Month April 2015

The Saturday Read – Dominique Browning – ‘Slow Love, How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas & Found Happiness’

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At a time when the economy is improving, ‘disruption’ still causes businesses to fail and people lose their jobs. At our most confident pinnacle of success, we feel the shadow of ‘the next best thing’ that will replace the work we love. And yet, we typically ignore the signs that work is going away.

This week’s ‘Saturday Read’ is ‘Slow Love, How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas and Found Happiness’ by Dominique Browning. It’s a meditation on success and what happens when work goes away.

Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Miranda Seymour provides the background for the narrative:

“In November 2007, House & Garden was abruptly closed down and its offices efficiently eviscerated, emptied of everything except the computers and some expensive bolts of fabric that management proved keen to retain. The change from busy, productive work space to security-guarded vacancy took just four days. The editor in chief of Architectural Digest, the tumbled magazine’s fiercest competitor within the Condé Nast empire, rubbed salt in the wound by publicly announcing that she intended to blacklist from her own pages all previous supporters of the fallen rival. “I felt,” Browning recalls, “as if I had walked into ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales.’ ” 

The story of ‘Slow Love’ is about what happened after Ms. Browning lost her job. Prior to the memoir’s release in 2010, she wrote ‘Losing It’ for The New York Times Magazine.

“Work had become the scaffolding of my life. It was what I counted on. It held up the floor of my moods, kept the facade intact. I always worried that if I didn’t have work, I would sink into abject torpor.”

“I have always had a job. I have always supported myself. Everything I own I purchased with money that I earned. I worked hard. For the 35 years I’ve been an adult, I have had an office to go to and a time to show up there. I’ve always had a place to be, existential gravitas intended. Without work, who was I? I do not mean that my title defined me. What did define me was the simple act of working. The loss of my job triggered a cascade of self-doubt and depression. I felt like a failure. Not that the magazine had failed — that I had.”

How many of us are supported by the scaffolding of work? Are there termites chewing at the foundation?

Ms. Browning’s progress of triumph over adversity in a process she calls slow love, knowing what you’ve got before it’s gone.

“At the start of this journey, all I could think about was loss: lost work; my children who had left home; my house slipping from grasp; my parents slipping into their last years. Lost love, on top of it all, because I was finally forced to confront the failure of a relationship that had preoccupied me for seven years. Attachment, abandonment, misery – I was plagued, until, mysteriously, something in my brain shifted into a new gear, and I was no longer experiencing all the changes I was going through as the loss of everything I loved. Instead, I began feeling the value of change…and experience, events – yes, some of them calamitous – that have unexpectedly come to enhance the quality of my days.”

Visit Dominique Browning’s blog, ‘slow,love life’, to view her work today.

Poetry in Music – ‘Fly’ – Maddie Marlow, Taylor Dye & Tiffany Vartanyan

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There’s another country music awards show this weekend. The duo of Maddie and Tae challenged the traditional role of women in country lyrics with their debut single, ‘Girl in a Country Song’. Their second release, ‘Fly’ describes their road to success, leaving Texas for Nashville at 17. In an interview for the CBS Morning News, they described ‘Fly’ as “an uplifting song that encourages people to hold on through the tough times.”

And their approach to songwriting: “For us, it’s mainly about just getting to tell our stories. And if we can release a song that’s true to us and our fans relate and then maybe it doesn’t get high on the charts, that’s really not important to us. And as long as we get to say what we want to say and we’re very passionate about it, that’s all that matters.”

This ‘Friday Poem In Music’ is for all of you trying to tell your stories.

Fly

Baby blue staring in the window pane
Just counting drops of rain
Wondering if she’s got the guts to take it
Running down her dreams in a dirty dress,
Now her heart’s a mess
Praying she will find a way to make it

So keep on climbing, though the ground might shake
Just keep on reaching though the limb might break
We’ve come this far, don’t you be scared now
‘Cause you can learn to fly on the way down

Searching for a sign in the night even like a lonely string of lights
That’ll burn just long enough for you to see it
The road’s been long and lonely and you feel like giving up
There’s more to this than just the breath you’re breathing

So keep on climbing, though the ground might shake
Just keep on reaching though the limb might break
We’ve come this far, don’t you be scared now
‘Cause you can learn to fly on the way down

On the way down

You won’t forget the heavy steps it took to let it go
Close your eyes, count to ten, hold your breath and fly

Keep on climbing, though the ground might shake
Just keep on reaching though the limb might break
We’ve come this far, don’t you be scared now
‘Cause you can learn to fly on the way down

Fly
Fly

Songwriters
Maddie Marlow, Taylor Dye, Tiffany Vartanyan

The LA Times Festival of Books 2003 & David Halberstam

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There’s a book festival this weekend in LA and one of my favorite writers will be missing. Eight years ago next week, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author David Halberstam died in a car crash in Menlo Park, California on his way to conduct an interview for his next book.

