, low-income kids of the chance to attend.To illustrate his point, Gladwell compares two small liberal arts colleges: Vassar College and Bowdoin College. The schools have a lot in common. Both are expensive and hard to get into, and they're both located in the northeast.But there's one crucial difference Gladwell highlights: While Vassar's food gets lukewarm reviews, Bowdoin's food is downright gourmet. Students at Bowdoin regularly get treated to inventive dishes like eggplant parmesan pancakes and high-end events featuring fresh-caught venison and Maine lobster.It might not come as a surprise that Bowdoin's food is one of the top selling points for incoming students.But then Gladwell visits Vassar and learns something important about how the college spends its money. About a decade ago, Vassar spent about $25 million on Pell grants, the financial aid option that lets poor kids attend for free. Roughly 11% of students that attended took that route.Then, in 2006, Catharine Hill became the college's new president. An economist by training, Hill noticed the school wasn't making the wisest financial choices. Vassar could do a lot more to accommodate students needing financial aid.Today, the portion of Pell grant recipients hovers around 23% with a spending of $58 million, more than double what it was in 2006. That places Vassar <a href="http://info.vassar.edu/news/announcements/2014-2015/140909-nytimes-report%20.html">near the top of schools in its category</a> in terms of financial aid.And how has Hill managed to award so much more financial aid? By cutting costs on renovating Vassar's dorms, putting off certain repairs, and, yes, deprioritizing the food."Some people claim it really gives it them indigestion," one sophomore named Amanda says on the podcast. "They're not happy with the quality of the food."For Gladwell, that's a small price to pay for admitting entire swaths of the population who might've never gotten the chance to attend an elite university.The downside at Vassar also pales in comparison to the disservice a college like Bowdoin does to its low-income applicants, he says. Today, only <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/05-food-fight">14% of Bowdoin students</a> receive Pell grants. Contrasted with Vassar's nearly $60 million in financial aid spending, Bowdoin spends just $34 million.There's only one solution, Gladwell says: Stop supporting&#xa0;schools like Bowdoin. The fact they allow such extravagance is "completely absurd.""Every time you support a school that spends its money on amazing food ... you're making it harder and harder for someone like Catharine Hill to create opportunities for poor kids," he says. "Send a message to the Bowdoins of the world about what really matters."Bowdoin has since issued a <a href="http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2016/07/bowdoin-responds-to-malcolm-gladwells-food-fight-podcast/">lengthy rebuttal</a> to Gladwell's podcast, criticizing his characterization of the school.It claims Gladwell failed to ask "a single question for his podcast about our financial aid program, our practices, our record, or our philosophy," which caused him "to miss the point about access and opportunity at Bowdoin."Gladwell, meanwhile, stands by the episode.<div></div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/keble-college-oxford-university-students-dorm-room-chapel-2016-7">What it's like inside Oxford University when all the students are gone for the summer</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VnbHBxNDE6ulLXKztT9wjf7t06ctzssA" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

Malcolm Gladwell says colleges that serve amazing food are 'completely absurd'

