It is official!

Or at least a little closer to official. My boss has committed to the following:

• On July 1, he will either have defined my part time role or he will accept my resignation letter.
• The week of July 7 will be spent transitioning all of my knowledge to the new MBB for one of my roles- regardless of their actual start date.
• The week of July 14 will be spent transitioning a project to one of my BBs and transitioning my staff to my boss.
• I will be paid as a Full Time employee during the transition time, even though I will only be doing only as much as I have to do.
• July 18 will either be my last day or the start of my part time role.

I was very blunt. And I sent him an e-mail last night so that he could be prepared enough to cover all of the transition plans in 30 minutes. I'm still disappointed that he had 4 months to deal with this and still didn't take care of his side of the deal until I forced the issue. One more confirmation of my opinion of corporate life.... But he knows that I won't stay on full time. We'll see what happens next!

Crossing generations at work

Disclaimer: I'm about to discuss some thoughts on a sensitive subject in sweeping and extremely generalized terms. I will talk about trends and overarching themes observed in the workplace. That means that, regardless of the group to which you theoretically belong, I am not talking about you. I'm talking about ideas. So, here we go....

I have come to understand that we Gen-Xers have, as a whole, been a challenge to the corporate world. As a general rule, we are far too casual and obviously unconcerned with hierarchies to mesh well with existing corporate structures. Considering how business ran before we came along, I can see how these attitudes might have been disruptive to Business As Usual. And I suspect that the recent focuses Employee Engagement and Diversity have been largely due to the variety of inputs from those Gen Xers that have crept into management. However, since I AM a Gen-Xer, I wasn't aware of all of the work that had to happen to prepare for our disruptive presence in the corporate world.

In my current line of work, however, I am very aware of the preparations for the current clash of generations. A number of people have been thinking about how to manage four generations of workers in the same corporation. Since this issue has been on the horizon for several years, you can google some version of "cross generation" and "work" to get classes, papers and blog posts on the subject. The focus of these discussions is on helping workers to deal with the sterotypically different work styles of each generation. And it has been extremely important and helpful (at least for me) information.

I am intensely interested, however, in the preparations for millenials/Gen-Ys in the work force not from the corporate perspective, but from the view of the millenials themselves. There is a fair amount of writing on the subject online. In particular, I've been looking at blogs (this one includes a list of "millenial friendly companies") written by some Gen Y folk which have led me to research some unexpected ideas (such as moving back home after college). It seems pretty clear that there are some cultural incompatibilites that will need to be addressed. None of this is fully developed in my mind, but I have a few areas that I'm mulling over. If you have any ideas on the notes below, let me know.

• This article talks about "helicopter managing". Apparently, some managers are trying to use the "helicopter parenting" techniques as a management model. That made me wonder about the relationship between corporate style and socially acceptable parenting norms. Are changes to corporate models really just ways to address adjusted expectations out in the world?
• Entitlement. This word comes up a lot with Gen-Ys, but it is increasingly impacting the work world from all generational directions. To resort (once again) to sweeping generalizations, Gen-Ys "expect" challenging and interesting work that pays well while being supported (possibly even financially!) by their parents. Gen-Xers "deserve" those upper level management jobs despite the fact that the jobs are already filled. And many Baby Boomers intend to retire on time, regardless of the hits taken by their retirement accounts over the years. How did we all come to believe that everything will work the way that we want it just because we want it to work that way? (This question is of particular personal interest, but we'll talk about that later.)
• Optimism. Tom Friedman's daughter graduated from college in May. He referes to her class as The Quiet Americans - "quietly determined not to let this age of terrorism curtail their lives, take away their hopes or steal the America they are about to inherit." It is an incredibly optimistic view and will contrast strongly with the cynicism of the Gen-X bosses. How will this play out?

A number of people comment that the Millenials are not "prepared" for work life. They are, however, the new work force. So the question is this: if we, as parents, did not prepare them for the work place, will we, as managers, prepare the workplace for them?

Writing a book

I'm thinking about a new book at the moment. The subtitle would be something like "Exploring a Working Model of Corporate Life". I have been noticing that most people tend to actually relate to corporations as if there was something there to relate back. That has set my brain whirring along odd paths. My model is a bit strange, so I'm not sure that I want to start this conversation with the model itself. What I'd like to hear is what you think.

How have you come to terms with the company that pays you? Are you anthropomorphizing the "corporate entity" to find some common ground? Are you sticking to your guns in the face attacks from a creature that makes no sense to you? Does your company take care of you like a "good" parent that has your best interest at heart or do they just mouth those words but make you want to run away from home?

