Deciding what to do next - How to design a career, business or education

Two article from Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist have been lingering in my drafts for some time. They were good articles, but I was not sure how to apply them to anything I was doing. My last post on design thinking and business got me to thinking about them again. This is still framing the question.

One article talked about how to decide what to do next. The focus is career-wise, which is Ms. Trunk's forte, but it can also be applied organizational-wise. The question is how to bridge and combine the two. Her example is Pastor Tony Morgan, chief strategy officer at NewSpring Church, whose blog mixes careers and church. In his book, Killing Cockroaches, he tells the story of when he was a city manager, and he was in the middle of running a meeting, and he heard a woman down the hall scream about a cockroach. So he got up from the meeting and killed the cockroach.

As Ms Trunk tells us, Really, all time management discussion is about this: How to know when to kill cockroaches and when not to. It's about why we spend time doing small, stupid stuff that is crawling around in front of us instead of the stuff that makes life meaningful. The dichotomy between wanting to make big-picture impacts on the world and being immersed in the more immediate issues bombarding us is a question for organizations and the individuals making up those organizations.What do we teach students about finding ways to make life meaningful, while still being able make it in the "real" world?

ALINA TUGEND wrote Shortcuts: Putting Yourself Out There on a Shelf to Buy in
YOUR MONEY back on March 28, 2009 in the New York Times. The article was about branding yourself in the job market. What caught my eye was Dan Schawbel, author of “Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success” (Kaplan, April 2009), advice that “Finding your niche is the key,” Which means:

Discover your passion and put it together with your expertise; create a “personal branding tool kit” (which may include a résumé, online profile, blog and portfolio of your work) that consistently reflects your brand; pitch your brand online and offline; and update and monitor any conversations about your brand.

At first glance this sounds in opposition to what was said in the last post, but not if we look at how to achieve this through his four-step process —

1. discover,


2. create,


3. communicate,


4. maintain.

All of which can be applied to hybrid thinking. The question is how do we teach this in classrooms? Ms Trunk points out that perhaps we should first consider changing how to lead in the new millennium.

Her reasons are that Generation Y has a lot of great traits, but classic, top-down leadership is not one of them. This is not a surprise: Because gen Y is the great teamwork generation. They did book reports in teams, they went to prom in teams, and they are notorious for quitting jobs in teams.

This should arguably make it easier to teach today's students the concepts of hybrid thinking and incorporate design thinking into students' career path.

Finally, I am including this TEDTalk (video) featuring Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation which points out that our assumptions about motivation are also questionable. For the same basic reasons he raises in the last post Roger Martin says, What's Thwarting American Innovation is Too Much Science. Dan Pink says that the problem is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Is the same thing true of education?

Innovation versus Idiots How to stay on the right road

Still catching up with some of the older pending posts in my draft bin. Found some from Harvard Business Publishing, especially this one by Bill Taylor.

The article of particular interest was Wisdom of Warren Buffett: On Innovators, Imitators, and Idiots in which he provides a hour-long television interview with Buffett in which he talks about the "natural progression" of how good new ideas go wrong. The "three I's":

1. Innovators, who see opportunities that others don't.
2. Imitators, who copy what the innovators have done.
3. Idiots, whose avarice undoes the very innovations they are trying to use to get rich.

Taylor tells us that, the problem, in other words, isn't with innovation -- it's with the idiocy that follows.

So how do we as individuals (not to mention as companies and societies) continue to embrace the value-creating upside of creativity while guarding against the value-destroying downsides of imitation? The answer, it seems to me, is about values--about always being able to distinguish between that which is smart and that which is expedient. And that takes discipline. Can you distinguish between a genuine innovation and a mindless imitation? Are you prepared to walk away from ideas that promise to make money, even if they make no sense?

So if Buffet warns us of the path to economic destruction, but what do we need to do to keep on the right road? Scott Anthony provides another insightful post, again from Harvard Business Publishing in which he discuses the Three Steps to Innovating in Struggling Industries.

