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The week@work: Broken Models

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

 

This week@work the majority of the stories fell into one category: broken models and attempts to create band aid solutions.

As we’re living longer, the traditional cycle of study, work, retire has been rendered obsolete. We may blame technology for disrupting our work lives, but it’s the human decisions that are realigning the workplace.

In the talent wars, employers entice employees with the opportunity to work ‘out of the office’, yet tether them with ‘workations’. Teachers lacking sufficient wages and benefits participate in the ‘sharing’ economy and solicit donations of vacation days to cope with serious illness. And a university will offer their current and future students a full tuition scholarship to address the burgeoning cost of medical school.

IMG_8767.jpgWe spend our days trying to figure out new ways to extend our lives, maintain our looks and yet we seem to have ignored the reality that our work life might also extend beyond traditional retirement age.

Pavel Krapivin explores ‘The Study, Work, Retire Model Is Broken As We Live Until 100’.

“Much of life over the past century conformed to the three-stage model of study, work, retire. It’s a model that was predicated on reasonably high levels of stability, both in the skills required in the workplace and also the labor market itself.  Training in one field and then having one or two employers for the majority of your working life was commonplace, but it’s a model that is increasingly being challenged.

Rapidly changing technologies have rendered the shelf-life of skills shorter than ever before, while medical advances mean that the majority of children born today will live to 100 years of age.  This longevity will cause ruptures in the three-stage model that dominates the Western world and predicate a transition towards a more multi-stage life that will see working, learning and resting blend into one.”

He identifies six core challenges that set the agenda for future organizational planning: “managing mature workers, flexible working, a multi-generational workforce, a world of options, learning how to learn and a less rigid path.”

grand central.jpgUnfortunately, we’re not doing a very good job of coping with current organization dynamics. Human resource professionals rarely have a seat at the strategic planning table. Each of these challenges involve people.

Louis Hyman identifies human choice as the primary factor in workplace disruption.  ‘It’s Not Technology That’s Disrupting Our Jobs’

“…when we talk about today’s economy, we focus on smartphones, artificial intelligence, apps. Here, too, the inexorable march of technology is thought to be responsible for disrupting traditional work, phasing out the employee with a regular wage or salary and phasing in independent contractors, consultants, temps and freelancers — the so-called gig economy.

But this narrative is wrong. The history of labor shows that technology does not usually drive social change. On the contrary, social change is typically driven by decisions we make about how to organize our world. Only later does technology swoop in, accelerating and consolidating those changes.

…it reminds us that far from being an unavoidable consequence of technological progress, the nature of work always remains a matter of social choice. It is not a result of an algorithm; it is a collection of decisions by corporations and policymakers.”

Again, the human factor. We have a choice.

Our attempts to adjust to change are ‘band aids’, attempts to cover the wounds of a painful workplace structure. Three stories that just made my blood boil this week@work described the concept of ‘workation’ and the continuing plight of underpaid teachers in the U.S.

IMG_2532.jpgTake a minute to view the video segment from Sunday Today, describing the new trend of ‘workations’. Basically you can work anywhere on the planet as long as you meet your goals. The segment, sub-titled ‘Flexible ‘workcations’ let employees stay connected far away from the office’, profiled one professional who has opted to participate in a Friday remote working option offered by her employer.

“The turning point was when I realized my client doesn’t know the difference. As long as I’m answering my emails on time, I’m answering their calls, I’m accessible, they don’t know if I’m in California or if I’m down the street in New York.”

Billed as a way to meet the challenge of providing workplace flexibility, I wondered, as I watched her walk along the beach in California, how many of her colleagues had the financial resources to access this option.

And then there were the two stories of folks who go to work educating our children.

la school.jpgAlia Wong reported ‘Low Pay Has Teachers Flocking to the Sharing Economy’.

“Airbnb, the popular platform that lets people rent out their homes and apartments, released the results of a volunteer survey this week containing the striking statistic that nearly one in 10 of its hosts in the United States is an educator. In some states the trend appears to be even more pronounced—more than a quarter of all Airbnb hosts in Utah and Wisconsin, for example, work as teachers or in education (the company includes in that category administrators and college professors). This is especially noteworthy given that an analysis of census and National Center for Education Statistics figures suggests that just less than 2 percent of adults in the country work as full-time K–12 teachers.

Many of these 45,000-plus educators in the U.S. are presumably using Airbnb to supplement their regular income, as teachers struggle with stagnant, if not declining, pay. The average annual salary for K–12 public-school teachers is roughly $58,000, and they typically spend a sizable chunk of that on classroom supplies integral to their jobs.

The typical teacher host earned $6,500 through Airbnb last year—hardly a negligible boost for financially strapped educators. And for many teachers, that boost is far more appealing than other means of supplementing their incomes.”

Pair that with the story this week of the Florida history teacher diagnosed with cancer who had exhausted his supply of sick leave before his treatment ended. Did his employer step in to help? No, he used social media to request donations of sick leave from colleagues, and was overwhelmed when the response far exceeded the 20 days he had requested.

Understand why my blood is boiling? Not only are teachers using their creativity to supplement their income in order to live, they are now forced to beg for supplemental benefits from other teachers. And that folks tells you a lot about our priorities.

The last story is good news for the medical students at NYU. In a pioneering effort, the school will offer full tuition scholarships to current and future students.

participants-at-nyu-school-of-medicine-2.jpg“The announcement from the medical school’s trustees, leaders, and faculty was delivered this morning to first-year medical students and family members as a surprise ending to the annual White Coat Ceremony, where each new student is presented with a white lab coat to mark the start of their medical education and training.

“Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our trustees, alumni, and friends, our hope—and expectation—is that by making medical school accessible to a broader range of applicants, we will be a catalyst for transforming medical education nationwide,” says Kenneth G. Langone, chair of the Board of Trustees of NYU Langone Health. The yearly tuition costs covered by the scholarship are $55,018.”

The hope is to diversify the composition of the student body as well as the choice of specialty after graduation.

If we’re now reflecting on our work/life cycle in terms of a century, we’ll need the expertise of these educators and medical professionals to provide the support to achieve success. Perhaps it’s time to reorder our priorities.

This week@work consider the complexity of a 100 year lifetime and imagine what innovations you could apply to replace the broken models.

 

Photo credit: LA Unified courtesy KPCC, White Coat Ceremony courtesy NYU School of Medicine

 

 

 

 

The Saturday Read – ‘The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

The Saturday Read this week is the latest book from Michael Lewis, ‘The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds’. It’s the story of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky; two men who baffled colleagues at their pairing from the early days of their academic careers until the point when the public perception “was now a Venn diagram, two circles, with Danny wholly contained by Amos”.

Reading ‘The Undoing Project’ I found myself underling and annotating as I went along, re-reading passages, flipping between chapters; engaged in an academic exercise vs. an enjoyable character-driven narrative.

