Category week@work

The week@work – the economy improves, the downside of ‘cultural fit’ & the new Fortune 500

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

The ‘big’ stories in this week@work included the release of the May 2015 US employment report and the 61st version of the Fortune 500. The small stories with potential ‘big’ impact told of the growing concern of the majority of Americans about income inequality and research showing discrimination at work is increasing as hiring managers rely more on ‘cultural fit’ to select employees.

On Friday the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics released the May 2015 employment report.

“Worries about the American economy’s momentum were blunted on Friday by the government’s announcement that employers added a hefty 280,000 jobs in May, well above the monthly average logged over the last year.

The official unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 5.5 percent as more Americans jumped back into the labor pool and began the job hunt. Hourly wages, which have grown fitfully, rose 0.3 percent last month, possibly helping to lure back some discouraged workers who had been staying on the sidelines.” (The New York Times)

Fortune magazine announced it’s annual listing of the largest U.S. companies by revenue.

“This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. In total, the Fortune 500 companies account for $12.5 trillion in revenues, $945 billion in profits, $17 trillion in market value and employ 26.8 million people worldwide.”

The top ten companies are Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, GM, Phillips 66, GE, Ford Motor Company and CVS Health. Compare that to the  top ten in Forbes Magazines’ list of ‘World’s Most Innovative Companies’ or Fast Company’s ‘Most Innovative Companies 2015’, and there is only one company that appears on two lists, Apple (Fortune and Fast Company). Forbes’ #1 company, Salesforce, the biggest tech company in San Francisco, appeared on the Fortune list for the first time in its’ 16 year history at #483.

Fortune’s number one, Walmart, is the company George Packer described in his book, ‘The Unwinding’, as the model that continues to influence our economy on a much broader scale:

“Over the years, America had become more like Walmart. It had gotten cheap. Prices were lower, and wages were lower. There were fewer union factory jobs, and more part-time jobs as store greeters…The hollowing out of the heartland was good for the company’s bottom line.”

A CBS/New York Times poll released on Wednesday found that the majority of Americans are concerned about the widening income gap that separates the Walmart shoppers from those on Rodeo Drive.

“The poll found that a strong majority say that wealth should be more evenly divided and that it is a problem that should be addressed urgently. Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, but they split sharply along partisan lines. Only one-third of Republicans supported a more active government role, versus eight in 10 of Democrats.

Far from a strictly partisan issue, inequality looms large in the minds of almost half of Republicans and two-thirds of independents, suggesting that it will outlive the presidential primary contests and become a central theme in next year’s general election campaign.”

The last story of the week concerned the downside of ‘cultural fit’. Lauren A. Rivera, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, shared her research on candidate selection in ‘Guess Who Doesn’t Fit In At Work’.

“When done carefully, selecting new workers this way can make organizations more productive and profitable. But cultural fit has morphed into a far more nebulous and potentially dangerous concept. It has shifted from systematic analysis of who will thrive in a given workplace to snap judgments by managers about who they’d rather hang out with. In the process, fit has become a catchall used to justify hiring people who are similar to decision makers and rejecting people who are not.”

At the end of the week@work we know the economy is improving and folks are becoming increasingly aware of income disparity.

But is anyone concerned that the largest revenue generating companies have no relationship to the most innovative companies in the world? If you are starting out your career or considering a move, do you choose a revenue generating behemoth or a venture capitalized innovative organization?

And for all of us @work – we want to ‘fit in’ to the organization culture, but with our talents, not personal similarities.

The week@work – Leadership lessons from FIFA, ways to boost job security & the ‘small, happy life’

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Early Wednesday morning Swiss authorities entered a high end hotel in Zurich and arrested 14 FIFA officials on a variety of charges including wire fraud, money laundering and racketeering. On Friday, Seth Blatter was reelected to his fifth term as President of FIFA. Subsequent reports throughout the week illuminated Mr. Blatter’s leadership style.

His response to the arrests and accepting responsibility as the most powerful leader in soccer:

“Many people hold me responsible. I can’t monitor everyone all of the time. If people want to do wrong, they will also try to hide it.”

Apparently the buck doesn’t stop at Mr. Blatter’s desk.

Writing in the Opinion Pages of The New York Times, columnist, Roger Cohen provided a rationale for Blatter to step down:

“Mr. Blatter, your time is up.

