Listen to the interview with this player or save the file to your computer: Jory Des Jardins talks to Lisa Belkin about women, careers and parenting.
There was a period a few years ago around the time that Michael Jordan was about to retire when I could swear I saw him endorsing EVERYTHING but feminine hygeine products--from hot dogs to men's underwear. I wondered if he would try to sell me an insurance policy next. I always admired Jordan but began to dismiss his ads because of his indiscriminating selection of products. Similarly, "hot" stars like Rihanna are heading down that path by lending themselves to brands with weak tie-ins some marketing executives made, such as her latest endorsement of the Totes brand umbrella, a concept derived from her 2007 hit, "Umbrella."
But here's the thing: It's working! The Rhianna ads and a tie-in line of rhinestone encrusted umbrellas has opened a whole new market for Totes, just as releasing the visually lush, if not opaque, Nicole Kidman spots for Chanel #5, with Baz Luhrman's direction in 2003, revived the old brand's sales by 30 percent.
So now I have a new question: Who's buying all this stuff? BlogHer's March study with Compass Partners showed that when it comes to purchasing decisions, we--women bloggers and blog readers--mostly rely on each other's endorsements before purchasing products. Does that mean that for others who are not as connected to online communities Gwyneth Paltrow will do the trick?
I take no issue with celebrity endorsements, or even endorsements. Sponsors of the BlogHer Ad Network, for example would love to inspire endorsement from bloggers, but that's just it: inspiring means there's a genuine fit between endorser and product. Halle Berry seems a fitting choice for hawking Revlon; Kelly Ripa showing how Electrolux appliances make her life SO much easier is less believable to me (I read onlne that she loves to entertain, but the public persona doesn't scream that she has much time to bake). Interestingly, the ProActiv endorsers--Jessica Simpson and Kelly Clarkson, to name a few--seem perfectly appropriate to me, as they actually show with before and after shots how the product cleaned up their pre-performance blemishes. Granted, they may have actually gone to dermatologists to clean up their pie faces, but the fact that they are willing to say it was ProActiv that cleaned them up says something to me.
Some ads play on the fact that the celebrity is an unlikely endorser, which makes the ads work. Take Ripa's Tide ads. It's highly unlikely that sans camera, Ripa whips out a Tide To Go pen to remove a stain while dining with her hottie husband Mark Consuelos. But the fun of the ad is the nuttiness of a celeb performing such a domestic task so avidly, and in public.
But more and more I see a disconnect between product and celeb, and it feels like a growing disconnect with audience. I can't help but wonder if the immediate flash of brand awareness that comes with Eva Longoria's promotion won't eventually die out if, say, Desperate Housewives goes off the air and she falls into obscurity. Or worse, she decides to promote another product, which muddies that association. Oh wait, that's already happened.
Will we reach a point of saturation, where we become so used to celebrity endorsements that, in the end, we will only really trust the endorsements of the not-famous? Or better yet, of each other?
]]>Despite the fact that I have no children, I find anything about work, women and childrearing fascinating, perhaps because a big reason for my own childlessness has to do with not having settled on a solution for having a career and children that I can live with. I've seen the effects that raising children has had on my friends' careers. While some willingly give up their jobs for motherhood, others struggle and never quite rectify the decision in their minds. My sister, for one, opted to do both with full fervor and found herself disappointed with her performance at both. Friends who fully embraced motherhood I found myself silently and unfairly accusing of never wanting a career in the first place.
I haven't figured out how to make both a consuming career and childrearing "work" in tandem, or probably more accurately I haven't been willing to yet address the inevitable compromise that I would need to make with both, so I sift through articles like Belkin's, hoping to glean, I don't know, HOPE perhaps that one can truly have it all. Or that, at least, I can choose one because I have proof that trying to do both is fruitless.
This article, which focused on a number of couples in various arrangements--one income, dual income, straight and gay--illustrated some of the potential pitfalls behind each. For instance, one couple who split childrearing duties down the middle, while maintaining a dual income, realized that attempting equality didn't make sense for the lower earner, who would have spent her salary on childcare alone. Another couple realized that there are specific compentencies that conformed with more traditional gender roles, and they had to stop being so rigidly insistent on parenting equality that they didn't do the tasks they preferred. The non-gestational parent in lesbian couples often felt left out of the parenting process because of not having a physical bond that biological mothers experience naturally.
I found the most inspiring couple for me, personally, were the Vachons, who met and had children in their late 30s, after having experienced careers and other relationships. They fit what I characterize as the couple who have, like me, had time to overthink parenting and career. So many friends of mine who had kids earlier in life say that if they had worried about how they would make it all work out--kids and career--they may not have had kids at all. And some, like the Vachons, almost didn't, but had enough experience with poor relationships and the meaninglessness of myopic focus on fast-track careers that they'd come to a place where making less for flextime wasn't seen as a sacrifice.
Initially, they tried to split all duties, but over time they realized that some traditionally "male" or "female" duties were, in fact, desirable. I agree that a common misstep of couples who insist on equality end up bleaching out the natural desires, and thus, the passion, in their relationship by always striving for fairness.
My own domestic partnership has formed an unspoken allocation of duties, interestingly, in a direction opposite what most would expect. While my husband, Jesse, "sees dirt quicker" that I would, to coin a phrase used by one of the women in Belkin's article, I see the longer-term. Jesse tends to handle much of the day to day housecleaning, cooking, and home repairs, while I pay bills and make vacation and social plans. I know my husband isn't always happy with what has become his role, just as I am not always thrilled to stay up late on Sunday nights to ensure our bills get paid that week. But overall, we are happiest with these duties. As my husband says, "It's not always 50-50, but it's teamwork, nonetheless."
Mom and ParentDish columnist (and BlogHer Contibuting Editor) Susan Wagner would agree:
"...my husband and I both work full-time, and we both bring different things to the table. His job comes with really good health care, for example, while mine comes with a flexible schedule that lets me take the kids to the doctor when they need to go. Is it equal? No, not really. Is it fair? Certainly. Is it working? Most days, yes."
Though, admittedly, when I'm reading email in the living room and raise my legs so that Jesse can vacuum the crumbs that are under the couch, I think to myself, what kind of a homemaker am I? Am I being a good spouse? And what kind of mother would I be, knowing I could full-well leave crumbs on the floor another day? We've created scenarios of what we would do, should we decide to have kids. The highest earner would work full time, we say, while the other may opt to work part-time, but ultimately would be the primary caregiver. Still, will this make sense outside the hypothetical? Will everyone feel satisfied with their role? Or will we be pissed at ourselves for the choices we've made that put us here?
There is an argument in Belkin's article: women, by virtue of choosing lower-paying professions, or having jobs with flexible hours, have made a choice regarding their future role as a caregiver. So then, what about women who have opted to have the higher-paying, more demanding careers? Have we unwittingly opted out of being good mothers?
Jory Des Jardins
]]>I'm curious to know other forms of harassment, or ways we experience silent hands, pushing us down. We are so familiar with the sadly-stereotypical hand-on-the-thigh-type incidents that we don't recognize some of the more insidious forms of harrassment. I welcome your comments and plan to follow-up with another piece integrating the stories I hear.
Here's my story: I had a colleague several years ago that I liked some of the time. During down times at the office I learned that he was passionate about surfing and extreme sports. He was renovating his house, and he had worked his way up the ladder to a management position by sheer savvy. He had a talent with customers and could craft solutions on the fly. When he liked your idea he bragged about you to everyone in the company. And when he liked your outfit, he said, "you look great!" in a way that was non-sexual. He appreciated style.
For a long time I tried to remember this side of my former colleague, but what really sticks in my mind are the negatives--he often went AWOL on business trips and no one could call or email him--he simply disappeared. When he felt pressure at the office he laid in to you, or "lost it". He often pitted colleagues against each other, sharing with one that someone else was going to get canned, or that someone had fallen on his bad side, and you had an unspoken choice of being on his side or experiencing a similar wrath. Our team was off-balance, torn between confiding in each other or the possibility of losing our jobs.
All of these things in themselves are lousy attributes in a leader, but the incident that cemented my terminal dislike occurred on a business trip, when I was out to dinner with three male colleagues including him. Our group assistant, a woman, had gone over the heads of the two male department heads and asked about getting a promotion. I later spoke to this woman and learned that, while her actions were clumsy, she didn't feel like she had a choice. She had been promised a promotion before the two male heads had been hired to lead the department, and the woman she implored, who was their boss, had been with the company long enough to know about this promise.
Instead of supporting our assistant, the female executive told the two male heads, in effect, her henchmen, about the conversation. Both of them were livid and full of piss and vinegar during our dinner.