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>A case argued in the Supreme Court on Wednesday has shed light on the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/business/supreme-court-weighs-employee-pay-for-amazons-after-work-security-screening.html">tight security at Amazon warehouses</a>. 
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/10/07/supreme-court-to-decide-if-amazon-workers-should-be-paid-for-security-screening/"></a>The case was brought against the Amazon contractor responsible for filling these warehouse jobs, <a href="http://www.integritystaffing.com/index.aspx">Integrity Staffing Solutions</a>, by two former Amazon warehouse employees who claim they should be compensated for all of the time they spent waiting in security checkpoint lines. (Amazon itself is not being sued.)
For former warehouse employee Jesse Busk, waiting in these lines essentially meant donating his time to Amazon. "They did it on my time," Busk, 37, of Henderson, Nevada, said in an interview with <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-06/amazon-workers-take-security-line-woes-to-supreme-court.html">Bloomberg</a>. "If people are stuck in your building and they're not allowed to leave, why don't you go ahead and pay them?"
In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/business/supreme-court-weighs-employee-pay-for-amazons-after-work-security-screening.html?_r=0">a statement to The New York Times</a>, an Amazon spokeswoman said "employees walk through postshift security screening with little or no wait." 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>As the world's largest online retailer, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-29/why-amazon-is-on-a-warehouse-building-spree">Amazon has more than 20,000 employees</a> working in its warehouses worldwide which are known as <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/">"fulfillment centers</a>." According to a study by <a href="http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhollin/rhollin.htm" title="Open Web Site">Richard C. Hollinger</a>, director of the Security Research Project at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the <keyword id="6354851" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Retail">retail</keyword> industry <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-06/amazon-workers-take-security-line-woes-to-supreme-court.html">loses over $18 billion a year</a> in warehouse thefts. Increasing security at these distribution centers is therefore key to cutting costs. 
Amazon warehouses follow very strict security procedures, keeping close tabs on its workers to prevent potential thefts. According to a <a href="http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/2013-10-03-Integrity-Cert-Petition-FINAL.pdf">court document</a> from the case, at the end of the day employees are required to remove their wallets, keys, and other items from their pockets and walk through a metal detector near the warehouse exit. 
As a former Amazon warehouse employee said in a Reddit AMA, "The place has really tight security. <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/10x8p8/iama_former_amazon_warehouse_associate_ama/">TSA has nothing on Amazon</a>." 
Besides being screened as they enter and exit the building, workers are also <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/amazon-warehouse-workers-lunch-breaks_n_5283329.html">checked during their lunch break</a> as they leave the warehouse floor and enter the cafeteria, according to a lawsuit filed in South Carolina. For employees who smoke, Amazon has built <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-workers-take-smoke-breaks-in-cages-2014-9">30-foot smokers' cages</a> outside of its Baltimore warehouse. The cages are designed to confine employees who must go outdoors, and prevent them from passing objects to anyone standing in the parking lot.
Amazon allegedly took its security measures to a dangerous extreme at a Pennsylvania warehouse in August 2011. An <a href="http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html#page=1">investigation </a>by Morning Call reporter Spencer Soper revealed that at that time, the Breinigsville warehouse had no air conditioning, and temperatures in the building rose to over 100 degrees. Fearing that items would get stolen, however, management refused to open the warehouse doors to allow fresh air to circulate, one worker told the Morning Call. The warehouse has since spent $52 million to <a href="http://articles.mcall.com/2012-06-03/business/mc-amazon-warehouse-air-conditioning-20120602_1_warehouse-workers-air-conditioning-breinigsville-warehouse">install air conditioning</a> units. 
We reached out to Amazon, Integrity Staffing Solutions, and the plaintiff's lawyer for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