1. Lower the cost of testing.
2. Creatively tap into outside resources.
3. Ruthlessly prune the portfolio.

Collaboration As Management Tool= Management as Collaboration Tool

The group Cool Tools & Ed Tech at Diigo.com introduced me to this article on Explaining Collaboration to Learners. The original source was found at cmduke's EdTechatouille. Although the article is geared toward the educational field, this blog takes the perspective that we are all learners.

Collaboration vs. Cooperation

A cooperative effort usually helps make up for a lack of time or resources; many people work on the task since it would take one person much longer to accomplish it. Dr. Reeves described cooperation as “divide and conquer.” Ultimately though, given time and resources, one person could run an entire assembly line single-handedly.

Collaboration means something very different. In contrast to cooperation, collaboration is more than simply making a contribution to the work effort. In a collaborative workspace, people amplify one another; the good work of one person magnifies the work of another. Individuals enhance the impact of contributions by others on the team; interaction and communication are necessary.

I have basically made bullets below out of the concepts dealt with more throughly in the article.

Apply Key Principles of Improv

• “Accept every offer.”
  
• “Make your partner look good.”
• “plus something.”
  
• “This is what I have, what can I add to it? How do I make my partner look good?”
• Focus on how you can contribute to the conversation.

Be Interested, Not interesting - it’s more important

• to be *interested* than it is to be *interesting*
• the person that’s interested contributes a great deal more.
  
• an interested person is curious about solutions other than the first one suggested.
• An interested person is more concerned about the process than their role in it.
• An interested person does more to amplify the people around them.

Communicate, Not Transmit

• Communication is more than simple transmission.
• Effective communication inherently involves translation, and the
• Translation must be done by the communicator, not the listener.
  

The next set of bullets were lifted directly from the article

So, what do learners need to know to better understand what collaboration really means?

• Collaboration absolutely requires the participation of two or more people; if you could accomplish the work by yourself, you’re cooperating, not collaborating.
• Collaboration Is enhanced by “accepting every offer” and “making your partner look good.” Focus on what you can add to what others have suggested rather than revising or fixing their ideas or solutions.
• Collaboration is facilitated by group members that focus on being *interested* rather than being *interesting* - be curious about others’ ideas, explore the possibilities, enjoy the process rather than focusing to quickly on the outcome.
• Collaboration demands bi-directional communication in which your ideas are shaped by the ideas of others; you must work to make sure your ideas are comprehensible.
  

Diggo Tags:cooperation collaboration

Designing Your Future and Your Success as a Team Effort

This blog does not depend on late breaking news, though posts are often put out late. Back on October 17, 2008 in the Acronym blog post Design and choice, Blogger Lisa Junker asked Rohit Talwar about the title of the new book he and his company collaborated with ASAE & The Center on, Designing Your Future:

Q: What do you think it means for an association to design its future?

We deliberately chose the word "design," because design is all about making a series of choices, about form, about functionality, and about how you assemble the components. That was very much what we wanted to get the associations thinking about--a design-led approach rather than a formula-led approach. The nature of design is, you ask yourself a lot of questions on the journey, and you make a lot of choices. So, we wanted [association executives] to think about that and to recognize that this was all about making choices, asking yourselves tough questions about every aspect of what you do and then making choices about how you're going to respond. That's why we chose this notion of designing your future rather than implying there was simply a future to be chosen. You could create it, and you have the power to create it.

Rohit Talwar's thoughts seemed to combine well in my mind with Sam Davidson's, A Thought on Leadership: Defining Success. The inspiration for these thoughts goes even further back to August 27, 2008 from The Other Side of the Pillow - Official CoolPeopleCare.org Blog.

Sam Davidson wrote that everyone knows what it looks like when we're successful. What I am finding greater connection with is the concept at CoolPeopleCare, that one key metric for success is the depth of stories that emerge from our work.

We are successful when we hear from people about how our content, products and resources have helped them change the world. Therefore, we all work towards this end, each of us doing our part, performing our tasks in order to help others make a difference. That's the same page we're all on. And we all know it.

What happens many times is that people would be on the same page, if they only knew what that page looked like. Therefore, there's a deep need right when organizations form or start a new leadership cycle to have a candid and open discussion about how success is defined.

