Almostgotit.com

The Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has continued its series of articles called “90 days,” presumably based on Michael Watkins’ bestseller, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.  Each WSJ column addresses the most critical things to remember in the first days following a major career transition.

There’s lots of terrific cross-pollination here, so if you’re in transition, go ahead and read them all!

• 90 Days: Working Productively As a Telecommuter
• 90 Days: Relocating Overseas? Do Your Homework And Ease Your Way
• 90 Days: Acing Your First Post-College Job
• 90 Days: Working for Yourself Can Have Its Challenges
• 90 Days: Easing Back From Maternity Leave
• 90 Days: Dealing With a PR Crisis Takes Planning and Truth
• 90 Days: Joining a Nonprofit Board Is More Than a Labor of Love

~ For more WSJ “90 Days” articles ~

———
Related Post:

The First 90 Days: Strategic Career Transitions

One of my dear friends directs an organization that works with inner city youth. 

These young people are often battered with repeated failures, but Chris believes in them, even when no one else does.  He encourages them to believe in themselves, too.

“Always Begin Again,” he tells them. Over and over.
—–

I’m helping a woman finish her latest book.  She’s old enough to be my grandmother, but whizzes around the internet like a pro and still hikes in the Andes.  She sent me an email yesterday, along with the latest installment of her manuscript. 

“This is so HARD,” she wrote.

‘But I have a sign up,” she continued, “that says ‘Failure can not tolerate persistence.”  Got it from a wonderful book called The War of Art.’

—–

Andy is home.  He called me today, and he sounded much better.  People have taken good care of him, so he was calling around to check in,  thank everyone.  His client had paid his hotel bill last night, even though he hadn’t managed to finish their show.  He added that Phillip has had some good days while he was gone, but that he himself hit another rough patch,  coming home this afternoon to the empty house.  

But he already has lots of things set up, lots of meetings with lots of people, for his business and to go over the estate, legal and financial things.   A  lot of mail had piled up while he was gone, too.  I could hear him shuffling through it.  He listed some of it for me:  Paperwork about benefits.  Insurance information for COBRA. 

And the death certificate finally came.  

“And, maybe,” he paused, “a grief counselor or something.  That might be good.”
—–

There’s a quote on scrap of paper on my desk that I’ve been trying to decide what to do with. It keeps getting shuffled to the top of my piles. I heard it last fall from an arborist who was speaking to our group about how badly our area’s trees had suffered from a year of severe drought, last spring’s late freeze, and a summer of record-setting heat.

Then he smiled. “But,  enough gloom and bad news.  I recommend, as all of us do who have the perpetual gardener’s heart: replant next spring!”

Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident—all those epithets that strike right at our femininity.

So begins an article on Women in Leadership, in which eleven women from different backgrounds tell their own stories about how they arrived at the place we call “success.”   Read it!  
Creative Commons  photo by Meretsoleil2

——-
Related Posts:

“Fixing the Women:” not enough to overcome pay inequity
The Tyranny of Petty Coercion

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.

—————-
Creative Commons Photos by AudreyJm529
—————-

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

While I do not love every word written (or philosophy espoused) by Marianne Williamson, I do love these words: 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson

We rode the train to Portland today. We had to go to some effort to get onto the train with the dining car, because while my children have been on many trains, they’ve never eaten in a dining car. It all worked out perfectly, except for the playing cards part.

Everyone knows that one of the best ways to pass the time on a train is to play cards. Another of the best things to do on a train is to walk from one end of the train to the other, finding the snack car along the way and buying something there. And what we wanted to buy was a pack of playing cards. We got on at the beginning of the Seattle-LA route, so everything should have been freshly stocked. Moreover, I was a perfect customer — on vacation, living large, and willing to spend almost anything for a little deck of cards with “Amtrak” written on them. And which, moreover, they had listed prominently for purchase on their snack car menu. We waited eagerly in line, being bumped by all the hotdogs and dorito bags going the other way.

But they were OUT. No cards. They’d not even bothered to stock them this morning, apparently.

Amtrak is a company in perpetual financial straits, and they really need my money. And I would very happily have obliged at their snack car, as I already had in their dining car. They also need to fill me with happy memories so I’ll come back as a repeat customer, and playing card games with my daughter in the lounge car would have gone a long, long way in that direction — for both of us!