This Supreme Court Case Sheds Light On The Insane Security At Amazon Warehouses

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://theadvocate.com/news/16311988-77/report-one-baton-rouge-police-officer-involved-in-fatal-shooting-of-suspect-on-north-foster-drive">Screenshot via The Advocate</a>Alton Sterling.</div></div></div>The world watched two black men in two different US cities die at the hands of police this week.In the first incident, an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/alton-sterling-shooting-louisiana-2016-7">anonymous bystander filmed</a> two Louisiana police officers find a gun in the pocket of 37-year-old Alton Sterling, then pinned to the ground, and shoot him in the chest. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/alton-sterling-police-shooting-2016-7">Another graphic video</a>, shot by the owner of the store where the incident occurred, later emerged.The next night, Philando Castile's girlfriend <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/falcon-heights-minnesota-police-shooting-2016-7">recorded a live Facebook video</a> of the aftermath of a traffic stop that ended with a Minnesota police officer firing multiple shots into Castile's arm. While police and state officials haven't confirmed many details, Castile reportedly informed the officer of his concealed weapon (for which he had a permit) and simply reached for identification, as instructed. The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/philando-castile-shooting-school-district-statement-2016-7">32-year-old school cafeteria worker</a> died later that night at a local hospital.Both incidents have fanned the flames of a national debate about the use of force and apparent racial bias in policing, and they have prompted renewed calls for better policies. In an interview with CNN Friday afternoon, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton hinted at her plan for greater standardization in policing."As president, I would implement the very comprehensive set of proposals that I've been making for more than a year, including we must do more to have national guidelines about the use of force by police, especially deadly force," she said. "We need to do more to look into implicit bias. And we need to do more to respect and protect our police."A general lack of effective training and uniformity within that training, however, acts as a significant blockade to a more peaceful future, many experts said.In fact, it's the "biggest issue" facing police departments today, Chuck Drago, a former police chief in Florida with over 30 years of experience, told Business Insider. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/751511284265455616">Screenshot via CNN</a></div></div></div><h2>Lower levels of force</h2>No national standards exist for the use of force, or other policing tactics, for that matter. Pulling from various Supreme Court cases, an officer is legally justified using lethal force if the officer reasonably and objectively fears the person will cause death or serious injury to the officer, other officers, or the public. "I think that officers are trained with the mentality that, 'Oh if it's reasonable, I can shoot.' It's a bad mentality," said Drago, who now acts as a consultant for various law-enforcement groups.Even the way <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-police-handle-concealed-weapons-castile-shooting-2016-7">cops handle concealed weapons</a>, which ultimately led to Castile's death, can vary from officer to officer. In many cases, critics, from <keyword id="6355470" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Law">law</keyword> enforcement to activists, feel police have become overly reliant on their firearms and have failed to adequately deescalate civilian interactions with lower levels of force and even simple communication.These lower levels of force can include weapons less lethal than guns, like Tasers and other kinds of stun guns, Drago said. Effective communication can also negate the need for weapons. Many police, however, may not feel as comfortable with these methods and instead turn to their holsters, Drago added."A police officer in crisis will jump to the firearm quicker than other forms of force because he or she feels the most confident with the firearm," Drago told Business Insider in a previous interview. "We are not teaching police officers communication skills or how to be proficient with less lethal defensive skills."<h2>'A bond between the police and the community'</h2>The Dallas Police Department on Thursday night <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-dallas-texas-protest-2016-7">suffered the deadliest attack on police</a> since the September 11, 2001, attacks on US soil. It came at the hands of a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/suspect-dallas-police-shooting-2016-7">25-year-old US Army veteran</a> "upset about Black Lives Matter," the city's police chief said, amid peaceful protests occurring in the city. In an era of rising tensions, the Dallas Police Department served as a model for progress, as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dallas-police-department-reform-shooting-ambush-2016-7">Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand reported</a>. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">(AP Photo/Eric Gay)A Dallas police officer receives a hug at the headquarters, Friday, July 8, 2016, in Dallas. Five police officers are dead and several injured following a shooting in downtown Dallas Thursday night.</div></div></div>Since the department instituted a "shift to deescalation," excessive force complaints dropped 64% from 2009 to 2014, according to BuzzFeed criminal justice reporter Albert Samaha. And after a string of officer-involved shootings in late 2013, Dallas Police Chief David Brown upped the frequency of mandatory lethal-force training from every two years to every two months, The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/07/08/what-dallas-pd-does-right-and-why-doing-those-things-could-now-be-more-difficult/">Washington Post</a> reported. The Dallas Police Department's lethal-force policy also identifies the "protection of human life" as a primary goal, which emphasizes that officers should exercise "great restraint" with lethal force and treat it as a "last resort." During the protests in the city Thursday night, Dallas police forewent riot gear and even stopped to pose for selfies with protesters. "I listened to eyewitness accounts of the protest, and they praised the police and their tolerance and sense of commitment to the people in the protest," Drago said. "There does seem to be a bond between the police and the community."