I thought it would be a good day to share my ‘memories at a distance’ of a journalist whose work continues to educate and inspire.

I first heard Mr. Halberstam speak at the University of Southern California commencement. His remarks were measured as he sought to reassure the Class of 2002; the first graduating class after 9/11. Words that are as relevant today as they were on that  May morning in South Central LA.

“We should, after all, all be aware of the blessings of our lives. The truth today, which I suspect you already know, is that you are among the fortunate of your generation. You have been given a priceless education in an age where work is increasingly defined not by muscularity but by intelligence, and therefore you are already advantaged. More, you have not only been given an exceptional education, but perhaps more importantly, you have been part of a rare community where the intellectual process is valued not just for what it can do for you economically but as an end in itself. Learning is not just a tool to bring you a better income; learning is an ongoing, never-ending process designed to bring you a fuller and richer life.

In addition, you are fortunate enough to live in an affluent, blessed society, not merely the strongest, but the freest society in the world. Our courts continue to uphold the inherent rights of ordinary citizens to seek the highest levels of personal freedom imaginable. In this country as in no other that I know of, ordinary people have the right to reinvent themselves to become the person of their dreams and not to live as prisoners of a more stratified, more hierarchical past. In America we have the right to choose who and what we want to be: to choose if we so want, any profession, any venue, any name.”

The next time I heard David Halberstam speak was on the UCLA campus in 2003.

I have this small yellow spiral notebook with blotched ink notes from the LA Times Festival of Books in 2003. I attended as many panels as I could fit, purchased cassette recordings of those I missed (it was the dark ages), and stood in line to garner author signatures in newly release titles. I took copious notes at every panel including one moderated by Marie Arana, (then book editor of The Washington Post), with authors Carolyn See, Terry Brooks and George Pelecanos. At the end of the day, in my notebook, there is only the title and the names of the panelists for ‘The Politics of Sport’. I couldn’t multitask. I could only listen as three literary lions shared their thoughts with a packed auditorium audience.

Author Gay Talese moderated the panel with Mr. Halberstam and George Plimpton. There were 322 other authors at the festival that weekend, but this discussion brought together three authors whose careers included journalism, war, media, sports, politics, civil rights and the founding of a major literary review. If you are looking for a book to read this weekend here are three of my picks, one from each author:

David Halberstam   ‘The Best and the Brightest’

George Plimpton   ‘Paper Lion’

Gay Talese   ‘The Kingdom and the Power’

The 20th annual LA Times Festival of Books takes place this weekend in Los Angeles on the campus of The University of Southern California. It’s the largest event centered on books in the country, showcasing fiction, non-fiction, travel, cooking, politics and biography.

It’s an opportunity to create an intellectual memory, stock your library for the coming months, and continue the never-ending process of learning to bring you a fuller and richer life.

An important question to ask in an interview

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The interview is coming to an end, all has been going well and then they ask: Do you have any questions for me? There are a number of questions you may ask at this point. The key is to ask a question that will help you figure out if this is a place where you will succeed. My question is a bit of a ‘turnabout is fair play’: Can you describe a time you failed and how did the organization respond?

Every survey I have ever read lists who you will work for as the most important determinant in accepting a position. And your immediate supervisor will be key to your decision to stay. It’s not money. It’s not the nature of the work. It’s the relationship.

Why the question about failure? An interviewer will ask you some version of the question to determine how you deal with setbacks. It’s just as important for you to understand how they deal with failure. You don’t want to work for someone who was valedictorian of their high school graduating class, and who has since progressed in their career by managing not to fail. It will limit your freedom to take risks and you may be micromanaged to the point where your hair catches fire.

The opportunity to ask questions at the end of the interview gives you the chance to have the conversation about the potential for professional growth and success.

As the economy improves, there is opportunity for mobility at all levels. There is always the possibility that your boss may move on within a few months of your arrival. And it may be that the opportunity for advancement is the component that attracts you to the position. You may want to work for the person who is moving on in six months.

Can you make an impact during his/her tenure? What happened to the last person who held the position?