Why? Because the corruption charges against current and former FIFA vice presidents and others reflect an organization rotten to its core, operating in the absence of any meaningful oversight, without term limits for a president whose salary is of course unknown (but estimated by Bloomberg to be “in the low double-digit” millions), overseeing $5.72 billion in partially unaccounted revenue for the four years to December 2014, governing a sport in which matches and World Cup venues and in fact just about everything appears to have been up for sale, burying a report it commissioned by a former United States attorney into the bidding process for the next two World Cups, and generally operating in a culture of cavalier disdain personified by Blatter, whose big cash awards to soccer federations in poorer countries have turned the delegates from many of FIFA’s 209 member associations into his fawning acolytes.”

Why should we care? On Wednesday, Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post published a story, ‘The human toll of FIFA’s corruption’.

“On the surface, it’s just another white collar crime story: rich, powerful men making themselves richer and more powerful. But a closer look suggests that there is a lot of real-world suffering happening as a direct result of FIFA’s decisions.”

“Human rights advocates’ worst fears about Qatar seemed to be confirmed as Qatar began building the infrastructure to host the Cup, and reports of migrant worker deaths started to pile up. The numbers, to the extent that we know them, appear startling: A Guardian investigation last year revealed that Nepalese migrant workers were dying at a rate of one every two days. In sum, the Guardian put the total Qatar death toll of workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh at 964 in 2012 and 2013.”

Perhaps we would all like to be a bit more secure at work, while not employing the extreme tactics of the FIFA president.

The ABC network affiliate in Sacramento, California aired a story on ‘Nine Ways to Boost Your Job Security‘. Number one is to do good work. Some of the other suggestions included continuing to learn to maintain your competitive advantage and never get too comfortable in your job. In other words, security and comfort are not synonymous.

The two tactics that stood out for me were to know yourself, and establish alternate revenue streams. “A 401k plan, prudent investments, side businesses, and lucrative hobbies can offer temporary financial support if you were to find yourself without a steady income.”

From the billions of FIFA to normal folk seeking security at work, the last story of the week comes from The New York Times columnist, David Brooks. On Friday his topic was ‘The Small, Happy Life’. He was surprised by the result of his request for essays from readers on “their purpose in life and how they found it”.

“I expected most contributors would follow the commencement-speech clichés of our high-achieving culture: dream big; set ambitious goals; try to change the world. In fact, a surprising number of people found their purpose by going the other way, by pursuing the small, happy life.”

So here’s one for you, Mr. Blatter. Not that you will ever read it. But if you did, you could learn something from the response from one of Mr. Brooks’ readers.

“Elizabeth Young once heard the story of a man who was asked by a journalist to show his most precious possession. The man, Young wrote, “was proud and excited to show the journalist the gift he had been bequeathed. A banged up tin pot he kept carefully wrapped in cloth as though it was fragile. The journalist was confused, what made this dingy old pot so valuable? ‘The message,’ the friend replied. The message was ‘we do not all have to shine.’ This story resonated deeply. In that moment I was able to relieve myself of the need to do something important, from which I would reap praise and be rewarded with fulfillment. My vision cleared.”

The week@work – Essays about work & class, what to learn in college, & paying tribute on Memorial Day

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This week@work invites us to pause and remember those whose unselfish commitment to our way of life motivates them to sacrifice immediate career aspirations, family and in some cases, their lives. On my ‘honors list ‘this year, in addition to the active members in the military and veterans, are the doctors and nurses who travelled to Africa to fight Ebola and the medical personnel who treated the Ebola patients who returned to the US.

These folks allow the rest of us to go about pursuing our own ‘American dream’ while they ensure our right to do so. We apply to college, launch careers, struggle with work/life balance and do our best to contribute to our communities. And on one day, Memorial Day, in towns across the country there will remember with parades, 5k races and wreaths set on memorials to the war dead.

Work & Class (‘Essays About Work and Class That Caught a College’s Eye’, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, May 21)

Very few college admissions essays address issues of work and class, but each year, a selection of those that do are published in The New York Times.

“The single most memorable line we read this year came from an essay by Carolina Sosa, who lives in Centreville, Va., and will attend Georgetown University. In writing about her father’s search for a job, she described the man named Dave who turned him away.

“Job searching is difficult for everyone, but in a world full of Daves, it’s almost impossible,” she wrote. “Daves are people who look at my family and immediately think less of us. They think illegal, poor and uneducated. Daves never allow my dad to pass the first round of job applications. Daves watch like hawks as my brother and I enter stores. Daves inconsiderately correct my mother’s grammar. Because there are Daves in the world, I have become a protector for my family.”