It’s the first time I’ve read a Michael Lewis book where I heard the voice of a Princeton alum more clearly than those of the two main characters.

Here’s the strange thing, as painful as the first read was; I keep thinking about the practical applications of the pair’s research long after the final page.

“The way the creative process works is that you first say something, and later, sometimes years later, you understand what you said.”

Read something and sometime later you understand how it applies.

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Both of these men had exceptional origin stories. Each was a genius in his own right. Each started out where we all do, with a certain degree of uncertainty about what to do with our lives.

For Danny, “From the moment he thought what he might be when he grew up, he simply assumed he would be an intellectual. That was his image of himself: a brain without a body… He’d always sensed that he would be some sort of professor, and the questions he had about human beings were more interesting to him than any others. “My interest in psychology was a way to do philosophy…to understand the world by understanding why people, especially me see it as they do.”

“Aptitude tests revealed Danny to be equally suited for the humanities and science, but he only wanted to do science. He also wanted to study people. Beyond that, it soon became clear, he didn’t know what he wanted to do.”

In an interview with Stephanie Demming, published in December, he further clarified his path.

“My own love affair with psychology began after I graduated from university in 2009, as soon as I started working in the real world. It took all of two minutes to figure out the working world didn’t function like the school system. If you worked hard, you weren’t always rewarded. The new currency was whether or not people liked you. It was a system governed not by grades, but by people’s minds.”

For Amos, “Entering high school, Amos like all Israeli kids, needed to decide if he would specialize in math and science or in the humanities. The new society exerted great pressure on boys to study math and science. That’s where the status was, and the future careers. Amos had a gift for math and science, perhaps more than any other boy. And yet alone among the bright boys in his class – and to the bemusement of all – he pursued the humanities.”

“Hebrew University in the late 1950s required students to pick two fields of concentration. Amos had chosen philosophy and psychology.  But Amos approached intellectual life strategically, as if it were an oil field to be drilled, and after two years of sitting through philosophy classes he announced that philosophy was a dry well…There are too many smart guys and too few problems left, and the problems have no solutions.”

Later, in his mid-forties he was asked by Harvard professor Miles Shore how he became a psychologist.

“It’s hard to know how people select a course in life…The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices probably tell us more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet…On the other hand, the small decisions are very systematic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reflect deep traits.”

The career choices of these two individuals resulted in a collaboration that challenged conventional thinking on human judgement and decision making.

“A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.”

“Given the work on human judgment that he and Amos had just finished, he found it further troubling to think that “crucial decisions are made, today as thousands of years ago, in terms of the intuitive guesses and preferences of a few men in positions of authority.” The failure of decision makers to grapple with the inner workings of their own minds, and their desire to indulge their gut feelings, made it “quite likely that the fate of entire societies may be sealed by a series of avoidable mistakes committed by their leaders.””

This was the book that Michael Lewis had to write. It was the origin story of his best seller ‘Moneyball’. A writer is often compelled to follow his curiosity and tell the stories he finds as he explores the tangents. ‘The Undoing Project’ may not be his best narrative, but it’s his best connection to the reality of the decisions ordinary folk face @work every day.

“I’ve always felt  ideas were a dime a dozen…If you had one that didn’t work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another.”

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The week@work – end of summer, Wells Fargo issues an apology to artists, start-ups adapt, cycling is the new networking, and the August jobs report

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

In news this week@work: Wells Fargo placed advertising in advance of ‘Teen Financial Education Day’ implying the worth of career aspirations in the sciences rank above those in the arts, Silicon Valley start-ups are adapting  to anticipate a market downturn, networking has moved from the bar to the bike (that’s a good thing), and the U.S. unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.9%.

Late Saturday morning I checked my Twitter feed and found this from novelist Caroline Leavitt. Forget post-tropical cyclone Hermine, this was the Labor Day weekend’s perfect storm.

According to Forbes contributing writer, Emily Willingham,“Wells Fargo rolled out an ad campaign this week that it almost immediately withdrew following on Internet outrage from a lot of angry artists and humanities professors. That may not sound that scary, but these folks know how to use words and emote.

The ads, using images depicting teens engaging in sciencey things, urge us to “get them ready for tomorrow” by ensuring that the aspiring ballerinas and actors of today become engineers and botanists of the future…

The message here is, of course, that the future is science. That becoming a ballerina or an actor is a dreamscape fairytale that has no place in a real world of cold hard cash and sciencey-sounding things like botany. Imagine if some parents buy into that ad’s message and try to push their budding ballerina into botany instead. The world loses an artist and gains a mediocre, uninterested botanist who’s given up her life’s dream? Lose–lose.”

This was not just a ‘business section’ story. Olivia Clement reported on Broadway’s reaction on Playbill.com.

“A new advertising campaign from Wells Fargo, an American banking and financial services company, has prompted outrage from the theatre community. The ads imply that it is more valuable for young people to pursue a career in the sciences rather than the arts.

A Wells Fargo brochure depicts a young man in a science lab. “An actor yesterday. A botanist today. Let’s get them ready for tomorrow,” reads the accompanying text. Another, depicting a young woman in a lab, reads: “A ballerina yesterday. An engineer today.”

Among those to express their disappointment and frustration at the campaign on September 3 were Alex Brightman, Ann Harada, Cynthia Erivo, Heather Headley and Benj Pasek—who took to Twitter to call out the company directly. “Apparently @WellsFargo doesn’t think that an actor or ballerina require any work at all. Shame!” read Erivo’s tweet.”

Wells Fargo apologized via Twitter late Saturday.

Anticipating the end of the boom, Katie Benner delivered a tech industry status report, ‘Warned of a Crash, Start-Ups in Silicon Valley Narrow Their Focus’.

“Last year, many tech executives, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs were convinced that a multiyear boom that had propelled young companies to great heights could no longer sustain itself.

The worst fallout may yet come, but many of the start-ups have hung on. Across Silicon Valley, engineers are still commanding annual salaries that average $136,000, according to Hired, a recruiting firm. Demand is brisk for $4 buttered toast, and office space rents remain near record highs. The biggest start-ups, like Uber and Airbnb, continue to land billions of dollars in funding. And investors are shoveling money into venture capital funds, which raised so much cash in the first half of this year that it rivaled the amount raised in all of 2015.

For all of the hand-wringing, “there just hasn’t been much of a downturn,” said Paul Buchheit, a managing partner at Y Combinator, a prominent start-up incubator that nurtured companies including Dropbox and Airbnb. “I don’t even see many companies going out of business.”

Wondering where you might meet one of those tech execs or VCs? This past week Sarah Max covered a story that has been growing globally over the past year, ‘Cycling Matches the Pace and Pitches of Tech’. In other words, cycling is the new networking.

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“Thinking he needed to take up a “California sport,” Greg Gretsch started cycling in 1988, when he moved to the Bay Area to work in marketing at Apple after graduating from the University of Georgia. He bought a 10-speed road bike and joined a group of other Apple employees for a standing noon ride.

