The pilot on tonight's flight just came on with an important announcement: we have enough fuel to get to Boston.
Hmmm. I probably was assuming that before he mentioned it. Is this something I really want to have brought to my attention? Is this something I need to hear?
I started to imagine all the other situations in which I really would not appreciate an announcement. How about a nurse who assured you that the syringe she's about to stick in your arm has never been used before? Or a waitress who mentioned that she washed her hands before she made your sandwich? Again, really something I prefer you not call to my attention.
A boyfriend who says that he is not going to break up with you today? A boss who is not going to fire you? (Okay, in today's climate, I grant you that one might be nice reassurance to have.)
But we often say too much.
Here are five situations in which saying less would have been more.
1. Describing one more product feature, after the customer's facial expression indicates that she has already decided to buy. By describing an additional feature, the only thing you can possibly do is trigger an objection the customer had never considered.
2. Beginning any meeting or speech by letting your audience know that you are poorly prepared or prepared at the last minute. At a minimum, this demonstrates a lack of respect for the importance of the event or other participants. In most cases, you also decrease the authority of your conclusions.
3. Asking a question that shows you have absolutely no idea about something you really should understand. I know, people often say there's no such thing as a dumb question. But, frankly, that's just . . . well, dumb. Sometimes it's much wiser to do some research (or ask a friend) to get grounded, and then go back with "smart" questions.
4. Trying for a second laugh after your first spontaneous comment proves amusing. (Think of this as the George Costanza rule for any of you who are Seinfeld fans.) It almost never works. Quit while you're ahead.
5. Assuring people things won't happen that people never imaged would. An airplane with enough fuel should be a given.
Shhhhh . . .
Saturday, August 1, 2009
The Best Leadership Advice I Ever Got - MARSHALL GOLDSMITH
This week's question for Ask the Coach:
As a coach, you are asked to give others advice - what is the best coaching advice that you have ever received?
Like many young Ph.D. students, I was deeply impressed with my own intelligence, wisdom and profound insights into the human condition. I consistently amazed myself with my ability to judge others and see what they were doing wrong.
UCLA Professor Fred Case was my advisor and head of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission - where I was doing my dissertation research. At this point in my career, he was clearly the most important person in my professional life. He was also a man that I sincerely respected. He had done an amazing amount to help the city become a better place. He was also doing a lot to help me.
Although he was normally in a very upbeat mood, one day Dr. Case seemed annoyed. He looked at me and growled, "Marshall, what is the problem with you? I am getting feedback from some people at City Hall that you are coming across as negative, angry and judgmental. What's going on?"
"You can't believe how inefficient the city government is!" I ranted. I immediately proceeded to give several examples of how taxpayer's money was not being used in the way that I thought it should be. I was convinced that the city could be a much better place if the leaders just listened to me.
"What a stunning breakthrough!" Dr. Case sarcastically remarked, "You, Marshall Goldsmith, have discovered that our city government is inefficient! I hate to tell you this Marshall, but my barber who is cutting hair down on the corner figured this out several years ago. What else is bothering you?"
Undeterred by this temporary setback, I angrily proceeded to point out several minor examples of behavior that could be classified as favoritism toward rich political benefactors.
Dr. Case was now laughing. "Stunning breakthrough number two!" he chuckled. "Your profound investigative skills have led to the discovery that politicians may give a more attention to their major campaign contributors than to people who support their opponents. I am sorry to report that my barber has also known this for years. I am afraid that we can't give you a Ph.D. for this level of insight."
As he looked at me, his face showed the wisdom that can only come from years of experience. He said, "I know that you think that I may be old and 'behind the times', but I have been working down there at City Hall for years. Did it ever dawn on you that even though I may be slow, perhaps even I have figured some of this stuff out?"
