Almostgotit.com

Very few of us will do the right thing, economically, unless we have to do it.

Doing the right thing because we have to do it still can be a positive experience.

Both Republicans (situationally) and Democrats (legislatively) believe in forcing people to do the right thing.

Republicans and Democrats take turns being right — and catastrophically wrong.

Maybe there are few definitive solutions at all.

Maybe there are more solutions than we can imagine.

Maybe most of us are getting poorer.

Maybe that doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.

Maybe we can’t make money doing the things that we love.

Maybe that will break our hearts.

Or maybe that will force us to discover how to love what we do, instead.

Maybe we’ll do everything right and still  fail.

Maybe we’ll make one mistake after another and turn out just fine.

Maybe life eventually will confound us all.

Many thanks to ALL the folks who responded to my post yesterday!  I appreciated every comment you posted.  Additionally, Deb replied to me on her blog, 8 hours & a lunch, as did Ann over at Compensation Force, .  Ann made the good point that it’s a buyer’s market out there, so (of course) job seekers like me have to hustle. 

I agree: yes we do.  But.

Recruiters may feel justified in abusing potential employees, given the current job market.  If they do, they are making a mistake, and their organizations will suffer for it as much as any individual employee ever will.   Which is my whole point.

Also,  I am not making this up:  employers really are employing more bad hiring tricks  than I’ve ever seen before.  At the very least, they give me pause, and in some cases have kept me from applying altogether.  Nor am I the only one.

And who knows?  One of us might have been the player who turned your company into Microsoft.

“Employee needed.  No Calls Please!  Send application to P.O. Box ###.”

One last gripe: blind box ads like these that proliferate in the paper.  No employer or company name is listed, no contact information (other than a post office box) is provided.  And I’m supposed to respond with full personal detail in return?  No f-ing way.

Now I have to confess something.  I interviewed last week with an organization that had posted a blind box advertisement.  I’d seen the ad and had already ruled it out, when a person in my network  called me about the same job.  I submitted my resume and got an interview, but it wasn’t a good fit, and I think both sides figured this out in short order.

But I still have no idea why this particular organization, looking for a PR person no less, was afraid to list its own name in public. Two reasons employers may choose blind ads are (a) to covertly oust a current employee or (b) to hide their hiring activities from competing employers.  Do you want to work for a company that may fire and hire this way?  Do you want to work for an organization that may be trying to underbid its competitor for your paycheck? The listed job may even be your own!

I still have no intention of responding blindly to blind box ads in future.  There remain some intriguing work-arounds, however, which I may try next time a blind box ad catches my eye.  I do like learning how to play a player!  And if this is a new game, I am going to have to learn how to play it, albeit on terms I can also live with. 

I’ll keep trying to be fabulous.  

It’s just that I haven’t seen a whole lot of “fabulous” coming from employers these days, and damitol, can’t it be someone else’s turn to be fabulous for a change?

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Related Posts:
Employers: it’s Your Turn to be Fabulous (part 1 of this series)
Un-Fabulour Employers Asking for Too Much Upfront (part 2 of this series)

man·i·fes·to [man-uh-fes-toh] –noun, plural -toes. a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization

My daughter is a master of the form.  Her bedroom door has, for years, been a constantly- changing canvas of proclamations, notices, lists, edicts and declarations:

Ten Utterly Useless Things to Do (including) Making Pyjamas Out of Duct Tape.

Why I Should Not Have To Change the Cat Litter.

Lost: Deadly Bull Spider including How to Catch Him.

Warning: Contents Under Pressure.

I Should be Able To Go to Dollywood I Am Not A Slave.

She makes me immensely proud.

A couple of months ago, I found a website that contains nothing but manifestos: ChangeThis.com, an online newsletter whose aim is “to disrupt the media pattern with powerful, rational arguments from leading thinkers.” ChangeThis uploads several new manifestos a month, written by very well-known authors and business gurus as well as more obscure ones. Recent top-pick-topics appearing on ChangeThis include:

• The Invisible Badge: Moving Past Conspicuous Consumption
• PR 2.0: A Communicator’s Manifesto
• Escaping Corporate America: Changing Your Career Can Change Your Life
• Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing Lessons from the Cast of the Show About Nothing
• The Upside of a Downturn Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World

A few years back, former Harvard Business School Professor Michael Watkins published an international best-seller entitled The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.

