By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The unsparing tsunami of bad news created by the collapse of storied Wall Street banking firms has made its way 3,000 miles to the palm-studded campus of Stanford University.
“Every day, it only seems to get worse,” says Ben Sloop, 29, of Atlanta, one of 740 students seeking an MBA at an institution known for incubating tomorrow’s business stars. (Think Google’s founders.) “You wonder, ‘Wow, if I get laid off at one firm, it’s not like I can now go to another.’ ”

With his elite schooling, New York firms were an option. But now Sloop likes the feel of a job grounded in reality. So he’s thinking small.

This past summer, he worked for an online company in nearby San Francisco that helps consumers manage their bills. The fit seems right.

“This crisis has reinforced that I want to get back to fundamentals,” he says. “I want to be a part of something I believe in.”

That ’60s sentiment has supplanted the ’80s mantra “Greed is good,” famously uttered by Michael Douglas in the Oliver Stone parable Wall Street. Pursuing lucre doesn’t have its old shiny ring.

“I hope this shakeout will cause people to start doing what they love,” says Garrett Miller, 26, of Cherry Hill, N.J., whose pre-Stanford résumé included a stint in Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast.

Fellow MBA candidate Kate Jackson, 26, of Kettering, Ohio, spent the past months working for her family’s educational company, Rhythm, Rhyme, Results. “With less money in finance, maybe the right people will go into it,” she says. “It’s not about yachts, but living well and liking what you do.”

Whoa. Have today’s twentysomethings killed greed?

“Well, no, but let’s just say greed is on a long hiatus,” says Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune magazine, who recently co-wrote an analysis of the financial meltdown for sister publication Time headlined “The Price of Greed.”

“Greed tends to visit us in cycles,” he says. “Cars are the perfect example. In the ’70s, we drove big boats. The oil shock hit, and suddenly dinky Toyotas were cool. Gas prices went down again, and the ’90s brought us the ridiculous Cadillac Escalade. The key is to have time in between. You can’t go from austerity to greed in one step, because it’s horrifying.”

Serwer says today’s business school students will resurrect greed but in kinder guise.

“For today’s Type A person, the ideal is to create a viral non-profit website that helps poor people and allows you to get rich in the process,” he says with a laugh. “I admire this generation, they’re much more socially conscious than mine. But they do want to be rich. Or at least have a great house in the suburbs.”

Author Po Bronson witnessed Wall Street’s wildest days firsthand as a banker in the late ’80s. He says there will always be room in an economy for sharks.

“Institutions like Lehman (Brothers) may be going away, but I have a hard time seeing that cowboy mentality disappearing,” Bronson says. “We’ve been burned again and again, and nothing seems to change. There’s always somebody who thinks a little money is never enough.”

That said, Bronson does see a shift in the culture away from celebrating greed and toward embracing personal fulfillment.

“I think Sept. 11 changed things for a lot of people,” says Bronson, who told those stories in 2003’s What Should I Do With My Life?. “From that point on, people gravitated toward wanting both a connection to community and meaning in their life.”

That movement is apt to be accelerated by the current financial mess, says William Greider, national correspondent for The Nation, whose political essays were a longtime staple of youth-culture chronicler Rolling Stone.

“I’m not celebrating what’s happening here, but we have a chance to rescue the country from the brutally indifferent values that reigned on Wall Street,” he says. “This is a liberating time for twentysomethings. It’s their chance to stop and do what they really want. You only live once.”

Less greed, less cynicism

There’s evidence this generation figured that out before the recent implosion. They came of age during the dot-com boom and bust; none seem fazed by the prospect of having three or four careers in a lifetime. They have ringside seats to mounting concerns about the planet’s environmental stability. And though their Boomer parents reveled in a luxurious lifestyle that may now be the stuff of legend, most of them find consumerism uninteresting and unfulfilling.