Today, Mr. Gretsch, 49, is a founding partner with San Francisco-based Jackson Square Ventures, which makes early-stage investments in fledgling companies, including a social network and performance-tracking app for athletes call Strava. He rides an average of five days a week on paved roads in the Bay Area and on trails near his second home near Lake Tahoe. Cycling is primarily for exercise and escape, he said, but it has also been good for his career.

“Connecting with people is important to what I do, and you can learn a lot about a person, and from a person, on the bike,” said Mr. Gretsch, who founded three companies before going into venture capital in 2000 at a firm called Sigma Partners.”

On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department released the August jobs report. Camila Domonoske summarized the data for NPR.

“The U.S. added 151,000 new jobs in August and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.9 percent, according to the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Both those metrics fell short of expectations: Economists were expecting about 180,000 new jobs, and a slight dip in the unemployment rate, to 4.8 percent…”

Finally, this week@work, we celebrated the last weekend of summer.

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Photo credit: Boulder cyclists, Cliff Grassmick, Daily Camera

 

The week@work – Olympic stories, author salaries, “what a feminist looks like” & the July jobs report

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work the athletes who go to work every day to pursue an Olympic dream are in Rio, Forbes announced their list of top earning authors, President Obama penned an essay on “what a feminist looks like”, and the U.S. labor market grew by 255,000 positions.

The major story of the next two weeks will take place in Brazil as the athletes of the world gather to compete in the XXXI Olympics. Journalists covered two athletes who have travelled diverse paths to reach Rio 2016.

 Kianoosh Hashemzadeh introduced us to equestrian, Lauren Kieffer, ‘An American Rider Trying to Beat the Boys in Rio’, for The New Yorker

“There are two Olympic-level athletic endeavors in which men and women square off head to head: sailing and equestrian sports. Eventing, an equestrian sport in which horse and rider compete in three phases—dressage, cross-country, and stadium jumping—has been called the most dangerous competition in the Olympics. That danger has never deterred female riders: they have competed alongside men since the field became open to them, at the 1964 Games, in Tokyo. Women do well in the sport, but they have struggled to reach its uppermost echelon: the current top-ten list of the Fédération Équestre Internationale, the sport’s governing body, is made up of eight men and two women. There are, however, six women in the following ten spots—and sitting at No. 12, eager to crash the old guard, is the top female eventing athlete in the United States, twenty-nine-year-old Lauren Kieffer.”

lauren kieffer.jpg“No woman has ever won an individual gold medal in the sport, and, while Kieffer’s focus is to bring home a team medal, an individual victory would be particularly sweet. Women are contenders in eventing, but few have made it to the very top. As Kieffer told me, “Someone has to beat the boys.”

If you’ve seen the Visa commercial that has been running during the NBC Olympic coverage, you may recognize the name Yusra Mardini, a member of the refugee team competing at the Olympics.

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Charly Wilder profiled her heroic story from her training facility in Berlin for The New York Times, ‘She Swam to Escape Syria. Now She’ll Swim in Rio’.

“Yusra Mardini, an Olympic swimmer, was an hour and a half into her first training session of the day, butterfly-kicking down the length of a pool with a yellow rubber duck balanced on her head.

Last August, Mardini and her sister Sarah fled war-torn Syria and embarked on a harrowing, monthlong journey through Lebanon, Turkey and Greece, up through the Balkans and Central Europe, to Germany, narrowly dodging capture and death. When their crammed dinghy broke down between Turkey and Greece, she and her sister, also a swimmer, jumped into the water and helped guide the boat to safety.

Mardini’s story came to public attention in March when she was identified by the International Olympic Committee as a candidate to compete on a new team of refugees, made up of athletes who are stateless or would otherwise be excluded from the Games. She was thrust into the spotlight, celebrated by the news media as a fresh-faced example of Germany’s so-called welcome culture — a story of uplift at the center of the global refugee crisis.”

Robert Kitson updated the story from Rio after the first day of Olympic competition, ‘Yusra Mardini delights with butterfly heat win for Refugee Olympic Team’

“For those minded to complain about minor irritations in Rio such as humidity in the aquatics centre or a few nibbling insects, the 18-year-old’s story should serve as a timely reminder of life’s more pressing issues.

The venue may have been far from full and her heat loaded with competitors entertaining nil hope of reaching the final but Mardini was the most popular of winners in a time of 1min 9.21sec, just over a second faster than her nearest heat rival. Afterwards she could scarcely contain her joy: “Everything was amazing. It was the only thing I ever wanted was to compete in the Olympics. I had a good feeling in the water. Competing with all these great champions is exciting. I’ve only been back swimming for two years so we’re only now getting back to my levels of before.”

The next story this week@work is for all of you commuting to work, considering a career change. Forbes announced their annual ranking of the world’s highest paid authors this week and new to the top ten was commuter, former journalist and ‘near broke’ novelist, Paula Hawkins.

Natalie Robehmed reported on ‘The World’s Highest-Paid Authors 2016: James Patterson, Jeff Kinney and J.K. Rowling Top Ranking’.

“These well-heeled wordsmiths earned a combined $269 million over the last 12 months, proving that the written word isn’t dead–although television and movie adaptations often help drive sales.

Patterson topped our list for the third straight year, earning $95 million pretax, while children’s author Jeff Kinney placed a distant second, earning $19.5 million.”

hawkins.jpg“The only newcomer to the ranking: Paula Hawkins. After “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Gone Girl,” her novel “The Girl on the Train” is the latest literary phenomenon with a calculating female character to hit the bestseller list. It sold 11 million copies worldwide; a movie version hits theaters in October.”

President Barak Obama wrote an essay linking his upbringing by strong women, his role as a father of two girls, and the nomination of Hillary Clinton, to describe “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” for Glamour magazine.

“In my lifetime we’ve gone from a job market that basically confined women to a handful of often poorly paid positions to a moment when women not only make up roughly half the workforce but are leading in every sector, from sports to space, from Hollywood to the Supreme Court. I’ve witnessed how women have won the freedom to make your own choices about how you’ll live your lives—about your bodies, your educations, your careers, your finances. Gone are the days when you needed a husband to get a credit card. In fact, more women than ever, married or single, are financially independent.

malia-sasha-obama.jpg…the most important people in my life have always been women. I was raised by a single mom, who spent much of her career working to empower women in developing countries. I watched as my grandmother, who helped raise me, worked her way up at a bank only to hit a glass ceiling.

So I’d like to think that I’ve been pretty aware of the unique challenges women face—it’s what has shaped my own feminism. But I also have to admit that when you’re the father of two daughters, you become even more aware of how gender stereotypes pervade our society. You see the subtle and not-so-subtle social cues transmitted through culture. You feel the enormous pressure girls are under to look and behave and even think a certain way.

