Recently I noticed a help wanted ad seeking someone who could multi-task. The ad stated that this was a must-have skill. In reviewing my own skill-set, I felt I would qualify as someone who is a good multi-tasker. I always have multiple projects going and find myself constantly juggling priorities to meet one deadline after another—sure signs of an accomplished task switcher. Later, I sat in a meeting where I had the opportunity to reflect on a body of work from an organization with which I had been working. As a group, we realized that the organization’s work was good, but it wasn’t great. There were unreturned phone calls, missed deadlines, flawed products shipped, yet the company was a successful leader in the industry.

A young bride, cooking a holiday meal for her family, paused when she began cutting the ends off the ham to prepare it for the oven. She turned to her mother and asked why they cut the ends off the ham, to which her mother replied that she did not know. Unsatisfied, she set off to ask her grandmother, because that is where her mother learned the “secret”. She discovered the reason Grandma cut the ends off her hams was to make them fit in the pan!

The debate about traditional evolutionary theory has been long and opinionated. When the topic comes up, sides are drawn quickly and discussions become heated. I would propose that we are in a cultural evolutionary cycle in which the division lines have already formed. Two Italian psychologists, in their new book, Technoliquidity, are claiming that technology has changed the way people think, creating “a new brain.” The premise of the book is that today’s children and adolescents have newly wired brains resulting from technology altering their thought patterns from the way their parents thought and perceived things.

Following a trend in the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers added two superstars to their lineup in hopes of winning a championship. Then, after an anemic 1-4 start, they fired their existing head coach and began looking for a replacement. Two months later, the Lakers are still struggling and appear to be getting worse as the season goes on.

In the early 1990’s Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor at Florida State University, studied violinists at the Berlin Music Academy to determine what separated great performers from the rest. What he discovered has become known as the 10,000-hour rule, and was popularized in “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell.

Recently, long-term NBA Player’s Union Executive Director Billy Hunter, under investigation for his business practices, was placed on indefinite leave. One of the allegations against him was that he practiced nepotism. Many of the plum jobs at the union offices were filled with Hunter relatives and several lucrative contracts were signed with organizations staffed by Hunter relatives. While this case is not unique (family businesses hire family members all the time), it does point to a greater problem in the workplace.