Dan Erwin

What's Your Story?

Those who do not have power over the stories that dominate their lives, power to retell them, rethink, deconstruct them, joke about them, and change them as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts. –Salman Rushdie 

A good story is a key success factor for making a role, job or career change. What truly moves us as human beings, what prompts us into action is the emotion of a good story. Even overly rational, fact-oriented, data driven magazines and journals like Harvard Business Review, journals that think of business as a matter of pure rational calculation, emphasize the same point. Michael Hattersley wrote in an HBR article, “truth to tell, few talents are more important to managerial success than knowing how to tell a good story.”

Sure, people have used all kinds of means for developing and negotiating identities. When I started in the coaching business back in the early 1980s, one of my first jobs was awarded to me by the CIO of Pillsbury. He was an astute guy, exceptionally capable of identifying talent and helping his folk build an identity. That job--and I still laugh about it--was to take a young manager and teach him to dress for success. The CIO recommended laundered cotton shirts, new ties, better suits and polished shoes. “So you’re going to pay me that much to coach him in his dress?” That young manager has since had three superb CIO jobs at well-known corporations. Obviously, his identity worked. And, we’re still intimate buddies. 

Although people have paid attention to dress, humor, personal style and even office décor to signal who they are, the most useful approach is through the development of a personal narrative. As Hermina Ibarra notes, a self-narrative is a story that makes a point about the person. Self-narratives not only express who we are, but they also create who we are. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook beginnings in his dorm room, Bill Gates’ dropout from Harvard, Hewlett and Packard’s and Steve Jobs’ garage beginnings, as well as Obama’s childhood stories are examples of self-narratives—personal stories—that are carefully crafted for public consumption. 

As a consultant, I learned early on that my personal narrative was exceptionally valuable, not only in the approach I took to my profession, but also as a tool to sell and manage to clients. I had to explain how I’d gone from a career as a minister, to that of a teacher and to that of a business consultant. My ability to relate that emotional story often was the determining factor in whether or not I got a consulting gig. 

In today’s world of free-lance, and “at will” employment, a personal narrative is especially valuable for everyone. At the heart of a new stream of research are the practice and strategy of crafting and negotiating work identities with stories. No one has completed a more fascinating study of identity stories than Ibarra’s work, dating from 2010. In her research, she ticks off some of the situations where your personal story will be of utmost value. 

• Career change
• Job change
• Team leadership
• New job
• High job stakes
• Interacting with high-status, powerful people
• Interactions with unfamiliar contacts
• Job interviews 

Having multiple personal identity stories is valuable in all kinds of situations. Even in questionable situations. In her research, Ibarra quotes an investment banker seeking to move into international development: 

With the nonprofits, the first hour of any interview was “Why the heck would somebody with your background and your pay scale be doing this?” It took an hour’s worth of credibility building; they weren’t wondering “What is your background and what can you offer” but “Are you insane?”

People not only construct identities by telling their story, they also reinvent themselves by telling new stories about what’s happening to them. They reinterpret past events and weave the past and the present into a repertoire. A repertoire that allows them to communicate their identity and negotiate it with others. 

Well, what’s your story?

Herminia Ibarra, Identity as Narrative. Academy of Management Review, 2010, Vol 35, No.1, 135-154.

Flickr photo: CTJ online

Once More: What Do Managers Do All Day?

Austerity. Employee engagement. Social media. Crowd-sourcing. Entrepreneurial. Social networking. Restructuring. Innovative. Internet company.

Words come and go. The verbiage changes, but how has this changed what managers actually do?

In a recent conversation with a Gen-Yer, just 14 months into his first management job, he downloaded most of his day at my request. He uses different language than most of my exec clients. His context, an internet company, is a lot different than theirs: technology, small appliance, agribusiness, etc. Does that mean that the heart of what he does daily is different than what 45 year-old execs at old-line firms do?