…we need to break through these limitations.” 

Finally, this week@work, the U.S. Labor Department released the July 2016 jobs report. Jeff Cox covered the news for CNBC.

“Job creation crushed estimates in July as the economy added 255,000 positions, according to the Labor Department.

The headline unemployment rate held steady at 4.9 percent, though a more encompassing measure that includes those not actively looking for work and those working part-time for economic reasons moved up a notch to 9.7 percent. Though still mired near generational lows, the labor force participation rate ticked up one-tenth to 62.8 percent as those counted as not in the labor force decreased 184,000 to 94.3 million.

Hourly wages also moved higher, increasing by 8 cents or an annualized pace of 2.6 percent, while the average work week edged up to 34.5 hours.”

Photo credits: Lauren Kieffer – Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post, Yusra Mardini – Michael Sohn/AP, Paula Hawkins – The Daily Beast, President Obama – The Daily Mail

 

 

 

The week@work – leadership lessons from Leicester City, #TonysSoDiverse, exit strategies & the April jobs report

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work we visit Leicester, England (think Wichita,KS) to uncover a story of unlikely success, celebrate the diversity of the Tony Award nominees, grasp the value of a positive employee exit process, and review the April jobs report.

At the beginning of the English Premier League season, Ladbrokes, the world leader in gaming and betting set 5000/1 odds that Leicester City would win the title. On Monday, the team beat the odds to hoist the trophy and celebrate their marvelous win.

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There were hundreds of news articles published over the past week, covering the story from every possible angle. Here are a few, examining the business applications and social impact.

‘What do the foxes say?’, The Economist’s take on the champions suggests a future in business school and corporate conference engagements for club manager, Claudio Ranieri.

“In footballing terms, Claudio Ranieri, an affable Italian, has found a way to turn water into wine. Mr Ranieri manages a club in England, Leicester City, which historically has not been very good. On May 2nd his team were crowned champions of the English Premier League, a competition more watched than any other on the planet, and reliably won—including in every one of the preceding 20 years—by one of four much bigger clubs.

…Leicester’s triumph will also spark inordinate interest in the world of business, which has long looked to sport for lessons on management and leadership.

The BBC’s Robert Plummer shared six of ‘Leicester City’s business secrets’. “You don’t need to throw money at the problem. Get the right people around you. Create the right culture. Do the maths. Create the right incentives. Don’t forget your mum’s birthday!”

For a literary, fan perspective, Booker winning author, Julian Barnes wrote ‘My Stupid Leicester City Love’.

“I haven’t always been a Leicester City supporter: there was a time before I could read, or knew how to tune the Bakelite wireless to the voice of Raymond Glendenning on Sports Report. But from the moment I became sportingly sentient – say, the age of five or six – I have been (as they didn’t much say then) a Fox. So, six and a half decades and counting.

To be a lifelong supporter of Leicester is to have spent decades poised between mild hopefulness and draining disappointment. You learn to cultivate a shrugging ruefulness, to become familiar with the patronising nods of London cabbies, and to cling to an assortment of memories, of pluses and minuses, some comic, some less so. Yes, we have won promotion to the top division every so often; but the fact of promotion logically implies an earlier relegation. Yes, we did win the League Cup; but what burns the soul are the four times we reached the FA Cup final and the four times we lost.”

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ESPN’s Wright Thompson introduced readers to the diverse “salad bowl” that is Leicester, England, in ‘We’ve come to win the league’.

“This is the first city in the United Kingdom with less than 50 percent of the population identifying as “white British,” which some people see as the inevitable destiny of an island nation that tried to conquer the world, while others see it as a sign of the apocalypse. People here of different faiths and races seem to get along; Narborough Road, one of the main avenues into the city, was named the most diverse street in Britain by researchers. Shopkeepers and small business owners from 23 nations work there.

John Williams lives on a park near the local university where he teaches…He studies the sociology of football and has written many books on the subject. Whenever someone wants to understand the subtext of life on the pitches and terraces of Leicester, he’s often the first call.

“It was a very white space,” Williams said. “It had a sense of foreboding and exclusion about it. The new stadium has none of those memories. Everyone starts with a clean state at the new stadium because you have to make the history. This is a new history being written.”

Janan Ganesh shared ‘Lessons for everyone from the rise of Leicester City’.  “There is more of the Enlightenment than of romance about this story.

Foreign owners, a foreign coach, a polyglot squad, a laboratory of a training ground: far from mounting a stand against the modern world, Leicester is the modern world. Do not hold out against change, this season teaches us, absorb and master it. The lesson is not just for other clubs but also for modest cities adapting to globalisation and for individuals navigating an insecure world.”

And while we are on the topic of diversity, the Tony Awards were announced last week, recognizing the best of the American theater over the past year. Katherine Brooks sent a message to the left coast, ‘Dear Hollywood, Let Broadway Show You What Diversity Looks Like’.

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“The nominations for “Hamilton,” along with other plays and musicals like “The Color Purple,” “Eclipsed,” “On Your Feet!,” and “Shuffle Along,” reveal a picture of Broadway far more diverse than seasons before it. These shows feature actors of color in lead roles, highlight the experiences of women and minorities in the U.S. and beyond, and empower writers and directors breaking barriers in their categories. They prove, along with a litany of shows that weren’t nominated, that this year was a different kind of year for the Great White Way.

…critics across the Internet are using a different kind of hashtag ahead of the theater world’s version of the Academy Awards: #TonysSoDiverse.”

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Heather Huhman addressed the importance of ‘last impressions’ in an article for Entrepreneur. Building and maintaining a positive reputation is key to recruiting talent. How an employer treats people throughout their ‘on the job life cycle’ is often chronicled in social media. Thinking strategically about the exit process can reap long term benefits.

“…the process for offboarding employees should be just as important as the onboarding one, and that companies neglecting the former, integral process may experience negative impacts. Here are a few things to consider, to ensure your formal offboarding program is successful: make saying goodbye positive, go beyond the exit interview, turn exiting employees into brand ambassadors and use past employees in your referral program.

Go beyond the exit interview to establish and continually improve the offboarding process to include exit surveys, strong communication throughout an organization and a plan to stay connected to departing employees.”

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Eric Morath analyzed the recent jobs report for the Wall Street Journal.

“U.S. companies slowed the pace of hiring in April while paying workers only slightly more, signaling a softening of the labor market…

…an increase in wage growth and a pickup in the number of hours worked across the economy could signal solid underlying income growth for workers that would support stronger consumer spending in coming months.

…the easing of job gains could also suggest the economy reached a level where firms will provide workers better pay increases and more hours, rather than hiring new employees.”

The year @work – equal pay, organization culture, Mark Zuckerberg’s books, the widening class divide, space exploration & Hamilton

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Topics of work and the workplace often captured the headlines in 2015. And some of those headlines seemed to echo the 1970’s. As the economy improved, the wage gap between rich and poor increased. And we are still talking about equal pay for equal work.