What about the companies that supposedly work with you? Does your mortgage lender make you believe in corporate punishment? Do you have an actual relationship with your bank? How do you feel about your grocery store?

And, above all, why do we have these emotional responses? Is it purely based on the marketing $s spent by savvy corporations? Or is there some basic human requirement that drives us to see relationships with things that don't exist?

I'm open to any and all perspectives here. I suspect that there are as many views on this as there are people.

Calculated vs Central Self - Art of Possibility musings

I’ve been one poor correspondent – I’ve been too, too hard to find… But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind!

I got terribly distracted for some time there and – unfortunately – it was right in the midst of a series of thoughts on The Art of Possibility. So, just as a recap, I’ve already talked about practicing the practices and scarcity thinking. The good news is that I have personally been making great strides in practicing my new practices and avoiding scarcity thinking. Working through these two concepts has been incredibly helpful for me.

This week has me thinking about one of the other big ideas that I picked up in this book. I should explain that I am currently sitting on the 26th floor of one of the World Financial Centers in Manhattan. For me, this environment brings up a recurring area of concern – that of the calculated self.

The Art of Possibility says that there are two versions of a person called the central self and the calculated self. Everyone seems to assume that the central self is obvious to us, which is probably a discussion for another post. But the interesting theory in The Art of Possibility is that the calculated self is created as a result of childhood survival strategies. My understanding of the theory is that each child survives by figuring out ho w to get what they need to feel safe. These strategies are the foundation of personality and, particularly, for stress response behaviors. If you take a look at those last 2 sentences, they implications are fairly astounding. There are several areas of those implications that I want to discuss, but I only have time to get to one today. And, I’m sitting in what I see as “the calculated self center of the world”, I’ll talk about the effects of this theory on work.

The business world in which I work encourages and rewards very specific behaviors. Again, each individual has strategies to obtain what they need to feel safe. As adults, our definitions of “need” and “safe” have been refined over time. Do I need to keep up with the Jones’ or do I need to be in complete control of my environment? Am I safe when I’m an executive? Am I safe when I have a certain $ value in the bank? Regardless of the individual need or safety requirements, there is only one way to meet the requirements. Our survival depends on pleasing the local representatives of our corporate entities. Each corporation effectively re-creates the conditions of childhood again managers acting as parents and departments acting as tribes.

I like this theory because it is consistent with my experience. I see competing siblings and tribes. I see blatant needs couched in acceptable terms. But perhaps I’m just cynical. What do you see?

Trimming blackberry bushes

Based on my schedule and the behavior of some of my potential work partners, I knew on Friday that this was going to be a rough week. So, to make sure that I was prepared, I spent some time trimming around my blackberry bushes this weekend.

Trimming around blackberry bushes is an art form. Anywhere that the bushes can grow, grass and weeds can grow as well. As a blackberry fan, however, I prefer that nothing else compete with my scrawny but fruit covered bushes for resources. Something just has to go.

My only interest is to make it easier for the blackberries to grow. But the blackberry bush doesn't know that. Even if it did know that, I'm not sure that it could do anything to help me. You see, blackberries are equipped with rather nasty natural defenses in the form of thorns. These are great for keeping birds away from the berries I want to eat. They are not so great, however, when I'm trying to reach under and around them to get at interfering weeds and grass.


People, of course, are smarter than blackberry bushes. When they have prickly defenses, they have good reason. Some of it is just corporate life. Some of it is their perception of me. Sometimes, I suspect, it happens just because the wind is blowing the wrong way. There is only so much I can control in these situations.

So, I've been learning to be very careful. I work on moving fluidly. I flex through a number of approaches until I see what will work best. I stroke egos. I make jokes. I charm. I cajole. And, most of the time, I only come out of it with a few scratches.

This week, however, I just don't know. There are far too many variables. And they do not appear to be playing in my favor. The worst part is this. There are a whole bunch of green berries on the vines that I'm tending at work. And just this last week, I started to see the faintest bit of color in one of them. I am so close to getting it all to work! But tonigh I'm just pretty scratched . Yes, the scratches will heal (assuming that they don't get repeatedly inflicted)- they always have before - but honestly, folks, can't we just figure out some other way to do business?

My New Office

My new office has a door. It has a window with curtains and a guest chair. It has a beautiful, big desk and an ergonomic chair. The cafeteria is always open when I'm hungry. It stocks Community Coffee and Tension Tamer tea and never uses disposable coffee cups. It is decorated with colors and fabrics that I love (OK, except for the guest chair which is just the right size, but DESPERATELY needs to be recovered) and it smells good. When the weather is nice, I can open the door to the outside world and hear the birds sing and nobody complains. Of course, this is all true because I started working from home today.