<h2>Lack of national standards</h2>With the lack of national policing standards, some organizations attempt to at least monitor and unify how various state and local departments create their individual policies. <a href="http://www.calea.org/content/what-calea">The Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies</a> (CALEA), for example, bills itself as the "public safety solution." Through joint efforts between elected officials, state Supreme Court justices, police chiefs, academics, and more, CALEA reviews and discusses police affairs in the US and creates standards with which jurisdictions must comply to receive accreditation with the organization."We tell the agencies what needs to be done. How they do that is dictated by the community, the demographics, lots of things," Travis Parrish, director of client services and relations for the CALEA, told Business Insider. "I would not want inner-city Chicago policies applied to my very rural community that I live within."Other organizations, such as the <a href="http://www.iacp.org/">International Association of Police Chiefs</a> (IACP), cite similar goals. Accreditation or adherence to any of these directives, however, remains optional for police forces across the country.Among the federal, state, and local levels, the US boasts an <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr">18,000-agency-strong police presence</a>. On top of the obvious difficulties coordination poses, accreditation takes time and money, which some police departments may not have. Still, experts tout the benefits of a more standardized approach. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesSome departments use Tasers, some don't.</div></div></div>"I would love to have a more consistent approach to training, policy, and procedure with regard to use of force," <a href="http://www.law.sc.edu/faculty/stoughton/">Seth Stoughton</a>, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former Tallahassee police officer, told Business Insider. "Unfortunately, that's incredibly difficult in the US."An excerpt from CALEA's fifth edition for standards for law-enforcement agencies emailed to Business Insider reads: "An officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that the action is in defense of human life, including the officer's own life, or in defense of any person in imminent danger of serious physical injury."It's similar to what Supreme Court cases have dictated, although CALEA does establish more specific standards, such as generally prohibiting warning shots and ensuring appropriate medical aid. "I think it would be great if CALEA would get some better defined standards in some areas," Stoughton said.Even though states typically create their own accreditation agencies and standards, some may allow the use of Tasers, while others don't. Some may prohibit chokeholds - the physical tactic that caused Eric Garner's 2014 death in Staten Island - while others allow them. "That's downside to our factionalized policing, compared to the national policing like they have over there" in the UK, Drago said.The United Kingdom has different demographics and a much lower rate of gun ownership than the US. But overall, a high degree of standardization exists among departments across the pond. For example, the UK's <a href="http://www.college.police.uk/About/Pages/default.aspx">College of Policing</a> oversees firearms training nationally. And national legislation, such as the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/60/contents">Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984</a> (PACE), help set and regulate standards of behavior for officers, including the use of force and videotaping interrogations.In the US, accreditation doesn't necessarily mean that organizations won't face problems or controversy, however. The Dallas Police Department, for example, does not currently receive accreditation through CALEA. And the Baton Rouge Police Department, which was involved in Alton Sterling's death, does. Neither department responded to Business Insider's requests for comment.<h2>Twice the rate of whites</h2>Even better training, however, may not be able to address one of the main complaints against police today: implicit, racially tinged bias. Police can use lethal force when they reasonably and objectively fear for their or other's safety. The Black Lives Matter movement, however, argues that police are more likely to see blacks, especially males, as threats and thus, more likely to use lethal force.After the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-police-shootings-alton-sterling-philando-castile-2016-7">President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned statement</a> Thursday night filled with disturbing statistics about being black in America.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/07/06/police-officer-involved-shooting-in-falcon-heights/">Screenshot via WCCO</a>Philando Castile.</div></div></div>Among those he offered: Last year, African-Americans were shot by police at more than twice the rate of whites.Policies can't control what happens in the heads and hearts of police. But even some case law introduces the issue of race, perhaps unintentionally disguised as poverty, into discussions of crime and policing.For example, a Supreme Court case from 2000, Illinois v. Wardlow, found that cops have a right to stop people for fleeing at the sight of officers <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/13/us/supreme-court-roundup-flight-can-justify-search-by-police-high-court-rules.html">as long as other suspicious factors are at play</a> - like a high-crime area. In many cases, high-crime areas double as areas with high rates of poverty. And it's no secret that poverty disproportionately affects people of color in the US. "If it's a wealthier neighborhood and you see a minority, you won't get suspicious," Drago said. "But if you see a 1989 car with one door painted a different color and six people packed into it around all these Mercedes, that's what draws suspicion." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/attorney-general-loretta-lynch-violence-dallas-police-shooting-2016-7"> US ATTORNEY GENERAL: Don't let this week of violence 'precipitate a new normal'</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="xjdW9tNDE6RDrrUDcrHeaxjh4J8iVuu9" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