One flashback was posted on the NPR website on January 2 in tribute to former New York governor, Mario Cuomo, who died on New Year’s Day. The post included the text and video of his speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, two years after the Equal Rights Amendment  failed to gain support from the 38 states required to pass.

“We speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule “thou shalt not sin against equality,” a rule so simple —

I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It’s a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters: E.R.A.”

Even though this year’s slate of Presidential candidates includes two women, the legacy of Cuomo’s passion is largely ignored.

Two stories in the past year served to visibly illustrate the continuing inequity.

In Hollywood, major studio, Sony was hacked, revealing, among other things, the disparity between the compensation of lead actress Jennifer Lawrence and her male co-stars. Madeline Berg covered the story for Forbes

“More frequent are anecdotes of discrimination like those recently related by Selma Hayek, Gwyneth Paltrow and even Streep.

All of these women have echoed the sentiment of Patricia Arquette, who brought the issue to the world’s attention at last year’s Oscars when she said in her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress, “It’s our time to have wage equality for once and for all.”

But it is not only the number on the paycheck that is the problem: Women are also greatly underrepresented on the big screen, leading to fewer opportunities to make money, an issue that Reese Witherspoon brought up at the American Cinematheque Awards in October: “Women make up 50% of the population, and we should be playing 50% of the roles on the screen.”

That is a dream that is far from a reality. According to a report by the Annenberg School at USC’s Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative released in August, only 28.1% of characters in 2014’s top 100 films were female and of that percent, only 21 had a female lead or co-lead.”

The misrepresentation is even worse behind the camera: Of the same films, women made up only 1.9% of directors, 11.2% of writers and 18.9% of producers. This only aggravates the problem. The report found that in productions where women held key positions off-screen—as directors, writers and producers—the films featured women more often, and in less sexualized roles.”

We may find it hard to garner sympathy for those who earn millions @work for acting or competing in sport. But those are the visible workers who set the bar for the rest of us on the lower rungs of the career ladder.

The year in sport was dominated by the FIFA scandal, but women who work in sport created the memorable moments of the year. Christopher Clarey, summarizing the year in sport for women noted ‘Women Surge On Playing Field but Fall Behind in Boardroom’.

“As visible as female athletes were in 2015, women lost prominence and power in another key domain in the sports world: the boardroom.

Stacey Allaster, chief executive of the WTA Tour, stepped down citing burnout and the desire to spend more time with her young children. Debbie Jevans, a Briton who was perhaps Europe’s leading women’s sports executive, also cited personal reasons for resigning as chief executive of England Rugby 2015 less than six months before the start of the Rugby World Cup that she had been instrumental in organizing.

Another industry leader, Mary Wittenberg, who oversaw the New York City marathon as chief executive of New York Road Runners, resigned to lead a start-up lifestyle company, Virgin Sport.

Allaster, Jevans and Wittenberg were all replaced by men, and by year’s end there was no woman leading a major professional sport, not even one for women. Steve Simon is in charge of the WTA, Michael Whan is in charge of the L.P.G.A., Jeff Plush runs the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States and Mark Tatum oversees the W.N.B.A., the most prominent women’s professional basketball league, on an interim basis after Laurel J. Richie stepped down after five seasons in 2015.

Considering the scandals and governance crises that enveloped leading male-dominated federations like FIFA and the I.A.A.F. in 2015, more women in power looked very much like part of the solution. The men could clearly benefit from new perspectives.

“For me, the most important thing about diversity in a workplace is definitely making everyone feel included,” Wittenberg said. “But the diversity that comes from diversity of thinking is also invaluable, and if you don’t have diversity around your executive table or any table, I think you really run a risk today. Organizations, and especially political organizations that lack diversity in any number of ways, including gender — you’re not coming close to representing a world view. Leadership today should be challenged at every turn.”

The topic of work/life balance continues to dominate the water cooler conversations from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. And the conversation is at the heart of defining organizational culture.

In mid-August The New York Times published a story, ‘Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace’ with the following sub-heading: “The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push
white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.” 

Definitely not a ‘puff piece’, but an important piece of journalism that ignited a dialog not only between the Amazon PR machine and the editors of The NY Times, but among workers in a variety of work settings about organizational values and personal tradeoffs. How an individual’s values mesh with those of their employer will determine ultimate success or failure. Who will you become? is a far more important question to ask than   What is the salary offer?

This was also the year that Mark Zuckerberg encouraged others to follow his example, and read a recommended book every two weeks. The final recommendation in  ‘A Year of Books’ was announced today, number 23, ‘The Beginning of Infinity’ by David Deutsch.

Richard Feloni compiled a list of the first 20 recommendations.

“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made a tradition of dramatic New Year’s resolutions, and this year he decided that he’d read a book every two weeks.

He wanted his selections to focus on “different cultures, beliefs, histories, and technologies.”

“Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today,” Zuckerberg wrote on his personal Facebook page. “I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books.”

Hopefully, we have all met our resolutions from January and shifted our media diet to include some ‘long reads’ outside our comfort zone.

As the economy continued to improve, the gap between rich and poor widened. Claire Cain Miller examined the impact of differences in child rearing on growing class divisions.

“Children were not always raised so differently. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is 30 percent to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than those born 25 years earlier, according to Mr. Reardon’s research.

People used to live near people of different income levels; neighborhoods are now more segregated by income. More than a quarter of children live in single-parent households — a historic high, according to Pew – and these children are three times as likely to live in poverty as those who live with married parents. Meanwhile, growing income inequality has coincided with the increasing importance of a college degree for earning a middle-class wage.”

And for awhile, a movie about space, not that one, the other one – ‘The Martian’, seemed to re-energize NASA’s plan to restart manned space exploration beyond the International Space Station.

Doug Bolton of The Independent reported on last week’s suspension of a proposed mission to the red planet.

“NASA has decided to suspend a mission to Mars scheduled for March 2016, due to the lander springing a leak.

The InSight Mission, which would have seen a rover analysing seismic activity and the interior structure of the red planet, was called off by Nasa bosses after technical staff failed to repair a leak in one of the rover’s prime instruments.

John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator for Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said: “We push the boundaries of space technology with our missions to enable science, but space exploration is unforgiving, and the bottom line is that we’re not ready to launch in the 2016 window.”

Which leaves our space efforts to two remarkable American entrepreneurs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. In May, Jessica Orwig expressed optimism in the future of private space exploration.

“This year is shaping up to be an extremely exciting time for the future of commercial spaceflight, which will be built upon the backbone of revolutionary 21st-century rockets. The private American space companies Blue Origin and SpaceX are paving the way.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2000, successfully launched its “New Shepard” space vehicle for the first time on April 29. The vehicle was named after Alan Shepard, who became the second human and first American to enter space 44 years ago. It is designed to eventually boost six people to space, where they can experience weightlessness for 10 minutes before returning to Earth. The ride is for entertainment and therefore not exclusively for astronauts, but these kinds of temporary spaceflights could become a new way for astronauts to train for coming space missions.