For the sake of audience appeal and to desperately offer newness, I need to be able to answer my question with a big, detailed “yes.” There are a lot of new approaches to management: new frameworks, models and buzzwords. But does the heart of managing more traditional companies differ from the heart of managing internet startups today? Or is the new language just new hype?

The context is different
It took only a bit of reflection to realize that at the heart of what managers do, nothing has changed. Oh yeah, the context is quite different, as are the products. But whether you manage at Facebook, GE or General Motors, the heart of management is action.

Most of us know that the orderly reasoning about managing is intriguing, but fairly useless. Even with just a semester of business, you know the business language, describing how managers are supposed to work. A rational approach to management includes the following: planning, organizing, staffing, coordinating, recruiting, etc., etc. When managers step away from the work, most of them still use the terminology of management. But we all know those descriptions have a lot of fiction in them. Managing, like other experiences in life, is messy. Very messy.

The Gen-Y manager
Listening to that Gen-Yer’s talk about chairing a meeting of eight people where an important and controversial issue was to be decided, I thought about his frustrations. He’d gradually come to realize that managing is not what he expected. It’s all action: 10 to 12 hours a day.

Here are six conditions that are completely reflective of what he experienced. Only the conditions were formulated nearly 25 years ago. Not surprisingly, my young friend said that they were completely identical with his 2012 experience. This is a highly descriptive statement about what managers do and can’t do all day:

As a manager, you “cannot avoid acting.” At each moment of the meeting you are acting. Even letting things go constitutes an action—and with effects you may or may not want. So, you are always “thrown into action, independent of your will.

“You cannot step back and reflect on your actions.” You have to rely on your instincts to react and act in real time, even though you may reflect on the meeting later on and realize or wish that you had done things differently.

"The effect of your actions cannot be predicted.” There are too many paths that any action could lead to, so you cannot always depend on rational planning to find steps that will achieve your goals. Instead, you have no choice but to “flow with the situation.

“You do not have a stable representation of the situation.” Things in the meeting evolve continuously. At any moment, you only see fragmentary pieces. The overall pattern of the meeting is only discernible after it is over.

“Every representation is an interpretation.” Even after the meeting is over, your description of what transpired at the meeting will never be the only one. Someone else will read the meeting differently and so the facts will always be elusive—what one must work with is opinions and interpretations.

"Language is action.” Every time you speak, you are not merely stating the facts, you are acting. You are actively shaping and constructing a definition of the situation and trying to persuade others of the facts as you see them and the action s that you believe must be taken. The rhetorical nature of managerial action cannot be escaped and must be constantly attended to.

That new Gen-Y manager breathed a sigh of relief. He expected his job to be something different than what he was experiencing. It was liberating to talk through these actions. They were pragmatic. His practice is not so much about business hype, but what works.

The more you know and understand a situation, the easier it is to work in that situation. I rarely get stressed by a situation I understand. So, like my Gen-Y friend, I find this description liberating. I’m very curious to know what you think about it.

Note: The six points are from Robert G. Eccles and Nitin Nohria, Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management.
Photo fm Flickr.com: by **Anissa**

To Find a Job, Rebuild Your Network

The best way to find a job is still through networking. Certainly the web is useful. But ultimately, nothing is better than face-to-face. Here are my secrets to the process.

No matter how you get the contact, face-to-face will be inevitable. However, many really need to change their networking process to get that new job they’ve always dreamed of.

Networking has been around since the 1930s, but research, insights and major changes enhancing success in the process are relatively recent. Don’t limit your outreach to close friends, colleagues or your current organization. It’s important to realize that your network needs to be tailored to its objectives. And if a new job is your objective, most will need to rebuild that network.

Many people seem to think that networks are easier to form if you’re extroverted and outgoing. But the real issue is effort, not personality style.

And one of the intriguing research finds about high performers is that they distinguish themselves by their network. They don’t necessarily have a big network. But their network has “bridging ties,” ties with people who reach outside their group and outside their organization. Job searchers should be finding and using “bridging ties.”