I felt torn: I believed that our assistant deserved a promotion and was bravely trying to salvage what was promised her. I didn't agree with my male colleagues but couldn't quite defend her, either.
"What she did was stupid, but don't fire her for it." I said.
Almost immediately the maelstrom of anger was turned on me. Looking back, I think it was a combination of my colleague's hurt pride and the glasses of expensive wine we were all drinking. But suddenly I was asked if I wanted my job. I realized things were coming to a point of potentially permanent damage, but I felt strongly about how poorly this woman was being treated.
I don't remember exactly how I responded, but I said something to the effect of "If you're about to fire me, then so be it." At this comment my colleague was really enraged. He then said something so completely out of the blue that it brought tears to my eyes. I can't even remember the exact wording because of how sexually violent and humiliating it was. Something about how he could be asking me to perform fellacio on my male colleague (the poor, uncomfortable peer of mine sitting to my left) if he wanted to, but, bless his soul, he didn't ask those things of me, and, yet, I had the nerve to question him? Of course it didn't quite come out this clinically.
The poor guy who's anatomy was unceremoniously brought into the conversation walked me back to my hotel, embarrassed that he had even witnessed this humiliation--his and mine. He had kept his mouth shut the whole time, and I don't blame him for this. We both had felt sideswiped and confused.
All of the dramatics from that night were supposedly forgotten. I kept my job, which was a smart move by these folks. But I pondered whether I was selling myself out by keeping it. I was still trying to define what had happened.
"You were sexually harrassed," a female co-worker I'd confided in said to me. Hearing her say this I wanted to shut her up. "Sexual harassment" is a term I'd applied to women who received advances from colleages, not screamed insults using the male C-word. Just adding the word "sexual" to the abuse made me feel like a Cassandra, a whistle-blower, even though I hadn't reported the incident. I was more afraid of what that term, if the incident were made public, would invoke in the minds of colleagues: that I'd asked for this treatment? That I couldn't handle a few remarks? That I couldn't be treated like one of the guys?
In the past, I'd heard of these more nebulous forms of sexual harassment--fawning from a male peer, a dirty joke told in the presence of female colleagues, the mention of a pubic hair on a Coke can--and thought, it's nice to know that women in the workplace have rights, but c'mon! Get over it! We can't make men feel like prisoners in a PC cage. But after the dinner incident I saw a flipside to the debate: Sure some of these incidents are harmless, but my colleague had used this language as a substitute for violence. He used such a crass image to verbally smack me in the mouth. To shut me up. I suppose he referred to my other colleague's private parts to prevent any possible accusation that he'd suggested sexual acts done on him. He changed the rules of engagement to a place where I couldn't go, so that he could ultimately win the argument. Granted, it was a cheap win, but it was a win in that he stopped me cold.
Now that I manage mostly women in an organization for women, the thought of what transpired, and what I put up with, makes me physically ill. The thought of this former colleague possibly calling me, while maybe a friendly act, made me ill. I think of the language I use in the office, with male and female colleagues, and edit myself not for political correctness but for intention.
]]>I thought that learning to flirt was contrived, but later I appreciated how being a good flirt translated to many other areas of life. Mirroring people and being a good listener makes people feel appreciated; makes them like you. People help you when they like you.
The same thing goes with networking. While some of us are born networkers--we enter a room and just start MEETING people--some of us look for the food or the exit. For others the act of networking seems fake or contrived. We may have many personal relationships, but professional friend-making just seems wrong.
But like flirting, networking isn't just learning to be social. A good networker builds her career, meets new friends, finds a decent caterer, via networking. Networking isn't a social skill, it's a life skill.
And I got that when I read the book of a former boss of mine, Mike Dulworth, who wrote The Connect Effect. I met Mike through, what else, networking. I was out with a friend and some of her close friends. I was talking to one of them, Teresa, about my desire to change my career into something more career-development-oriented.
"You should meet my husband," Teresa said. Her hushand, Mike, was a leadership development expert and entrepreneur who had just bought an executive development firm. I met Mike and was offered a job a week later.
Once I started working with Mike I couldn't help but notice his penchant for networking. I thought I was schooled in the networking arts, but I hadn't previously been exposed to the master. Mike taught me several nuances about networking:
Anyone is networking material. Aunts, uncles, former teachers, even the guys who mow your lawn. Mike made every person in his network count. Just because someone isn't in your industry, or doesn't have budget or experience, doesn't mean they don't know someone who does.
Never burn a bridge. Mike always kept his relationships alive. Even today, he stays in touch with me and our former colleagues. He lets things roll off. He doesn't get slighted. He always sees the potential in people.
Diversity, diversity, diversity. It didn't bother Mike that my background was in media, not executive development. Great, that meant I could help with the firm's books and PR. He met my husband and thought, how great, a landscape architect. He invited him to participate in a project he's developing for homeless women in the city.
It was cool to see that Mike put a lifetime of networking experience into a new book, and that he asked me to contribute my experience to it, and he asked others in his network to do the same. The result, a breakdown of a skill that really isn't as simple as it sounds--networking.
Mike goes into many aspects of networking. This isn't about how to master cocktail coversation, but how to make it an integral part of your career. He covers "communities of practice" a professional practice of meeting with a group of your peers in other companies, virtual networking (I thought he might quote me there, but alas, he stuck to my offline world), and the importance of having a Personal Board of Directors (POD).
Despite some of the insider associations Mike has in the corporate executive development field--Mike can call such executive development and coaching luminaries as Steve Kerr and Marshall Goldsmith friends--having such practical advice from these people is huge.
Even if you are natural networker--or flirt--this is an interesting read.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>Now, there were some heavy hitters on that panel, but it was actually the least of my worries. Rather, I agonized over going over the Press Policy. What if I didn't parlay it correctly and our attendees ran amok videotaping other attendees against their wishes? What if the tone of civil disagreement I had to describe ended up falling on deaf ears? What if I wasn't able to accurately define the tone of respect we needed to achieve?
By the end of the day I was having quite a bit of fun, despite almost falling off the stage, not having a speaker ready and having to ad lib for a few minutes, and choking on my chewing gum. I didn't realize that that day would mark the beginning of my speaking career.
I'd done pitch meetings and short presentations before, and I'd done a lot of presenting over the phone. Yet despite being fairly extroverted, I'd always done by best creative work in private, in writing. Unless I became comfortable presenting that work for live audiences I would always be at odds with myself.
Almost three years later I speak every day, be it describing the BlogHer conference over the phone to a new sponsor, sitting on a panel, or explaining what we do to a large audience. I've been forced to get my word out there, myself. This has been a very liberating experience for me, as I'm hard-pressed to find instances when I cannot take advantage of chance encounters or even create new opportunities from my speaking. I feel expressed and able to represent my hard work and my company. I feel heard.
I believe that public speaking, while nerve-wracking for most, is a suitable gateway for women transitioning in their careers from being hardworking and knowledgeable to being powerful. Yet, surprisingly, after the first BlogHer conference in 2005, when we erected a Speakers Wiki for women to increase their visibility, many in the community opted not to use it.
We were very driven to get the word out about the talent in the women's blogosphere and followed up with attendees to find out why they hadn't opted to promote themselves. The most common answer: I have nothing of importance to say.
This is why I've written a WOMEN'S guide to public speaking; both genders could use basic training, but there are different underlying issues. Quite frankly, men are more likley to think that what they have to say is interesting (sometimes to their detriment) and women, who are often great natural facilitators and promoters of discussion, can often think that driving or dominating a discussion is egomaniacal.
Panel programs like Hardball that feature predominantly men trying to dominate the conversation with their brilliance perpetuate this misperception. But I'm not suggesting that we all learn to wield sharp jabs in verbal combat. I'm talking about using our voices to help others, whether it be to describe your company or teach people to blog. If your goal is to help inform and enlighten, you needn't worry about sparring with others, or about relevance.
In the past I thought that public speaking needed to be a difficult endeavor if I was to be "good" at it; that subjects near and dear to me and so easy to talk about would never be interesting to others. But I suspended my disbelief just long enough to see that this is where there is most opportunity; the aspects of your knowledge that you take for granted can be your most valuable asset.
I've written a practical guide to public speaking the way I know best, from experience. There are some additional, absolutely fantastic guides you should also check out, including my favorites, on Guy Kawasaki's blog.
1. Focus less on blowing people's minds with your words and more on bringing your audience closer to what you are passionate about. I once presented to a women's group about blog strategies for their small businesses. Very early into the talk, I could see that the knowledge level on blogging was much lower than I'd anticipated. I asked my audience at the beginning how many were blogging, and when I saw no hands raised asked how many knew what a blog was. A smattering of hands went up.