Two weeks earlier, on April 14, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, founded in 2002, attempted to land one of its Falcon 9 rockets on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets are designed to boost spacecraft to greater heights than Blue Origin’s and are therefore involved in other missions outside of commercial spaceflight, including supplying the International Space Station, launching satellites into orbit, and aspirations to reach Mars.”

On December 22, NBC News reported “SpaceX completed an historic vertical landing of its Falcon 9 rocket on Monday night — the first time such a feat had been achieved.

The launch and landing in Cape Canaveral, Florida, were the first from the private U.S. spaceflight company since its rocket exploded on liftoff in June.

SpaceX has come close to landing a rocket but until now, never actually pulled the feat off. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, stuck a landing last month — but Musk pointed out that was a suborbital trip, the requirements for which are considerably different.”

And then there was ‘Hamilton’ the musical. Just as the founding father was about to be replaced on the U.S. ten dollar bill, his story took center stage this summer on Broadway. In a 2015 recap article, ‘Surprises from 2015 and Reasons for Hope’, Gina Bellafante examined the ‘Hamilton effect’ on five year olds.

“As if it weren’t surprise enough that a hip-hop musical about the life of the country’s first Treasury secretary would become a Broadway sensation, finding impassioned fans in both President Obama and Dick Cheney, “Hamilton” has found an unlikely cohort of obsessives among 5-year-olds in New York, thanks to the cast album and scenes available on YouTube. At least one kindergartner in Brooklyn is regularly going to school with white socks pulled up over his pants. Some children are demanding quill pens, and many are singing the songs at home over and over and over.

“This is the new ‘Frozen,’” one already fatigued mother observed. Expect heated arguments about the limitations of Federalism among first graders next year.”

 

The week@work – Mark Zuckerberg writes a letter, equality comes to combat, 20 predictions/20 years, the November jobs report and terrorism@work

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work was dominated, until mid-week, by the story of the ‘Chan Zuckerberg initiative’ to set aside 99% of their Facebook wealth, and overshadowed a major shift in policy within the Pentagon, opening all combat jobs to women, without exception. The November jobs report continued the positive trajectory of the economy with the revision upward of September and October numbers. And the editor of Fast Company Magazine offered ‘Twenty Predictions for the Next Twenty Years’.

All of those stories pale in comparison to the return of terrorism to the workplace at a holiday party at 11 AM on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California.

Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to his new daughter and lots of attention was paid to the section on sharing his wealth.  Carmine Gallo of Forbes took closer look and noted that the letter read like a great speech.

“As you’ve probably read by now Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan welcomed a daughter into the world in a very big way – with the creation of a new initiative to donate 99% of their Facebook shares ($45 billion currently) to philanthropy. That’s the headline. I was struck, however, by how the open letter to their daughter read more like a speech than a letter. It was meant for the eye…and the ear. It was meant to inspire a generation to commit itself to giving and to making the world a better place.

“Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,” the letter begins. Read aloud at an average speaking pace, the 2,200-word letter takes about twelve minutes to recite, the ideal amount of time for a good speech (many of the most notable speeches in recent history clock in at 15 minutes or less).

Zuckerberg’s hope for his daughter’s generation provides the theme of the letter, a headline that fits into one short sentence. In bold letters, Zuckerberg writes:

“Advancing human potential and promoting equality.”

Amanda Platell of The Daily Mail offered an alternate version.

“Let’s start with the ‘friends’ you may have on Facebook. Do not confuse them with the friends you should trust in the real world. Many will barely know you, plenty may be jealous, others will be insincere and spiteful…

If I have learned anything from running Facebook, it’s that there is no such thing as privacy any more. After all, that’s how I made our billions!

Come to think of it, perhaps we won’t give you a computer until you’re 18, just to be safe. Love, Dad.”

On Thursday the Dan Lamothe reported on the groundbreaking change in staffing policy at the Pentagon.

“Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Thursday that he is opening all jobs in combat units to women, a landmark decision that would for the first time allow female service members to join the country’s most elite military forces.

Women will now be eligible to join the Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces and other Special Operations Units. It also opens the Marine Corps infantry, a battle-hardened force that many service officials had openly advocated keeping closed to female service members.

“There will be no exceptions,” Carter said. “This means that, as long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before.”

Robert Safian, the editor-in-chief of Fast Company magazine marked the twentieth anniversary of the publication with ‘Twenty Predictions for the Next Twenty Years’.

“We celebrate birthdays to remember all that has gone before, and also what is to come. This month, with issue No. 201, we recognize Fast Company’s 20th anniversary by looking toward the future. The dynamic change of the past two decades is just a warm-up for what is still to come.

I have used the phrase Generation Flux to describe this era of transition. Because the changes are coming so fast, there is a rising premium on our ability to adjust, to be adaptable in new ways. This can be scary for some, but it is also undeniably exciting, and for those prepared to embrace this emerging reality, the possibilities are tantalizing.

What follows are 20 observations that we believe will hold fast in the years ahead. They are predictions and, as such, are fraught with limitation and supposition. None of them, on their own, is shocking. That is by design. In combination, though, they outline a world of tomorrow where work is still personal, computing is still social, and knowledge is still power. And where the rules for success will be ever-changing.”

Bouree Lam covered the optimistic economic report from the Labor Department on Friday.

“The November jobs report is out, and it’s meeting what were moderately high expectations. The figures from the Labor Department show that the unemployment rate remained at 5 percent and the economy added 211,000 jobs in November. Jobs were added in construction, health care, and “professional and technical services”—the Labor Department’s term for an assortment of white-collar jobs. Among those, the construction sector showing particularly strong growth, adding 46,000 jobs.”

On Wednesday morning a group of colleagues went to work at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. As they were taking a break, preparing for a holiday celebration, one of their team and his wife, both heavily armed, entered the room and changed lives forever.

In 2014 there were 404 workplace homicides, 80% were shootings. The ‘mass shooting’ in San Bernardino was the fourth of this year.

Yesterday the editors of The New York Times published an editorial on the front page of the paper, ‘End the Gun Epidemic in America’.

I’m done with the retailers who give away guns to the first 200 customers on Black Friday. And I’m not comfortable with my cubicle mates carrying weapons to work. The workplace is a place to create, engage and perhaps follow a dream. Fear and hostility have never been a productive part of life @work. The last time leading by fear worked was in the mid-20th century Catholic grammar school classroom.

“It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.”

On March 4, 1933 newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his inaugural address. The familiar phrase, “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself..” has been whispering from the back of my mind since Wednesday and I think it’s particularly relevant to our political conversation today.