There are a few downsides to my office at the moment. I don't have bookshelf in here yet. I don't have a filing cabinet either. I will add those things as I find them. I'm sure that I will miss the social aspects of work in the future - though not the near future with the teaching that was added to my plate today. I also suspect that I will need to clearly communicate my work hours this summer when D2 is home during the day.

But the tradeoffs are great! I've gained an extra hour of sleep by not doing my morning commute. I'm not driving 72 miles a day - no matter how good the emissions and gas mileage are on my car, that has NOT been very friendly to the environment! I have also gained 45 minutes (or more) at home in the afternoon by not doing the return trip. And - when I am not on conference calls - I am in a space where I can behave in whatever way works best for me. Do I think that blasting The Tragically Hip and dancing around the place will help me figure out how to propose a radical change? No worries! Do I need utter, complete silence to perform complex analysis or get a presentation ready before deadline? It is all mine! And, since all of my tasked interactions are virtual anyway, I haven't lost any "face time" by making this change.

In many industries, an office with a door has become short hand for power, status or a VP job. A door has been the mark of successful corporate ladder climbing. Now it seems, however, that there is much more interest in a successful life - of which a career or job is only one part. There is a great deal of discussion about how to manage that. In my case, as I have moved into greater work responsibilities, even small changes like this can be a huge step toward managing my life the way I see fit. Of course, this is not the career move for someone on track to be a corporate CEO. But perhaps the top of the ladder would look more appealing to people like me if the office at the top had all of the advantages of my new, off-the-ladder-track office.

Freedom!

Obviously if I'm excited about something, Mr. Gus here needs to know why. After all, surely that box is not picture worthy when he is around. But it is. It really truly is. Not because it is my latest technological acquisition. Not even because it is the latest example of a really good deal. This box will allow me to work from home regardless of the reimbursement policy of my company.

Let me explain. I work with a team based in Europe and a boss based on the East Coast. To accommodate those schedules, I start my day at 6 am local time. To be in the office at that time, I have to leave my house at 5:15 - which means that I am up at 4:30. So, the logical thing to do would be to work from home. I could be up at 5:30 and still be showered and logged in by 6. BUT calls to Europe are not cheap. And my company is encouraging us to be reasonable in the use of our company calling cards.

So, I put in the paperwork to be a 100% virtual employee. I sent it to my boss, who suggested this in the first place, but I have not heard a word about processing that through HR. In other words, it could take months to get approval - which means reimbursement for my phone bill - but I've been losing sleep for 2 months now! What is a dedicated but sleep deprived employee to do?

Enter the box! I have the unlimited plan - local, long distance and 5 European countries including the one I need to call! - for $25/month. That isn't even one week's worth of gas for my commute. If they never reimburse me, I'll still come out ahead. So, an extra hour of sleep a night, 1.5 - 2 hours of commute out of my life, and the ability to work in an office of my own design all for $25/month. Yeah, that box is picture worthy. That box is freeeeedddddooooommmm!!!

Speculative fiction

Here is how the story would go.

A young woman with some small magical powers completes her training and goes out into the world to struggle with all of the day to day aspects of survival. She takes a job that appears to be consistent with her training and skills. She does her job well, but is inevitably cut from the work force for mysterious reasons. She continues on, with new jobs in new places, but all the while suspecting that she is missing something. Are they really hiring her for the training and skills that she brings? Or is there something more that she is missing? What is really going on here? Slowly, she makes her way through the layers of obfuscation, grasping at any clues that come her way until she finally understands. Although her skills are what ostensibly got her in the door, that can no longer be the primary focus for her or any of her colleagues. Everyone she knows is really only employed to further the care and feeding of an incorporated Corporate Entity, sitting in corporate headquarters like a queen bee stuck in its hive.

OK, I have no idea what would happen after that. It could become a safari/zoo keeper kind of story on how to take care of something that could happily eat you alive if you don't cage it properly. It could be an ultimate showdown/David and Goliath kind of story with the individual facing up to the big Entity - but then I would have to have a winner and I don't think that will work. Or it could be a true coming of age story - the kind of coming of age that doesn't happen until sometime in your 30s and 40s.

But, you have to admit, it does make the entire corporate experience a bit more amusing in a bizarre way. The analogy is already fairly fleshed out in our language - worker bees, drones, hive mentality, etc. This would only take it to that slightly surreal and somewhat silly place. Since most corporate entities are notably lacking in humor and silliness, it could be a welcome addition to those of us who spend too much time under bad lighting and between cube walls.