Many candidates miss the opportunity to have this conversation about success and failure with a potential employer. Often time is limited at the end of the interview. Be prepared with the questions that will help you differentiate this offer from the others. And take a chance to ask about failure and its’ consequences.

Why experience is better than perfection or how to avoid “permanent curvature of the spirit”

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You know that question they ask in celebrity profiles: If you could invite anyone to dinner who would it be? I would invite Randy Pausch and Anna Quindlen. At the end of the meal I would be so clear on my goals, brimming with self-confidence and ready to break though any obstacles in my way.

Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who delivered the ‘Last Lecture’ to faculty and students in September 2007. The title of his lecture was ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’. Anna Quindlan is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist who delivered the 2009 commencement speech at Mt. Holyoke which was later published as a small book, ‘Being Perfect’.

Randy’s lecture takes us on a journey fulfilling his childhood dreams. No matter how out of reach each goal seemed, he figured out a way to achieve it. And then there were the times he encountered ‘brick walls’, which were usually people, not buildings. And he learned: “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”

Not get what he wanted? Only at first. And that’s when the learning took place.“Brick walls are there for a reason…not to keep us out…to give us a chance to show how badly we want something…the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop other people…”

Anna’s essay frames her story within the pressure to be perfect. Arriving as a freshman at Barnard College in 1970 she had a plan for perfection that was disrupted by her reality. “Being perfect was hard work, and the hell of it was, the rules kept changing…it was harder to become perfect because I realized at Barnard, a place populated largely by terrifyingly well read women who all seemed to be elevating intellectual perfection to a high art, that I was not the smartest girl in the world. And eventually being perfect became like carrying a backpack filled with bricks every single day. And oh, how I wanted to lay my burden down.”

She continues with one of the most striking visuals to illustrate her point: “So if this sounds in any way familiar to you, if you have been trying to be perfect, too, then perhaps today is the day to put down that backpack before you develop permanent curvature of the spirit. Trying to be perfect may be inevitable for people who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and in its good opinion. But on one level it’s too hard, and at another, it’s too cheap and easy. Because all it really requires of you, mainly, is to read the zeitgeist of wherever and whenever you happen to be and to assume the masks necessary to be the best at whatever the zeitgeist dictates or requires. Those requirements shape-shift, sure, but when you are clever you can read them and come up with the imitation necessary.”

At my imaginary dinner, I can hear Randy respond with a quote from his lecture: “When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up…Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care.

Critics are good. They remind you that perfection is irrelevant. Learning is what’s important.

Both Randy and Anna were smart enough, early in their careers to realize what matters is not the external influences but the strength of individual spirit and conviction. And in their respective stories we find an alternative model for success. It’s not about meeting the expectations of others, it’s about living up to your own.

Anna concludes: “… nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great, ever came out of imitations. What is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

The week@work – April 6 – April 12

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This week@work included a new book describing how to get a job at Google and magazine articles detailing what you will need to get hired by a non-profit in 2020 and the new etiquette for quitting your job; which will come in handy if you plan to leave to work at Google or a non-profit in the next five years.

‘Work Rules!’ the new book by Laszlo Bock, the SVP of People Operations at Google was received well amidst an impressive media roll-out. However, the Bloomberg Business review was skeptical. Here is a sample:

“Take interviewing: Most companies let their managers make decisions on hiring, but Google has a universal system, horrifically called qDroid, that produces algorithmic questions meant to tease out various attributes of applicants. Bock concedes that the questions are often rote, but “it’s the answers that are compelling.” So compelling, in fact, that Google “scores” the responses with “a consistent rubric” it calls Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales. He’s certain this automated process, which takes months for most applicants to complete, brings in the “most superb candidates.” Google does get top employees, but you have to be squinting pretty hard to think this is the right way to find them. The reason it has talented workers is that it’s a multibillion-dollar company that pays extremely well.”

If you are thinking about working at Google, I would recommend David Eggers‘ 2013 novel ‘The Circle’.

What will non-profits be looking for in 2020? A Fast Company article based on interviews with innovative non-profits found opportunities have grown with the market in recent years.

“According to The New York Times’ analysis of data from the American Community Survey of the United States Census Bureau, 11% more young college graduates worked for nonprofit groups in 2009 than in 2008. A 2012 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that the U.S. nonprofit sector grew an average of 2.1% between 2000 and 2010, while for-profit sector jobs declined by an average of 0.6% a year during the same period.”

Technology, social media and design skills will be needed by non-profits to develop solutions to complex problems. An ability to work across private and public sectors will be key in courting donors and allocating resources to meet global needs.