The 2 police shootings this week revealed the 'biggest issue' facing police departments today

It was the memo heard around the world: In late February, when Yahoo CEO <keyword id="319703" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Marissa-Mayer">Marissa Mayer</keyword> ordered the company's staffers to stop <keyword id="889044" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="working-from-home">working from home</keyword>, she set off a ferocious debate over workplace <keyword id="23080" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="productivity">productivity</keyword>. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home," wrote the company's human resources chief in a leaked memo implying that <keyword id="327869" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Telecommuting">telecommuting</keyword> employees were less productive than those in the office.
Nonsense, shot back advocates for flexible arrangements: Without interruptions from co-workers or time wasted in traffic, telecommuters are often more productive than their in-office compatriots, not less.
The debate highlights a broader issue that goes well beyond the struggling Silicon Valley giant -- the widespread disagreement and lack of clarity over what constitutes productivity in the modern workforce.
More than 50 years after management guru Peter Drucker first wrote about the difficulty of defining and measuring the productivity of knowledge workers, management experts say many companies still do a poor job of it. "In general, organizations have not truly come to grips with how to think about productivity in a knowledge economy, let alone how best to manage it," says Jordan Cohen, a productivity expert with PA Consulting Group.
At its most basic, employee productivity is simply a measure of how efficiently he or she works: For each hour spent on the job, how much does the person produce?
That may be easy to calculate for assembly line workers in traditional manufacturing jobs once at the core of the economy. But it's far from the case for the service jobs and knowledge work that dominate today's economy. "When it comes to knowledge work, productivity is really hard to measure; it's nowhere near as simple as the number of bushels a worker picked in an hour or the widgets produced," says <a href="https://opimweb.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1712/">Lynn Wu</a>, a Wharton operations and information management professor. "It simply doesn't work to measure productivity by output."
Quality is often as important, if not more so, than quantity: The sheer amount of time spent on a project or the output produced may have little to do with how productive an employee truly is.
Wu points out that it would make no sense to judge the productivity of a software developer by counting the lines of code produced; a shorter string of code might yield a far better solution than a longer one.
Despite the difficulties, companies often end up relying on crude numeric tools, notes<a href="https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1385/">Matthew Bidwell</a>, a Wharton management professor. Some rank engineers based on the number of patents awarded, for example. But who is more productive, the engineer who files many low-value patents, or one with fewer patents which prove to be more useful?
Moreover, Bidwell adds, such measures rarely take into account what he calls "citizenship behaviors" -- behind-the-scenes work such as recruiting, mentoring or communicating across teams. Such behaviors are critical in knowledge organizations, yet they are frequently overlooked in favor of hard data. "The risk is that we focus more on quantity over quality, just because we can measure it," says Bidwell.
A Bonus System That Backfired
The answer, according to management experts, lies in creating broader and more nuanced measures of productivity that account for the quality, effectiveness and impact of an employee's work, as well as the quantity. "You can't just say more code is better," notes Cohen. "Better code is better."
Cohen suggests that managers must be rigorous in defining what behaviors and outcomes are most critical to enhancing productivity. And they must be equally diligent in determining how to measure those qualities over the medium to long term, not just immediately.
"How a company defines productivity will determine what infrastructure they build to measure and manage it. If they don't really question the traditional assumptions around productivity, they end up with an industrial-era notion -- simply that 'more output with less input' is better," he states.
Cohen points to the experience of a recent client, a fast-growing fashion website. The manager sought help in improving the productivity of sales representatives who handle customer orders over the phone. "He thought that if he could shrink the time that reps spent with each customer a little bit, they would be more productive," says Cohen.
Many customers wanted advice on the items they saw on the site, however, particularly the first few times they called. That interaction was key to building a strong relationship between the site and its customers. It also provided valuable insights as to what shoppers wanted.
Rather than cutting back the time each rep spent with a customer, Cohen suggested that the employees stay on the phone longer. "If you think about productivity in terms of effectiveness, that extra time was all about trust-building for the customer, at least the first few times they called," he says. "Maybe after the fifth or sixth call, you would want the reps to shorten time on the phone, but not before that."
For lawyers or engineers, that might mean including more subjective criteria when determining the impact of their work, for example. Measuring how often others cite an engineer's patents or refer to a lawyer's briefs, or ask to work with them on difficult projects, might give a fuller picture of effective productivity than the number of patents filed or hours billed alone.
Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed and How We Can Stick to the Plan, warns of another danger: Managers often judge productivity by whether performance targets are achieved, without looking closely at how they are met.
One company Gino works with sought to boost the productivity of its sales people by introducing a system of bonuses for those who met monthly targets. Sales went up, bonuses were paid and everyone was happy -- until the managers realized that returns were also soaring. The poorly designed system allowed the sales people to get their friends to buy merchandise, then return it the following month as soon as the employees pocketed their bonuses. "If you aren't measuring the right thing and you have incentives in place, you might trigger behavior you don't want," says Gino. "Too much attention is paid to outcomes, and not enough to process."