There are a number of top students of networking and networking analysis. But for popular consumption and personal feedback on your network and network building, pick up Wayne Baker’s, Achieving Success through Social Capital. It’ll help you analyze where your network weaknesses are, how to build a better network and how to focus on your objective.  

Redefine your network to focus on your job search.
Most have far more contacts than they think. Go through your past history, identifying former classmates, colleagues, clients and community acquaintances. When you sit down with a contact to talk, always ask for other contacts. Be very specific.  Follow the sales assumption approach: “Based on our conversation what three people should I contact?” Notice the specific number. If you ask whether they can suggest some others, you’re liable to get a no. But if you ask for specific number and keep seated, they’re liable to go to their own contact list and pull out three names for you. Then ask if you have permission to tell the contact that he/she was the source of the recommendation. And here’s a terrific secret: once you’ve made contact with the three, call the original source back, telling him of the results in up-beat fashion. And thank him. Half the time, he’ll give you more insights and more contacts.

The contact meeting is a discussion, not a job interview.
Keep faith with the stated objective of your meeting. If the purpose of your meeting is information gathering, never, never ask for a job in that discussion. If the contact brings it up, that’s fine. But don’t commit such a strategic blunder. Never go into a discussion unprepared—and be knowledgeable about the contact’s industry. Using information you have about his/her industry, ask more about the industry, its status, future, current jobs situation. Ask how to succeed in the industry and how to position yourself for opportunities.

Finally, get feedback on your handling of the conversation. How can you improve your information-gathering process? What other questions should you be asking, even what shouldn’t you ask. Make it a learning session, both for you and your contact. Give the contact a smile, a firm handshake, and get out of the room—on time. And if the contact continues to give you information, let him know that you appreciate it but that you want to keep faith with his time. He’ll let you know if you can stay seated or should get on your way. And, he’ll respect you for your professionalism. 

Keep good records of your contact and your meetings.
There are all kinds of programs for record keeping, but I keep a special contact file in outlook for potential clients and information gained from meetings. But be sure to check back every two or three months, update the contact, and check to see how he’s doing and whether he has further suggestions for you.

Earlier on in this blog, I pointed out that building a network is about effort, not personality. I hope that message has really sunk in. I’ve worked with numerous leaders who were scrupulous networkers. One especially comes to mind. A vice-president of a consumer products company, I watched him move from job to job, seemingly without any difficult. His first position was lost to a merger, but he had a new position in another company before he finished his tenure. His second position was lost to a strategic IT blunder, but he marched off to another even better position before being let go. He inevitably devoted time every week to networking, revising the quality of his links, and checking in with his contacts. It paid off in spades.

Flickr Photo: by clairphotography 

Why Job Search is Like Throwing Darts at a Target with Your Eyes Closed

Job seekers submit hundreds of applications online, but with little hope of receiving a response. The flip side of that, as a Wharton survey shows, is that blunt-edged tracking systems instantly weed out candidates, including well-qualified ones who don’t fit the software criteria. The process is frustrating for both human resources and the job seeker.

A “broken” process from the very beginning
Applicant-tracking software makes it almost impossible for a job candidate to stand out in the initial screening. And companies have become a victim of their success in using social media tools. For the candidate, problems with the hiring process are not new, dating from the 1970s and 1980s. Three-fourths of companies didn’t inform applicants whether a position was filled 40 years ago and still don’t today. Sure, there are strong legal limitations on what companies can say about why a person doesn’t get a job. But, as Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads says, if large companies continue to treat applicants poorly, then the best might spurn them as well.

Hiring always involves a bit of luck, even for the best companies
A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed that 7.6 million people applied to Starbucks for 65,000 corporate and retail positions last year. And nearly 1 million people applied to P & G for 2,000 positions, while 2 million applied to Google for 7,000 openings. Drill down into that candidate list and you see what big companies face: only 35% of the applicants met the basic requirements of the job they applied for. 

