American Suicide Madness

Dedicated to Tyler Hilinski, the Junior Washington State quarterback who committed suicide. Prayers and sympathy to his family, friends and fans. Same prayers and sympathy for all those who lost a loved one from this same disease.

No I don’t know Tyler, and have no idea why a successful, popular young man thinks something is so horrible he can’t recover from it. Don’t know if it was a relationship, illness, social media, bullies, public embarrassment, being a burden, or afraid of the future. Fear is a powerful motivation.

He is not alone, nor is it a young man’s disease. Per AFPS.org Middle age men 45-54 have the highest suicide rate, followed by senior men over 85. Nor are they alone, 44,965 people die every year. For every death, there are 25 attempts. More men die, and more women try to die. The rate has been increasing over the last 10 years.

Nor is suicide the only symptom in our society. Drug addiction and overdoses are rising. Over 600,000 people died of overdoses, and the rate has been increasing for 16 years per the CDC. No one know how many overdoses are suicides versus accidental if they don’t leave a note.

Most people who try suicide really don’t want to die. Reports from Golden Gate jumpers have reactions like “I made a mistake” and “I want to live.” These people wanted someone to talk about their problems, to know problems could be fixed, or to just feel love or understanding.

Treatments of metal health issues are not working. Not enough people are identified soon enough. If someone wants treatment, there are not enough beds. The stigma of admitting you have a problem stops people from asking for help. Michael Phelps the gold medal swimmer contemplated suicide after the 2012 Olympics and his 2014 DUI arrest due to depression and anxiety. Fortunately he got help and is now speaking out to others to get help.

What can we do? Pay attention when someone changes his or her behavior drastically. Don’t be afraid to bring it up. Remind them we all have bad days and trials in our lives. Have had to overcome bad years, bad business decisions, and bad relationships in my life. Am not alone.

The main thing people in stress do is focus on their problems. Thinking about the people who care about us, respect us and love us are the antidote to issues. Spend time helping someone. Play with children in your life. Smile and greet people even when you don’t feel like it. Acting as if you are well is often a great step forward.

We have to look out for our outlook on life, and we have to look out for family, friends, co-workers and loved ones with challenges. Let them know you care. Remind them daily. And if they are still struggling, get them to professional help. Therapy with medication is successful 9 out of 10 times getting people healthy.  If the first therapist doesn’t fit with you, try another until you succeed. Do what you can where you are. And know we love you.

The Future of Our Work

We are entering a new time period. Many of us have lived through the Information Age, we are now entering the Automation Age. The combination of Artificial Intelligence with Robotics is changing our world.

This did not start recently. Been working with robots since graduating college in 1978. Computers since 1970 (more or less). Artificial intelligence goes back to mythology, and really started with Dartmouth College in the Summer of 1956 (My birth year). Autopilots were invented and demonstrated in 1914 by Lawrence Sperry. This saved wear and tear on pilots enabling longer flights. Also freed up pilots for more important tasks like navigation or bombing. Modern autopilots handle all phases of flight including taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, approach, and landing. Next step will be cargo planes without human intervention.

What is happening now is different technologies are reaching a level of maturity that will change the world. Software programing has better analyzing and self learning. Sensors are more effective, have more range and cost less. Battery life improved as weight went down. Our cell phones are mini computers. The future will be mobile.

Automation with artificial intelligence will replace most repetitive, difficult or dangerous work. Ships will not need pilots or crews for weeks on the oceans. Deliveries will not need truck drivers. Taxis, Uber & Lyft will not need drivers. Electric vehicles do not need all the maintenance of gas & diesel motors. Mechanics, Miners and Farmers will not be put at risk of injury or death to work.

But this will go further. Bookkeepers will not be needed to support accountants with artificial intelligence. Taxes will be calculated automatically. Pharmacist technicians will not count pills or type labels. Like the secretaries of old, these positions will fade away. Estimates are 20% to 40% of current blue & white collar jobs will go away.

Like the last new ages brought challenges. Moving to cities was uncomfortable for many from family farms. New skills had to be learned. Familiar places were missed. We adjusted to change. When computers came into the office, more skills were learned as responsibilities changed.

 What will be different this time is the speed of the change is faster. Technologies are accelerating and new skills are replacing old ones.

How to have job security? Keep learning and being productive. Take more responsibility. Automation and computers are not as good as with people skills. They can better maintain an algorithm for repetition. Creativity, sales and innovation are not strengths of Artificial Intelligence. Those require people. No reason it can’t be you.

Focusing on What is Important

Productive workers are not the busiest worker. They are the people who focus where a difference can be made. It is surprising the management miss this simple concept.

Have seen managers reward workers who show up on time and crank out volumes of simple, repetitive work. Easy to do because these people are not encountering hard problems that require manager’s time & attention. They generate good metrics and free your time.

However your most valuable employees tackle the more difficult work. They are not going to crank out numbers fixing typos. They do research. They negotiate with other departments, suppliers and customers to find good solutions.

Managers have ignored female coworkers contributions I have worked with. It’s because they don’t pay attention to their informally teaching coworkers skills, and ignore how difficult are the issues they tackle. It creates resentment and often leads to your best people leaving.

An Insurance Company rewarding their best salesman. This company focused on the metric of sales calls per agent. The vice president giving the award note the best salesman only made half the sales calls per the goal. “Can you imagine how many sales he would of made if he met the sale call goal?”

The agent responded “Can you imagine how much your sales team would sell if they made as few sales calls as I do?”

The question is Where Can You Make a Bigger Difference at Work?

This riff was inspired by Bloomberg’s Jerry Useem’s well thought out “The Hardest Workers Don't Do the Best Work”. Worth your time to find out why your best workers “do fewer things, and seem to have better developed mechanisms for deciding what not to do.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-02/the-hardest-workers-don-t-do-the-best-work