Are there any organizations like this in the real world of business? I came back to these concepts because of recent changes in my career and because I discovered one particular exemplar for what has been termed distributive leadership. The MIT Sloan School of Management invited Terri Kelly, President & CEO, W.L. Gore & Associates, who:

provides insights into the W.L. Gore Company, and explains its unique culture that encourages experimentation, risk taking and taking the long view Nurturing a Vibrant Culture to Drive Innovation.

The idea of leading by design through the creation of a common story that defines a role of beneficial change in the world rings true with me and will be explored further.

Leading Global Growth And Protecting What Matters Most - Irreconcilable Goals?

Now I have my own biases, which hopefully I can examine more thoroughly through this weblog. One of which is positively slanted toward technology and MIT. What I admire is that MIT combines the technological insights and scientific discoveries of their labs with the management and leadership of the Sloan School of Management. What is more is that they don't stay sequestered in an academic environment but venture out to help better the world and invite in those who have walked the walk. The question though is what walk exactly?

Recently MIT World had Ellen Kullman speaking on: Leading Global Growth by Protecting What Really Matters Most. The question I am asking myself is whether the same corporate entity can do both?

- Annotated diigo tags: MIT, business, sustainability, economics, management

ABOUT THE LECTURE:
After 205 years, DuPont has transformed itself substantially while remaining true to its character, suggests Ellen Kullman. “We're a company with a passion for science,” says Kullman. DuPont, which got its start making black powder for explosives, pursued chemicals for its first 100 years, but is now taking its science into energy, biotechnology and nanotechnology, with products and services in agriculture, nutrition, coating and color technologies, performance materials and safety and protection.

It was Ms. Kullman's assertion that Dupont's core values were:

• Safety
• Ethics
• Environment
• Respect for people and environment

Ms Kullman came up with examples of Dupont's commitment to corporate responsibility. It is a concept, however, that can be attacked from both sides of the political spectrum. One such example was its membership in the World_Business_Council_for_Sustainable_Development . This is also subject to debate. Dupont's commitment to the environment can be questioned.

Yet, despite such concerns, there is still a great deal to be learned from Ms. Kullman's talk. Ms Kullman focused on 7 principles that can be as readily adopted by change-agents and social-entrepreneurs as they are by corporate businesses.

7 principles

• 1. focus on opportunity not current capability
• 2. thrive on fast cycle time and feedback
• 3. communicate, communicate, communicate
• 4. go beyond assets tremendous opportunity beyond assets
• 5. open up business models
• 6. embrace future
• 7. think big think different

Ms Kullman emphasized Surrounding yourself with the right people with the right skills.

From the Leading Global Growth side of the question global exposure means global impact. To sustain the lead for growth meant looking to:

• Who is the customer. Listening and respect
• Interdependent innovation
• Collaboration without borders requires reciprocal relationships
• Recognizing that while technology and innovation are global humans needs are local
• That science and technology are not enough, you also need commitment.
• Finally, it requires optimism

Ms Kullman has the same bias that I do, that most problems are solvable and that science will help. Organizations seeking to bring about change need to address short term pressures in addressing long term needs. We must realize that people must see innovation to appreciate it.

She left the audience with some optimistic inspiration.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - antoine de saint-exupery

How to be a good manager: Be generous to everybody

One ongoing paradigm shift is looking to use my skills sets in new ways after I finish my current career. The question is not only what to do, but who to do it with. 50-plus entrepreneurs starting lifestyle businesses via RetirementRevised by Mark Miller back in May of this year provides some insights.

Ask someone over 50 what they want to do after retirement, and you may well get this answer: "Keep working!" Surveys suggest that more than 75 percent of the baby boom generation plans to keep working past traditional retirement age. But it's not likely that many will keep laboring away in Corporate America. Most boomers [...]

The "who" applies not only to the type of organization, which defines more than anything the what, the who is also the types of people within the organization as well. It has been discussed before, but Lela Davidson's article, also in May, on 4 Generations of Workers - Can You Relate? via Business Pundit provides another look at working in a multi-generational environment.