The Facebook Problem
Beyond measurement, another critical challenge is managing a workforce with varying levels of productivity. On any team, some employees will inevitably be more productive than others.
That was the issue Yahoo's Mayer faced in addressing the firm's stay-at-home workers. Internal data showed that many appeared to be less productive than those working in Yahoo's offices, in part because many didn't log in to its virtual private network (VPN) for much of the day. In the memo sent to employees, Yahoo's human resources director also argued that increasing face-to-face collaboration would improve the company's performance. "Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings," she wrote.
While few management experts doubt the value of face-to-face communications in fostering ideas and collaboration, many believe Yahoo erred in addressing its productivity problem with a one-size-fits-all solution. By penalizing both high and low productivity employees equally, the company risks losing the strong performers among its telecommuters, without getting to the bottom of why others' productivity sagged.
"Blanket policies are a really bad idea to address performance issues" that involve only a few people, says <a href="https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1307/">Peter Cappelli</a>, a Wharton management professor and director of the school's <a href="http://chr.wharton.upenn.edu/%23id=chr&amp;num=4">Center for Human Resources</a>. "The right answer is to deal with those individuals."
Cappelli argues that managers should work directly with their low-productivity employees to determine the source of the difficulty and whether it can be resolved. "The biggest problem is a lack of supervision -- setting out objectives and following up on their progress," he notes.
In Yahoo's case, that might have meant only ending telecommuting for those who didn't log in to the VPN frequently. The laggards could have been more closely supervised from the office, while leaving alone those able to work productively from home.
To address Mayer's other concern -- her desire to improve Yahoo's performance through greater employee collaboration -- other, less draconian solutions might also have been found. Yahoo might have limited telecommuting to one or two days a week, Wu says. Or it might have urged managers to schedule regular on-campus meetings or brainstorming sessions to foster more of the creative interactions Mayer sought.
Wu points out that other companies have come up with more innovative solutions to develop that sort of collaboration and knowledge sharing. IBM has created an in-house database of expertise, for example, that allows consultants to tap into the knowledge of others throughout the company. The technology services giant has been able to leverage the expertise of its most experienced and productive employees far beyond their teams or personal networks. As a result, says Wu, IBM's consultants saw their productivity grow 5%.
Many companies have also turned to blanket solutions to address another common productivity problem: the fear that employees are spending too much time on personal email, Facebook and other social networks.
Once again, experts suggest that overly broad policies -- such as limiting Internet access for everyone -- risk doing as much harm as good. "People don't goof off on the 'net if they're engaged or are doing high-quality work," notes Mark Ellwood, president of Pace Productivity, a consulting firm. "If you see abuses happening, the question is, 'Why?'" Does the person's job need to be restructured? Could they be given more challenging work? Do they simply need time management training? "Do some diagnostics -- don't just set a blanket policy," he adds.
That's particularly true given the importance of social media to many jobs in today's economy. New research by Joe Nandhankumar, a professor of information systems at the Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom, demonstrates that workers encouraged to use Skype, Twitter and other social networks are among the most productive. He found that workers who used such sites could handle more calls from customers, and resolve their problems faster, than those who didn't, thanks to their ability to tap social networks to quickly find new people and resources to address customers' issues.
While some workers undoubtedly do waste too much time checking out Facebook at work, the lesson is clear: Teaching the low-productivity workers to better manage their time, while ensuring they have engaging work suited to their skills, will more effectively enhance productivity, says Ellwood.
The Productivity Punishment
Another difficult issue in managing a team with varying levels of productivity is balancing out the workload for those who boast better than average performance.
Consciously or not, these highly productive employees tend to become the "go-to" players: Managers know they can count on them to get a difficult or time-consuming project done. And as staffing levels shrink even as the workload at firms continues to grow, the impulse to pile more projects onto the most productive only increases. It's a natural human tendency -- but it can also leave the most productive people feeling burnt-out, warns Gino. Employees quickly come to feel as though they are being punished -- by being given more work -- rather than rewarded.
The risk for managers is that these high-productivity people will leave. To counter that risk, managers must improve the productivity of other team members so that they can pick up more slack. They must also monitor the top performers closely to ensure they don't hit the tipping point.
"As a manager, you have to align the incentives for your high-productivity people -- give them a bonus, or more responsibilities, so they have an incentive to stay," notes Ellwood. "For a lot of knowledge workers, money is part of the equation, but the intrinsic desire to do something cool is just as important." Assigning them projects that increase their status often works better than financial incentives, he adds.
It can be a difficult balance to maintain, especially when budgets remain tight and internal job movement is limited. But for companies intent on achieving optimal productivity across the workforce, managing highly productive employees carefully can be just as critical as improving the performance of those who lag behind.This story was originally published by <a href="http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/" target="_blank">Knowledge@Wharton</a>.