“CEOs realize that in order to get the best and the brightest, they need to show their companies are socially engaged,” says David Eisner, CEO of the national service program AmeriCorps. “Some companies pledge to use employees to provide skilled assets to non-profits, while others spin off for-profit entities that help the disadvantaged.

“The accelerant to greed is cynicism. You can’t change things, so why bother?” he says. “We’re all a little bit greedy, but we’re seeing a lot less cynicism.”

Robert Fogarty heard greed’s call loud and clear a few years back when he traded his bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Oregon for a headhunting job on Wall Street.

“All I wanted was to make a lot of money and play that game,” says Fogarty, 25. “But then I had nightmares in which I was 60 and only had a bank account to show for 40 years of my life.”

He quit not a year into the job, signed on with AmeriCorps and today coordinates volunteer efforts out of the New Orleans mayor’s office. His salary has dropped from close to $80,000 a year to $10,000 (plus free housing), but he’s thrilled.

“In the finance world, the only thing tangible to me was the number at the bottom of a spreadsheet,” says the Omaha native. “Here, it’s different. I just spent 36 hours recently helping people help others when (Hurricane) Gustav headed this way. I was exhausted and elated.”

Emily Schiller, who grew up in Detroit, is wrapping up her MBA degree at another highflying business institution, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Her interests dovetail with this new profit-while-doing-good ethic: She wants to help corporations tackle efficiency issues while remaining admirable corporate citizens.

“Sure, I’m worried about the economy and finding a job that’s substantive vs. one that just pays the bills,” she says. “Hopefully I can still can have it all.”

Back at Stanford, MBA students echo that sentiment — chagrin mixed with hope.

“What used to be a stable thing, going into banking, now feels like going to work for a start-up,” says Lindsey Maynard, 26, of The Woodlands, Texas, a suburb of Houston. She worked for Morgan Stanley last summer, and will join the troubled firm’s Houston office after graduation.

‘Not great timing for us’

But for most business school students, the future will require adjustments to cope with the shrinking options in finance.

Former stage actor Miller and Roshni Jain, 26, from Milwaukee, are aiming at consulting giants Bain & Co. and McKinsey & Co. respectively, firms that stand to gain from the shift. Meanwhile, ex-Google business analyst Aldo King, 29, of Brownsville, Texas, will be working for Facebook next summer.

And some are even looking beyond the jobs their Stanford MBAs net them. Jain and Maynard both are pursuing joint MBA/education degrees that will allow them to shape higher ed at an administrative level. “I want to be in that world,” Maynard says.

But until then, it’s time to bear down. Even for this lucky lot, it’s going to be a tough ride.

“We sensed this Wall Street run wouldn’t go on forever,” says Mike Armstrong, 26, of San Diego, who worked at J.P. Morgan last summer. “So, it ended. Not great timing for us. But we’ll re-enter the job market with the skills we need. It’s no longer about making the big money, and that’s fine. It’s more about having a passion to help. I’m excited.”

That’s the rose-tinted view. King offers a more sober assessment of the challenges facing the MBA class of 2010.

“Every generation has things they need to fix from the generation that preceded them,” he says. “That’s just the way it is.”

I’m happy to welcome another guest blogger. She’ll remain anonymous for now so we’ll give her a pen name. I will tell you that KSS is a 28 year old client of mine and is happy to share some of her thoughts and experiences – ‘paying it forward’ as it were so that more people are assured they aren’t the only ones going through these transitions. Really, this post could be written by one of my 40 or 50 something clients too. You’ll see more posts from KSS as the weeks go by. Stay tuned!

Road Signs are for more than Driving, by Guest Blogger KSS
Several years ago, in the throes of my first real job and its ensuing demise, I randomly turned on my television and was immediately greeted by Oprah Winfrey. Never an Oprah devotee, I quickly decided to change the channel, but something inside me halted my impulse. “Wait”, “Listen” were the words emanating from within me. So, I did. Sure enough, the next thirty seconds profoundly changed my outlook.