Today's workforce is a diverse mix of generations that each come with their collective background and value systems. Understanding their unique perspectives is important in a large organization where they are likely to be working side by side. Professor at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, Cristina Simón's study Generation Y and the Labor Market: Models for HR Management, address differences in generational values. Simón looked at our generations of workers, analyzed their values and suggested ways for businesses to get people working together.

Four Generations and Their ValuesTraditional Workers(born before 1946/over 60)

• Value loyalty and discipline.
• Tend to respect authority.
• Accomplished a lot
• Contributed to success under hierarchical systems of the past.

Baby Boomers (1946-1960/late 40s and up)

• Expect success.
• Created strong social change including
• The hippie movement,
• Feminism, and
• Civil rights.
• Optimistic and self-motivated.

Generation X (1961-1979/30s and 40s)

• Best academic training and international experience in history.
• Breaking with traditional patterns, including
• Creating informal work environments
• Transforming corporate structures from hierarchical into horizontal and flexible entities.
• Personal initiative and a healthy dose of skepticism toward large organizations
• Produced a lot of entrepreneurs from this generation.
• Key value achievement of balance between career goals and quality of life.

Generation Y (starting from 1980/under 30)

• Lived their entire lives with information technology
• Have a hard time comprehending a world without it.
• Tend toward individual needs in favor of the community good
• Often demand a high level of autonomy.
• Lacks in loyalty, makes up for with the the value they place on relationships with co-workers and supervisors.

So this gives me potentials for what to do and who to do it with, next is how to do it in a ideal environment. One of my favorite sources of insight is Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk who wrote on How to be a good manager: Be generous again this past May. I am just summarizing what for me are some of the high points here. For the details, you need to go to the original post.

So the first rule, and probably the only rule of management, is to be respectful. A lot of questions I get from managers can be answered the same way: ask yourself if you are really being respectful.

Most people don't see management as listening and thinking, but that's what it is. Because that's what caring about someone looks like. Once you get to the point where you are connecting with the people you manage, and you are helping them get what they want from their job, you are in a position to change the world. Really.

All this reminds Ms Trunk of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

She comes up with her own version of Pseudo-Maslow Hierarchy of Job Needs in which you start with get a job, and you figure out, eventually, how to use your job to make the world a better place.

1. Physiological - Take care of keeping yourself fed and clothed.
2. Safety - Work on feeling secure that you can keep yourself employed, if something happens.
3. Love and belonging - Figure out how to get a job that respects your personal life.
4. Esteem – perform well at your job because you have the resources and the security to do so
5. Self-actualization – help other people reach their potential through creative and moral problem solving

I am at the point where I am directly quoting the original article more than I prefer for these posts, but Ms. Trunk says it so well that re-writing does not seem to be of any service.

So really, management is an opportunity to self-actualize. Some people will self-actualize by being artists, or writing code. Some people will self-actualize through management. Some, a combination.

But the point here is that being in management is an opportunity to grow spiritually and give back to the world in a way that is enormously fulfilling. If you allow it. You will need to set aside real time to make this happen. And you need to give generously. No big surprise there, though, because why else are we here, on this planet, except to give to each other?

Innovation At MIT Inspires Experimentation At Home

MIT is, I have no hesitation saying, synonymous with innovation. Not only with technical innovations, for products or projects but process innovations which are often of greater long term impact and implementable by more people in the organization. This post is experimenting with its own innovations. You can either just go ahead and see what happens or peek at the bottom.

The two resources that are combined here deal with organizational transformation and how to bring that about. One featuring Rebecca Henderson, the Eastman Kodak LFM Professor, MIT Sloan School, describes the process and one describes on ongoing program that helps to bring that objective about. These are part of a series on Strategies for Sustainable Business Practices. How to you get all the different components of a large complex organization to work together for a common goal and set of principles. The principles presented here at a somewhat more abstract level, though they are derived from practical applications, but other presentations within this series provide tested pragmatic solutions.