What to Learn in College (‘What to Learn in College to Stay One Step Ahead of Computers’, Robert J. Shiller, The New York Times, May 22)

Professor Shiller addresses the central question in higher education today. How do we ensure that those who attend college are transformed by the experience, not just with a utilitarian skill set, but with a broader understanding of the human condition and a commitment to improving their local and global community?

“What can young people learn now that won’t be superseded within their lifetimes by these devices and that will secure them good jobs and solid income over the next 20, 30 or 50 years? In the universities, we are struggling to answer that question.

Two strains of thought seem to dominate the effort to deal with this problem. The first is that we teachers should define and provide to our students a certain kind of general, flexible, insight-bearing human learning that, we hope, cannot be replaced by computers. The second is that we need to make education more business-oriented, teaching about the real world and enabling a creative entrepreneurial process that, presumably, computers cannot duplicate. These two ideas are not necessarily in conflict.”

His conclusion reflects a recognition of the value of integrated, adaptive learning.

“The developing redefinition of higher education should provide benefits that will continue for decades into the future. We will have to adapt as information technology advances. At the same time, we must continually re-evaluate what is inherently different between human and computer learning, and what is practical and useful to students for the long haul. And we will have to face the reality that the “art of living in the world” requires at least some elements of a business education.”

Paying Tribute

This week The 9/11 Memorial marked it’s first anniversary since opening. News organizations were given a preview of the observation deck atop the new One World Trade Center. A good time to revisit the intention of the original architect of the twin towers, and his quote preserved on the wall of the memorial museum.

“Beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its’ importance, become a living representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.” 

Minoru Yamasaki, World Trade Center Architect, 1964

This week@work we make connections. The architect’s desire for his building to represent man’s belief in humanity, Carolina Sosa’s hope to recover her father’s human dignity from ‘the Daves’ and Professor Shiller’s intention to preserve the values of higher education to ensure each graduate’s opportunity to find greatness.

The week@work – Nail salon workers, Sally Mann, sacrifices of the successful and Dan Abromowitz shares his potential job list

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

The dominant story of work this week was told in a two part series for The New York Times, ‘Unvarnished‘, by reporter, Sarah Maslin Nir, “examining the working conditions and potential health risks endured by nail salon workers”.

“Once an indulgence reserved for special occasions, manicures have become a grooming staple for women across the economic spectrum. There are now more than 17,000 nail salons in the United States, according to census data. The number of salons in New York City alone has more than tripled over a decade and a half to nearly 2,000 in 2012.

But largely overlooked is the rampant exploitation of those who toil in the industry. The New York Times interviewed more than 150 nail salon workers and owners, in four languages, and found that a vast majority of workers are paid below minimum wage; sometimes they are not even paid. Workers endure all manner of humiliation, including having their tips docked as punishment for minor transgressions, constant video monitoring by owners, even physical abuse. Employers are rarely punished for labor and other violations.”

The series received an immediate response from the New York governor.

“Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered emergency measures on Sunday to combat the wage theft and health hazards faced by the thousands of people who work in New York State’s nail salon industry.

Effective immediately, he said in a statement, a new, multiagency task force will conduct salon-by-salon investigations, institute new rules that salons must follow to protect manicurists from the potentially dangerous chemicals found in nail products, and begin a six-language education campaign to inform them of their rights.”

In a follow-up report for The New Yorker, James Surowiecki examined ‘The Economics of New York’s Low Nail-Salon Prices’.

“…one of the most surprising, and economically telling, facts in the piece is also among the most mundane: namely, that the price of a manicure hasn’t budged much, if at all, in the past two decades.”

“What the nail-salon owners have done…is to pay their workers much less than a market wage. Maslin Nir’s nuanced account of who nail-salon workers are and how they live helps explain just how the nail salons are doing this: they hire workers who have fewer choices for employment because of language barriers, immigration status, and so on. These workers also have less bargaining power, and many are presumably leery of using the legal system to gain redress, which gives nail-salon owners the freedom to violate minimum-pay and overtime laws with little fear of being punished. The result is that these salons can stay profitable and still keep offering their customers the same low prices for decades. From this perspective, the cheap manicures New Yorkers have been getting have come, quite literally, at the expense of nail-salon workers.”

