Peter Cappelli

You know, research in these kind of topics, business management, it's not like we're studying cancer, you know, where there's a clear program.

We know what the goal is, cure cancer.

We're just at least maybe me pick particularly because of attention issues.

You know, something appears to be interesting.

Poof.

There you go.

So we were studying, generally looking at employee performance in the context of organizations, and we stumbled upon this place that had collected, for reasons that had nothing to do with us, data on this.

That is, they could actually see when birthday cards were handed out to people.

It was collected by the center of the corporation and

They had a rule.

Basically, the supervisors are supposed to give it to you.

And they were serious about that.

The idea of handing it to the person and saying happy birthday was part of the whole deal.

It wasn't sticking it in their pigeonhole, you know.

And it just so happened that they also collected when the cards were actually delivered.

And then you could see what happened afterwards.

And poof, that's what we found.

Well, on the comically small side, you know, there has been a lot of research.

There is a stream of research, not on birthday cards, but on things that irritate people about their bosses in organizations, right?

And not surprisingly, if the issues are big, it's not a big shock to discover it really affects people's performance.