Then he delivered the advice I will never forget. "Marshall," he explained, "you are becoming a 'pain in the butt'. You are not helping the people who are supposed to be your clients. You are not helping me and you are not helping yourself. I am going to give you two options:
"Option A - Continue to be angry, negative and judgmental. If you chose this option, you will be fired, you probably will never graduate and you may have wasted the last four years of your life.
"Option B - Start having some fun. Keep trying to make a constructive difference, but do it in a way that is positive for you and the people around you.
"My advice is this: You are young. Life is short. Start having fun.
"What option are you going to choose, son?"
I finally laughed and replied, "Dr. Case, I think it is time for me to start having some fun!"
He smiled knowingly and said, "You are a wise young man."
Most of my life is spent working with leaders in huge organizations. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that things are not always as efficient as they could be - almost every employee has made this breakthrough discovery. It also doesn't take a genius to learn that occasionally people are more interested in their own advancement than the welfare of the company. Many employees have already figured out this one as well.
Real leaders are not people who can point out what is wrong. Almost anyone can do that. Real leaders are people who can make things better.
Dr. Case taught me a great lesson. His coaching didn't just help me get a Ph.D. and become a better consultant. He helped me have a better life.
Think about your own behavior at work. Are you communicating a sense of joy and enthusiasm to the people around you - or are you spending too much time in the role of angry, judgmental critic?
Do you have any co-workers who are acting like I did? Are you just getting annoyed or are you trying to help them - in same way that Dr. Case helped me? If you haven't been trying to help them, why not give it a try. Perhaps they will write a story about you someday!
As a coach, you are asked to give others advice - what is the best coaching advice that you have ever received?
Like many young Ph.D. students, I was deeply impressed with my own intelligence, wisdom and profound insights into the human condition. I consistently amazed myself with my ability to judge others and see what they were doing wrong.
UCLA Professor Fred Case was my advisor and head of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission - where I was doing my dissertation research. At this point in my career, he was clearly the most important person in my professional life. He was also a man that I sincerely respected. He had done an amazing amount to help the city become a better place. He was also doing a lot to help me.
Although he was normally in a very upbeat mood, one day Dr. Case seemed annoyed. He looked at me and growled, "Marshall, what is the problem with you? I am getting feedback from some people at City Hall that you are coming across as negative, angry and judgmental. What's going on?"
"You can't believe how inefficient the city government is!" I ranted. I immediately proceeded to give several examples of how taxpayer's money was not being used in the way that I thought it should be. I was convinced that the city could be a much better place if the leaders just listened to me.
"What a stunning breakthrough!" Dr. Case sarcastically remarked, "You, Marshall Goldsmith, have discovered that our city government is inefficient! I hate to tell you this Marshall, but my barber who is cutting hair down on the corner figured this out several years ago. What else is bothering you?"
Undeterred by this temporary setback, I angrily proceeded to point out several minor examples of behavior that could be classified as favoritism toward rich political benefactors.
Dr. Case was now laughing. "Stunning breakthrough number two!" he chuckled. "Your profound investigative skills have led to the discovery that politicians may give a more attention to their major campaign contributors than to people who support their opponents. I am sorry to report that my barber has also known this for years. I am afraid that we can't give you a Ph.D. for this level of insight."
As he looked at me, his face showed the wisdom that can only come from years of experience. He said, "I know that you think that I may be old and 'behind the times', but I have been working down there at City Hall for years. Did it ever dawn on you that even though I may be slow, perhaps even I have figured some of this stuff out?"
Then he delivered the advice I will never forget. "Marshall," he explained, "you are becoming a 'pain in the butt'. You are not helping the people who are supposed to be your clients. You are not helping me and you are not helping yourself. I am going to give you two options:
"Option A - Continue to be angry, negative and judgmental. If you chose this option, you will be fired, you probably will never graduate and you may have wasted the last four years of your life.
"Option B - Start having some fun. Keep trying to make a constructive difference, but do it in a way that is positive for you and the people around you.