The other worrisome difficulty for firms is that the “formulaic hiring” of software can result in a less creative workforce. Companies relying solely on the “blunt tools” of software can unintentionally rule out candidates whose expertise might benefit the company in unanticipated ways. Companies using software that focuses too narrowly typically assume that college major provides a direct line to analyze the most useful expertise. It’s conventional, but wrongheaded. Anyone who’s studied research creativity and significant contribution knows that much of the finest contributions are at the nexus of science and the humanities. To flip the conventional gray matter switches, some of the most contributive scientists also read Proust. And, shock, some of the more effective pattern thinkers in technology, for example, are musicians and English majors. Does the software pick up on this? 

Best approaches for companies
Smart employers are beginning to make their application very, very narrow. And lengthy. And seriously differentiated from competition. That discourages the thousands of folk who ship off dozens of applications. As Wharton’s Matthew Bidwell says, “The more questions an applicant has to think carefully about, the fewer applications he or she will have time to fill out.” It’s always important for employers to pull back from the mass market and focus on canvassing “internal employees, professional networks, job contracts where you work with third parties and even customers” to find the best recruiting leads and good candidates.

Best approaches for candidates
So what’s the job-seeker to do? A lot more than scanning online sites and hitting the “submit resume” button.  Since most companies have a recruiter and a hiring manager, your application had better be compelling to the recruiter-screener. If you can’t connect with the recruiter, you certainly won’t get to talk to the hiring manger.

The experts are advising candidates to make sure their resume addresses the “skills, capabilities and values” of the company. Pay close attention to the keywords of the offering and use them. Furthermore, try to find a connection within the company. Applicants for particular jobs should see if they know anyone who works there, anyone who knows anyone who works there, or even anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who works there. A lot of jobs come out of extended networks. Take advantage of the network of the networks. That means, inevitably, that you’ll be talking to a lot of people you’ve never met. But, if you want a job . . . that’s the drill.  

Photo by Flickr: Army Strong PA

Milestone on College Degrees is Passed

More than 30% of American adults hold bachelor's degrees. That's a monstrous change, considering that only 11% of my generation of septuagenarians holds a bachelor's. 

The report, tucked away on page 16 of the Times, is far more significant than its newspaper location suggests. Drill down into the statistics and there's a lot of fascinating information. Information which suggests that careers are changing significantly. Some for the good and some not so good.

After a relatively stagnant period between 1970 and 1990, the stats reflect an increase that began in the 1990s. Significant gains are represented by all groups, but blacks and Latinos still lag behind whites. What's not so good is that the gap between whites and the rest has even widened in the last decade.

The census figures are initially heartening.

As of last March, 30.4 percent of people over age 25 in the United States held at least a bachelor’s degree, and 10.9 percent held a graduate degree, up from 26.2 percent and 8.7 percent 10 years earlier.

The statistics bear out the growing lead of women in college degrees, especially since colleges have enrolled and graduated more women than mean. The historic male advantage in graduation rates is about to be a thing of the past, although salary differences between men and women certainly don't reflect that collegiate advantage.

 In 2001, men held a 3.9 percentage-point lead in bachelor’s degrees and 2.6 percentage points in graduate degrees; by last year, both gaps were down to 0.7 percent.

It's no surprise that Asian-American are the best educated racial group: Asian-Americans remain the nation’s best-educated racial group, with 50.3 percent having bachelor’s degrees, and 19.5 percent holding graduate degrees.

Though this study didn't report on salaries, Asian-Americans have replaced Jews as the best paid in today's world. And, by the way, Asian-American Muslims are a significant factor in that high-wage world. As an aside, I've noticed that Asian-Americans are exceedingly aware of the best schools while most Midwestern college grads seem to have little interest. If, for example, I note that one of my daughters holds a Columbia University degree and another a U Chicago degree, there's a gasp from the Asian-American, and then a lot of questions. They want to know how, as a parent, I prepared them, what experiences did I provide for them, what high schools my kids went to, was it an International Baccalaureate school? Etc., etc. 

In addition to the census statistics, the article alluded to results from the American Community Survey.