Whether you are considering a move to a non-profit or a Fortune 100 organization, how you depart your current employer will have long term effects on your career. Social media provides opportunities to create online networks, but the virtual world can be both an asset and a liability in your career advancement. Entertainment, Financial Services and Silicon Valley organizations share information informally, and with mobility increasing in an improved economic environment, there is always the possibility that the boss you just left shows up in a few months as your new leader.

Another Fast Company article offered some basic suggestions including providing enough notice, keeping positive and maintaining momentum on tasks. One piece of advice that resonated is to visit with colleagues before you leave and acknowledge your appreciation for their support and contribution to your career growth.

As with any advice, the culture of your organization drives behavior. You may be in a place that welcomes a professional exit approach, but you may not. Adapt your plans to the reality of your workplace, ensuring your reputation stays intact as you depart.

Finally, this week, ceremonies in Appomattox and Arlington, Virginia marked the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Timothy Egan, visualized Lincoln in the aftermath of surrender in an opinion piece in The New York Times  “Imagine him in the last week of his life, 150 years ago this month. Shuffling, clothes hanging loosely on the 6-foot-4-inch frame, that tinny voice, a face much older than someone of 56. “I am a tired man,” he said. “Sometimes I think I am the tiredest man on earth.” 

This was a President @work, nearing the end of his term. The challenge ahead was to unite the nation and welcome back the soldiers to their places of work now that the war had come to an end. History repeats, as today we once again welcome soldiers returning from war to their modern day workplace.

The Saturday Read – ‘Shop Class As Soulcraft’ – Matthew Crawford

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What can you do with a degree in philosophy? Matthew Crawford received his PhD in political philosophy from the University of Chicago in 2000. After a series of jobs as a ‘knowledge worker’ he created a career that combined philosophy, writing and custom motorcycle maintenance. Drawing from his personal journey, he wrote about the value of work and producing tangible results. His book, ‘Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into The Value of Work’, was published in 2009.

In a New York Times Magazine essay he argued ‘The Case for Working With Your Hands’.

“A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.”

He provides the historical context to explain how we got to where we are today.

“High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.”

Contrasting his experience at a policy organization with his part-time experience tearing down an old Honda motorcycle under the guidance of an experienced tradesman: “As I sat in my K Street office, Fred’s life as an independent tradesman gave me an image that I kept coming back to: someone who really knows what he is doing, losing himself in work that is genuinely useful and has a certain integrity to it. He also seemed to be having a lot of fun.”

He then considers the broader implications to our society when the best and the brightest are channeled into elite institutions bypassing an apprenticeship in problem solving in the world of grease and dirt.

“The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions (like when I dropped that feeler gauge down into the Ninja). In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?”

He remains optimistic as he concludes the essay: “The good life comes in a variety of forms. This variety has become difficult to see; our field of aspiration has narrowed into certain channels… For anyone who feels ill suited by disposition to spend his days sitting in an office, the question of what a good job looks like is now wide open.”

Enjoy the Saturday read, ‘Shop Class As Soulcraft’.

On Imagination a poem by Phillis Wheatley

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The ‘Friday Poem’ comes from an eighteenth century African-American woman, Phillis Wheatley who was the first published African-American Poet.

Sondra A. O’Neale of Emory University authored a profile of Ms. Wheatley on the Poetry Foundation website. “In the past ten years, Wheatley scholars have uncovered poems, letters, and more facts about her life and her association with eighteenth-century black abolitionists. They have also charted her notable use of classicism and have explicated the sociological intent of her biblical allusions. All this research and interpretation has proven Wheatley’s disdain for the institution of slavery and her use of art to undermine its practice.”

On Imagination

Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,
How bright their forms! how deck’d with pomp by thee!
Thy wond’rous acts in beauteous order stand,
And all attest how potent is thine hand.

From Helicon’s refulgent heights attend,
Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:
To tell her glories with a faithful tongue,
Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song.

Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies,
Till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.

Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.

Though Winter frowns to Fancy’s raptur’d eyes
The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise;
The frozen deeps may break their iron bands,
And bid their waters murmur o’er the sands.
Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign,
And with her flow’ry riches deck the plain;
Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round,
And all the forest may with leaves be crown’d:
Show’rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,
And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.

Such is thy pow’r, nor are thine orders vain,
O thou the leader of the mental train:
In full perfection all thy works are wrought,
And thine the sceptre o’er the realms of thought.
Before thy throne the subject-passions bow,
Of subject-passions sov’reign ruler thou;
At thy command joy rushes on the heart,
And through the glowing veins the spirits dart.