MIT World: Why It's So Hard to Do New Things In Old Organizations... - StumbleUpon - diigo Annotated diigo tags: management, innovation, sustainability, strategy, mit

• It is not just the technology, its how you use the technology, its how you use the technology together. Quite a few insights that sound logical when your hear them but so few organizations take the time to listen, even to themselves.

MIT ILP - MIT Industrial Liaison Program - Annotated

• Corporate Access to MIT


• Innovation is your lifeblood. Your company's survival depends on your ability to nurture growth with a continuous flow of generative ideas. Ideas for new products. Better processes. Superior services.


• MIT's Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) is your one-stop shop for MIT expertise. The vast resources of MIT - one of the world's outstanding research universities - can provide a rich vein of technological and managerial innovation that will help sustain your competitive advantage for decades to come.


• Leading companies from across the globe turn to the ILP for professionally coordinated access to MIT experts, research facilities, and information resources that will help them bring innovation to market. For its part, MIT has long held that leading, breakthrough research is the product of open, consultative dialogue. And the MIT faculty has come to expect its colleagues at the ILP to identify companies that can add meaningful input and perspective to important new areas of scientific inquiry.

The first link above goes to a StumbeUpon review of the target page with the link to the targeted page at the top. The second link is the same StumbleUpon page tied in with diigo. Subsequent sets of links go directly to the site or to the diigo account. If you decide to become a member of either tagging system, then there are more connection for you to explore by others. This post was created by tagging the sites first then creating the post from those tagged links. The idea is finding ways to make these separate components integrate together better. StumbleUpon, diigo and this weblog itself serve to organize and disseminate information, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The diigo account, under its "About" function under "More" in the diigo menu bar, indicates that this page is also found under my own delicious account and BlogLines through EURFORIC a member of my del.icio.us/network.

Strategic Leadership Whether New Blueprint, Pathway or Paradigm Does It Get You There?

Back on 2/7/08 Businesspundit wrote post on A Blueprint For Strategic Leadership

Strategy+Business has an excellent article about building an organization in ways that allow executives to flourish.

The challenge of leadership is not what it used to be. For the past few decades - at least since the genre-defining book Leadership by historian James MacGregor Burns was published in 1978 - writers on business and society have understood that the quality of a leader's character makes all the difference.

But for all the sophistication of the experts, for all the books published on the subject, there is still no definitive consensus on the most effective style of leadership.

One of my favorite books, "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done," preaches that the job of a leader is to get the right people in the right places. Organizational design is often overlooked, but I think it is an important factor in any successful business.

Another perspective by Linda Bryant of the Nashville Business Journal, lends support to that idea that getting the right people to the right place is important, but through education -

Management today less about telling, more about teaching.
Maintaining a highly-motivated, productive workforce is something every small business wants, but it can be an elusive goal.

"A lot of organizations struggle with it," says Mark Marshall, an instructor in the University of Phoenix program and vice president and director of professional services at Lee Hecht Harrison, a national leadership consulting firm with offices in Nashville. "Much of the solution comes down to the employee understanding how they fit into an organization," Marshall says. "You need to make sure people know how they fit in and how they contribute to the overall success of the company."

These two perspectives seem to be different sides of the same coin. Leaders can be responsible for complex and often large organizations requiring multiple forms of talent to operate. Today's leader must inspire others to follow his or her vision. The people making up that multitude of talent may know their own individual field, but look to others to communicate and implement a larger vision. Putting it all together to reach one common goal is a talent of leadership. A new way of looking at this is InnoExecution.

Helping To Pave Over The Health Equity Gap

As a quick look would likely show, this weblog has a high regard for the work that is being done at MIT. I only recently learned of their motto and its meaning though. This weblog has long held the view that social-entrepreneurs and activists have a good deal to learn from business and private-entrepreneurs. MIT is taking a lead in making that a reality. They are now applying that effort to global health care.

Mens et Manus - Home (Annotated with diigo)

Welcome to mens et manus

mind and hands describes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology approach to learning by doing. Part of a rich tradition of real-world engagement at MIT, mens et manus may be more important than ever as an approach to transforming the world by combining rigor, innovation, action and learning. Start here to join some exciting projects emerging at MIT, and to nurture new ones.