These articles, letters to the editor, media follow-up combined with good old fashioned customer guilt, will hopefully continue a conversation to improve the working conditions of these folks whose day is spent making others feel beautiful.

In other news this week@work:

Charlie Rose interviewed photographer Sally Mann. In an exchange taped for the CBS Morning News they shared their mutual concept of work: “In the end it’s love and work. Work to find your place so you can stand and leave your mark.”

Lifehack, a productivity and lifestyle blog reported on the ‘8 Things Successful People Sacrifice for Their Success’: “time, stability, personal life, sleep, health, quiet times, sanity and immediate desires.” 

Writer and comedian Dan Abromowitz shared a list of ‘Jobs I’d Be Well Suited For’ in The New Yorker, “As part of my current job hunt, I conducted a thorough inventory of my unique skills. From that, I’ve generated a list of professions at which I believe I’d excel. Please contact me if you are recruiting for any of these positions.” 

A sampling: “History Channel alien expert, Lobbyist, if that meant what it sounds like it means, Night watchman at Sleepy’s & Night watchman at the Museum of Natural History, provided that “Night at the Museum” is true, but lower-key than that.”

We are now in the ‘high season’ of university commencements. NPR has collected ‘The Best Commencement Speeches Ever’ from their archive. “We’ve hand-picked over 300 addresses going back to 1774. Search by name, school, date or theme, and see our blog n.pr/ed for more.”

The week@work May 4 – May 10 The US economy improves, the best resume fonts, networking tips & stay@home dads

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This week@work brought good news with the US Labor Department reporting the addition of 223,000 Jobs in April, lowering the  unemployment Rate to 5.4%. Wage gains have not kept pace, registering only a 0.1 percent gain last month. The New York Times reported on the “mystery of missing wage growth”:

“As the unemployment rate has dropped, many economists have kept predicting that substantive pay increases would come soon. But as long as wage gains remain just around the corner, their absence is expected to fuel increased public frustration and become a central issue in the presidential campaign.”

“The difference between where we are now and where we were in the 1990s is that the prosperity then lifted more boats,” said Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez. “The unfinished business of the recovery is wage growth. Too many people are working a 50-hour workweek and getting their food at a food pantry.”

If you are currently on the job market, your resume is your calling card, and Bloomberg Business suggests the best and worst fonts to use.

“A résumé, that piece of paper designed to reflect your best self, is one of the places where people still tend to use typeface to express themselves. It does not always go well, according to people who spend a lot of time looking at fonts.”

“We went digging for a complete set of professionally fly fonts and returned with just one consensus winner: Helvetica.”

“If you are very experienced, use Garamond to get your long rap sheet to fit into a single page.”

You have your resume, the job market is improving and you’re off to an industry networking event. Fast Company published founder and CEO of Circle Bank, Manoj Ramnani’s strategies to prepare for the event, ‘work’ the event and follow-up after the event.

“To get the most from these events, there’s quite a bit of front-loaded strategizing and after-the-fact upkeep. Think long-term goals, a slow burn, and you’ll approach these events with a much more productive attitude.”

“Identify your goals. Know who’s coming and reach out. Define your value.”

The last item this week@work tells the first-person account of ‘stay at home dad’, Liam Robb O’Hagan.

“Two years ago, I flew through Heathrow airport in London. On my arrivals card, I listed my occupation as stay-at-home dad.

The Customs and Immigration Officer, who was trained in the finer art of welcoming visitors to the country — or friendly chit-chat as normal people call it — made the comment that he had never seen that occupation listed before. I had to admit that it was the first time I could remember offering it as my profession.

I still find calling myself a stay-at-home dad awkward. My discomfort doesn’t make it any easier when I have to answer the question, “What do you do?” I’ll often couch my answer in the phrase, “Right now, I am a stay-at-home dad.” Perhaps I’m doing this in the hope that will give the inquirer license to delve into my distant past or just talk about the weather.”

As much as we resist, in social settings our work defines us. ‘What do you do?’ is a question that creates a first impression.

The occupation of ‘stay at home dad’ is a critical to the future of our society as ‘stay at home mom’. Many entrepreneurs and  professionals ‘work from home’. Maybe it’s time to include parents in this category. They don’t ‘stay at home’, they ‘work from home’.