One of those, examining major fields of study, shows that taken together, engineering and science are the most common areas for bachelor’s degrees, representing 34.9 percent of the total.

The persistence of men in those fields is waning, a significant trend given that engineers and people with science backgrounds tend to be in high demand, and have above-average incomes. Among college graduates 65 or older, only 23 percent of those with degrees in science or engineering majors are women; among people 40 to 64, the proportion of women rises to 36 percent; among those 25 to 39, 45.9 percent are women.

The same report also found that engineers and science majors are most heavily concentrated on the East and West Coasts, with the highest percentages in the District of Columbia, California, Washington and Maryland, and the lowest in Southern and Plains states.

Two issues are of importance from the last set of statistics. First, Richard Florida's research on the hot areas for technology and other STEM vocations merits study by parents and recent grads in search of jobs. Having spent much of my life in the Midwest, I'm aware that leaving home for a job in another state is difficult for many. Still, if recent grads want job opportunities of significance, they'd best kiss mom and dad goodbye and head for where the jobs are.

Second, the extensive jobs study at Georgetown University's Center for Education and the Workforce (downloadable free here), argues that US competitive advantage will turn on science, technology, engineering and math expertise. The report is highly nuanced, recognizing, for example, that two-year grads will have opportunities in the tomorrow's world. The conclusion for parents with kids looking to college are broadened significantly beyond the typical conversation. To wit: major in a stem discipline, or, choosing not to major in a stem discipline, get a job in a company with core stem needs. The third approach is to attend a top school (you know the list of the top 25) and major in whatever you wish.  

Carol Dweck and Greg Walton on Willpower

Is willpower about your biology or your brain? Are we constrained by the narrow limits of our biology?

After nearly a two-week hiatus from blogging--and Thanksgiving week in glorious Boston with my kids, spending some of that time going over my grandson’s list of potential colleges, I’m back home again. So I chuckled to see Carol Dweck and her associate, Greg Walton, reporting still more of their ground-breaking practical research in Sunday’s NYTimes. 

The Stanford profs have studied another important issue of human capital: willpower. And they’ve found that we can actually manage our willpower. 

The authors begin by posing two important illustrations of the problem, both depicting the popular belief that willpower is about biology not mindset. In one, they quote a recent nutrition book, arguing that because of how the brain’s hypothalamus works, it is a “myth” that anyone can will himself to lose weight. A second illustration from a just published book concludes that willpower is “limited and depends on a continuous supply” of glucose. Dweck and Walton’s assessment is spot on: these theories attribute our failures of willpower to our fixed biology—and wrong. 

The theories, as Dweck and Walton point out, have an obvious appeal: attributing failures of willpower to our fixed biological limits justifies our procrastination as well as our growing waistlines. Not only that, we also get to consume more sugar. 

In stark contrast, their research has found that what’s limiting our willpower is our mindset. And when people believe that willpower is self-renewing and work hard, they’re energized to work more. 

Recognizing that many people are skeptical about renewing willpower, their research found the following: 

When the initial task was easy and willpower wasn’t required, people did well on the tricky cognitive task, making few mistakes. But when the initial task was hard and involved self-control, people who believed that willpower was limited made almost twice as many mistakes on the tricky cognitive task as did the group that performed the initial easy task. This finding replicates many studies by Dr. Baumeister and others that have been interpreted as evidence that willpower is limited and easily depleted. But, strikingly, we found that people who believed that willpower was not limited continued to perform well on the second task, making few mistakes, even after facing the difficult initial task. They were not “depleted” and kept on doing well.

This study and others put the lie to our common notions about the limitations of willpower. They also reinforce the well-known research that shows that the more we learn, the better and the faster that we can learn.

You may contend that these results show only that some people just happen to have more willpower — and know that they do. But on the contrary, we found that anyone can be prompted to think that willpower is not so limited. When we had people read statements that reminded them of the power of willpower like, “Sometimes, working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel energized for further challenging activities,” they kept on working and performing well with no sign of depletion. They made half as many mistakes on a difficult cognitive task as people who read statements about limited willpower. In another study, they scored 15 percent better on I.Q. problems.