Their current focus: global health delivery (learn more)

Dean's Innovative Leader Series - MIT Sloan School of Management Corporate Connection

Guy Kawasaki 's The Art Of The Start Can Apply To Paradigm Pathways As Well

Although Guy Kawasaki is well-known in the web 2.0 world, my introduction to him has been more gradual. The first introduction to him and his work being through blog.guykawasaki.com in the So Money (of any currency) Can Buy Happiness post. Then through the ChangeThis site in the Optimism Is Not For Wimps post.

Guy Kawasaki's contribution is ChangeThis :: The Art of the Start

A former Apple Fellow and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Guy talks about up-starting a start-up. A sneak preview from his upcoming book, "The Art of the Start." Guy encourages entrepreneurs to make meaning, make mantra, and get going. According to Kawasaki, some examples of making 'meaning' are: make the world a better place, increase the quality of life, right a terrible wrong, and prevent the end of something good. Plus, his brilliant FAQ's (frequently avoided questions) will answer almost all your fears about starting a new business.

All of which are goals that this weblog can support. More recently, the topic of discussion in an The Entrepreneurial Mind post was again Guy Kawasaki

Guy offered many pearls of wisdom, but one of the best that I had not heard from him before was this:

"An old Chinese proverb says this: 'If you wait by the river eventually the body of your enemy will float by.'"

Dr. Cornwall sees this as advising us that,

Too many entrepreneurs are impatient and impulsive. They lock themselves into a cat and mouse game with competitors. In doing so, they become too clever by half. Put your energy into your employees and your customers.

Good things take time. It takes time to build a successful business and it takes time to build wealth. Take the high road, work hard, stick to your vision, make your customers your evangelists, and all those competitors you are obsessing about will take care of themselves.

It probably best though to let Guy Kawasaki do the talking himself which he does in this Art of the Start video.

diigo tags: advice, business, entrepreneurship, learning, management

Define Who You Are For Yourself Before Defining For Others

A previous post dealt with having, "your organization's portrayal or public face firmly established in the mind of all of your members." What that is can be based on one of two foundations either:

• What You Love
• or
• Who You Are

Sam Davidson gives his perspective on advise from Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist.

CoolPeopleCare | Penelope's Advice: Do What You Are
Should you do what you love or do what you are? What if both of those change?

Penelope Trunk, whom I had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago in Madison,has just written what I think is her best piece. She trashes the common career advice of, "Do what you love." She takes to task the impossibility and unfeasibility of this advice, claiming that:

"Often, the thing we should do for our career is something we would only do if we were getting a reward. If you tell yourself that your job has to be something you'd do even if you didn't get paid, you'll be looking for a long time. Maybe forever. So why set that standard? The reward for doing a job is contributing to something larger than you are, participating in society, and being valued in the form of money."

Sam continues his philosophical musings.

CoolPeopleCare | But What If I Love Entrepreneurship?

Should I do what I love or do what I am? But what if I want to make my passion my profession?

Yesterday, I highlighted Penelope Trunk's recent condemnation of the career advice, "Do what you love." In its place she suggests that people "Do what they are." I agreed.

But I soon began to think about entrepreneurs. Many people embrace the notion of entrepreneurship in order to do what they love. They start jobs and companies in order to turn their passion into their profession.

So are they being misguided? Should they be steered away from trying to base a business on something they love?

Or should every entrepreneurship course be prefaced with Penelope's advice, steering budding starters away from basing a concept on a love and instead basing it on who they are?

Or, by only changing one word in a tired maxim, is Penelope really just saying the same thing?

The Businesspundit questions the ability of some of his generation's ability to meet the challenges of being an entrepreneur.The Businesspundit: Not Built For Business: Are We The Greatest Generation?

David Brooks calls the years when members of my generation wander in their 20s "the odyssey years." We move between careers, get our traveling itch done and experiment with startups. Ben Casnocha, an entrepreneur who hasn't even reached his "odyssey years" yet, encourages exploration but not without setting goals-no doodling on Taco Cabana bags and Twinkie wrappers, people. In the August issue of Maxim, Mark Cuban championed an even more daring quest in a feature on "CEO Secrets."