For months I anguished over what to do or make of myself since my original intentions – broadcast journalism, followed by public relations – were glaringly unsuccessful. Interviewers repeatedly told me that I was a very bright, accomplished, mature prospect with “everything going for her”. Except, every time the door of opportunity finally inched open and gave me the sense I was about to enter that realm of career bliss, it slammed shut – hard, cold and definitively. It was as though the universe was laughing at me, fumbling around like a fool in search of someone else’s destiny. I could not understand how this was happening to ME. Why did all of my seemingly green lights suddenly turn yellow, then red?

I still don’t really know what the topic of Oprah’s show was that day. All I needed to see was those few precious seconds and obviously someone out there in the greater cosmos felt it necessary to bluntly put the message in front of me since I had been speeding past it all along.

Close-up and looking straight into the camera as though speaking directly to ME, Oprah said, “God speaks to us often, but we choose not listen. When we don’t listen, God speaks more loudly. When we still don’t listen, God yells.”

The hairs on my arms raised in alert. Could it be that I was refusing to see the very signs directly in front of me all along? Was it possible that the purpose, clarity and direction I had been praying for were always there? Yes, it seemed plainly so. The bumpy road of my first attempts to carve a niche for myself in the world were filled with all kinds of road signs – some of them cautions or warnings, others detours or alternate routes. At that moment, I realized I had been seeing only what I wanted to see and ignoring the messages put right in front of me because they did not correspond to the course I had assumed I would travel or the road map I thought I wanted for my life.

That was a defining moment for me. I realized that I had been given road signs to navigate my course all along and finally decided to heed them. That signaled the beginning of my process of self-discovery and it meant I had to follow my own unique path even if, at times, it seemed contrary to the exactness I had envisioned. Life, like a road, is not predictable. There are sharp turns, steep hills to climb and beautiful scenes to take in along the way. The road map is always within us and we have to be unafraid and honest with ourselves if we really want to access it. Road signs will always be there to guide us, especially when we’ve misplaced our road map. We just have to open our eyes and see them.

A few days ago, I was interviewed for an article about social networking at work… The article is now up on the Yahoo Hot Jobs site!

Social networking isn’t really news, but its use in the workplace is.

According to a new survey of human resources professionals by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the nation’s first outplacement consulting organization, 59% of companies don’t have a formal policy in place regarding the use of social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, at the office, perhaps because nearly half of those polled said surfing these sites isn’t a problem as long as employees are completing their work.

In terms of networking and finding out about career paths and to get a sense of different kinds of people and professional opportunities, I think social networking is fantastic. I’m all for the social networking sites because I believe there’s so much you can learn; and if you want to be accessible to headhunters, it’s great.

Just don’t overuse and/or abuse social networking. As an employer, I’d be incredibly disappointed if an employee were keeping a running tab on his whereabouts throughout the workday on any site. My perspective on that is that it’s like taking personal calls all day long.

Read the article

Daisy Swan & Associates – Summer 2008 Newsletter

What’s Inside:

• Welcome & Introduction, by Daisy Swan, MA, CPCC: The Los Angeles Career Counselor & Coach

• Survey: Complete our brief survey and be entered into our prize drawing!

• Updates: What’s New at Daisy Swan & Associates

• Recommended Reads & Web Sites

Welcome & Introduction, by Daisy Swan, MA, CPCC: The Los Angeles Career Counselor & Coach

Hello, Readers!

It’s been a momentous year, thus far, at Daisy Swan & Associates. You’ve probably reached that conclusion on your own, if you’ve read all of the notices about our events and programs! I’m so pleased to have been able to offer so many new programs, and to have served an ever-growing clientele – with the multiple live events that we’ve hosted, as well as the addition of new, talented coaches to our staff, we have been (and will be) able to serve hundreds of people this year.