Rather than plow through the cool marketing strategies I had outlined, I had to back up and, in effect, sell blogging rather than teach blogging strategy. I believe it worked. Many of the women followed up with me to share that they had taken steps to start a blog. This wasn't the mission I had started with, but it was still mission accomplished.
2. Be focused AND flexible. If you are just starting out, try to pitch yourself as specifically as possible; you want to be completely comfortable with the content and scope of your talk. But also understand that you will likely have to conform to some pre-determined discussion and still be relevant. If this is the case, address the topic you are being asked about, but from a place of knowledge and passion.
I will be speaking on a search engine marketing panel, which I wouldn't define as my forte, but I can speak to optimizing social media, and to how social media campaigns have effected search engine performance. This tangential knowledge will enhance the audience's overall perspective on the topic.
3. Don't seek to perform, seek to inform. Some of my "worst" performances received the most positive feedback. And that was because there was less performance, or concern about whether I was considered "good". Think less about how you are delivering to your audience and more about serving it. There's no point in finishing your talk without a glitch if no one absorbed or understood what you were saying.
As a course of action, I let the audience know what I will cover in my talk and when I will take questions (I usually opt to take them throughout, but will check with the program producer first). If you think taking questions during your talk will ruin your rhythm or cause you to forget key facts, then let your audience know you will answer questions at the end. Then make sure you leave enough time to do just that.
Perfection is not the goal here. Utility is. Nothing is more impressive than answering someone's question or making them realize something they didn't know before. It's great to make people laugh, but ultimately you want them to think and to understand.
4. Develop an affinity with your audience: Guy Kawasaki mentions this as well on his blog. In cases where I've had to arrive somewhere last-minute before speaking, I'm totally disconnected from my audience. I prefer to have enough time to sit down, have coffee with some attendees, find out why they are there, or have a conversation with some of the people I'll be presenting to while I set up.
Recently I had an opportunity to provide the closing keynote at a conference and opted to go to the event the day before. I spoke with attendees and heard them articulate their issues and what really interested them. By the time I spoke, the talk had practically written itself. I was able to emphasize the right parts and to address questions I was asked earlier. Before a recent panel I kvetched with one of my co-panelists about odd, even gross, experiences we'd encountered at meetings at our former companies. This had nothing to do with our panel discussion, but we all felt more than comfortable sitting on stage and interacting during our talk.
If arriving a day or a few hours before your engagement is not possible, at the very least squeeze in a conversation with your host, or the event producers, so that you are grounded a bit more with the tone of the event and with the crowd.
5. And if you don't get an opportunity to develop this affinty, just keep going. Last year I had an exciting opportunity to speak about BlogHer in Tel Aviv. Though everyone was extremely friendly and seemed to enjoy my presentation. I found it difficult participating on a follow-up panel where all the recipients except for myself and an American professor spoke Hebrew. I had to wear one of those translation headsets to understand what was being said and couldn't chime in until seconds after the fact. It's tough being witty or poignant in a dicussion you can't understand. So I waited patiently. I waited until I heard my name, which meant that I was being asked a question. And I apologized for the five second delay before being able to understand it, and I responded on-message.
I've also had to pitch or present to people whose only greeting to me was "I have five minutes", or who were on the way to their next appointment.
The point I'm trying to make is, until you are your topic's equivalent of Steve Jobs and people will flock to hear whatever comes out of your mouth, you must take your opportunities, stay on-message, and be super grateful for the opportunity, no matter what. A sense of humor in these situations is key. Take one second to gather yourself, even say, let me take a moment to remember my name, and then GO!
6. Practice self-acceptance: Wish you had on a better outfit, or that your hair didn't look so flat on the day that you have to present? Your audience doesn't, so defer to them on this one.
7. Know thyself: I know that I have a tough time memorizing facts, and I know that I'm good at telling stories. I take time days before the talk to go over my numbers, dates, and names--it takes several reviews before they become second nature, and I try to structure my talks in ways that enable stories, very short ones, wherever possible.
God forbid I still can't remember a fact in front of a whole slew of important people, and no one is up for story hour, what then? I tell them I don't remember that name, statistic, or source and ask if I may follow up with them later with that information, and then I do what I say I will. And I refrain from self-flagellating later. Guilt is so indulgent.
8. Don't pray for exposure, make it happen. A friend once asked me how I got on panels, and I told her that I have all the right connections and that it's always been about who I know--NOT! Sure, knowing people helps, but there's a much more effective method to getting speaking gigs: asking. And I don't mean sending a note into the conference-planning either and hoping that your name serendipitously brings up memories of the producer's best friend from high school. I mean PITCHING yourself.
I've seen a lot of panel pitches. Ones that I'm not compelled to show Elisa Camahort, who plans our events:
"Hi, I've gone to BlogHer before and I just really love what you do..." I love people who love BlogHer, and while love conquers many things, it does not seed a panel. We need credentials! We need to know why your topic is so important to our audience, and we need to know your hopefully unique perspective on it. If you don't see your topic as critical, you've lost the game, and you need to go back to the beginning of this post to read why what you know matters.
"I would love to be on a panel relating to (insert forty-thousand-foot-view on amorphous topic here, like parenting, women who work, people who love too much, etc.)" In effect you are saying, "please do the work for me and tell me where I fit in." Book publishers hate this approach and bong prospective authors with no real view of how their work should be positioned. Likewise, a conference programmer may disagree or want to alter your approach, but asking to be involved without indicating how you want to show up may take you out of consideration.
9. Slow down and hydrate. I'm a fast-talker, so this is a toughie for me. Often I've got a lot to say and want to plow through, and I tend toward excitedness. If you are like me, slow down your pace--people actually appreciate when you let them catch up. If you tend to have less energy when you are nervous, fake excitement, and remember, you are not doing your audience a disservice by not being yourself, you are helping them to absorb what you have to say. One of Guy Kawasaki's posts explains how vocal inflection plays a role in what your audience can hear and retain.
And yes, drink water, even break to take a sip, if you must. At that first BlogHer conference, I was running around madly, trying to supply people with Cat-5 cables and adjusting signage. I didn't take any time to prepare physically for my panel. By the time I got to introduce my panel, my throat was so dry I actually started squeaking. It didn't help that I'd popped a piece of gum in my mouth and almost choked on that. (One that we still chalk up on the "What was she thinking?" list of early speaking blunders). These things may seem small, but start talking for a significant amount of time with no water and you'll see/feel/hear what I mean. If you are offered water, take it. And if you aren't, ask for it!
10. Don't memorize, visualize. Years ago my sister asked me to speak at her wedding. I started scripting things to say, and then got frustrated with myself when I tried to recite what I'd written and couldn't remember it. A colleague of mine at the time, a former news anchor and prolific speaker, suggested that I outline what I wanted to say, and then spontaneously generate the words, working off of that outline. I've used this model for public speaking ever since.
For a presentation that might mean something like:
1. Introduction: Story about when April and I met.
2. Correlation with the company's purpose
3. What we are doing now to stick to that purpose
a. Product design
b. Company culture
c. Launch of newsletter
Pretend that you are giving your presentation to a real audience, and go through your outline in your head, spontaneously speaking to each point in your outline. Notice where you tend to digress or drag down the presentation. Notice where you can't elaborate and either need to build more details/description/storytelling, or drop that point.
If you are giving a presentation multiple times, you become a self-correcting machine. Though I've given the same presentation many times before, I've never delivered it the same way twice. Some phrases are repeated, as I've memorized them over time, but by using an outline I am able to move things around as necessary, address questions, and present authentically.
And if you have facts or lists of information you must share and aren't sure if you'll nail it, read it verbatim. This isn't a contest to see what you can recite, and forgetting information can be more damaging--or discrediting--than remembering it incorrectly. I do this when I present our sponsors at BlogHer. I'm not trying to be tacky; I'm trying to give everyone credit.
11. Know the difference between a soundbite and a script. This relates to the last point; while I don't suggest memorizing a speech, I do recommend reviewing your most salient point, product, argument, and deciding EXACTLY how you would like it worded. We call these crafted terms soundbites, and they aren't meant to be artificial marketingspeak but rather a clear, repeatable, press-quotable way to refer to your idea or business.
I've always been resistant to soundbites; I'm a writer for Chrissakes! Don't tell ME how to express what I can express more authentically and spontaneously myself! This attitude is unrealistic and will lead to others not being able to remember key aspects of your work or business. As Chip and Dan Heath say in their book Made to Stick (with some re-interpretation by me): Do you really need to infantilize your audience by repeating phrases over and over again like they are little children? Based on what we know about cognitive retention and brand recognition: Yes, you do.