"My advice is this: You are young. Life is short. Start having fun.
"What option are you going to choose, son?"
I finally laughed and replied, "Dr. Case, I think it is time for me to start having some fun!"
He smiled knowingly and said, "You are a wise young man."
Most of my life is spent working with leaders in huge organizations. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that things are not always as efficient as they could be - almost every employee has made this breakthrough discovery. It also doesn't take a genius to learn that occasionally people are more interested in their own advancement than the welfare of the company. Many employees have already figured out this one as well.
Real leaders are not people who can point out what is wrong. Almost anyone can do that. Real leaders are people who can make things better.
Dr. Case taught me a great lesson. His coaching didn't just help me get a Ph.D. and become a better consultant. He helped me have a better life.
Think about your own behavior at work. Are you communicating a sense of joy and enthusiasm to the people around you - or are you spending too much time in the role of angry, judgmental critic?
Do you have any co-workers who are acting like I did? Are you just getting annoyed or are you trying to help them - in same way that Dr. Case helped me? If you haven't been trying to help them, why not give it a try. Perhaps they will write a story about you someday!
How to Run a Meeting Like Google - Carmine Gallo
Meetings get a bad rap in business today and for good reason—very little gets accomplished in them. I can recall a Dilbert cartoon in which several people sat around a table while the meeting organizer said, "There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we'll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us…"
That pretty much sums it up. The majority of meetings are unstructured, uninspiring, and unproductive. But they don't have to be that way.
When I decided to write a column about running effective meetings, I turned to a leader who holds more than anyone I know and who actually credits her meeting structure for leading to some of the most innovative advances in technology today: Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president of search products (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "Marissa Mayer: The Talent Scout").
Mayer holds an average of 70 meetings a week and serves as the last stop before engineers and project managers get the opportunity to pitch their ideas to Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Eight teams consisting of directors, managers, and engineers—all at various stages of product development—answer to Mayer.
In a shop like Google (GOOG), much of the work takes place in meetings, and her goal is to make sure teams have a firm mandate, strategic direction, and actionable information, while making participants feel motivated and respected. Mayer's six keys to running successful meetings follow:
1. Set a firm agenda.
Mayer requests a meeting agenda ahead of time that outlines what the participants want to discuss and the best way of using the allotted time. Agendas need to have flexibility, of course, but Mayer finds that agendas act as tools that force individuals to think about what they want to accomplish in meetings. It helps all those involved to focus on what they are really trying to achieve and how best to reach that goal.
2. Assign a note-taker.
A Google meeting features a lot of displays. On one wall, a projector displays the presentation, while right next to it, another projector shows the transcription of the meeting. (Yet another displays a 4-foot image of a ticking stopwatch.) Google executives are big believers in capturing an official set of notes, so inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be caught immediately.
Those who missed the meetings receive a copy of the notes. When people are trying to remember what decisions were made, in what direction the team is going, and what actions need to be taken, they can simply review the notes.
3. Carve out micro-meetings.
Mayer sets aside large blocks of time that she slices into smaller, self-contained gatherings on a particular subject or project. For example, during her weekly two-hour confab with the co-founders and CEO Eric Schmidt, she sets aside five- to 10-minute segments—or longer, depending on the subject—devoted to such specific areas as weekly reports on how the site is performing, new product launches, etc.
This method offers enough flexibility to modify the agenda just before the meeting, should anything pressing occur. It also instills discipline that keeps the meeting tightly focused. Mayer does the same with members of her teams who might need only five or 10 minutes of her time instead of 30 minutes—the shortest block of time her calendar permits. By setting aside micro-meetings within a larger block of time, she accomplishes more.
Mayer, who has a background in engineering and computer science, jokingly refers to micro-meetings as "reducing latency in the pipeline." That means if she has an employee with an issue that comes up Tuesday, he or she can schedule a 10-minute micro-meeting during Mayer's large time block, instead of waiting for her next 30-minute opening, which might not be available for two weeks.