Thanks to one of my dear clients, for so succinctly, clearly and concisely stating exactly my main purpose, with Daisy Swan & Associates: Help more people know that making a life – not just a living – is possible, no matter which LifeStage you happen to be in. This is not to imply that we can always get what we want, when we want it; sometimes we really do need to stay where we are or take the job that we don’t want to take, in order to get where we want to go. What we at Daisy Swan & Associates do, is help our clients sort through the confusion, the options, the ideas, possibilities and breakthroughs, to intentionally create, clear and walk a path. Sometimes these paths unfold in funny ways, and often things take longer than we expect – I’m learning that, myself!

I thought that by this time of year, I would have my new programs installed and operating with ease and simplicity…HA! I’m finding that I am not alone in discovering that our world is moving to a new rhythm – one which requires most of us to be as flexible as possible, and OK with things not going quite as we plan or expect. I have been reminded by some wise teachers that ‘We plan and then God laughs.’

What does all of this mean? It means that we need to keep our heads up, eyes open, and shoulders wide and broad, with feet firmly planted – but also able to move. I think of the beach, as I write this: If a big wave starts to roll in, and you’re standing on the shore with your attention somewhere other than on that fast-approaching swell, once it hits, you’ll end up on your butt. A lot of people have been doing just that – they are where they are, but are not really paying attention (or don’t want to pay attention) to the waves that are rolling in with gusto – and then they get knocked on their butts. In the coming months, my aim is to help more people uncover what’s happening in our world, and how to handle what’s going on…how to ROLL with the waves, and everything that is happening in our ever-changing lives! And to that end…

Survey: Complete our brief survey and be entered into our prize drawing!

…I’m linking a brief survey to this note, which I sincerely hope you will complete for me. As an incentive, we’ll be holding a drawing for all survey participants – two lucky winners will receive an initial two-hour consultation with me, free of charge. It should only take about a minute to complete – really.

This survey will help me to determine what to offer to you and your friends, family and/or colleagues in the future, so that we can all ROLL a little easier in the next few months, and the year ahead. I intend to deliver more programs at lower costs, to more people, and to truly offer a venue where people can meet others who are smart, creative and capable of doing amazing work. L.A. is a small town, but hard to get your arms around. The clients with whom I work are all fantastic people, and when they can all gather in one spot, they inevitably link up with new like-minded people. I love to build a sense of community, as well as helping people find their “people,” and the work or careers that they want. So please do help me with this survey, so that I can reach out and share my gift with more people. And along these lines…

Updates: What’s New at Daisy Swan & Associates

…I am planning to host an informal, networking mixer at some point in the early fall, for all of my current clients and their guests. Please stay tuned for the “official” announcement and details! If you have any suggestions, comments, or ideas regarding such an event, please feel free to include them with your survey.

I’ve been helping people to make sense of their lives and careers for years now, and I repeatedly hear certain questions that I needed a way to address, to aid people looking to make life changes discover new ways of finding what they want. To help simplify the new job search process, I’ve just posted my first eBook on my site, “Demystifying Technology for the Job Search.” Perhaps this will be helpful to you or others you know who are attempting to make changes in their lives or careers. Other eBooks will be hitting the site this year, along with new opportunities to learn about the issues faced by those in each of the LifeStages I’ve described on my site.

Over the years, I’ve worked with a multitude of creative people and people who would like to be more creative. To aid those people, I’ve invited Cathleen Rountree, B.F.A., M.A., Ph.D., Creativity Coach, to join Daisy Swan & Associates. Cathleen has an impressive breadth of experience and education to share with those of you who are interested in pursuing your writing or other creative ventures. Bev Weise, M.B.A., has also joined Daisy Swan & Associates. Bev is a sharp professional with years of experience working with leaders in business and law environments. You can read about all of our Associates on our web site.