When faced with skepticism about this kind of research I remember that old dogma dies hard. Once concepts are deeply embedded, a superstructure of assumptions and ideas grows around it. Rejecting a dogma means that many ideas are now questionable, and . . . as a result a close read of a book or thoughtful analysis of a new and complex idea is impossible. As an acquaintance of mine said about these ideas: "I don't believe it. I can't believe it. Everything I've ever learned about intelligence and achievement would go out the window." He tuned out. It was a losing battle I chose not to fight.

This research reminds parents of some very important truths for their children—and themselves as adults, businesspersons and professionals.

At stake in this debate is not just a question about the nature of willpower. It’s also a question of what kind of people we want to be. Do we want to be a people who dismiss our weaknesses as unchangeable? When a student struggles in math, should we tell that student, “Don’t worry, you’re just not a math person”? Do we want him to give up in the name of biology? Or do we want him to work harder in the spirit of what he wants to become?

The New Career Paradigm: Matt Damon vs. Johnny Depp and Steve Jobs

Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne is the classic reflection of the American career--linear and mechanistic. Bourne, like many business professionals, focuses on the choices and the actions available to achieve his objective. Driven by incentives and desires, he focuses on a single objective and takes the necessary actions to achieve that objective. Ten minutes into the movie you’ve got a pretty clear lay of the land and where it’s liable to be going. Laying out the sequences of the movie on a storyboard would be simple. It is a very traditional, linear plot.

In stark contrast, last week I went to see Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary. Both my movie storyboards and career models got waylaid. Badly.

The movie, a semi-autobiographical depiction of the early years of the life of Hunter Thompson—the famous journalist and novelist—got underway with Thompson’s alter ego Paul Kemp (played by Johnny Depp), coming to consciousness, having ravaged the minibar in a dark, trashy Puerto Rican hotel room, overlooking a glorious beach. It’s the 1950s, and his bleary disorientation is accentuated by the small plane that flies by with the banner, “Puerto Rico Welcomes Union Carbide.” Yep. Pave paradise with parking lots! Ugly Americans infest the bowling alley. Right wing capitalists plan vulgar resorts on the unspoiled army testing range at Vieques.

Aside from the enjoyable script, filled with absolutely hilarious, cynical, insolent patter, after the first twenty minutes, I was stymied. Where the hell is this going? The only objective in sight was that the young Kemp (Depp), newly arrived from New York, got a job at the San Juan Star, a newspaper edited by a lunatic. The movie quickly introduced a garrulous, frustrated news photographer and a brain-damaged crime writer that initiated him into a round of barhopping, alcohol-soused benders, and cockfighting that result in a trip to the slammer. At the end of the first thirty minutes, two things were obvious: I couldn’t storyboard the plot like a Bourne movie if I tried, and I was the only person laughing in an audience of about 50 people. But just one thing was clear about the plot: it was jumbled and chaotic, not linear.

Even the ending failed to tie the threads together. The newspaper collapsed, and Kemp (Depp) got out with his life still intact, though flawed and, I assume, made even more cynical by his experiences.

Initially, I thought, rather superficially, that it was a crappy way to begin a career. Still, the movie wouldn’t let go of me. The audience didn’t give evidence of liking it--but I couldn’t let go of it.

Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that rather than a crappy way to begin a career, it was a highly auspicious beginning for a brilliant career. The Rum Diary, in contrast to the Bourne trilogy, depicts human experience in all its warts: chaotic, fragmentary, deviating from cherished values and given to imponderable ambiguity. Thompson was a successful writer, at the least, because of his rich exposure to a variety of encounters and involvement with the discomforting unfamiliar.

Johnny Depp’s Rum Diary was a classic break with the past. In profound contrast to the calculated, linear life of choice, the sense of Rum Diary is its focus upon the vagaries of human experience. Like real human experience, the Diary is messy and filled with misadventures.