On the other hand, later that afternoon, we stopped at Powell Books’ flagship store in Portland. What a great bookstore! And by coincidence, in a matter of hours, also one of many that would be unveiling HARRY POTTER #7. They had the costumes, the signs, the brilliant cross-promotions. There were “Harry Potter Updates” going out over the loudspeaker every few minutes. Outside, the line of excited H.P. fans was already wrapped around the block. Powells, however, was prepared already with tents, signs, and traffic cones. Two news vans were already comfortably parked on the busy street as well, and ready to jump on the unfolding story.

Which is why Amazon.com STILL hasn’t beat Powells books, even in this, their mutual home territory.

10. Just keep trying.
9. Try to determine what is working.
8. Try to determine what is not working.
7. Try to find someone who’s done it.
6. Try to ask for help.
5. Try it again tomorrow.
4. Try it a little differently.
3. Try once more.
2. Try again.
1. Try.

Kind of beautiful, isn’t it?  I saw this on a giant poster in an educational supply store.  It’s also featured in November 2006 issue of The Lorraine Hansberry Library News, and that’s about it.  I gather then that these words are meant for children.  Perhaps adults are too cynical to hear them, or have discovered already that trying isn’t always enough.  Or is it?  At what point in our lives do we lose our limitless potential?  When is it that we can no longer grow up to be the president of the United States? 

Just keep trying.  Find mentors.  Ask for help.  Focus on the positive (what’s already working) while carefully defining any remaining barriers (what’s not working.)  Take a break when you need to and try it again tomorrow.  Instead of giving up entirely, try it just once or twice more, or try it with a slightly different approach. 

The Economist, among others, has been busily debunking the enduring American dream of endless economic opportunity and upward mobility.  That dream is dead, they tell us, and we need a new one.  The realists, these adults among us, are insisting that we read their reports and statistics that show us how limited we truly are by our educations and our socio-economic status.

The reports are true.  The inequities are real, and they are growing.  

But.

No population study can ever define an individual.   This is why, in addition to The Economist, we also have stories.  This is why we have The Lord of the Rings and The Little Engine that Could.  We buy these books for our children but, if we’re honest, we know we need them, too. 

And if we are not only honest but decent, we will not be content with lying to our children about things we don’t believe any more ourselves.  And what we are telling our children is this:  no set of aggregate numbers can ever describe a single person.  No statistical level of improbability ever stopped a hobbit.

So just keep trying. 

———-
Related posts:
Chapter Two-ing
Success!! 
Hanging in (and blonder, too)

Penelope Trunk  recently wrote a wonderfully iconoclastic column in The Huffington Post entitled Hold CEOs Accountable for Their Bad Parenting.   It seems that corporate boards don’t mind their CFO’s having mistresses, or even having three mistresses at once: they just don’t like it when all three mistresses go public and embarrass the company. 

Even more horrifying, however, is how universally this “success” culture celebrates bad parenting by lauding wealthy fathers who work 100-hour weeks and assure their colleagues that “My Family is You.”

Trunk writes:

I can’t decide which is more pathetic — the way these men approach their role as a parent, or the way that Fortune magazine writes about it without any commentary.

How can there be no mention of the fact that these CEOs are neglecting their kids?

We have a double standard in our society: If you are poor and you abandon your kids, you are a bad parent. But if you are rich and you abandon them to run a company, you are profiled in Fortune magazine.

Don’t miss the article, nor the comments, either.  One is by Harvard Business School’s Bob Sutton.

Who washes his own family’s dishes.

———
Related Posts:
Woman vs. Rabbit Hole

“Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps”    Emo Phillips

Frankly, I’m in an (almost) funk.  I met with two great guys at our favorite diner this a.m. to talk about some paying projects we have coming down the pike.  That’s good news, too.  But I also may just have lost one of my clients (for whom I was writing copy about one of the most boring subjects you can imagine – I mean, if you were going to pick a subject that was so quintessentially boring that you could make a great joke about it?  This one would be it.)

Nevertheless, it was honest work and paid well. I like the client too (as I generally do), and fervently believe in their right to assertively market a solid and necessary product.  Moreover, it truly is an interesting challenge to help people in such obvious need of a “make-over.”  Also, I’m learning a great deal. 

It’s really sweet to be (almost) employed.  That’s about how I would describe things at the moment, given I’ve only been (almost) freelancing for a couple of months now, and have only made enough money doing it to buy a new laptop (which was, first and foremost, NOT a Dell.  Dells are great, but they are also standard-issue at The Institution Which Shall Not be Named.  So of course I had to buy something else!)

Some have asked if I’d keep writing this blog.  Is it fraudulent to write about being unemployed when, technically, I’m not?  But then again, I would feel equally fraudulent  claiming I know everything there is to know about being an employed person now. 