The week@work April 27 – May 3  Chief Storytelling Officer & Nancy Drew @ 85

Eileen Kohan 1 Comment

Writing from North Carolina, this week@work has been a transcontinental journey. Observing life along Highway 40 you notice the new urban growth areas and the blight along old Route 66. Booming city centers and suburbs of Oklahoma City, Nashville, Knoxville and Charlotte contrast with graffiti covered, abandoned roadside attractions in a land that time forgot.

Travelling by car is typically reserved for tourists, but it’s worth the trip to reconnect with the reality of the changing economic landscape that’s hard to see from 20,000 feet.

Two stories to share from the past week:

Fast Company magazine reported on a new creative position, the ‘chief storytelling officer’:

“The CSO is a thoroughly modern title, the product of a growing interest in corporate storytelling, a pursuit that has lured other established writers and journalists into the world of corporate hackery.”

Using the example of Pakistani writer, Mohsin Hamid author of ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, we discover the value of novelists in a corporate environment. “He’s now working for the half-century-old creative consultancy Wolff Olins as the company’s first chief storytelling officer.”

“Last year, Wolff Olins—which in 2001 became a subsidiary of the marketing giant Omnicom Group—contacted Hamid to explore how he could contribute to its work; the more he thought about it, the more he recognized, he says, that “storytelling isn’t only for novelists, but CEOs and leaders as well.

More than just a feel-good theme, Hamid says a unifying narrative that all employees can grasp can help them work more creatively and independently—necessities in today’s company structures, which often rely on a distributed leadership approach, rather than the top-down supervision of yesterday.”

This week we celebrated the first national Independent Booksellers Day and the eighty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the first Nancy Drew mystery book. Author and journalist Theodore Jefferson wrote an excellent piece on the influence of the series on book publishing and expanding young women’s aspirations:

“Agency.

It is that which forms the foundation for any hero’s ability to save the day. In America, agency for teenage girls in literature made its debut in 1930 in the person of Nancy Drew.

Scholars Janice Radway and Nan Enstad assert that stories like Nancy Drew’s provide girls a “place to dream.” While they highlight romances and the “dime novels” of the pulp era as prominent examples, that “anything is possible” spirit was not limited to those forms.

It was the imaginative energy of that era that propelled Nancy Drew and characters like her into the kinds of stories nobody had ever seen before.

“…it is what Nancy Drew does in her stories that sets the Drew-niverse apart from what once was. Nancy gets into fights, drives a car, packs a gun and relies on herself to get out of tough situations. She is mechanically inclined and at the same time doesn’t act like most people in the 1930s would have expected a teenage girl to act.”

This week we celebrate storytelling as a way to communicate corporate culture and we recognize a heroine whose stories encouraged young readers to dream.

The week@work – April 20 – 26 CEO pay, women@work & a yellow hairdryer

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This week the conversation continued about Gravity Payments CEO’s decision to cut his salary and raise the minimum wage of his employees. Women@work were the topic of a viral gender equality spoof and Meryl Streep announced plans for a screenwriting lab for women over 40. And for those of you budding entrepreneurs comes the story of Dry Bar and those yellow hairdryers.

Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments announced in mid April that he would be ‘sharing the wealth’ with his employees. His plan is to raise the minimum salary for all his employees to $70K within the next three years. Business professors and cable TV pundits criticized his idea, suggesting he was crazy, going so far as to cite research that happy workers are not necessarily productive workers.

This is what you get for being innovative. How will you know unless you try it?

Conceding on MSNBC that he might be crazy, “he dismissed the back-seat business advice as misguided. Proudly calling himself a capitalist, Mr. Price…argued that the new salary structure would benefit his firm in the long run even as it would help, more broadly, to highlight the corrosive effects of income inequality in American society.”

He is building a corporate culture founded on values of fairness that he believes will benefit his company in the long run.

At the Tribeca Film Festival actor Meryl Streep announced plans to fund a screenwriting lab for women over 40.

As reported in Variety, “The retreat will be run by New York Women in Film and Television and IRIS, a collective of women filmmakers.  

“Called the Writers Lab, the screenplay development program aims to increase opportunities for female screenwriters over the age of 40. This year the initiative will accept submissions May 1-June 1, with eight winning scribes named Aug. 1.

Among the mentors to participate in the Lab’s inaugural year are writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Beyond the Lights”), producer Caroline Kaplan (“Boyhood”), and writers Kirsten Smith (“Legally Blonde”) and Jessica Bendinger (“Bring It On”).

Citing current statistics, Forbes Magazine reported : “As of 2014, women constituted only 17% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 (domestic) grossing films. Shockingly, this is the same percentage of women working in these roles in 1998. The needle hasn’t moved.”