Here's to seeing you up on the dais. Imperfect and powerful.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>This isn't a realistic standard, especially when I work in a nascent, ever-changing field. Fact is, I need people who don't have the same experience that I do; I need people who think differently and who will make me smarter. I need people who came from the client side, the agency side, the geekier side, who can tell me what we're missing. I need youth; and yet I need experience. I need seasoned people who can also drop outmoded thinking. I need someone who sees working with my organization as the ultimate opportunity and yet makes me feel like I have struck gold by having her on board.
I need a lot, you see. And, I suspect, I'm not different from the millions of managers out there who are navigating increasingly global, networked markets.
I believe BlogHer was able to grow as a business because the community had no pre-conceived notions of what it was (other than an org for women), which only freed us up to get smarter and fully leverage the talents of the many women who opted to work with us. But I can't give myself that credit, or the company. We had no choice but to embrace women and diversity--it was our mission.
Yet that's not a given for many other organizations. I had an eye-opening experience this weekend, when I attended the Women's Leadership and Innovation Conference, produced by Womensphere, in New York City this weekend. I was invited to speak on a panel about women who'd started entrepreneurial ventures involving community, though I was able to sit in on a few sessions, notably the lunch keynote, entitled "Unleashing Potential: Inspiring and Empowering Diverse People - and Oneself". The session was moderated by Nadine Mirchandani of Ernst & Young and featured Freada Kapor Klein, CEO of The Level Playing Field Institute, Joanne Creighton, President of Mout Holyoke College, and Carla Harris, Managing Director and Head of Equity Private Placements and Global Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley.
All three of the panelists impressed me, though they offered up wisdom from very different perspectives. As head of the Level Playing Field Institute, Klein showed how companies actually lose billions of dollars of talent by insisting on one kind of talent, or a resume branded with all the right schools and experience.
"You don't always know why someone went to the school she did," Klein said. We assume that if someone's school wasn't top tier that the candidate couldn't get into top tier, but that's just not the case. Many top candidates had to care for family and stay close to home. Or, for some, a top-tier school just wasn't a priority.
I went to school with a very different notion of what I would be doing once I graduated, and "new media", let alone "social media", wasn't exactly a major. Qualified candidates can be people who have very different backgrounds, or who couldn't afford a good school.
Klein also mentioned companies that shall remain unnamed (ine rhymes with "Oogle") that often miss the big picture by requiring educational transcripts as a gatekeeping method. She mentioned a very experienced 39-year-old woman who was recruited by the company, who had to first produce a college transcript before the company could continue discussions. I understand such incidents where people lied about their background, but in this instance, the work and experience seemed to take precedence, no?
As Joanne Creighton mentioned some of Mt. Holyoke's history and traditions during her keynote, women interspersed in the audience clapped or laughed; they were clearly alumni. It occurred to me that some of us had another form of privilege that even other educated people may not have had in life, the influence of strong women; an education that was grounded in the notion that women would do great things.
I didn't go to a sexist school. My sorority supported sisterhood and good works. But I don't think that state or co-ed schools necessarily promote women making a place for themselves in the world. Rather, in these environments you have to seek out this re-enforcement. As I met so many Mt. Holyoke alumns the pride and assumption of being powerful was apparent in each one. Sure, some graduate and don't opt to have groundbreaking careers, but none question whether they can have these things. For many other women with different educations confidence is genetic, or discovered through chance experiences, or just plain hard-won.
The final speaker, Carla Harris, just impressed the hell out of me, and everyone in the room. At the urging of someone in the audience, she even sang a bit of Gospel for us. I loved her opening lines. She took issue with the name of the panel, "Unleashing Potential". She thought the word "potential" should be replaced by the word "power".
"I'm a black woman who's been on Wall St. for over 20 years. I think I know a thing or two about power," she said, amidst a cheering audience.
Harris taught me another lesson, different from the others. She's black, a woman, and has had all the "right" education, having gone to Harvard for undergrad and Business School. She fit the bill for any organization who wanted to hire smart minorities. But from this position she didn't fall for settling on just getting in the door, nor did she forget who she was.
The first pearl of wisdom she shared with the audience was about being authentic, aspiring on your own terms.
Sure, she said, you need to learn about a corporate culture and play along with the rules of that organization, but you had to do that in a way that was still in alignment with yourself. She told a great story from early in her career, back in the 1980s, when she was just out of school and a senior manager said, amidst a roomful of people, "Why don't you come sit on my lap, Carla." And she said back, "Don't be writing checks with your mouth that the rest of your body can't cash." I'll bet the incident kept her from being marginalized in a hard-driving Wall Street environment.
That panel, along with my personal experiences, left me with some perspective for what to consider 'good people' to hire. I've come up with some of my own principles.
Ask yourself about the candidate: Does this person want to be here? Sounds like a silly question, but you know it when a candidate is not totally interested, or weighing other options. There's too many other things you will have to worry about to invent the right hire, let alone keeping things interesting for the wrong one. Just don't go there.
Having a "star" on board can be more of a pain than a gain. Don't get me wrong, competence is important. Your candidate may know all of the right people and have been extremely successful in jobs similar to the one for which you are hiring. But if that candidate is going to rest on her laurels, or destroy a team dynamic, the damage may far outweigh the benefit of having this person on-board.
Don't be turned off by someone who is concerned about culture, or her hours. People who ask these questions signify people who are serious about doing well, and thus need to know what is expected of them. Will you expect them to work all hours? If there's a mismatch, then respectfully part ways, or even consider what you are missing by having someone with some boundaries on your team.
Notice here that I never said anything about educational or professional pedigree. Of course there are certain criteria that must be met in these areas, but this is the easy part, people. Finding "good people" is more art than science, I'm afraid. For people who came to their careers from more of zig-zagged than a straight line, this is excellent news.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>I don't love driving in places I don't know well: parking lots, shopping malls, Los Angeles. I take cabs, or order a car service, or convince my husband to drive. But my colleague, Kristin, and I had a slew of business meetings recently in L.A., some we had together and some not. It seemed to make the most sense to drive.
]]>I don't love driving in places I don't know well: parking lots, shopping malls, Los Angeles. I take cabs, or order a car service, or convince my husband to drive. But my colleague, Kristin, and I had a slew of business meetings recently in L.A., some we had together and some not. It seemed to make the most sense to drive.
Though I had Mapquested every leg of my trip there were inevitable cancellations and time changes the night before, rendering my printed work useless. I sprang for GPS, thank God, and shrugged and said "Yeah whatever," when they asked me if I was OK with a sporty compact. This was my first mistake.
Poor Kristin, who is easily six foot three in heels, couldn't even fit in the passenger's side of our two-seater.
"I'm sure I can make this work, somehow," she said, bringing her knees uncomfortably close to her head. The last time she had to be in that position was probably when she gave birth to her son. She couldn't so much as fit her wallet in the front seat with us, so she stuffed her belongings in the back
"You are on it!" she said to me, I suspect, because directions and logistics are not my forte. This was positive re-enforcement. Though I struggled to see over the wheel, we managed to make it onto the highway, with the GPS indicating we would make our meeting with plenty of time to spare.
We chatted about random things as I kept my eye on the GPS; I wondered for a moment how I would have managed without it. We'd been warned that the traffic was slow in L.A., though I found it odd that even as traffic sped up we continued at a 20 MPH clip.
Suddenly the engine light began to blink.
"Uhhhh, Kristin. I think something's wrong here."
The car lost all acceleration; we had to coast off the highway, onto a random street.
"This isn't happening," Kristin said, trying to hold it together.
"Re-calibrating route. Re-calibrating route." The GPS responded.
Though we managed to swap out the bad car an hour later, Kristin had to call and tell her contact that we would likely be late. We did salvage the meeting, but I input the wrong address into the GPS and we had to scramble to get there--scramble being a highly subjective word, since we were unable to drive faster than 18 MPH. I drove with the blinkers on; Kristin apologized profusely to anyone who passed us wishing we were dead.
The remainder of the day was equally strewn with problems: One of our appointments had been rescheduled the night before, so Kristin and I had to split up. I dropped her off near her building, where there seemed to be an opening to park--next to a dumpster. Though I had over an hour before my next meeting, which was five miles away, I was stuck in traffic and driving about a block a minute. A colleague had called for some help on a proposal that was due in a few hours. I tried to provide usable feedback while inching ahead to my meeting. The GPS Lady recalibrated my arrival time every minute; I was dangerously close to being late for my next meeting too. With all this down time, I dug into my purse for a Balance Bar, ripped off the wrapper with my teeth and scarfed the thing down. Nothing sucks more than having your stomach growl during a presentation.
The assistant of the executive I was meeting gave me very specific instructions, including making a right once I saw a billboard. I saw three. I guess I should have asked him to be more specific: a billboard of what?