4. Hold office hours.
Mayer brought this idea from her experience teaching computer science at Stanford, where she first met the two guys who would go on to revolutionize how the world gets its information. Beginning at 4 p.m., for 90 minutes a day, Mayer holds office hours.
Employees add their name to a board outside her office, and she sees them on a first-come, first-serve basis. Sometimes project managers need approval on a marketing campaign; sometimes staffers want a few minutes to pitch a design (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/30/06, "Inside Google's New-Product Process").
Says Mayer: "Many of our most technologically interesting products have shown up during office hours. Google News, Orkut [Google's social networking site], Google Reviews, and Google Desktop all showed up first in office hours." During office hours, Mayer can get through up to 15 meetings, averaging seven minutes per person.
5. Discourage politics, use data.
One of Mayer's "Nine Notions of Innovation" is "Don't politic, use data" (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "9 Notions of Innovation").
This idea can and should apply to meetings in organizations in which people feel as though the boss will give the green light to a design created by the person he or she likes the best, showing favoritism for the individual instead of the idea.
Mayer believes this mindset can demoralize employees, so she goes out of her way to make the approval process a science. Google chooses designs on a clearly defined set of metrics and how well they perform against those metrics. Designs are chosen based on merit and evidence, not personal relationships.
Mayer discourages using the phrase "I like" in design meetings, such as "I like the way the screen looks." Instead, she encourages such comments as "The experimentation on the site shows that his design performed 10% better." This works for Google, because it builds a culture driven by customer feedback data, not the internal politics that pervade so many of today's corporations.
6. Stick to the clock.
To add a little pressure to keep meetings focused, Google gatherings often feature a giant timer on the wall, counting down the minutes left for a particular meeting or topic. It's literally a downloadable timer that runs off a computer and is projected 4 feet tall.
Imagine how chaotic it must look to outsiders when the wall shows several displays at once—the presentation, transcription, and a mega-timer! And yet, at Google, it makes sense, imposing structure amidst creative chaos. The timer exerts a subtle pressure to keep meetings running on schedule.
Mayer does have one caveat when it comes to the timer—maintain a healthy sense of humor about it. (The timer was counting down to the end of my interview with Mayer—but she turned it into a fun and friendly reminder instead of an abrupt end to our discussion.)
Please keep in mind that these meeting techniques work well for Google. They may or may not be appropriate for your place of business. But these six keys should give you some new ideas about how to transform your meetings from a waste of time to time well spent.
That pretty much sums it up. The majority of meetings are unstructured, uninspiring, and unproductive. But they don't have to be that way.
When I decided to write a column about running effective meetings, I turned to a leader who holds more than anyone I know and who actually credits her meeting structure for leading to some of the most innovative advances in technology today: Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president of search products (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "Marissa Mayer: The Talent Scout").
Mayer holds an average of 70 meetings a week and serves as the last stop before engineers and project managers get the opportunity to pitch their ideas to Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Eight teams consisting of directors, managers, and engineers—all at various stages of product development—answer to Mayer.
In a shop like Google (GOOG), much of the work takes place in meetings, and her goal is to make sure teams have a firm mandate, strategic direction, and actionable information, while making participants feel motivated and respected. Mayer's six keys to running successful meetings follow:
1. Set a firm agenda.
Mayer requests a meeting agenda ahead of time that outlines what the participants want to discuss and the best way of using the allotted time. Agendas need to have flexibility, of course, but Mayer finds that agendas act as tools that force individuals to think about what they want to accomplish in meetings. It helps all those involved to focus on what they are really trying to achieve and how best to reach that goal.
2. Assign a note-taker.
A Google meeting features a lot of displays. On one wall, a projector displays the presentation, while right next to it, another projector shows the transcription of the meeting. (Yet another displays a 4-foot image of a ticking stopwatch.) Google executives are big believers in capturing an official set of notes, so inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be caught immediately.