Which leads us to ‘Its Only Fair That Men Should Have It All’ a video spoof of gender inequality. The video, created by Patricia Noonan, Nadia Quinn, and Emily Tarver used an all-female cast and crew of 70 to comment on a serious topic, with humor in words and music.

The last story of the week is a profile in The New York Times of the Drybar founder, Alli Webb.

“In just five years, Ms. Webb’s business has grown to a $50 million-a-year enterprise. (That was in 2014; the company says it is on track to generate $70 million in revenue in 2015.) This was not what she imagined growing up in South Florida. Back then, a young Ms. Webb (nee Landau), was forced to contend daily with her hair, which was wavy, and in humid Florida, very frizzy.”

What is Drybar? A visit to the website defines the product:

“Drybar is a brand new “blow dry bar” concept created around a very simple idea:
No cuts. No color. Just blowouts for only $40. You see, we believe that everyone (even us pros) prefers having someone else blow out their hair. Why? It just looks better! We also believe there has to be a better option than paying $60+ at a traditional salon, or going to a less-than-desirable discount chain. But there’s not. So, we decided to make one.”

Here is a simple business idea that originated with a basic beauty need and a woman who created a market for a product we didn’t know we needed until it arrived.

From the NY Times story: “Drybar now has 3,000 employees. There is a line of styling products, hot tools and brushes, sold in the Drybar shops and at Sephora. The company has about 50 investors, many of whom began as clients, like the actress Rose McGowan, and Alexander von Furstenberg, who got in touch about investing after he picked up his teenage daughter from a Drybar shop where she was getting a blowout. “I was like, wow, this place is so well run, just the execution, you know, everything,” Mr. von Furstenberg said.”

Most days you have to create your own success. Mr. Price of Gravity Payments is redefining employee compensation. Meryl Streep is recognizing the value of storytellers over 40. The creators of #makeitfair are reminding employers of the equal contribution of all workers. And Alli Webb has built her business based on 10 core values and a bright yellow hairdryer.

The week@work April 13 – 19 Apollo 13, Brian Grazer & Adderall in the workplace

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The week@work celebrated authors and their books at the LA Times Festival of Books in Los Angeles, commemorated the courage of the astronauts on Apollo 13 and explored the growing abuse of attention deficit disorder drugs in the workplace.

It’s interesting how the dots connect. Yesterday I was sitting in a large auditorium at the University of Southern California listening to an interview with Brian Grazer, producer and now writer, describe a self-improvement process he has utilized since graduating from college. Each week he identifies at least one person, a stranger, he would like to meet and have a ‘curiosity conversation’. It’s a practice he continues to energize and expand his capabilities. Speaking earlier this year at SXSW he emphasized “Curiosity is the source of all my success.”

In 1995 he produced the film Apollo 13, recounting the story of the astronaut’s survival. The key word is survival. His process in selecting this project connected back to a woman, Veronica Denegra, who had been tortured for 18 months in Chile for her opposition to the government. It wasn’t his interest in space, but his memory of Ms. Denegra’s story of survival that connected him to Apollo 13.

“You can never know how the dots will connect; how opportunities will come alive when you never knew they existed.”

The talented professionals at NASA who brainstormed their way through to a successful conclusion of the Apollo 13 mission were honored this week at the San Diego Air and Space Museum on the 45th anniversary of the mission. The story of the ‘real life’ events led by mission commander Jim Lovell and flight director Gene Kranz remains a model case study of problem solving, teamwork and creativity in an extremely high risk work environment.

In the December, 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review three authors described their findings on how CEO’s innovate. In ‘The Innovator’s DNA’ Jeffrey H. Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen identified “five “discovery skills” that distinguish the most creative executives: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking. We found that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50% more time on these discovery activities than do CEOs with no track record for innovation. Together, these skills make up what we call the innovator’s DNA. And the good news is, if you’re not born with it, you can cultivate it.”

Here we have Brian Grazer, producer, who appears to be the poster boy for the innovator’s DNA, telling the story of another illustration of innovation, in the story of the Apollo13 crew and the folks on the ground at NASA who brought them home, 45 years ago this week.

“The conversations are the artistic fertilizer of what comes up on the screen. It enriches everything that lives in your mind in terms of exploring possibilities.”