More recently, the Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has been running an excellent series of articles called “90 days.”

In each of these periodic columns, WSJ authors address the most critical things to remember, and steps to take, in the first days and months after making a major career transition.  While I assume WSJ is using Watkins’ book as a model,  “9o day” topics range from “Make the Most of a New Promotion” to “Mobilizing an Unplanned Job Search.”

I’m intrigued, too, by the choice of a “ninety-day” interval.

Ninety days was, in fact, almost exactly the period it took me to establish definitively that my most recent employers were not prepared to make an executive transition.  It really did take about three months for me to run through all my own “critical success strategies” first, to see if there was any way at all to save the dying patient.  There wasn’t. 

Michael Watkins describes getting acquainted with a new organization as being similar to “drinking from a fire hose.”  Yes, that’s exactly what it was like, but I fully expected to move on to the point eventually where the torrent would slow a bit.  It’s very strange to have it come to a complete stop, instead.   

So according to the 90-day model, I’m currently in  a subsequent transitional period which happens to follow immediately upon the prior one, without the traditional break in between.  So what should I do?

‘The trick to a successful transition is not to panic,’ says Doug Matthews, President and CEO of Right Management.’ 

‘The biggest mistake is not a financial one, but a psychological mistake,’ says Andrew Tignanelli, president of Maryland-based financial advisory firm Financial Consualate. ‘People panic. They feel and act devastated.’

Before even thinking about boxing up plants and swiping staplers, find a way to get your personal files out of the office. Fire off a few emails to your personal email account with files attached and export all your contacts.’ (Yes, and thank goodness I learned that trick a couple of jobs ago!)

And maybe most importantly:

Meet your new boss. It’s you. You’re working for yourself for the time being, and the job is all about marketing a promising candidate. Just as you would with any other job, establish a home office space and regular hours of operation.

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Creative Commons Photos by AudreyJm529
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Here are the WSJ “90 day” articles to date:

• 90 Days: You’re the New Boss, Now What?
• 90 Days: Make the most of a new promotion
• 90 Days: Managing your former peers takes effort
• 90 Days: Mobilizing an Unplanned Job Search
• 90 Days: Planning a Move to Your Second Job
• 90 Days: What to do after a Layoff.
• 90 Days: Finesse a Flexible Work Schedule

Change Is Hard Work; it requires hope, direction, bravery and time. -Thomas Moore

The sign at left is a standard one in Great Britain, and was one of our favorites.  While it merely means “adjusted right-of-way ahead,” I always had the strong sense that Stephen Covey was speaking to us directly from the heavens.  Other signs we loved were “Caution: Rising Bollards!” (which sounds like a variety of aggressive ostrich but in fact refers to adjustable traffic barriers) and various humorous — and at times salacious – notices about “zebra crossings” (which are crosswalks with painted lines.  Get it?) 

When we lived in England, we were frequently amazed and amused at how different our two languages were.  Pantyhose don’t “run” in Britain, they “ladder.”  Sinister-sounding ”schemes” merely refer to ”plans.”  Our children’s classmates patiently explained to us that a “pavement” is not a material but a sidewalk.  (though they also knew what “sidewalks” were from watching American telly.)   ”Corn” is a generic term for grain, while “lumber” is the rubbish you store in your attic.  

Moreover?  It is not nice to mention your pants (underwear) in public, but perfectly acceptable to announce that you need the toilet (bathroom). 

That last, in particular, was a particular challenge for us as embarrassed Americans, even when we understood that a willingness to ask perfect strangers to please point out the nearest toilet was not only necessary, but completely ordinary to everyone but ourselves. 

In other words: change was hard, but we had to get over it or else pee in our, er, trousers.  Sigh.  (Life is so brutal sometimes.)

So maybe my current life stage is not so very different from learning to use a new language, nor even so very different from potty training.  What do we tell our children when they are learning such a life-changing skill?  You need to think ahead. You need to pay attention to yourself.  Sometimes, there will be accidents, but keep trying and eventually you will succeed.  