The first one was a no-go; I probably should have noticed sooner that I had entered an amusement park. The second one was correct; I checked in with security. In addition to ensuring everyone's safety, these people serve another useful purpose--you can always blame them for being a few minutes late: "Wow, that's some security you have down there. Took us 15 minutes just to get my name tag!"
An aside: Be very careful with these name tags. Though you might want to just throw them away or toss them into your purse, sometimes you actually have to show this thing to a receptionist when you get to the receptionist's office. I learned this the hard way once, when I'd used my name tag as a receptacle for my chewed gum. Also be very careful with those sticky name tags. If you are wearing cashmere or suede, your guest will understand if you cannot wear it on your person. Be creative! Stick it on your purse (not leather!) or your file folder. These make for great momentos, though not if you flaunt it at a competitive company. Apparently that's tacky.
After this next meeting I got lost in the parking lot, realizing I had been searching the wrong end of an eight-story building and having to inspect every platinum gray car. In some ways I was grateful; I wasn't going to be making it to the gym that day, so the climbing in heels provided me with a decent sweat. I've gotten lost in parking lots many times before and had tried to look for visual cues before I entered the structure, but there weren't any. I parked my car with the butt jutting out, thinking this would provide me with enough differentiation to spot my car later, though I didn't note the make of the car, the replacement of the dysfunctional one I had been driving. It didn't seem very important when I was scrambling to make it to the last meeting. This was another mistake.
I prayed to God while clicking my powerlock keychain, hoping any of the tailights of the thousand or so cars I walked past would flicker. I had only eaten a Balance Bar that day and felt borderline delirious. Finally, I heard it, like God's voice, "beep beep." I've never been so excited to see a Pontiac before.
I couldn't figure out how to input the "Los Angeles Airport" into the GPS (no specific address), so I approximated my way back to the airport, conducting three phone meetings with colleagues in the process.
"When can you take a look at what I just sent you?" one asked.
"Depends," I said, "on When I get to the airport ... sometime." I thought about whether I was actually unable to edit a document from my Blackberry, while driving. I felt that making him wait until I was able to open the doc on my laptop was a little precious, but whatever.
"Did you input the right address this time?"
That was unneccessary.
Once I got to the airport my flight was delayed, and the check-in desk was re-assigned three times. I noticed another gentleman who was booked on my flight and seemed to be able to intuit where to go next. I blindly followed him from station to station and managed to get on the standby list of an earlier flight.
Did I mention the meetings went really well?
Aside from my car rental breaking down, this was not an entirely atypical day of business meetings. Ask anyone who has to be on the road a lot and they are bound to have stories. We wear them like odd badges of honor. Kristin was able to one-up our little car-rental fiasco. She was actually hit by a car on her way to a meeting. Needless to say, she was late for that one, too.
My mother thinks I'm crazy to travel so much. Why would anyone knowingly place themselves in the pit of the unpredictable? But this comes from a woman who hates to leave her house lest she need to go potty. True, it ain't for everyone, particularly people who need to know what to expect in a day. For me, the face-to-face connection with clients or partners is priceless, worth stripping down at airport security numerous times a day.
I find that having to coordinate my work around my travel makes me more organized; I make the most of each minute. Sure, the travel keeps me from a lot of my work, too. I've stopped apologizing for missed emails; I do a daily triage of my email to determine what has to be answered in between flights and meetings. Some just can't get answered until I get back.
The process of successfully managing business travel is like GPS: You start out in a very straightforward manner, but when inevitable changes take you off-course, you must re-calibrate, and do it quickly. You must be willing to offroad and then wipe off the dirt before you make it to the client's lobby.
Needless to say, you should always bring handi-wipes.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>Therefore I'm intrigued by books that try to encapsulate new business management models with storytelling, or "the business fable" to get a point across. Most commonly, when we hear of business fable, we think Who Moved My Cheese. But this book is to business concepts what Everyone Poops was to my four-year-old niece, a bit basic. And, like, no duh.
]]>Therefore I'm intrigued by books that try to encapsulate new business management models with storytelling, or "the business fable" to get a point across. Most commonly, when we hear of business fable, we think Who Moved My Cheese. But this book is to business concepts what Everyone Poops was to my four-year-old niece, a bit basic. And, like, no duh.
If we can get over our issues with feeling infantilized by some of the less adept versions of fables, the ones that almost literally start with "Once upon a time in a corporate office park far, far, away..." we realize that storytelling can be an enjoyable way of taking our management medicine. And I think this is why management specialists such as Patrick Lencioni are so popular--they write books that don't feel like a graduate seminar. But they can often feel like a network sitcom--not always funny or that entertaining, and not very applicable to real life.
Take Lencioni's books. His latest fable, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job pulls you in with the title, even if the book is, itself, more about managing properly. Personally I love any business book that hints at finding fulfillment. But alas, I'm not sure I found it here.
At first the book reads like a Fast Company profile: We learn that the protagonist, a hard-working and rather earnest executive, has become for the first time in his life gainfully unemployed, following the purchase of the company he led. (Here would be a good opportunity to dwell on the topic of fulfillment and answer a question most of us workaholics wonder about: What would we do with ourselves if we weren't so myopic and one-dimensional? But I'm getting away from the plot here.)
While contemplating his next step in Lake Tahoe, which lasts all of a page, the executive encounters a malfunctioning Italian take-out restaurant and bam, he discovers that he is meant to turn the place around. Some people are born again, some learn that their purpose is to treat the sick in Bangladesh, and this guy discovers that he is meant to ensure that no one forgets to pack a spaghetti marinara in a take out order--EVER AGAIN.
The executive takes an ownership stake in the restaurant, with the intention of turning it around. In the process of transformation, he learns three basic signs that signal an unfulfilling workplace: anonymity, irrelevance, and "immeasurement" or no tracking of performance improvement.
The pages that follow remind me of the first half hour of Atonement, only all the initial painstaking attention to the mundane details of running a restaurant doesn't lead to a bestselling epic, or much of anything. Whenever I'm forced to notice details, and when I'm made privvy to random comments, I assume the effort was made for the purpose of foreshadowing some major event, and this just was not the case. Lencioni likes to pepper his characters with attributes like surliness or shyness, or even a tattoo, but none of these characteristics mean anything later and are too vague to paint a picture, as strong descriptive narration does. I'm left wondering, what did I miss? What was I supposed to pay attention to?
Spoiler alert: Later, the executive applies these principles to his new gig as an interim CEO of a flagging athletic retailer. And, at the very end, Lencioni takes off the storytelling masquerade altogether and returns to what he is most comfortable with--being a management consultant. He, the consultant now, reiterates the three points he made during his protagonists' catharsis in the fable, only now he walks you though it like any old-fashioned business book writer would, just in case the reader has no clue what she was supposed to glean from the past two hours of reading.
I wish I could say I felt more enlightened by this book. But rather I felt like I'd just been lured by an engaging title into an approximation of reality by someone with good intentions, but who sounds like the poor HR manager who kindly asks you all to sit down while she fires up the exciting corporate video. You almost want to see boobs just to stay awake.
I wish that more consultants would think like my favorite history teachers in high school, who would show movies like Brazil to teach about the ill-effects of fascism, or The Gods Must Be Crazy to teach about cultural difference. Some forms of entertainment educate in ways experts can't. We may think that Steve Carell's character in the TV Show "The Office" is absurd, but don't think he doesn't remind you of someone, even yourself. I could see aspects of myself in his need to constantly entertain. Just by watching this program I've learned that, sometimes, the greatest way to help your people is to leave them alone. Let them participate on their terms.
Taking off from this discussion, I would love to hear what are some of the best unintentional business books, movies, TV shows you'd recommend. I won't be recommending any fables.
Jory Des Jardins also writes at Pause.
]]>Fortunately, Malik sought treatment in time and should recover fully ... provided he lets up on some of his less-healthy habits, as he admits, "smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods."
]]>Fortunately, Malik sought treatment in time and should recover fully ... provided he lets up on some of his less-healthy habits, as he admits, "smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods."
Perhaps you were shocked by Malik's ability--or desire--to blog so quickly after such a scary event. I can understand this; even after such horrific events as my father's death, I blogged that day. It seemed I craved a way to grieve and process, and blogging provided me with that outlet. Similarly, after years of posting Malik may find comfort in being in contact with the community he spoke to every day.
Perhaps you are floored by the near-thousand comments that follow his brief post, messages of encouragement and empathy. When you've ensconced yourself in a community as impactfully as Malik, this is bound to happen. As bloggers, we don't want to cash in our free sympathy chips too readily, but when we do have a legitimate crisis, the immediate outpouring can be healing.