Besides.  I have yet to write about my various inquiries and explorations of going back to school.   About all the post-stay-at-home-mom career issues that I’ve been obsessed with for the past few years.  About how even after you’ve taken all the personality type indicator tests that exist over the course of your ever-lengthening life – and even taught some of the WORKSHOPS for God’s sake – it’s still possible to have no idea what to do next.

Or how incredibly complicated life can become sometimes, especially whenever one is tempted to get smug, so that all of the normally-healthy, normally-obvious “things to do next” are neither.  Oh well.  As Whoopi Goldberg quipped,  ‘normal’ is just a setting on the washing machine.

I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.

———–
Related Posts:
Success!
In Defense of Thoughts

Still thinking about Marilee Jones.  A lot.  I’ve been reading lots of good commentary on the situation (some of the best to which I’ve posted links, right column) 

Our world, most especially the academic part of it, is still astonished at (and extremely resistant to) the idea that anyone can be so good at something without a degree.  Even in cases when they can produce two pages of (verifiable) publications and achievements. 

We can huff and puff all we want to about how a degree is a useful standardized measure of dependability or capability.  Or whatever.  We may even be right, most of the time.   But all our noise flies out the window when we have an exception right in front of us, proof in hand, and we turn the other way.  That is the point at which our myth is exposed.  We don’t care about the “dependability and capability” after all – our true fealty is to the degree!

Most of human chauvinism, of course, is based on self-interest, e.g.:  I worked hard on my own degree, and I need it to mean something.  I don’t WANT people without degrees to be as qualified as I am.  (Personally? I also permanently damaged my career in order to hand-raise my children, and thus don’t WANT the children of working parents to be as wonderful and well-adjusted as mine are!)  

Life is about exceptions, though.  And ah, confession is good for the soul. 

I don’t know Marilee Jones personally of course, but any accusation that she was a greedy “opportunist”  I dismiss out of hand.  We all are all of us that, and in this country it’s considered a virtue.

However, I do agree with other commentators that much depends upon whether she is a pathological liar.  I strongly suspect she is not.  I believe, instead, that much of the great good that she has contributed came from an interior acknowledgement of her own mistake.  As penance for it, even.  I think she has been truly sorry for much of the last 28 years. 

I also think it is absolutely wrong, even in the slightest degree, to look backwards now and recast her whole working history in light of this new information (that she had no degree.  And that she lied.)  To do so is fraudulent on our part, and only exposes our own grave disingenuity and chauvinism:

“She didn’t have a degree, so turns out she doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

“She lied, so therefore can say nothing to us at all about how to tell the truth.”

Garbage.

One of the things Marilee wrote about (and yes, we’re on first name basis now) was the importance of integrity.  In a book she co-authored last fall, Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond,  she writes:

Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners.  But just remember that ‘what goes around come around,’ meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out.

This is what I tell my kids, too.  But reading those words now makes me ache.  Just listen to her confession, her fear, even her contrition.  Thing is?  People who cheat quite often do get away with it, and people who don’t cheat quite often get shafted.  Sometimes, unfortunately, ‘virtue has to be its own reward.’  And often a pretty damned shabby one, at that.

Moreover, it’s just cheap for those who “have” to admonish those who “haven’t” for being greedy and ungrateful.

I’ve been hanging around the academy for over 20 years now.  Guys, academics do really ugly things, all of the time.  (as humans do in general, I imagine.)  They plagarize.  Have terrible, exploitative affairs. Torpedo the careers of each other’s Ph.D students out of sheer spite. 

And yes, quite often, they lie. 

According to the New York Times article on the subject of Marilee Jones’ “resignation”, Phillip L. Clay, M.I.T.’s chancellor declared:

There are some mistakes people can make for which ‘I’m sorry’ can be accepted, but this is one of those matters where the lack of integrity is sufficient all by itself.  This is a very sad situation for her and for the institution. We have obviously placed a lot of trust in her.

(The aptly-academic Latin to respond with here would be ”res ipsa loquitur“)

Dr. Clay is probably correct that there is no conceivable way that MIT or any other university could re-absorb Marilee Jones back into its ranks, but “integrity” has very little to do with it.  Jones is now a public embarrassment to them and worse, an irreducible iconoclast.   (as in, literally: “a breaker or destroyer of images, esp. those set up for religious veneration. a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.”)

She’s gotta go. 

In a fair world, though?  Half the rest of ‘em would go with her.

—-
Related Posts: 
MIT really blew it
Marilee Jones joke
How to (Almost) get Marilee
Coming Out: I’m a closet academical