The third story this week appears on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, ‘Abuse of Attention Deficit Pills Graduates Into the Workplace’. A generation that employed attention disorder drugs to stay up late to study for a final or complete a paper has now continued the practice, ordering ‘pills on demand’ to complete work assignments.

“Doctors and medical ethicists expressed concern for misusers’ health, as stimulants can cause anxiety, addiction and hallucinations when taken in high doses. But they also worried about added pressure in the workplace — where the use by some pressures more to join the trend.”

Young professionals believe they need these drugs to get hired. And once hired, believe they need chemical support to sustain their productivity, to be competitive.

We are only at the beginning of this story, but leaders should be paying attention and consider the effects of an organizational culture that facilitates this behavior. A dose of management emotional intelligence and creativity might go a long way to building an alternative workplace, a place where productivity is fueled by ‘curiosity conversations’, not drugs.

Mr. Grazer believes “Curiosity is the solution to every problem that you’ve got.” And he may be right.

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 week@work – March 30 – April 5

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work stories ranged from college admissions to a debate over foreign players in England’s Premier League and a stagnant US Jobs report.

On the college admissions front, McSweeney’s published ‘A Honest College Rejection Letter’ by Mimi Evans. In part:

“Dear Applicant,

The Admissions Committee has carefully considered your application and we regret to inform you that we will not be able to offer you admission in the entering class of 2015, or a position on one of our alternate lists. The applicant pool this year was particularly strong, and by that I mean the Admissions Committee once again sent candidates like you multiple enticing pamphlets encouraging you to apply, knowing full well we had no intention of accepting you.

However, you will be pleased to know that you have contributed to our declining admissions rate, which has helped our university appear exclusive. This allows us to attract our real candidates: upper-class kids and certified geniuses who will glean no new information from our courses or faculty, whose parents can incentivize us with a new swimming pool or lacrosse stadium…”

A high school senior in North Carolina responded to a rejection letter from Duke:

“This year I have been fortunate enough to receive rejection letters from the best and brightest universities in the country. With a pool of letters so diverse and accomplished I was unable to accept reject letters I would have been able to only several years ago.

Therefore I will be attending Duke University’s 2015 freshmen class. I look forward to seeing you then.”

The student will be attending the University of South Carolina in the fall and should be encouraged by the comments of 26 year old Jenna, described in Frank Bruni’s article on college admissions.She was not offered admission to her first choice college:

“I felt so worthless,” she recalled.

She chose Scripps. And once she got there and saw how contentedly she fit in, she had a life-changing realization: Not only was a crushing chapter of her life in the past, it hadn’t crushed her. Rejection was fleeting — and survivable.

As a result, she said, “I applied for things fearlessly.”

It’s Final Four weekend. Talented college athletes will be competing in both men’s and women’s basketball. Marc Tracy, writing in The New York Times, takes us back to 1965 when the Final Four included Princeton University and their star player, Bill Bradley. The story is about the athlete and the writer, John McPhee at the beginning of their careers. Published in The New Yorker, ‘A Sense of Where You Are’ was later released in book form. How did Bradley choose Princeton?

“Bradley was affluent. Having initially accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Duke, he chose Princeton, he said, because the summer before his freshman year he had visited Oxford University and was determined to return. A Rhodes scholarship seemed like a great way to do so, and he had read that Princeton produced the most Rhodes scholars.

“I came home from a date, woke my parents up, and said I’d like to change my mind,” Bradley recalled.

And yet in its way the book does argue the merit of incorporating athletics into education. Watching Bradley’s dual sense of where he is — on the basketball court and in life — serves as a reminder that most young people lack a sense of where they are, and that sports are one way to try to find it.”

In 2010 author Franklin Foer published his book, ‘How Soccer Soccer Explains the World’. He looked at soccer and it’s role in various cultures explaining how international forces affect politics and life around the globe. This week, in England an anti-globalization sentiment is growing as Premier League fans question how many potential players in soccer academies are losing opportunities to international players. The English league owes its popularity and skyrocketing salaries to globalization. Will England restrict the number of players recruited from abroad? The debate illustrates conversations that go beyond the ‘workplace’ of soccer and fuel the immigration controversy in both the US and EU.

The New York Times reported on the latest economic report:

“The yearlong streak of robust monthly job creation was broken on Friday with the Labor Department’s report that employers added just 126,000 workers in March, a marked slowdown in hiring that echoed earlier signs that sluggish business investment and punishing weather were exacting a toll on the economy.”