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<keyword id="150034" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Vijay-Govindarajan">Vijay Govindarajan</keyword>, voted one of the greatest 'Thinkers' of the world by Thinkers 50 and the Earl C. Daum 1924 <keyword id="1816524" type="POSITION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Professor-of-International-Business">Professor of International Business</keyword> at the <keyword id="298560" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Tuck-School-of-Business">Tuck School of Business</keyword> at <keyword id="224383" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Dartmouth-College">Dartmouth College</keyword>, talks about about the problems plaguing <keyword id="6375224" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="higher-education">higher education</keyword> in India and the US and also the benefits of 'reverse innovation', a term he formulated through his bestselling book with the same title, in this freewheeling chat with Dr <keyword id="209438" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Amit-Kapoor">Amit Kapoor</keyword>, <keyword id="6364480" type="POSITION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Chairman">Chairman</keyword> of the <keyword id="2798602" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Indian-Council-of-Competitiveness">Indian Council of Competitiveness</keyword>. 
 
Could you give a brief insight of your academic journey and your notion of reverse innovation? 
 
Having grown up in India, I know that innovation is the solution for many of the country’s problems. India has too many problems and we have too few resources and the only way to solve these problems is innovation. I committed myself to really studying innovation and I have always been interested in its impact on the real world, but by doing really regular research. When I came to America my study was really targeted at American companies and how they innovate. In the last 10 years or so I got interested in the notion of reverse innovation which is about innovating in a poor country like India and so that brought me full circle with regards to my ambition. 
 
When you said you have come full circle moving from India; working with American companies; and now looking at India, what is the biggest learning that you drew from this country? 
 
I think there are three learnings that I got from India. Firstly, the notion of frugal thinking that comes very naturally to us. Because the resources are limited and we want to be very efficient in how we spend our resources and not waste them. Secondly, we Indians emphasize a lot on memorizing data which is not so in the US. It is dying even faster because of the advent of computers, calculators and iPhones. US focuses on critical thinking, whereas in India we do not focus on critical thinking. As I was brought up in India and was exposed to memorizing data, then when I came to US and got the critical thinking part, it was a deadly combination as I had the data plus critical thinking orientation. critical thinking without data is useless and data without critical thinking is also useless. So, the second important notion from India is data. The third thing is diversity. India is such a diverse country and if anyone has operated inside India, then he is well prepared to face the outside world. 
 
There is a misnomer amongst people who relate frugal innovation to Jugaad. How would you react to this? 
 
To me jugaad is absolutely the wrong way to go. Jugaad is different from frugal thinking. Frugality can co-exist with the latest technology. Jugaad is “The way people use it, improvise it, make it work and get the things done”. I think jugaad implies even inferior quality. That’s not what we need. What we need is latest technology in innovation, which is at the cutting edge. For example, <keyword id="749500" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Narayana-Hrudayalaya-Hospital">Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital</keyword> is an excellent hospital as they have the latest equipment in cardiac surgery as you would find in the US. Yet we are able to do cardiac surgeries for $2000 whereas in US it costs $150,000. Frugality is bringing that cost down to $2000 by using absolutely the greatest, latest and the most appropriate technology. What we really need is to marry technological powers in the US with frugality. 
 
You wrote a very interesting piece in <keyword id="53675" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="harvard">Harvard</keyword> Business Review wherein you talked about a $300 home. How can 
reverse innovation help us do that? 
 
When I wrote the article about $300 home it was not about lowering cost but was about offering more value at a lower cost. I was challenging people to think about how more health, education, jobs can be offered in a $300 house. Take for instance health – health is not just delivered in hospitals, health is also delivered in a way you construct a house. In today’s world there are three infectious diseases, which are killing millions of poor people all over the world - TB, cholera and malaria. TB is air borne disease and if we imagine a hut, which has no sunlight, no ventilation, and ten people sleeping then if one of them has TB the other nine would also be infected with it. So, why can’t we derive a $300 house with proper sunlight, ventilation and thereby decrease the incidents of TB. In a similar way cholera is water borne disease and we should look at designing a $300 house, which has portable drinking water. The last one is malaria, which is caused by mosquitos, so the house should be designed in such a way so that we can put up mosquito nets and decrease the incidents of malaria. The point is to think about the housing problem by using breakthrough thinking. we did a project in Dartmouth wherein the participants were called from all across the globe and were given the task of building a $300 house, which is earthquake/ hurricane resistant. By using local materials, the local people could actually construct the house thereby creating jobs for themselves. This is really about how do we include the poor people in the innovation that we create. 
 
What we are saying is at what level we are able to give in hands to quality of life. Yes, that’s really the point. Ultra low cost housing is not a new topic as people talked about it for decades but they talk about it as though it is a problem of charity. We somehow divided the world of 7 billion people into two compartments. 1 billion who are consumers who have the purchasing power and the rest 6 billion, the non-consumers, the so-called poor, who we have left to be taken care of by charity. The problem of converting the 6 billion non-consumers to consumers is not a question of charity but it is a challenge for innovation because the reason they are non-consumers is they can’t consume the products the 1 billion consumers are consuming. In Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) the same platform is used for doing surgeries for the people who are paying and also for the poor patients who either pay nothing or pay subsidized rates. The concept of a $300 home or a $2000 cardiac surgery is not charity. Corporations should clamour for this model for its reach maximization and not for profit maximization. NH is also about reach maximization. The problems of education/ health/ transportation can be solved by making it available to the consumers and the non - consumers. So, having a $300 home is a problem for the corporations to solve and corporations would come in this space if they find significant opportunity in this field and are able to make money. Looking at 6 billion populations of non - consumers with an average of 6 people per household we would have an opportunity of $300 billion. Similar is the case with Apple where it is not able to sell its iPhone to 6 billion non- consumers, as they cannot afford it. If apple makes a $10 nano iPhone they would be looking at a $60 billion opportunity. So, on a digital platform in the $300 household one can deliver more education to the poor through eLearning, more health through tele medicine, more banking through mobile banking etc. All the above requires thinking and creativity and leads to doing more with less. 
 