As this post is already getting long enough, I am going to make additional comments at another post.

Forwarding webpages with highlights and sticky notes, powered by Diigo

Passion Alone Is Not Enough For You Or Anybody Else

Love Your Job? That Doesn't Mean Youre Better at It - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Love Your Job? That Doesn’t Mean You’re Better at It according to a recent article by Melissa Lafsky via the Freakonomics Blog.

"So is it really a fact that happiness breeds a better worker?

"Not necessarily, according to Wright State University psychologist Nathan Bowling. In a new paper called “Is the job satisfaction–job performance relationship spurious? A meta-analytic examination,” he re-assesses conclusions from five previous meta-analyses of the Big Five personality traits. He also conducts his own meta-analysis of the issue, focusing on studies that used data from thousands of employees and controlled for work-related self-esteem (how valuable employees think they are) and locus of control (how much they think they’ll be rewarded for a job well done)."

"His conclusion is right out of a Freakonomics lesson in causation vs. correlation:"

"My study shows that a cause and effect relationship does not exist between job satisfaction and performance. Instead, the two are related because both satisfaction and performance are the result of employee personality characteristics, such as self-esteem, emotional stability, extroversion and conscientiousness."

So the fact we have passion alone is not only not enough to sustain us through the ordeals we are likely to find ahead, its not enough to get anybody to want to keep us around. It seems to be more a matter of who you are in terms of values and character than what you want. Then again who your are dictates to a great extent what it is that you want out of life. People who are passionate are not necessarily good at what they do, but so often I find that people who are good at what they do are passionate.

Knowing Its A Rose By Any Other Name Doesn't Make You A Horticulturist

Businesspundit: Management by Semantics

Businesspundit had an interesting post that is applicable both the my recent posting on tagging or labeling and to business communication. It also mentions Richard Feynman, who is one of my favorite people.

Richard Feynman's father told him an interesting story about words and meanings:
See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird.

In Rob's perspective the problem with many in business today is that,
"They know business ideas in the sense that they know what they are called, and what their definitions are, but they really don't understand them. They can't explain them or apply them. "

"Thinking that you know and understand something when you really only know what it is called is exactly the type of thing that gets incompetent people promoted. And it's probably more dangerous than not knowing the terminology in the first place."

Language has been another topic of interest for this weblog. This post brings its proper application a bit closer to the street and everyday use. Its hard enough to communicate when your face to face with someone and have that other 80% of communication through body and eyes to fall back on, but when your communicating across continents and cultures the challenge is even greater. There is still that danger of getting sucked in by those who sound or look like experts but are all veneer and no substance. On the other hand, if you do manage to develop some substance then how do you make sure it gets through all the other flash on the web?

Blocking Your Own Paradigm Shifts

(Are you) Getting in your way? via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 11/29/07

Seth Godin asks the question, So, as a percentage of the time you spend at work, what percent would you say qualifies as "marketing"?

Now Seth has a definition which is likely more expansive than that of most people.

"I'm going to count educating yourself, networking, creating products, creating media, spending money, building networks of sneezers, inventing great stuff, executing great stuff, motivating front-line people and telling stories."

Based on this criteria I do a good deal of marketing both at my dayjob and with my online persona. My work depends upon constant communication. In some ways I do more marketing of projects than I do managing of projects. Often, it is the same thing. The best management takes good marketing. At least if I use Seth's definition.

The other two choices according to Seth are:

• Selling your ideas internally/waiting for approval
• and
• Dealing with the chaff of responding to inbound junk and wasted time in meetings.

Which is also true, and since I work for government, perhaps even more so. Seth doesn't attribute this to environmental or organizational factors though. I am guessing he sees the individuals he is talking about as change agents. Since they are supposed to be changing, improving, enhancing the image of who they work for in a substantial way, not just veneer, then they should be able to do the same for themselves. Sometimes the most needed personal paradigm shift is to market ourselves to ourselves.