What surprises me about Malik's scare and the recent death of uber-blogger and productivity expert Marc Orchant is that we expect people whose work we admire to blog forever. When Elisa told me about Malik's stroke, she, Lisa, and I all thought the same thing, "but what about the blog!" I checked all of the places where Marc Orchant wrote, most recently Blognation, and there was a note: "Will the last one out please turn off the light", with a link to the archives. Since this is where I really knew Marc, his online work, this image inspires the most grief.
Some of the comments to Malik's post included sentiments encouraging Malik to take care of himself and get his health back up to par before jumping back into the fray. Of course, to many bloggers, or to any workaholic for that matter, stopping is tantamount to a death of sorts, a death of relevance. Publishing is proof that we matter. And even after the initial rush of recognition we get from our work, it becomes equivalent to a runner's high--something we need to achieve in order to not feel sluggish for the rest of the day.
I imagine it will be a struggle for Malik to change his daily habits, eat a little better, get some exercise, and, as he says, even drink decaf. But the hardest part might just be sitting on the sidelines while others blog the trends on GigaOm, his eponymous site. To turn inwards and look at what was has been quietly moved to the side, earlier than he can even remember.
A young man still, Malik confirms that his scare was linked to his way of living. While I knew Marc Orchant personally, I only met him once in person, and I think I probably imbibed more than he did. I know nothing of his personal habits, or of any genetic predispostion he might have had toward heart disease. But I do find it ironic--unfair, even--that someone like him, a productivity expert dedicated to simplifying things for people and who lived by those rules of simplification, suffered a fate of accumulation, of life built up.
Marc was a hero of mine--someone who had constructed a life outside of work while reminaing fully ensconced and relevant within his career. There was no onramp of offramp period for him. It all flowed together. I can't even begin to imply that this was not really the case, because of his massive coronary. I can only conclude that it doesnt' make much sense, and that we should strive to live well anyway...even if it means, from time to time, skipping a post.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>Problem was, I was miserable following this path. Granted, no one is herself in a market downturn, but for some reason the studying wasn't coming naturally. I realized that my consternation was from a deep-seated fear that I was wasting my time. But I was far too practical to not have a Plan B.
A friend suggested that I see her career coach. I didn't see the point; after all, I KNEW what I needed to do. I just needed to understand what was keeping me from getting the job done. I agreed to call her coach, with hesitation.
My first call with Kimberly Wiefling went differently than I had imagined it would.
"I'm going to ask you a series of questions," she said, "and I want you to answer them as honestly as you can."
My impulse was to think I was wasting my money. How would asking me questions provide me with that I didn't already know about myself? I was paying her to tell me what she thought about my situation.
That day I learned something new: Coaches aren't doctors; they don't prescribe. Rather they find the area of consternation and, with your awareness, help you to dissolve it. Kimberly didn't tell me what to do; she brought me closer to my own truth and equipped me with a game plan for my chosen path.
Kimberly used her science background to approach my situation, asking me "If/then" questions and extracting my rationale for how I was approaching my career. I learned that a key assumption behind everything I did was that I needed some form of credibility to enable me to do what I loved.
I had wanted an MBA, I told Kimberly, because I wanted to speak and inspire others; maybe even coach. But even with this revelation there was a hidden agenda. After an hour of questions we got down to a truth that I, a practical woman, didn't want to admit to herself. At the end of the day, I wanted to tell stories.
"And you need an MBA to do that?" Kimberly asked.
"People would listen to me if I had one," I said, hearing the absurdity in my statement.
With this new truth I couldn't move forward with business school. I wasn't sure what I should do and ended up taking several months to figure things out, but I knew that I needed to find more direct means of reaching my goals. And this required a new bravery, of learning to off-road. I wanted to go to business school because it was like a highway leading me in the direction I wanted, but until I was courageous enough to take the smaller routes--or even forge my own--I would never get to exactly where I wanted to go.
That session was very powerful. After that meeting I spoke with Kimberly occasionally, and subscribed to her outstanding newsletter. I felt I was cheating, gleaning her wisdom with no effort on my part. She was a natural writer, and funny to boot. In all of her missives she used a word to describe the ethic behind everything she believed--scrappy. This isn't a very glamorous word, but it applied to me, someone who busted her butt and was learning to work smarter and with more integrity. Of course, years later, I encouraged her to blog.
I met Kimberly when she was just starting to grow her practice, in 2001. Today, she's a full-time coach, speaker, and writer. She's the embodiment of someone who has forged a unique path. I read of her new courses and enterprises, including ongoing work in Japan, and felt a sort of kinship, as I was now rolling on my own path. When she sent me the galley for her new book--alas, part one of a new series called The Scrappy Guides!--I was excited. Finally Kimberly found some time to cull her wit and wisdom into a guide. I had to read it.
Kimberly's first book, Scrappy Project Management: The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls that Every Project Faces comes at an interesting time for me. As BlogHer grows, so does its headcount. My usual mojo is Lone Ranger--let me handle it all! But now my projects go beyond what one woman can handle; I am my own bottleneck. I knew I needed good people--more qualified than myself--to get us to where we're heading. I was relieved for the help, but anxious as well. More people means more to manage.
I love Kimberly's approach to leadership--having one or few lead many is a recipe for failure. Rather, a leader has to encourage everyone to take a leadership role and cull those efforts. A leader is a project manager. And by removing the onus upon oneself as a leader to be the genesis of everything, you will get more done. This news was a relief.
Kimberly deftly uses metaphor for what I often call a "clusterf*&k" effect that often occurs with well-meaning but failed project management. She calls this "The Rip Tide Model of Project Teamwork":
With unclear goals, the speed of mistakes exceeds the speed of progress, and team members start to drift rather than paddle. Imagine yourself floating on a raft in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean on a dark, cloud-covered, moonless night. Having no idea of where you were, whether you were moving, or in which direction, why on earth would you bother to paddle?Compare this to being on a speeding bullet train where the path and destination are clearly defined. Even if the track runs out a couple of kilometers down the line, a team that trusts their leader will fly down the tracks at full throttle, knowing that more track will be laid by the time they get there.
I've just started the book, but already I can relate. In my "Web 1.0 Days" projects were periods of time when everything in my life was moved over. I had no life, so this wasn't as difficult for me, but for folks with spouses, hobbies, and children, this is, indeed, a challenge. Not surprisingly, in a leadership workshop I attended, my work persona was given the name Mac Truck.
Kimberly writes:
In my younger days I focused entirely on results, with little regard for the impact of the process on myself or others. I worked myself into exhaustion, became even more irritable than normal, alienated potential allies, pushed people too hard, and said lots of stupid things that made me wish I had a rewind and erase button on my mouth. On one occasion I got into some quarrels with one of my guys. He was normally easy-going, so I asked him what was wrong. He said he was trying to quit smoking. My retort? “Quit after the project is over!” And when another talented engineer complained that the long hours were wrecking his relationship with his girlfriend I told him he could always find a new girlfriend after the project was finished.
Although somewhat funny at the time, I look back on my callousness with a degree of remorse. My own personal scorecard now includes building long-term relationships.
I, too, armpit-deep in the most challenging "project" of my career intend to manage with relationships intact. In my neverending quest to achieve results AND maintain sanity--and humanity--this book is like a beacon to me. I look forward to the next scrappy guide (Kimberly, a request: Make the next one Scrappy Time Management).
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>Now with most of today's Reality TV features crazy, borderline sadomasochistic challenges and people who are willing to do anything to "get the job", I've come to appreciate a Hip-Hoppier version of The Apprentice that I've watched now for four seasons: Making the Band, featuring music mogul, Diddy. Each season he is on a quest to find the right group of performers on which to bother spending precious resources, such as studio time, producers, voice coaches, and Rolexes. And though in many ways Diddy is egomaniacal and harsh with his recruits, his show really does provide insight into better hiring practices, with a few exceptions.
I do have some fundamental disagreement with a few of Diddy's tactics. This season the candidates have so much natural talent that he's had to find other ways of narrowing the pool, namely by breaking the recruits. I didn't see the point of the one-on-one boxing matches he'd arranged, during which candidates fought for their professional lives. One singer, after getting his pretty face bloodied up, decided that it was time to call it a day. Shame, he might have been a better pop star than a fighter.
During season 3 Diddy shared some harsh, but accurate feedback with a talented white woman who made it into the Girl Group he assembled, "Quit trying to be black," he said. Translating this in corporate speak: We've already established that you are talented and belong here; now your best contribution to this team would be your authenticity.
This season, I cringed when he told a very talented singer that he needed to lose weight or he'd be cut. Just think if someone said that to you in a job interview! "I want to see five or six pounds (of weight loss) every week," he told the singer, who appreciatively nodded. But then I realized, this is SHOW BUSINESS! Think of all the opportunities this guy might have lost hoping to get by without getting in shape. This is the music industry's version of compassion.