How is your thinking emerging in the area of education as this is the foremost problem the world is facing? 
 
Let us think as to why education is so expensive in US. At Dartmouth the annual charges are $60,000 for tuition, boarding and lodging amounts to $200,000 – $250,000 for a 4-year course. Basically only the very rich can afford that kind of education or very poor because they get scholarship. The middle class people get squeezed because they make enough money so they are not entitled to scholarship, but they can’t afford $250,000 so they have to take a loan and hence pay for the rest of their lives. 
There are three reasons why education is expensive in the US. Firstly, good institutions follow the vertical integration strategy which means knowledge creation is done by the faculty who do research and the same faculty disseminates that knowledge to teach and the same faculty does the assessment to grade the students for which the institute issues the certification. So once you pass these courses you get the certificate. The cost rises with vertical integration. Secondly, at Dartmouth everything is done on campus. Therefore, the infrastructure costs rises as lab, dormitory, classes, faculty offices, cafeteria have to be built. Thirdly, colleges have an admission policy called principle of inclusion and principle of exclusion. In Dartmouth we take a lot pride in saying how many people we reject. About 95% of the people who apply are rejected. So, we have built an education industry in this country on these people who are snubbed. India has millions and millions of people who need education and we cannot follow the American model of education as that model is based on exclusion and not on inclusion. Higher education is very expensive in India so we have to disaggregate the value chain. We should not focus on the basic research in India instead let the American universities do the research. In this way we would be able to eliminate the expense on research. Secondly, we need to create a global university in India, which will have online courses in every subject. Delivering courses online is not only low cost but also high quality. In higher education there are two types of courses – transactional and transformational courses. Transactional courses are better delivered through online platform and transformational courses are face-to-face interaction because it’s about application/ problem solving. So, we could have the best teachers in India create the best course in every area in the transactional courses. The universities would only conduct the transformational experiences and then we would create a third global university, which would do the assessment. So the second university would take the assessment and third university would do the certification. In certification we need certified courses, which provide right kind of knowledge and capabilities to do the right kind of job. 
 
Do you think we can surmount the problem of critical thinking that India is lacking? 
 The transformational courses are the ones from where the critical thinking comes from. And that’s why we have to have the broken model university system as well and hence the transactional courses and transformational courses. The corporations also need to step in and <keyword id="47916" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="invest">invest</keyword> in human resources. My thinking is we have to fundamentally rethink the way we are attacking the education problem in India. This is a great innovation opportunity to create a new model of education. 
 
When it comes down to it, what is pushing India back and what really needs to be changed in this country to take it forward? 
 
When I look at India I look beyond the filth and poverty and at a huge human potential. The human potential in India is enormous and awesome. Then I look at our accomplishments which are very disappointing. Of late I have become even more frustrated with the lack of progress in India. So I look at what we have achieved and what we could achieve. The human potential is incredible, but we have fallen short. The problem is really the leadership gap. There is a real leadership deficit in India. If India has to realize its full potential we need to create systems and process and structures which will harness the talent. We really need someone to lead this talent. Youngsters need to step up and take the leadership forward. 
 
Everybody understands the way political leadership has failed the country. Are you saying that even corporate leaders have failed? 
 
My hope is corporate leadership. Since independence we have had problems in political leadership. There have been scandals, corruption charges and lack of economic progress even on the corporate side. We have had some success stories, especially in the 90’s when the IT companies came on board. We thought we were building a new India, but it looks like we are back to the same muck. Corruption and inefficiencies are cropping up, growth is slowing. We should have more experiments in the education industry like we have NH in health industry. Health alone could be a huge industry in India. Presently, they are touching only about 1% of India; 99% of India does not have proper health care. The health industry is one where we can employ a lot of people because it is a services industry. We can solve our employment problem and this is what I mean by, where is the corporate leadership? Similarly in infrastructure and transportation the gap is so big. Corporate leaders need to step up and make their employees a part of the wealth creation process. We certainly don’t seem to have that momentum to move forward. 
 
(This article was contributed to Thinkers, a quarterly thought leadership magazine that features the brightest thinkers in the areas of economics and governance, philosophy and literature, science and technology, and management. To learn more about the magazine, please visit: <a href="http://www.thinkers.in/">www.thinkers.in</a>)

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