Those who missed the meetings receive a copy of the notes. When people are trying to remember what decisions were made, in what direction the team is going, and what actions need to be taken, they can simply review the notes.
3. Carve out micro-meetings.
Mayer sets aside large blocks of time that she slices into smaller, self-contained gatherings on a particular subject or project. For example, during her weekly two-hour confab with the co-founders and CEO Eric Schmidt, she sets aside five- to 10-minute segments—or longer, depending on the subject—devoted to such specific areas as weekly reports on how the site is performing, new product launches, etc.
This method offers enough flexibility to modify the agenda just before the meeting, should anything pressing occur. It also instills discipline that keeps the meeting tightly focused. Mayer does the same with members of her teams who might need only five or 10 minutes of her time instead of 30 minutes—the shortest block of time her calendar permits. By setting aside micro-meetings within a larger block of time, she accomplishes more.
Mayer, who has a background in engineering and computer science, jokingly refers to micro-meetings as "reducing latency in the pipeline." That means if she has an employee with an issue that comes up Tuesday, he or she can schedule a 10-minute micro-meeting during Mayer's large time block, instead of waiting for her next 30-minute opening, which might not be available for two weeks.
4. Hold office hours.
Mayer brought this idea from her experience teaching computer science at Stanford, where she first met the two guys who would go on to revolutionize how the world gets its information. Beginning at 4 p.m., for 90 minutes a day, Mayer holds office hours.
Employees add their name to a board outside her office, and she sees them on a first-come, first-serve basis. Sometimes project managers need approval on a marketing campaign; sometimes staffers want a few minutes to pitch a design (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/30/06, "Inside Google's New-Product Process").
Says Mayer: "Many of our most technologically interesting products have shown up during office hours. Google News, Orkut [Google's social networking site], Google Reviews, and Google Desktop all showed up first in office hours." During office hours, Mayer can get through up to 15 meetings, averaging seven minutes per person.
5. Discourage politics, use data.
One of Mayer's "Nine Notions of Innovation" is "Don't politic, use data" (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "9 Notions of Innovation").
This idea can and should apply to meetings in organizations in which people feel as though the boss will give the green light to a design created by the person he or she likes the best, showing favoritism for the individual instead of the idea.
Mayer believes this mindset can demoralize employees, so she goes out of her way to make the approval process a science. Google chooses designs on a clearly defined set of metrics and how well they perform against those metrics. Designs are chosen based on merit and evidence, not personal relationships.
Mayer discourages using the phrase "I like" in design meetings, such as "I like the way the screen looks." Instead, she encourages such comments as "The experimentation on the site shows that his design performed 10% better." This works for Google, because it builds a culture driven by customer feedback data, not the internal politics that pervade so many of today's corporations.
6. Stick to the clock.
To add a little pressure to keep meetings focused, Google gatherings often feature a giant timer on the wall, counting down the minutes left for a particular meeting or topic. It's literally a downloadable timer that runs off a computer and is projected 4 feet tall.
Imagine how chaotic it must look to outsiders when the wall shows several displays at once—the presentation, transcription, and a mega-timer! And yet, at Google, it makes sense, imposing structure amidst creative chaos. The timer exerts a subtle pressure to keep meetings running on schedule.
Mayer does have one caveat when it comes to the timer—maintain a healthy sense of humor about it. (The timer was counting down to the end of my interview with Mayer—but she turned it into a fun and friendly reminder instead of an abrupt end to our discussion.)