Fancy might now her silken pinions try
To rise from earth, and sweep th’ expanse on high:
From Tithon’s bed now might Aurora rise,
Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies,
While a pure stream of light o’erflows the skies.
The monarch of the day I might behold,
And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold,
But I reluctant leave the pleasing views,
Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse;
Winter austere forbids me to aspire,
And northern tempests damp the rising fire;
They chill the tides of Fancy’s flowing sea,
Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, 1773

Buona notte da terra @AstroSamantha

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When she left earth on November 23, 2014 for the International Space Station, astronaut Samantha Christoforetti had 143,000 Twitter followers who had tracked her training to launch day. Today, a month before she returns to earth, her followers have grown to 430,000. How can you not explore space with the first female Italian astronaut, who brought a specially designed espresso machine to the ISS?

The 37 year old, Milan born captain in the Italian Air Force is single-handedly dragging us back into the wonder of space exploration.

Forget the AT&T U-verse commercial that imagines a day when we finally walk on Mars, Captain Christoforetti captures the imagination with her tweets and photos. Most evenings her followers are wished “Buona notte dallo spazio.” (Good night from space.) It’s like getting an answer to ‘Goodnight, Moon’.

Her breathtaking photos remind us of our global interconnection. On Sunday she sent ‘colors of the earth’ in lieu of easter eggs. Monday, the UK at night, challenging followers to identify the city centers. Tuesday, Sri Lanka and India. And yesterday, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

How many girls of a certain age imagined themselves as a young Amelia Earhart? Who in the current astronaut corps found their first role model in Sally Ride? Where is the 5th grader who is following Samantha and planning her dream career?

There was a time when we could name all the astronauts. We remembered where we were at those moments of great discovery and great tragedy in the space program. We were inspired, knowing there was a frontier beyond the bounds of our atmosphere.

We need more Samanthas and Sallys and Amelias. We need to reimagine a workplace of exploration and innovation circling earth and traveling to galaxies ‘where no man or woman has gone before’.

Tonight, join me in wishing ‘Buona notte da terra @AstroSamantha’.

Why aren’t we asking about the value of work?

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We seem to have ‘consumerized’ every decision from buying a car to choosing a college. But when it comes to the workplace, where we spent the majority of our days, we don’t take the time to consider the value of the experience or fully assess the impact on our professional portfolio.

David Brooks wrote a ‘letter’ to employers in 2014. “Dear Employers, You may not realize it, but you have a powerful impact on the culture and the moral ecology of our era. If your human resources bosses decide they want to hire a certain sort of person, then young people begin turning themselves into that sort of person.”

Google consistently ranks at the top of surveys of best employers. Recent reports indicate that their hiring process is more selective than the admissions process in top ivy league schools.

Yesterday, Laszlo Bock,  the Senior Vice President of People Resources at Google published a new book that fundamentally describes how to get hired at Google. Even as I write, I imagine potential candidates reworking their job search strategy to meet the standards described in the book.

This is the most recent illustration of how candidates are encouraged to alter expectations in order to perform the magic required to obtain an offer.

What happens after you accept the offer?

Reading the Wall Street Journal review of the book we learn that “…Google spends more than most on recruiting, it spends far less on training. Top people need less training. And the lesson for talent is watch how you’re recruited: it’s an indication of the company’s mind-set and the talent you’ll be working with.”

Similar to our most elite academic institutions, Google has created a process to attract the best and the brightest; generalists who know when to lead and when to step back, can learn and solve problems and do so with ‘intellectual humility’. The ‘hook’ is the promise of a workplace where your colleagues will mirror your talents and learning will spontaneously combust.

In some ways it sounds like graduate school. You take from the work experience what you put into it. In other words, we set the table, provide the kitchen but you cook the meal. There will be no gourmet flourishes, because attracting you to the feast is more important than the meal itself.

When you leave Google are you transformed by the experience or are you pretty much who you were on your first day of work?

You will have Google on your resume and future employers will be mesmerized by your fortune, but who will you be after a few years at Google?

These are universal questions. When you go to work for any employer, over any period of time, will the work transform you? Will others remark on your growth? Will a spectacular failure result in termination or be viewed as a critical learning tool?

The process of being courted for a position whether it takes a few weeks or a few years is intoxicating in its’ flattery. Remember that it’s a conversation about your future as well as your contribution to an organization.

What is the value of the promised work experience? When you invest your energy and ideas solving problems for others, do you also fill a void in your portfolio?