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

 

 

 

The week@work – Jobs report, valuing low-skilled workers, succession in fashion and another college scorecard

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work ended with the release of a disappointing September jobs report. On Thursday, an English instructor and restaurant server in Las Vegas shared her views on the value of unskilled labor. In the world of fashion the transition in leadership at Ralph Lauren was the most publicized succession news, but a number of fashion houses are facing business continuation challenges. And, potential college students have one more metric to use to select a college, the Obama administration’s ‘College Scorecard’.

Patricia Cohen provided a detailed analysis of the September jobs report from the Labor Department.

“The Labor Department found that the jobless rate held steady at 5.1 percent in September, but wage gains stalled, the labor force shrank and employers created many fewer positions than they had been averaging in recent months. While the latest report is only a snapshot of the economy and the weakness may ultimately prove fleeting, it made clear that ordinary workers are still failing to take home the kind of monetary rewards normally expected from a recovery that has being going on for more than six years.”

The low skill areas of the economy continue to be the hardest hit. It’s this group that was the topic of an opinion piece by Brittany Bronson, an English instructor with a perfect view to comment from her other job as a restaurant server. She posed the question, do we value low-skilled work?

“We’re raised, in the culture of American capitalism, to believe certain things, without question, namely that the value of work is defined by the complexity of the task and not the execution of it, that certain types of work are not worthy of devoting a lifetime to.

The labels “low-skilled” or “unskilled” workers — the largest demographic being adult women and minorities — often inaccurately describe an individual’s abilities, but play a powerful role in determining their opportunity. The consequences are not only severe, but incredibly disempowering: poverty-level wages, erratic schedules, the absence of retirement planning, health benefits, paid sick or family leave and the constant threat of being replaced.

…When you witness a great restaurant server or see a particularly effective janitor at work, you aren’t observing a freak talent, but someone who took the time to learn his or her job and improve on it. Now imagine if more “low-skilled” workers were given the compensation, job security and encouragement to do the same.”

The conversation about valuing the work of low skilled labor has recently centered around raising the minimum wage. While important, it plays into the narrative that value is validated by the size of a paycheck. Ms. Bronson addresses the bigger issue.

“But the more difficult challenge is to redefine the language and perceptions that trap large segments of reliable workers in poverty. All work can be executed with skill, but denying that fact is useful to those who justify the poor treatment of, and unfair compensation for, millions of workers.

Convincing those workers that their treatment is temporary, that if they just keep working harder, learn to do their tasks more quickly, more efficiently, more fluidly, they will eventually surpass it — this is a myth we can’t keep telling.”

On the other end of the economic spectrum, Nikki Baird examined the implications of the transition at the Ralph Lauren company as its namesake and leader leaves his chief executive officer position.

“Ralph Lauren, the company, will undergo a critical transition as its namesake founder steps down, to be replaced by the former president of Old Navy , Stefan Larsson. The transition comes at an interesting time for high-end fashion brands, and for the Ralph Lauren brand in particular.

It’s always tricky when a personality-driven brand’s primary personality steps down, though granted in this case, Mr. Lauren will remain the company’s chief creative officer. New blood means new opportunities, and even brands with very established values and specific lifestyle appeal can lose relevancy during a leadership transition.”

“But Ralph Lauren is making this transition in the midst of a much larger change happening within specialty retail, a change driven by the rise of the internet and consumers’ cross-channel shopping behaviors, and exacerbated by consolidation in the department store landscape.”

The challenge of leadership continuation is not restricted to the fashion industry. Many of the changes that have occurred in other business sectors can trace a direct line to disruption from players outside traditional marketing and delivery channels. Now the spotlight shifts to the world of fashion as a generation of designers departs and executive recruiters seek leaders who will be both relevant in imagination and design, and grow revenue in an increasingly competitive global, digital market.

“The question of succession is a pressing one for many major brands, not just labels with leaders d’un certain âge (Karl Lagerfeld, of Chanel and Fendi, is in his 80s; Giorgio Armani, 81). Even among young designers, turnover is a regular occurrence.”

“The responsibilities of branding in a rapidly changing digital age — not necessarily the skills honed in fashion colleges 20 or 30 years ago — have put a new premium on youth and comfort in the digital space.”

“If a brand is not meaningful through the screen, there is very little hope that you can really build a success,” Ms. de Saint Pierre said. “I think we are at a time when the majority of the consumers are coming from non-Western countries. Their education to luxury, their education to brands has not been generational. It has been through a screen. This is a major shift of paradigm for the 21st century, and this is not going to change.”

The last story of this week@work comes from James Stewart, ‘College Rankings Fail to Measure the Influence of the Institution’.

“The bottom line is that no ranking system or formula can really answer the question of what college a student should attend. Getting into a highly selective, top-ranked college may confer bragging rights, status and connections, but it doesn’t necessarily contribute to a good education or lifelong success, financial or otherwise.”

The week@work – How to live wisely, raise strong women, the value of a liberal arts education and more

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

It’s that time of year, ‘back to school’. It doesn’t matter if you are preschool or college, your local retail outlet is ready to meet every consumer need to outfit you or your dorm room. It’s also ‘back to work’ for those returning from vacation ( if you are one of the six in ten who took some leave this summer). There was a lot going on this week@work. Here are a few stories to get your Monday morning office conversations going.

Harvard professor Richard J. Light, the author of a 2001 book, ‘How to Make the Most of College’ asked New York Times readers to imagine they were dean for a day in a new article, ‘How to Live Wisely’. Before you skip to the next paragraph, stay with me. His questions have relevance for all leaders.

“Imagine you are Dean for a Day. What is one actionable change you would implement to enhance the college experience on campus?

I have asked students this question for years. The answers can be eye-opening. A few years ago, the responses began to move away from “tweak the history course” or “change the ways labs are structured.” A different commentary, about learning to live wisely, has emerged.

What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions?”

Once we leave college and begin to move ahead in our careers these questions become even more critical in our quest of life long learning.

Professor Light offers “five exercises that tackle the big questions”. Number three:

“I call this the Broad vs. Deep Exercise. If you could become extraordinarily good at one thing versus being pretty good at many things, which approach would you choose? We invite students to think about how to organize their college life to follow their chosen path in a purposeful way.”

Rephrase this one in respect to your career preparation. Have you organized your life around your choice to develop an expertise or be more of a generalist?

The next story may be too late for some struggling small colleges, but Forbes magazine reported ‘That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket’. ( Full disclosure here, I have one of those ‘useless’ degrees and have found it extremely complementary to my career choices.)

“Engineers may still command the biggest salaries, but at disruptive juggernauts such as Facebook and Uber, the war for talent has moved to nontechnical jobs, particularly sales and marketing. The more that audacious coders dream of changing the world, the more they need to fill their companies with social alchemists who can connect with customers–and make progress seem pleasant.”

Liberal Arts = Social Alchemy? Has a six figure ring to it.