But what annoyed me about that mandate is that Diddy--like many ineffective bosses--issued unrealistic goals without providing a roadmap for getting there. Who knows what this guy is going to do to himself in order to slim down quickly? Diddy did provide a trainer; I hope the candidate uses this resource. You can see in the candidate's eyes how much he wants to be in the band; though I suppose that good intentions just don't matter in Diddy's world. Only the marketable survive. In the last episode he had to cut a candidate who'd injured his leg and couldn't adequately perform his dance moves, and a candidate who was distracted after learning that his unborn child would likely have Down's Syndrome. We have personal leave policies for that kind of thing. But not here.
"The music business isn't always fair," Diddy said. Come to think about it, BUSINESS business isn't always fair. Sure, we have to espouse fairness, but when it comes to such things as staffing, there are biases--inherent "unfairnesses". While we can't say we won't hire a candidate because she's a woman, we can legally say that she's "not a fit."
Some other lessons I learned from Diddy:
1. Have good people surrounding you: Diddy flits in and out during key moments of the program, but its really his professional coaches, managers, instructors who provide the care and feeding of the candidates. They need champions--people who will instruct and let go. But make no mistake, it's Diddy's decision in the end. They are like the Tim Gunn's (Project Runway) of the world, who don't make the final hiring decision, but who offer guidance and a buffer between the harsh realities of competition. Every company needs folks like these to keep the candidates from going insane.
2. Only those who really, really want it survive: There is some feeling of justice in that only the fully committed get anywhere on this show. So often we see talented-but-aimless types on the covers of magazines because they got drunk in a club, not because they are particularly talented. In Making the Band (and others like Project Runway and Top Chef) these people WORK for it. Whomever gets chosen you can't say didn't deserve to be.
In some of my hiring experiences I've been confronted with having to choose between a disengaged "star" and an underseasoned but promising alternative, who would die to have the job. On the rarest occasion I'll have the star who really wants the job, but barring this incredible luck I'll take the promising and enthusiastic one.
3. It's all about fit: I marvel at how quickly Diddy can make a gut decision about a performer. It usually comes down to his/her fit with others in the group. He's cut outstanding performers who don't mesh with the group vocally or culturally. And then he's let people with seemingly odd or averse backgrounds, but who can lend something unusual to the group, stick around. I know that I've often been caught up in hiring stars at the risk of having to bend over backwards to please them. Now I always ask myself, will having this person on-board affect the chemistry and flow among the others?
4. Don't just hire to hire: In season 2, Diddy felt that despite all the work put in to create a band, the group he had didn't have what it took to make it to the big time, and he dissolved the group. MTV must have had some consternation on the production side when he announced, at the end of season 3, that he hadn't found the right talent yet, and he extended the season to add more talent to the recruiting pool.
I admire his tenacity, though admittedly his pickiness is a luxury. When I have been in recruiting situations I normally need the person, like, NOW. I would love to send them home for a few months until they are "band material" or not make any decision at all. But it's still nice to see what high standards look like in the music world. People make a brand. You pick the wrong people and the brand suffers.
Word out, y'all. Peace.
Jory Des Jardins also writes at Pause.
]]>But this morning was different. My husband suggested going out this morning.
"I just thought we could spend some time together," he said.
Normally I'd protest and tell him that we usually spend our Sunday mornings in the house together; him, typically browsing online, and me squeezing a blog in between emails. But inherently I know that this form of togetherness isn't quality time, and despite all that I had to accomplish, we both needed to go out and have breakfast--even if we could cook a better one.
Our weekends have become the place where I park everything that I didn't get to the week before. Every Sunday I'm shocked that all of the little things I pushed to this day add up to more than 12 hours or work. And the usual weekend things that I normally accomplish on Sundays are, ironically, moved to a weekday evening.
The wait wasn't long. We sat down and were served coffee.
"It seemed like we needed to go out today," my husband said. "You've just been so busy."
I agreed, and added, "You know, I don't plan to work all the time for the rest of my life. I work now to work less later."
As I said this, I questioned my rationale. I sounded like an alcoholic who claimed she could stop at any time. "I'm drinking now, while I can, before my liver gives out."
"You could be hit by a bus tomorrow," my husband said.
I realized that I needed a new reason for why I work.
Throughout our lives we work for different reasons. Ideally we work because we are driven to make change in the world; the money is incidental. Or better yet, we get rich making change in the world. Sometimes we work for a specific goal--to save for a house, or to afford a child's education. The goal helps us set our sights on something beyond the work itself. If we get frustrated with the work we can say, "Well, I said I would do this until my son starts school," and the feeling of control over a currently challenging situation diminishes a bit.
A friend of mine took a job a few months ago because of it's boringness. "I feel no stress or pressure," I get my bills paid and can leave the office at 5pm, ready to do things that I really love." She realized that her passion was not something that she would be paid for, so she found something relatively painless to do for pay that created a foundation for her other life. Some people can maintain this arrangement for years, though it can't last if the passions that we meant to fund through our less-inspiring work gets lost, or we start to pour the energy we had for other things into our jobs. Personally I know I'd fail in these circumstances. If I took a job for the sake of "getting by" on my way to something else, I would become sidetracked. I would want to achieve in this less-desirable existence.
I've worked for all of the reasons I mentioned, and as I work through these issues of work and motivation, I realize I have no answers about the right way to work. In early 2005 I took a career equivalent of backpacking in Europe for an undetermined amount of time. I learned my strengths and weaknesses, and what kinds of environments work for me. And I also found a project that has become all-encompassing, something that currently overflows with so much possibility and things that I am passionate about that it has spilled all over my well-laid plans for balance. To my right is a pile of clothes I remembered to take out of the dryer at 1 a.m., I may not get to folding them this week. In front of me Post-Its mix in with the TV remote, some beverage coasters, and yesterday's mail.
By nature I'm an orderly person, but there is no delineation anymore. And yet I've received just what I silently asked for. My mistake was assuming that getting what I asked for would mean instant coordination of everything else.
For me, the new mix is taking it one day at a time and prioritizing as I go. Today the laundry will wait. Brunch, it seemed, needed to come first.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>I happened upon a news feature on the British soccer referee Graham Poll. Having not seen the program from the beginning, I didn't understand what Poll's wife and mother were talking about when referring so solemnly to "the incident".
]]>I happened upon a news feature on the British soccer referee Graham Poll. Having not seen the program from the beginning, I didn't understand what Poll's wife and mother were talking about when referring so solemnly to "the incident".
"I don't understand what happened," his mother said, tearfully. I wondered if he'd lashed out at a player or committed a crime.
Finally they showed the clip of horror, the accidental yellow card that Poll gave a player, who had already racked up enough yellows to deserve a red.
Poll was teary-eyed recounting the aftermath of humiliation that followed in the British press, the suspicion that accompanied him every game afterward. The sadness of having a 27-year-career wiped out from that mistake. His daughter had sent him a text message letting him know that despite the mistake, his family still loved him. Not coincidentally, he resigned in May.
I thought the story was ridiculous; in the U.S. refs screw up all the time. It happens. Sure, people get riled up, but then they drop it. The referee goes home and shows up at the next game. And if he had enjoyed a distinguished, decades-long career like Poll, we'd be surprised at his mistake, but we wouldn't condemn him for it. Our politicians get away with far worse.
Several days later I met podcaster Anna Farmery at the Women Business Blogging Conference in Leicester, UK. We were discussing British Prime Minister Tony Blair's seemingly endless world tour marking the end of his political tenure. Though I'm not an avid follower of British politics I've always felt bad for Blair, who seems to be a charismatic, compassionate leader in the tradition of Bill Clinton, and yet he will be remembered far less fondly by his constituents than our former president, who used the White House as his very own motel room.
"What did Blair actually do wrong?" I asked Anna. Sure, most of us who abhor the continuation of the war in Iraq don't agree with Blair's support of the Bush administration. But I see many other things that Blair did right.
"At the end of the day, Blair is probably a better PM than Bush is a president," Anna said. "But we don't allow as many mistakes out here."
Clearly, Americans have a cultural way of remembering things in averages, the good with the bad, and accept the darker shades of gray.
I came away from that conversation with a new distinction: The British don't have a culture that allows failure, like the U.S. does. Consider the Silicon Valley culture of high-stakes risk and reward. The Googles of the world wouldn't have been built without founders who were willing to buck the odds and without investors who understood the numbers game involved with great success. Most of my successful colleagues in the Valley have experienced layoffs, setbacks, sometimes the failure of their own companies. Some of our failures we don't exactly brag about, but we can refer to them as proof of experience. We may over-identify with our achievements, but we don't identify with our failures. We use them as professional stepping stones. Our inability to not let fear of failure stop us is irrational, perhaps, but it works.