The 21^st century is going to require competencies that are not easily derived from our incrementalist business schools and linear developed careers. Think about it. The key expertise for success in a globally volatile marketplace includes adaptability, exploration and entrepreneurialism.

Take adaptability as an example. Adaptation comes out of encounters with novelty that may seem chaotic. In trying to adapt, we often have to deviate from cherished values, behave in ways that we’ve barely glimpsed and seize on clues that are merely fragmentary. What better teacher than novel experiences?

It’s obvious today, that careers and work are experiencing a break with the past as significant as that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when parts of the world began the long process of industrialization. The twentieth century mindset ruled our careers. It was, as the Bourne movies revealed, a highly calculating, narrow, specialist’s view of career. And though I’d be the last person to reject that career model, I’m also very certain that, of itself, it’s inadequate for the demands of the 21^st century.

It was Steve Jobs, of all people, that brilliant, painfully difficult and dysfunctional executive, who pointed to the same problem when discussing professionals in the technology industry.

A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

It’s this journey of experience that The Rum Dairy so eloquently points to. And it’s this very important career shift that businesspeople, desirous of a career future, had best pay attention to. When someone can’t adapt to changes, lacks creative insight, has difficulty resolving complex problems or making decisions, one important conclusion becomes obvious: he (or she) doesn’t have enough dots to connect.

Picture: Flickr..Celine Q.

The Surprising Secret of Success is Failure

The blueprint for successful failure has no straight lines. Nor is it guaranteed.

At 77, I’ve long-since quit stewing and being embarrassed over the fact that I was expelled from college for both social and academic reasons when I was a freshman. Unlike Bob Sternberg, who blew it in the fourth grade, I blew it my first year of college. Fact of the matter, aside from the woman I married and our three daughters, that freshman failure was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

That failure made “I’ll show ‘em” one of the central motivations of my life. I took a mandatory year off, worked in a Detroit factory, and resolved never to find myself in that situation again. So in due time, I knocked off a baccalaureate degree, a masters of divinity from a theological seminary, most of a master’s in theology, an M.A. from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. And my careers, most anyone would say, have been marked by success—and great fun. Freud wrote that the “normal healthy life” includes work, love and play. That was a swell blueprint for me.

I tell this story with obvious relish, recognizing that I’m not the only one who wrested success out of profound failure. But I’m also aware that research has shown that failure can have devastating consequences for psychological well-being. There’s a lot of evidence suggesting that rejection can precipitate a psychological state resembling physical pain, often followed by long-term isolation. You expect psychologists to look for the grim human experience and the abnormal, and that’s what the early research revealed.

However, a fascinating series of studies from 2007 issued a strong caveat to that early research, and also explained my motivation in spades. Jon Maner of Florida State and a number of his colleagues asked whether social exclusion motivates interpersonal reconnection. Six different studies found that the experience of social exclusion increases the motivation to forge social bonds, but . . . with new sources of affiliation. Although it was possible for me to return to the college that expelled me, I chose to go elsewhere.

In retrospect, much of my life has been pure luck. Most probably don’t have the opportunities I was given, much less the mentors who walked into my life, gave me clear direction and were not at all shy about delivering “shape up” lessons.

Merely changing schools, however, did not necessarily imply a “successful failure.” Conventional wisdom says that we learn from failure. That’s far from the truth. Most of the time, we don’t. Failure anxiety rules us. We jump to conclusions, rationalize the hell out of failure to make it look good, ignore or distort feedback and, significantly, fail to separate skill from pure luck.

John F. Kennedy once said that “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” We are quick to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure. Don’t think that the failure was anyone’s but mine or that the success was solely about my own ability. Again, much of it was luck. Being born a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male in the 1930’s to a family that became moderately well-off, a family willing to fund experiences in one of the culturally richest cities of the world (Detroit in the thirties, forties and fifties), educated in a school system that provided experiences students would drool over today, attending a prominent church that pointed its kids to rich and fulfilling experiences and meeting people who took an interest in me, often for no discernible reason, played a large part in my successes. Furthermore, my success over that freshman failure certainly failed to inoculate me against more failure. That’s reality.