Like Trying to Milk a Fish

The Entrepreneurial Mind wrote Like Trying to Milk a Fish on 11/30/07

The concept of social entrepreneurship has also been explored a number of times by this weblog. Jeff Cornwall introduces us to social entrepreneur Sam Davidson has a thoughtful reflection who at his blog tells us about what it is like being an early-stage entrepreneur.

Those who know me know that I never planned on being an entrepreneur, but that I enjoy every single minute of it. There's risk, there's reward, there's freedom, there's excitement, there's disappointment, there's opportunity - and that's just Monday before lunch. And so when people ask me what it's like to start my own company and be a social entrepreneur, I tell them:

"It's like trying to milk a fish."

Sam is a co-founder and President of CoolPeopleCare

Below is a short video from their website on who they are.

Is What You Do Who You Are?

Seth's Blog: End your tasks, end your job?

"It's no wonder, then, that groupthink and politics and natural defenses kick in every time strategy is discussed."

One means of defining ourselves is by our job and the means of defining our job is what we do, what are our tasks? Sometimes that is hard to define. Certain tasks can be essential when working in a multi-discipline organization, however explaining how they relate to the overall enterprise can be a challenge. Especially, if they focus on organizational cohesion to move projects forward rather than direct application of a certain discipline.

As Seth asks, if your tasks, that which you do day in and out, ends does that end your job. If that job and those tasks have defined you, how do you then define yourself? As Seth points out, organizations often do a bad job at responding to this, depending on all too often on worn out paradigms. I am less optimistic about his ideas about creating change within the organization. Most upper management would not go for it and neither would most of the line staff. I believe it is something one will have to do for oneself.

Making Personal Paradigm Changes to Make Social Paradigm Shifts

According to Entrepreneurial Mind Baby Boomers and Millennials are two generations that are over-represented in the ranks of entrepreneurs. As part of my own personal paradigm shift as a baby boomer I am moving away from government bureaucracy to some form of entrepreneurship, most likely social. Not sure what form just that I would not want to do absolutely nothing and will at sometime look for something different. The Millennials are the ones light years ahead of me in Web 2.0 and are far likelier to be working in areas in which I have interest. So would I be managing or working for them. A previous post took a look at the Yer's.

Social Entrepreneurship has been an ongoing topic of contemplation for the weblog. The ideas reflected in this site are also being considered by universities across the country. Part of the mission of this weblog is trying to determine how to best fit into such an environment. Previous to the above post Entrepreneurial Mind raised the question, Is Social Entrepreneurship, Just Entrepreneurship? Quoting the visiting Dr. Morris and Dr. Brooks of Syracuse University

"Mike Morris stressed that it is important to keep in mind that entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship no matter what the organizational context. I could not agree more. Our program will have students taking a wide array of our standard entrepreneurship classes. We will be using the social entrepreneurship classes as a vehicle to interject experiential and service learning."

Arthur Brooks went on to give a working definition of social entrepreneurship:

"Process of creating value by bringing together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity, in pursuit of high social returns."

All of which I can and have agreed with in the past and continue to do so.

Transcending Economic Castes

Although it is not the primary purpose of this weblog, I will still contribute on occasions to the comments under the Marginal Revolution blog. One in particular was a post on the caste system in India.

One reader's comments struck me as being particular relevant for where we are today.

"The tribulations of Russia's economic liberalization teaches us that doing the right thing 'too quickly' can be sub-optimal in the wrong circumstances, posted by Nick seemed to me to be a very valid point.

It again raises a comparison with China which I originally did back at the Why the Left should learn to love liberalism post. Some comparisons seem obvious but some insights from those with more experience and education would be appreciated. George David of United Technologies provides some comparisons between India and China in this MIT Sloan video (don't remember exactly where but the entire video is interesting).

I realize that this was off on a bit of a tangent, but it seemed we are talking about economic systems and their sustainability. Cross comparisons of current systems seem more enlightening that overly in-depth analysis of a hopefully antiquated system.

Sounded something akin to the Law of Unintended Consequences though this time from the side of the unfettered capitalists. It also argues that understanding local culture is as important to creating beneficial paradigm shifts as understanding economic principals. Something that may be relevant to the study of the mosquito nets.