Please keep in mind that these meeting techniques work well for Google. They may or may not be appropriate for your place of business. But these six keys should give you some new ideas about how to transform your meetings from a waste of time to time well spent.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
How to Perfect an Elevator Pitch About Yourself - Daisy Wademan Dowling
You're in the elevator with the hiring manager of Dream-Job Corporation. As the door slides shut, you feel a combination of adrenaline and slight nausea: you've got 15 seconds, if that, to communicate your value as a potential employee in a compelling way — just 15 seconds to cram in a whole resume's worth of work and accomplishments and late nights and successes. There's so much you want to say, but your message has got to be crisp, tailored, to-the-point. Handle this one right, and you'll be the newest member of the Dream-Job team. Flub it up, and you're back to scanning listings on Monster.com. What are you supposed to say?
Here are the five key things to know and do in order to make your elevator pitch successful:
Practice, practice, practice. Very few people have the oratorical power to make compelling 15-second speech about their entire professional lives on demand and under pressure. Practice your speech 100 times — literally. Know it, get comfortable with it, be able to tilt it effectively for a different audience. Practice your body language with it: how will you give the speech differently sitting down vs while walking down a hall? How will it be different over the phone vs in person?
Focus on impact. Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes aired a segment set at a white-collar job fair. One of the interviewees, a laid-off Wall Street secretary, looked straight into the camera and said, with total conviction, "I can make any boss shine." I wanted to hire her on the spot. Who doesn't want to shine? Describing the impact you've had, and can continue to have, is much more compelling than talking about your number of years of experience.
Ditch the cultural baggage. A lot of us have been taught — by parents, teachers, or team-oriented corporate environments — not to toot our own horns, and to use "we" instead of "I". Elevator pitches are all about "I". You've got to get comfortable with bragging about your own individual contributions (in a graceful way).
Be slow and steady. Whether out of nervousness or a desire to cram in a lot of information, people giving elevator speeches tend to talk at breakneck pace — which is extremely off-putting to potential employers. Speak at a pace that shows your calm and confidence. You want them to think of you as thoughtful and deliberate — not as some manic babbler.
See the whole world as an elevator. Too many people looking for jobs save their elevator speeches for job fairs and interviews. Remember the first rule of sales: ABC (Always Be Closing). Give your elevator speech to everyone — at family gatherings, in the waiting room of the dentist, at coffee hour at your church or temple. You never know where the next job is coming from.
How do you pitch yourself to prospective employers? What advice do you have for other people doing the same? What works — and what doesn't?
Here are the five key things to know and do in order to make your elevator pitch successful:
Practice, practice, practice. Very few people have the oratorical power to make compelling 15-second speech about their entire professional lives on demand and under pressure. Practice your speech 100 times — literally. Know it, get comfortable with it, be able to tilt it effectively for a different audience. Practice your body language with it: how will you give the speech differently sitting down vs while walking down a hall? How will it be different over the phone vs in person?
Focus on impact. Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes aired a segment set at a white-collar job fair. One of the interviewees, a laid-off Wall Street secretary, looked straight into the camera and said, with total conviction, "I can make any boss shine." I wanted to hire her on the spot. Who doesn't want to shine? Describing the impact you've had, and can continue to have, is much more compelling than talking about your number of years of experience.
Ditch the cultural baggage. A lot of us have been taught — by parents, teachers, or team-oriented corporate environments — not to toot our own horns, and to use "we" instead of "I". Elevator pitches are all about "I". You've got to get comfortable with bragging about your own individual contributions (in a graceful way).
Be slow and steady. Whether out of nervousness or a desire to cram in a lot of information, people giving elevator speeches tend to talk at breakneck pace — which is extremely off-putting to potential employers. Speak at a pace that shows your calm and confidence. You want them to think of you as thoughtful and deliberate — not as some manic babbler.
See the whole world as an elevator. Too many people looking for jobs save their elevator speeches for job fairs and interviews. Remember the first rule of sales: ABC (Always Be Closing). Give your elevator speech to everyone — at family gatherings, in the waiting room of the dentist, at coffee hour at your church or temple. You never know where the next job is coming from.
How do you pitch yourself to prospective employers? What advice do you have for other people doing the same? What works — and what doesn't?