On the millennial front this week there were two stories in The New York Times. The first reported on a new Pew Research Study which found that millenials are less likely to leave the nest.

“In 2010, according to the study, 69 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds lived independently. During the first four months of this year, just 67 percent of that same age group was living independently. From 2010 to April 2015, the share of young adults living in their parents’ homes has increased to 26 percent from 24 percent, the study said.”

For those who have left the nest to build their own, another Times report found ‘Millennial Men Aren’t the Dads They Thought They’d Be’.

“Young men today have aspirations of being hands-on fathers as well as breadwinners — supportive husbands who also do dishes.

But as they enter that more responsibility-filled stage of life, something changes: Their roles often become much more traditional.

Millennial men — ages 18 to early 30s — have much more egalitarian attitudes about family, career and gender roles inside marriage than generations before them, according to a variety of research by social scientists. Yet they struggle to achieve their goals once they start families, researchers say. Some researchers think that’s because workplace policies have not caught up to changing expectations at home.”

This research and story is one to follow as this generation now makes up the largest % of the workforce. As they progress in their careers it will be interesting to see if attitudes begin to align with work/life policies.

Amy Joyce reporting in the Washington Post poses the question: ‘Are you holding your own daughter back? Here are 5 ways to raise girls to be leaders.’ This is another must read article with research backed practical suggestions for parents to avoid gender bias.

“Think you’re raising your daughter to be a strong leader? Look more closely: You, and the people around her, may unwittingly be doing just the opposite.

Teen boys, teen girls, and, yes, even parents have biases against girls and women as leaders, new research from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and its Making Caring Common project found.

Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist who runs the Making Caring Common project, said he was “surprised by the extent of it … how gendered both the boys’ and the girls’ responses were.”

Weissbourd decided to look at bias as part of the larger goal of helping children learn to be kind. “We were concerned that biases get in the way of people caring about and respecting other people, so our initial study was just looking at biases,” he said. “And one of the striking findings that emerged was gender bias.”

And the last story is related to the photo in the header. Erica Murphy, editorial assistant at Levo shared ‘7 Things I Learned About Life From Completely Unplugging’. (This one’s for you – the 4 in 10 who have not taken vacation this summer) My two favorites (you can read the rest) – “No one cares & a tech free world does exist”.

“When you live in a big city like New York, you forget that people out there do lead simple lives. And honestly? It’s not so bad. I don’t think I could deal with no running water all the time, but it’s nice to be out in the country sometimes and just relax. Maybe Potter County isn’t on your radar, but it’s the same idea as finding a nearby park and leaving your phone at home. Or maybe you go hiking for the day and really connect with nature. With our lives getting more hectic every day, it’s important to find that time for yourself to decompress.”

Hoping you find time to unplug this week@work.

The week@work – Apple’s diversity problem, top cities for worker satisfaction, college is not a commodity and AstroSamantha returns to earth

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work we welcomed astronaut, Sam Cristoforetti, back to the home planet, and female senior executives at Apple to the Worldwide Developers Conference stage. A former Ivy League president reminded us that college is not a commodity and we learned where we should be living to have the best opportunity for job satisfaction.

Sam Cristoforetti, aka AstroSamantha, returned to earth and the steppes of Kazakhstan on Thursday. Her fan base grew to  558.1K followers on Twitter during her 199 days in space. Now that she has returned, we will miss her end of day wishes: “Buona notte dallo spazio.” Welcome home, Captain Cristoforetti.

The LA Times covered the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, taking note of the participation of senior, female executives:

“Apple Music, new operating systems and a smarter Siri were front and center at Apple Inc.’s Worldwide Developers Conference, but it wasn’t a new product that got people talking — it was women.

During Monday’s keynote presentation, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Internet services, and Susan Prescott, vice president of product marketing, took the stage to announce new developments with Apple Pay and a news reading app. It was the first time that Apple has had female executives on stage at any of its major events since at least the launch of the first iPhone in 2007.”

In an interview with Mashable prior to the meeting, Apple CEO, Tim Cook shared responsibility for the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley:

“Cook doesn’t subscribe to the idea that women just don’t want to be involved in tech — calling that argument a “cop-out.”

“I think it’s our fault — ‘our’ meaning the whole tech community,” he says. “I think in general we haven’t done enough to reach out and show young women that it’s cool to do it and how much fun it can be.”

If you are interested in working for Apple, the good news is San Francisco is at the top of ‘Forbes Top Cities for Employee Satisfaction’.

“Topping the list is San Francisco, where a largely tech-focused workforce finds the deepest levels of satisfaction with their work. In fact, several California cities can claim deeply engaged workforces, as San Jose and San Diego round out the top three spots on this ranking.

Many smaller cities fare well for employee satisfaction as well. Salt Lake City, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, and Oklahoma City all make the cut. Major east coast mainstays Boston and Washington, D.C. have satisfied workforces as well, as does the Pacific Northwest’s tech flagship, Seattle.”

Hunter Rawlings, former president of Cornell University and current president of the Association of American Universities disputed the view that college is a commodity.

“A college education, then, if it is a commodity, is no car. The courses the student decides to take (and not take), the amount of work the student does, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, her participation in class, his focus and determination — all contribute far more to her educational “outcome” than the college’s overall curriculum, much less its amenities and social life. Yet most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television.

Students need to apply themselves to the daunting task of using their minds, a much harder challenge than most people realize, until they actually try to do it. To write a thoughtful, persuasive argument requires hard thinking and clear, cogent rhetoric. To research any moderately complex topic requires formulating good questions, critically examining lots of evidence, analyzing one’s data, and presenting one’s findings in succinct prose or scientific formulas.”

The Atlantic’s Michael Levitin reflected on ‘The Triumph of Occupy Wall Street’.

“Nearly four years after the precipitous rise of Occupy Wall Street, the movement so many thought had disappeared has instead splintered and regrown into a variety of focused causes. Income inequality is the crisis du jour—a problem that all 2016 presidential candidates must grapple with because they can no longer afford not to. And, in fact, it’s just one of a long list of legislative and political successes for which the Occupy movement can take credit.”

And finally, for all you sports fans, the US Women’s National Team began their quest for soccer’s world cup with a win over Australia and a draw with Sweden.  Caitlyn Kelley, writing in The New Yorker, ‘The Hope Solo Fiasco’, asked the question on the minds of many loyal followers, “Am I going to have to root for Hope Solo if I want to root for Team U.S.A.?”

“This summer it will be sixteen years since the U.S. women last won the World Cup, which was hosted in the United States. The success of the tournament—not just the fact that the American women took home the trophy but that they did it in front of packed stadiums and record millions of television viewers—was an affirmation of the value of Title IX. Thanks to that piece of legislation, we want and expect women to have the same opportunities as men in sports. We should hold women athletes—and their organizations—equally accountable for mistakes, too.”