Recommended Reads & Web Sites

Dara Torres, age 41, competes in her 5th Olympics

In June, I attended the International Conference & Exposition of the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). It was there that I heard Malcolm Gladwell speak about his upcoming book, due out in November, which I want to thank him for writing. It’s about the value of various types of talent development. And – thank you, thank you! – the value of LATE BLOOMERS and how our world of business and sports and arts is overlooking those whose talents develop over time. The book will certainly be another great read, especially for those of you out there who are realizing that most of us really hit our stride after 35…not to mention how many boomers are currently re-creating life after 50! There’s so much that we can do with our lives – who wants to stop at 60?!

The avid reader that I am, here are a few notable books that I’ve enjoyed, and think are particularly noteworthy in today’s life landscape:

“Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America”
by Marc Freedman, President of Civic Ventures

“Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World”
by Peggy Orenstein

“Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”
by Carol Dweck

“On Women Turning Thirty,” “…Forty,” “…Fifty,” “…Sixty,” and “…Seventy”
by Cathleen Rountree (One book for each decade!)

“Looking Around”
by Witold Rybczynski

“Creating True Prosperity”
by Shakti Gawain

“The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife”
by Marianne Williamson

And just in case you haven’t found the The Music Genome Project®, www.Pandora.com yet, I highly recommend it! I’m listening to my own radio station as I write. I’m sure that know you all know about TED already, but did you know about www.talk.biz? And for those of you with teens, you need to know about Vanessa Van Petten’s blog, “Teens Today.” This is a must-see resource if you have kids aged 11-25, or older!

Until I get to see or hear from each of you again, please enjoy the rest of your summer days! And keep an eye on those waves that life is tossing our way…

Daisy Swan

This article is from The New York Times
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: November 19, 2008

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That’s what unhappy people do.

Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research.

While most large studies on happiness have focused on the demographic characteristics of happy people — factors like age and marital status — Dr. Robinson and his colleagues tried to identify what activities happy people engage in. The study relied primarily on the responses of 45,000 Americans collected over 35 years by the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, and on published “time diary” studies recording the daily activities of participants.

“We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

But the researchers could not tell whether unhappy people watch more television or whether being glued to the set is what makes people unhappy. “I don’t know that turning off the TV will make you more happy,” Dr. Robinson said.

Still, he said, the data show that people who spend the most time watching television are least happy in the long run.

Since the major predictor of how much time is spent watching television is whether someone works or not, Dr. Robinson added, it’s possible that rising unemployment will lead to more TV time.

Daisy Swan & Associates upcoming career panel is a great way to learn about working in a variety of entertainment industry positions including the music industry and also how to transition out of these jobs. Guests will have the opportunity to talk informally with the panelists both before and after the discussion.

According to the 2008 ExecuNet Sixteenth Annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report, 40% of executives are dissatisfied with their current job. The Report also states that 44% of executives expect their age will negatively impact their ability to land a new position. And practically nowhere do these two statistics ring true more than in the entertainment industry.

At this July 10th “Navigating Career Change” Panel Discussion, Daisy Swan, MA, CPCC, “The Los Angeles Career Counselor & Coach,” will moderate a panel of entertainment industry professionals who will address the ways in which career change can often take shape. Attendees will receive practical tips and inspiration from these real people who have experienced real career change – while dealing with the attitudes and expectations of their entertainment industry colleagues and peers. Want to hear their stories? Join us at this event on July 10th!

Event: Navigating Career Change Panel Discussion: Overcoming Obstacles to Career Change in the Entertainment Industry
Presented by Daisy Swan, MA, CPCC: The Los Angeles Career Counselor & Coach
Date: Thursday, July 10, 2008
Time: 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Location: Jobing.com, 12100 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 320,
Los Angeles, CA 90025 (at Wilshire and Bundy)
Tickets Call 310-820-8877 or visit www.daisyswan.com

You have been in an “assistant” position for what seems like too long. You are ready to make a career change, but are unsure of how to proceed. You have achieved a level of success, and are ready to try something different and more meaningful. These are all self-truths that the July 10th panelists admitted to themselves at certain points in their entertainment industry careers, and they all successfully maneuvered through the necessary changes, in order to attain their ultimate goals.