Why Generation X Has the Leaders We Need Now - Tammy Erickson
William Strauss and Neil Howe, coauthors of Generations, posit that each generation makes a unique bequest to those that follow and generally seeks to correct the excesses of the previous generation. They argue that the Boomer excess is ideology and that the Generation X reaction to that excess involves an emphasis on pragmatism and effectiveness.
As many of you know, I've spent much of the last year talking with members of Generation X — those of you born roughly in the 1960s and '70s. The book I've written based on those conversations (What's Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want — safely in the hands of the publisher and due out in December) includes many of your voices — including quotes from your responses to posts on this site. Through this research, I developed a deep admiration for the generational traits evident among most X'ers, particularly in the context of our current challenges.
Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. Perhaps the biggest change from the past: leaders will have to listen and respond to diverse points of view. There will be no dominant voice.
In this context, I'm convinced that Gen X'ers will be the leaders we need. The experiences that shaped those of you who were teens in the late '70s and '80s, as I've outlined in past posts, translate into valuable contemporary traits and perspectives.
Your accelerated contact with the real world, for many through a "latch-key" childhood, has made you resourceful and hardworking. You meet your commitments and take employability seriously.
Your distrust of institutions grew as you witnessed the lay-offs of the '80s and has prompted you to value self-reliance. You have developed strong survival skills and the ability to handle whatever comes your way with resilience. X'ers instinctively maintain a well-nurtured portfolio of options and networks.
A sense of alienation from your immediate surroundings as teens, coupled with rapidly expanding technology, has allowed you to look outward in ways no generation before could or did. You operate comfortably in a global and digital world. Many of you are avid adopters of the collaborative technology that promises to re-shape how we work and live.
Your awareness of global issues was shaped in your youth, and you are richly multicultural. You bring a more unconscious acceptance of diversity than any preceding generation. Your formative years followed the civil rights advances of the 1960s. High divorce rates during your youth meant you are the first generation to grow up with women in independent authority roles. You welcome the contributions of diverse individuals.
Your preference for "alternative" and early experience in making your own way left you inclined to innovate. You tend to look for a different way forward. Your strongest arena of financial success as a generation has been your entrepreneurial achievements.
Your skepticism and ability to isolate practical truths have resulted in rich humor and incisive perspective. You help us all redefine issues and question reality.
Your childhood made you fiercely dedicated to being good parents, prompting you to raise important questions about the way we all balance work with commitments beyond the corporation.
Your pragmatism has given you practical and value-oriented sensibilities that, I believe, will help you serve as effective stewards of both today's organizations and tomorrow's world.
The most difficult elements of your past may well be those that provide you with the strongest capabilities for today.
You have traded the idealism of my generation for realism, tempered by value-oriented sensibilities. At mid-life, you are well-prepared to serve as pragmatic managers, applying toughness and resolution to defend society while safeguarding the interests of the young. You will force nations to produce more than they consume and fix the infrastructure.
In today's challenging world, your humor may be your most-valued asset. Czech leader Václav Havel said, "There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world." You help us step back . . . and remind us to laugh.
You will have the opportunity to change the corporate template, and create organizations that are more conducive to your values. As leaders, you will be able to reshape the organizations you lead to make them better places for future generations and yourselves, make them more humane, and break the cultural norms of corporate life — long hours, a focus on full-time work, heterogeneous perspectives, and language of combat. You will bring your desire to create better alternatives, including how to balance work with commitments beyond the corporation and finding meaning in work. Most importantly, your preference for "alternative" and your inclination to innovate will allow you to look for a different way forward.
I'm ready to join the team.
As many of you know, I've spent much of the last year talking with members of Generation X — those of you born roughly in the 1960s and '70s. The book I've written based on those conversations (What's Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want — safely in the hands of the publisher and due out in December) includes many of your voices — including quotes from your responses to posts on this site. Through this research, I developed a deep admiration for the generational traits evident among most X'ers, particularly in the context of our current challenges.
Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. Perhaps the biggest change from the past: leaders will have to listen and respond to diverse points of view. There will be no dominant voice.
In this context, I'm convinced that Gen X'ers will be the leaders we need. The experiences that shaped those of you who were teens in the late '70s and '80s, as I've outlined in past posts, translate into valuable contemporary traits and perspectives.
Your accelerated contact with the real world, for many through a "latch-key" childhood, has made you resourceful and hardworking. You meet your commitments and take employability seriously.
Your distrust of institutions grew as you witnessed the lay-offs of the '80s and has prompted you to value self-reliance. You have developed strong survival skills and the ability to handle whatever comes your way with resilience. X'ers instinctively maintain a well-nurtured portfolio of options and networks.
A sense of alienation from your immediate surroundings as teens, coupled with rapidly expanding technology, has allowed you to look outward in ways no generation before could or did. You operate comfortably in a global and digital world. Many of you are avid adopters of the collaborative technology that promises to re-shape how we work and live.
Your awareness of global issues was shaped in your youth, and you are richly multicultural. You bring a more unconscious acceptance of diversity than any preceding generation. Your formative years followed the civil rights advances of the 1960s. High divorce rates during your youth meant you are the first generation to grow up with women in independent authority roles. You welcome the contributions of diverse individuals.
Your preference for "alternative" and early experience in making your own way left you inclined to innovate. You tend to look for a different way forward. Your strongest arena of financial success as a generation has been your entrepreneurial achievements.
Your skepticism and ability to isolate practical truths have resulted in rich humor and incisive perspective. You help us all redefine issues and question reality.
Your childhood made you fiercely dedicated to being good parents, prompting you to raise important questions about the way we all balance work with commitments beyond the corporation.
Your pragmatism has given you practical and value-oriented sensibilities that, I believe, will help you serve as effective stewards of both today's organizations and tomorrow's world.
The most difficult elements of your past may well be those that provide you with the strongest capabilities for today.
You have traded the idealism of my generation for realism, tempered by value-oriented sensibilities. At mid-life, you are well-prepared to serve as pragmatic managers, applying toughness and resolution to defend society while safeguarding the interests of the young. You will force nations to produce more than they consume and fix the infrastructure.
In today's challenging world, your humor may be your most-valued asset. Czech leader Václav Havel said, "There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world." You help us step back . . . and remind us to laugh.
You will have the opportunity to change the corporate template, and create organizations that are more conducive to your values. As leaders, you will be able to reshape the organizations you lead to make them better places for future generations and yourselves, make them more humane, and break the cultural norms of corporate life — long hours, a focus on full-time work, heterogeneous perspectives, and language of combat. You will bring your desire to create better alternatives, including how to balance work with commitments beyond the corporation and finding meaning in work. Most importantly, your preference for "alternative" and your inclination to innovate will allow you to look for a different way forward.
I'm ready to join the team.
The Generation M Manifesto - Umair Haque
My generation would like to break up with you.
Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.
You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.
You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.
You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.
You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.
You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.
You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.
You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.
You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.
You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.
You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.
You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.
There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."
What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.
Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.
Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.
The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or "morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.
You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.
But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's what I mean:
"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."
Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution. We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.
I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me: every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.
Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?
Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.
You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.
You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.
You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.
You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.
You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.
You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.
You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.
You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.
You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.
You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.
You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.
There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."
What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.
Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.
Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.
The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or "morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.
You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.
But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's what I mean:
"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."
Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution. We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.
I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me: every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.
Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
“The final thing is – and it comes back to the notion of leadership – it's empowering other people,” he says. “And entrepreneurs are people who have a sense of empowerment, of doing things better. They have the courage of the innocents, which is to ask, ‘Why are we doing it this way? Because we've always done it that way?' But not just why, why, why – but why not? Having put forth the question, what's the resolution?”
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