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58 Business
2 without losing control. Optimists believe
that the giant’s move could be to data what
ibm’s embrace in the late 1990s of the Linux
operating system was to open-source soft-
ware. Linux went on to become a rival to
Microsoft’s own Windows and today un-
derpins Google’s Android mobile software
and much of cloud-computing.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president,
notes that fewer than 100 firms collect
more than half of all data generated online.
More sharing would, in his view, counte-
ract the concentration of economic—and
political—power. Bridging the “data di-
Bartleby Play’s the thing
Creative ways of training staff
nyone who has spent a long time in
Aan office job will have suffered the
indignities of a training day. The group-
bonding exercise where workers fall into
each other’s arms, as if they were part of a
1960s encounter group. The overenthusi-
astic guest lecturer who constructs a
lengthy and banal presentation out of a
series of random nouns. The debate
about the company’s future which turns
into an exercise in Stalinist self-criti-
cism. It all resembles one of those night-
mares when you find yourself marooned
back in the school classroom.
If there is one good thing about the
current pandemic, it is that no one is
being sent to an awayday event at a sea-
side resort or a country retreat. Perhaps
the whole idea will become less fashion-
able. Thankfully, there are inventive
ways to undergo training online.
One management course uses the
skills of an improvisational-comedy
troupe, the Second City. “People are
rarely taught to be a boss,” says Kelly
Leonard of the Chicago-based outfit, and
the course attempts to guide them in the
right direction. The philosophy is based
on a book called “Radical Candour” by
Kim Scott, which argues that managers
need to deliver and accept constructive
feedback. She says that a “difficult but
necessary part of being a boss [is] telling comfort of their own homes. Some people
people clearly and directly when their
work wasn’t good enough”. Of course,
some bosses are too quick to criticise and
never offer praise. So praise is also need-
ed but it has to be “specific and sincere”.
The approach works, Ms Scott argues,
only if employees believe that their
managers care about them personally.
And managers need to solicit and accept
criticism from their subordinates.
The training was originally designed
for use in workshops, something that
vide”, as he calls it, won’t be easy. Data are formation. The more data that are shared,
more complex than code. Most program-
mers speak the same language and open-
source collectives mainly solve technical
problems. People in charge of data often
come from different industries without a
common vocabulary and talk business.
Indeed, like ibm before it, Microsoft has bigger hurdle. Even if technical and legal
reasons other than altruism to champion
open data. It makes most of its money not
by extracting value from hoarded data
through targeted advertising, like Alphabet
or Facebook, but by selling services and
software to help others process digital in-
would be impossible at a time of social
distancing. Fortunately, the actors at the
Second City created a sitcom, “The Feed-
back Loop”, to illustrate the ideas. In the
video, people are made to endure a version
of “Groundhog Day”, in which they keep
reliving the same situations until they
learn from their mistakes. The fictional
workers learn not to be “obnoxiously
aggressive” and “manipulatively insin-
cere”; managers realise it is hopeless to be fully to every word,” Mr Turk argues. “It is
“ruinously empathetic”.
The show can be downloaded and
discussed by staff and managers from the
may feel that humour is inappropriate at a
time of a global pandemic. But comedy can
be a source of solace in a crisis. (Bartleby
would insert a coronavirus joke here, but it
will be days before you get it.)
Another creative way of imparting
information is poetry. Gary Turk is a poet
who has worked in British tv alongside
Ricky Gervais and Richard Curtis, the man
behind “Love Actually”. When Mr Turk’s
then girlfriend complained that he spent
too much time on the phone, he tried to
The Economist April 25th 2020
the better for Microsoft. Mr Smith argues
that this makes his firm the perfect cam-
paigner for open data. “If you want to know
who to trust”, he says, “you should look at
the company’s business model.”
That may be so. But this also points to a
barriers to sharing could be removed,
many data-rich firms will be reluctant to
loosen their lucrative grip on user informa-
tion. Mr Zuckerberg’s declarations not-
withstanding, don’t expect Facebook to fol-
low Microsoft’s lead any time soon. 7
take a break. He noticed how much time
others spent with their devices and that
inspired him to make a short film, which
he narrated in rhyming verse. When he
uploaded the film, called “Look Up”, to
YouTube, it struck a chord, receiving 1m
views within five days, and then, on the
sixth day, getting another 10m.
After the video’s success, Mr Turk was
contacted by other organisations which
wanted to tap into his skills. Some of this
work was promotional, such as for Brit-
ish Airways. But much was in the realm
of public information (a campaign in
Western Australia to stop people texting
and driving) and some was for compli-
ance training (notably a video on corrup-
tion and another on sexual harassment).
These can be difficult issues to cover.
It is all too easy for the tone to become
either too flippant or too preachy. Mr
Turk’s videos get the message over in two
to three minutes and may lead to a more
open discussion than if the subjects were
presented more formally. “Spoken-word
videos are great at grabbing people’s
attention—the rhyming patterns and
lyrical structures make you listen care-
also something fresh that most employ-
ees have never seen in their annual
training or work presentations before.”
Columns should be set in prose
And this is often one of those.
But a fleeting burst of verse
Might not make the readers curse.
Though the hardest part will be
Finding rhymes for Bartleby.
A little bit of poetry and comedy goes
a long way. One wouldn’t want an entire
training day to consist of jokes or
rhymes. But online or offline, these
kinds of innovative techniques can
enliven those endless seminars when the
clock never seems to reach 5pm.