The July 10th panelists include Hillary Kaye, who joined the William Morris Agency in 2007 as a corporate communications assistant, after a three-year stint in television development at production company, Katalyst Films; Gracelyn Brown, currently serving as the Vice President of Programming for MGM-HD, whose career was founded in brand strategy, at Innovation Protocol, and in marketing television stations, and creating and producing branded events and broadcast specials; Judy Cairo, an independent film producer in Los Angeles, who, 15 years ago, packed up her life and left her Southern home and first career phase, as a corporate-side producer for numerous local television stations and networks; Angela Fairhurst, whose career began in network television as a producer and line producer, but has transitioned into consumer marketing and product development, where she is currently the Executive Director for the Chambers Group, a creative marketing firm that does positioning and product development for large consumer product companies; and, Mary Oatman, who currently works as an elementary school band director, after 25+ years at NBC as a music supervisor and music consultant.

Tickets are $35 each for those who register by July 3, and $45 each thereafter and/or at the door. For more information or to register, please call 310-820-8877 or visit www.daisyswan.com

Article Source: Melissa Barber, Circuit City – City Life

The job market’s tough for new grads, and not only because of a faltering economy. Many employers dismiss today’s 20-somethings as the Entitlement Generation because they expect even their first entry-level job to offer them personal satisfaction, great benefits and high pay.

Really, young people are just seeking balance, says career strategist Daisy S. Swan, founder of Daisy Swan & Associates. This younger generation has seen how stressed modern workers can be, she says, and they hope to avoid a similar fate. “They want what a lot of people want, they just want it sooner.”

Equipping your grad for cubeland
First, however, they need to prove themselves, and that may mean working nights and weekends. “More than ever, at any time in our work history, flexibility is at a premium,” Swan says.

For that reason, any new grad needs to be accessible after hours and able to work from home. A speedy laptop with built-in wireless is a must, as is a BlackBerry or similar smartphone. The Nokia N810 Internet tablet is the best of both worlds; it offers email and Internet access and is small enough to carry everywhere.

College professors may have been tolerant of lost notebooks or late arrivals, but a grad’s new boss won’t be. Even if your grad isn’t naturally organized, tools like digital voice recorders and USB drives can help. If she tends to run late or get lost, having GPS navigation can save a sales call.

Whether working from home or the road, “be vigilant about staying in touch,” Swan advises. Just don’t make the fatal mistake of getting too attached to your electronics. If you tappity-tap on your laptop or cell phone during a meeting with your boss, you look like you just don’t care.

What did you just say?
Technology helps us communicate at lightning-fast speeds. It also means anyone can make a big workplace blunder in the blink of an eye. One of Swan’s clients wrote an email venting about her problems with a free gym membership—a company perk. Then she realized she had sent it to a senior VP, much to his annoyance. “It wasn’t the kind of attention she wanted,” Swan says.

How do you recover from a mistake like that? The old-fashioned way, Swan says: apologize in person. “Technology—it’s kind of got the last laugh on us,” she says. Emails and IMs often make things more complicated when an issue’s best resolved face to face. Knowing when to use technology, and when to turn it off, is the skill that might (one day) get your grad that job with the four-week surf vacation.

——————————————–
More tips for grads
——————————————–

* Don’t play on the Internet at work. They know.
* Do check to make sure your online presence is free of keg party photos—or at least upgrade your privacy settings so employers can’t stumble upon them.
* Do build a personal website that reflects your professional accomplishments.
* Don’t communicate via text message unless absolutely necessary. “OMG that reprt was due ystrdy???” is not something your boss wants to read.