Contrast this with the English referee Poll, who saw his failure as a signal to call it quits.
Another thing struck me when I presented at the Women Business Blogging conference about the marketing power that women hold online. In terms of leveraging blogs for commercial purposes, the UK is "behind" the U.S., though in other ways it's on-par or even further along. I was impressed with the attendees' openness to blogging, their interest in it on an anthropological level, and to London's long-established blogging culture. Meg Pickard, another presenter at the conference, has blogged longer than most people I know (and I know a lot of bloggers!). Following two phenomenal, more theoretical presentations, I felt a bit like the filthy American, out to show people how to make a buck.
"Don't worry," said the conference head, Sue Thomas. We may not show our interest on commercialization publicly, but you are answering questions that we all have."
I chatted further with Anna Farmery on the current state of advertising on blogs. She was effusively grateful that I'd answered her questions and agreed to a later podcast interview.
"Of all of the businesspeople I've interviewed," she said, which includes a rather impressive list (Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and other heroes of mine) most are American." She explained that many she's approached who are British have declined being interviewed, even those with books and businesses to promote. I was shocked by this. Perhaps we're not all born with the promotional gene; or perhaps it's more nurture than nature, and some cultures "approve" of promoting oneself than others. The culture of academia is like this: My sister, a college professor, sees mass exposure as less legitimate than, say, a mention in a college text. (I'm attempting to change her attitude in light of the publication of her next book.)
I'm not necessarily proud of the American tendency to grab our 15 minutes of fame, but I wonder if the British tendency to under-exploit doesn't hurt them on an entrepreneurial level. If you can't shill, monetize, or--on occasion--lose, how can you play?
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
]]>Though I am a voice of BlogHer and support women online I was annoyed! This woman clearly had not read about my role at BlogHer, or researched other options of who could give her the help she required.
You might think, "What was this person thinking? She didn't even know you!" But consider this woman's position: she was a woman blogger seeking help with setting up a blog. I'm associated with a women's blogging org, and my email address was right there on our contact page. Why not just see what happens!
The automation of the networking process may make connecting with people easier, but it also makes it a lot easier for people whose needs and interests don't match yours to connect with you. Now imagine if this woman had pinged Steve Jobs for help with her blog. I get dork chills just thinking about it.
Unfortunately, being a good networker means having some uncomfortable moments when you have to deny requests. Linked-In has automated the process of putting people in the uncomfortable position of having to make these judgements. And because of this effect I believe you have to use this tool wisely.
I am what you might consider an evangelist of the social media; I see distributed media as the way of the future, and word-of-mouth as the most powerful form of marketing. I was just espousing to a group of small business folks how your Virtual Reputation means more now than it ever did. If you don't know you have one, you are in denial, and if you are not taking care of it, you'll be in trouble.
Still, I don't use Linked-In as my primary means of networking.
Don't get me wrong--I'm on Linked-In. I created a profile over two years ago, when the first few requests to be connected began to trickle in, and I update it occasionally. I see the value of tapping networks and appreciate that I can reference people's Linked-In profiles to get a good sense of their professional backgrounds. I have many contacts in Linked-In; people I have approved to include me in their list of connections. But I have not pursued anyone myself.
I still haven't really used the tool by searching for leads or scouring the networks of my contacts to see whom they know. Granted, I'm a slow adopter--I have yet to Twitter--nor do I have much time to troll profiles, but there is also a discomfort that I have with the tool. It encroaches on a fundamental belief I have about networking--I've always believed that a contact is only legitimate when there's been a proactive introduction and acceptance of the contact information.
Let me clarify: A "proactive" introduction is an organic introduction. A typical proactive networking situation (besides meeting someone in-person and exchanging information) would be chatting with someone who is inspired by your cause and offers to introduce you to a contact. A less-proactive, but still acceptable, form of introduction would be reaching out to your network for introductions to people that your contacts believe would be interested in connecting. Then the onus is on your network to speak up and offer contacts, or not. If they offer contacts they do so by choice.
Linked-In is permission-based--my contacts cannot get access to my other contacts without my permission. But when a contact askes me to connect them with another contact of mine, I'm sometimes uncomfortable. My reputation IS my contacts, and so is my judgement in sharing them. I believe in the democratizing effect of social media and its ability to connect people of like minds (and like needs). But within six degrees of separation are many sub-degrees of nuance, intuitive determinations of appropriateness that Linked-In cannot mechanize.
Recently a good friend pinged me through Linked-In, asking for an introduction to a fairly high-powered person in my network. While I wanted to help my friend, I did not believe it was appropriate to connect him to this person. In fact, I believe it would have caused this contact to question my judgement by bringing to him contacts that were not a fit with his business. There are times when I agree that it is appropriate to connect people and I make the introduction in a much more customized, personal way than by simply clicking on "Yes" and linking these people digitally.
I have some personal rules and limits for how I use Linked-In. I'll share and would love to hear some of yours:
1. Don't be a Connection Junkie: You knew these people Pre-Web-2.0: They had to get extensions on their Rolodexes to accommodate their thousands of business cards, a millionth of which they actually used. They back up their Palm Pilots daily to keep their contact database up to date. They have the biggest birthday parties and invite everyone from work and the neighborhood. They love to mix work and play, family and colleagues. They loved to seem well-known and well-connected. I know this type so well because I have connection junkie tendencies. I love bringing people together, and I still can't throw out the hundreds of business cards from days of yore.
The problem with Connection Junkies is that they are too willing to invite and share, and while they may connect you to some quality people from time to time, they also send over cousins of friends of friends looking for internships, neighbors selling cubic zirconia bracelets for the local basketball team, and Jehovah's Witnesses. These people also love to include you in their travelogues--even if you haven't seen them in 15 years, or send you tasteless jokes. Eventually we stop responding to email from these people--they just don't think enough before distributing your name to their Outlook Address Book.
To these people, Linked In is like a blue light special--THE PLACE online to wheel and deal. If I suspect I am being asked to approve a request by a Connection Junkie I don't respond. Sorry to offend.
2. Be a linker with limits: This next one treads on some touchy territory, but let's face it: professionally, you are who you know (and what you do, of course, but when networking your contacts are critical). If you don't give your virtual Rolodex proper care and feeding it's not worth very much. This means that you have to be clear about how you are defining your network, and whom it may include.
That means that my Nana stays in my personal address book and out of my Linked-In account. Likewise, college buddies, high-school sweethearts, even blog buddies stay out of my professional network unless they are in some relevant way associated with my work. This is not a hard and fast rule--I happen to have old high-school friends who are great professional contacts, but I'm cognizant of the fact that Linked-In isn't MySpace. Generally personal contacts are not there, which increases the professional value of my contacts. That said...
3. Be OK with saying No to introductions, and when you say yes, ask for permission from the other party. I've been asked for introductions to my literary agent, magazine editors I know, attractive female friends, and in all cases I run an appropriateness check before providing introductions, and if I'm on the fence, I ask for permission. Why? Because I don't want to be a Connection Junkie, or perceived as one. I want people to be excited about the projects and people that I bring to them, and that means not bringing to them inconvenience--opportunities that I know they will have to take the time to turn down. That's not networking that's direct marketing.
Recently I was asked by a good friend to connect his friend (a total stranger) to my literary agent. This was by no means a slam dunk for this person. I gave him a qualified yes: I would consider the introduction, seeing as it was requested by a him, but I would need to read the work first. Would my agent be excited to represent me if I simply forwarded any and all manuscripts her way? Don't think so. She's got enough unsolicited material to handle.
4. Know your place. Ewww that sounds so horrible! But I mean it. Just because someone is on Linked-In doesn't necessarily mean it's wise to contact her. I don't take for granted that all people have the properly calibrated radar for appropriateness. Perhaps they envision themselves as the next Erin Brockovich on a mission that's too important for such formalities as introductions. Men without this intuitive quality might pitch Steve Jobs if they saw him standing in the next urinal stall.
One of my worst jobs ever was in a strategic sales position, where just by virtue of being within 100 yards of an SVP meant I had to "go get 'im!" In a word: Ick.
You have to consider what the lives of your contacts are like, and that they will likely hand off your info to someone else. Salespeople know this inherently and charm the gatekeepers of the world. They work their way up the food chain, in business speak, and are patient for the appropriate introductions. A long-awaited, qualified introduction is a thousand times more profitable than a cold call to someone who doesn't know you.
None of my "rules" imply that I think Linked-In isn't useful. But I question full reliance on any tool that allows people to avoid the hard work of authentic connection. In the end, real connections seal the deal.
Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
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