Since our “mums” aren’t here to tell us these things anymore,  maybe posting signs for ourselves now and then would actually be a good idea.  Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror or on the computer monitor or in a daytimer?  Or maybe posting signs for the REST of the family would be in order, too.  What would your signs say?
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Creative Commons images by
Christine(bpc) (Changed Priorities);  Andrewb47 (Rising Bollards);  SeanMcTex (Humped Zebra Crossing); Ceejayoz (Princess Parking)
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Tangentally Related Posts:
New Opportunities: Jobs for those over 40

My 11-yr-old daughter got braces today, and since I am currently the flexible, unemployed parent, I’m the one who took her to the orthodontist. Before taking her back to school afterwards, I took that cute kid and her new mouth out for lunch to try it out.

We found ourselves doing a mother-daughter “Gilmore Girls” act as we tried to guess at the profession of the women gathered at an adjacent table. “They look like plastic ladies!” my daughter whispered. It’s true… though their bodies came in the normal variety of shapes and sizes, they had strangely-colored helmets of hair, strangely-colored orange skin, and they were even shiny. One began passing around neatly bound notebooks to the others, with “Beauty Consultant Success!” printed on the cover.

What the heck is a “Beauty Consultant?” And please: will no one ever make me be one?!?
(more…)

Creative Commons Photo by estherase

Well, that was a strange little interlude.

It seems my predecessor wasn’t quite so eager to resign after all, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem except that the Board of Directors wasn’t quite sure they could do (ANYTHING) without her, either. So I decided they’d have to do without me instead, and here I am.

The “no succession plan” scenario is, unfortunately, far too common in the nonprofit world (most churches require retiring ministers to leave the congregation entirely, for this very reason). Perhaps this Board will do a better job next time; for my part, I suppose I’ll chalk it up to learning how to fail faster; I was just glad I saw the no-win situation for what it was as soon as I did, and got out before there were any actual murders.

My friend Emily has asked me to guest-host her “Rocky Road of Love” blog for the next week or so (starting Monday) while she is in PARIS doing some research (she’s a writer, and does that sort of thing.) I think she mainly wants to see me get off my dark-night-of-the-soul butt, but it’s very kind of her and I think it will be a lot of fun. Stay tuned!

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Related Posts:5 strange things I did to get my job
Working for a nonprofit organization
Career or blog in a rut? Find a Traveler

1. Nonprofit Communications
Written by a nonprofit consultant, this active site is a particularly rich one with tip sheets, a wonderful archive, and a terrific blogroll. Not to be missed.

2. Nonprofit online news
Every new executive needs to invest time in keeping up with her new industry. This site provides the latest news from and about the online nonprofit community.

3. Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector
Keep up with the times or get left behind! With nonprofit giving remaining fairly steady while the number of NP organizations continues to grow, it’s getting pretty competitive out there. Smart NPs know they need to pursue new audiences and new approaches (social networking, e-philanthropy, push technology.)

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Quick lesson: build a feed reader

“What qualifies you for this job?”

It is a fair question. The reporter sounded like he’s all of twenty years old, and he knows my husband, which tells you two things at once: I must be getting old, and no matter how big a city, this is still a Small Town.

I thought of the paper this guy writes for… one of those thin weeklies (mostly advertisements) that inevitably appears at the end of your driveway on a day when it rains, so that you have to scrape up a sodden mass of multi-colored pulp when you go get the mail, vowing to boycott every single one of the advertisers (though their names are no longer legible) and wishing there were some sort of Law.

There were so many ways to answer his question, too. Possibilities ranged from simply repeating the info on the press release he’d already read to an astonished “Who says I’m qualified?”

I also could have held forth on the benefits of having had a liberal arts education, or else quoted the title of a book by Ann Crittenden: “If you’ve raised kids, you can manage anything.”

In the end, though, I had pity on the fellow, who just needed something short and straightforward, to fit a couple of column inches between the ads for rain gutters and exterminators. And decided it was time to get back to blogging!