Article Source: Melissa Barber, Circuit City – City Life

What’s the best graduation gift? Money? A watch? A car? A trip to another country? All good! But I’m giving something some might think is rather dry. I’ve decided to give the gift of education…I’ve been reading about the difficult time new grads, and those who haven’t even graduated yet, are having finding jobs this summer and I want to do something to help. I’m offering our Interviewing Excellence program on June 10th for free to those people out there who are under 23. I may even do that with our Navigating Career Change panel on July 10th, too. There’s just so much you don’t really know about work when you’re just getting started.
I know I didn’t know much about how to handle an interview when I was 21, or 23 (and sometimes when I was older, too, although I did get really good at it). My life would have been completely different if I’d gone for the job at the brand new little shop on Columbus Avenue – The Silver Palate. Had I handled the introduction and the interview with confidence and ease that little shop, with it’s two illustrious owner/chef/authors, might have launched me into a whole world of work that I would have loved! But I didn’t know the first thing about doing an interview, let alone a job search. That opportunity swept past me faster than a falling souffle! And that shop and its owners went on to make culinary history (writes the woman who just (happily) made 8 doz. cookies today).
So my gift is extended because I remember all of the things I didn’t know. And I’d love for someone, someday, to write me a letter and say that because of my gift of this program they got the job that launched many years of satisfying work. Now that would be a real gift for me 😉

As I sit here with my 12 year old helping him to study for his Humanities final I am bored and interested…and inspired to re-read an article I clipped a couple of weeks ago. I loved the May 12th issue of The New Yorker. Chock full of interesting articles about innovation. One article, by James Surowiecki, really grabbed me: ‘The Open Secret of Success’. It made me think of the riddle about how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. In Surowieki’s article he discusses Toyota’s approach to innovation…they implement a million new ideas a year — small process oriented ideas. What I thought was particularly interesting was that he states, parenthetically, that ‘Japanese companies get a hundred times as many suggestions from their workers as U.S. companies do.’ Why is that? Are our companies not willing to hear ideas from workers? Are US workers not looking for new ways to do things? Are we less inspired to offer ways to improve and change systems? Are you, in your work looking for new ways to do things that can improve the way you do what you do? Does your executive team offer a feedback loop so you have can have an impact on the companies bottom line?

Perhaps I’m digressing…Essentially this message is that little improvements made on a regular basis add up to major improvements – and innovations. And, as Surowiecki describes, Toyota’s improvements are based more on ‘process’ than on ‘product’, but the result is in great quality.

Same process can apply to our own lives:
Take a ‘constant improvement approach’ in your own life and career –do a little bit every day and the rewards may show up (imperceptibly at first, but ultimately) in new positions, new behavior, new relationships, new insights. I’m one of those people who gets bored easily so I need ‘new’ a lot. And a lot of my clients are the same way, but they don’t know how to get out of the rut of ‘bored’. You know Newton’s Law? An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by a net force/an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by a net force… When I work with clients I often suggest they do at least five things every day that will keep them moving forward. Five things isn’t really that much. (One of those important things can be sitting down and doing nothing — ie, listening to yourself/your intuition.) Think about it. If you’re working in a job and looking for a new position you need to be reaching out to at least two people every day to keep your network alive. You also need to be reading local periodicals in one way or another, looking to learn about what’s happening in the industry you want to engage in.

Activating curiosity, of course, is at the heart of all of this. There’s no easy way to make change happen. Change is a process of small steps, development of awareness and, usually, two steps forward/one sideways/one backward, repeat. Sometimes good fortune comes our way and things drop right into place.

But in retrospect, there’s a slow and steady process of action that leads to the results we all seek — no matter what they are. I know I’m impatient to see results — and so are my clients. We are an impatient society. Just as Surowiecki asserts, this process to innovation/change/improvement is ‘easy to understand but hard to follow’. I’m living it right now…Ok, now back to the Indus and Nile Rivers…

Check out my article “5 Ways to Raise Career Savvy Kids” at OnTeensToday.com with Vanessa Van Petten:

• OnTeensToday.com