Still, motivation, ability and just gutting it out play a huge role in anyone’s life of successful failure. So along the way, I developed the learning competencies that support future success. Though invariably curious, I had to build those performance virtues of persistence, self-regulation, responsibility and what Duckworth calls grit. My small wins responded to the multiplier effect and my successes become more obvious. I found, as Paul Tough has put it so eloquently, that cultivating those strengths is a reliable path to “the good life,” a life not just happy, but meaningful and fulfilling.

Successful failure is not easily won. It’s hard work. But lest you be put off by the seeming demands of success, it’s important to say that I count many friends among my list of successful failures. People who rose to take advantage of their failures. I’ve gotten a lot out of my freshman failure. So maybe the failure never will be finally forgotten, and that’s not such a bad thing. Yeah, I seriously doubt that it’s possible to be successful without real failure. And Steve Jobs is the classic example of that truth.

Note: John K. Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, Schall, Does Social Exclusion Motivate Interpersonal Reconnection? Resolving the "Porcupine Problem." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 1, 42 - 55.

The Critical Dimensions of Organizational Learning

The most gratifying response to one-on-one coaching is the enhanced potential for success. It should come as no surprise that what’s true for individuals is definitely not true for organizations. 

In a long-term coaching and mentoring relationship with a senior client it’s readily possible to figure out the disruptions and the political changes new competencies may bring. At the same you’re able to help the executive make the necessary adaptations required by new skills. But that’s a very different story when it comes to organizations. 

My checkered history of working with volunteers and non-profits before going into corporate consulting positioned me to be very skeptical about organizational change. If volunteers don’t like the changes you’re trying to make, they’re gone, buddy. And you’re left holding the bag. The political ramifications of working with volunteers and non-profits often require almost god-like insights. So truthfully, even though some had suggested that corporate America would be easier to work with, I kept my skepticism in place.  That was a smart move. 

Organizations require a much more thoughtful and methodical learning model than individuals. I’ve worked with brainy individuals who, upon receiving extensive feedback, could talk very quickly about the changes that implied. They’d run off to try them on and come back three weeks later telling me what worked and what didn’t. We could easily fine tune and they’d come back in a few weeks, successful change in place. 

But organizations require a better model. That’s why I’ve found Crossan, Lane and White’s model of the 4i’s to be a cool way to think about and plan for organizational learning. Here are its basics: 

Intuiting.  This is that “pre-conscious recognition” that there are some potentially better patterns or ways of doing things. Pre-conscious recognition is a nagging or gnawing that something is not working as well as it should, or it should work better than this, or we’re not getting the best possible results. It usually starts out with frustration, and eventually some individuals develop novel insights and language to talk about that nagging. 

Interpreting. Organizational learning often looks to be more sequential than individual learning. I suspect, though, that often there are a lot of simultaneous things happening. Don’t get hung up on sequence.  Anyway, after intuition comes the explaining, through both words and actions, of the insights of intuition. We explain both to ourselves and to others in the process of interpreting. I think of it as “bouncing” ideas or explanations off others to clarify and refine the interpretations. 

Integrating. This is the first process that occurs at the group level. As Crossan puts it, it is “the process of developing shared understanding among individuals and of taking coordinated action through mutual adjustment.” You’ll find the group going through a great deal of sorting, analyzing, discarding and adding before they begin to integrate the needed actions. 

Institutionalizing. This is where the learning that has occurred both among individuals and groups is transferred into organizational institutions and on to the members of the organization. Over the years two of my clients—very different organizations—showed themselves to be masters of institutionalizing. They were the 3M Corporation and American Express Financial Planners (now Ameriprise). Once 3M research and development has gained significant new learning, they formalize it and make it available throughout the company. Of course, often those ideas are kept under wrap and key as intellectual property. But the information is networked throughout the needs of the corporation. Someone always knows who has the learning or where to go for it. In very different fashion, Amex used extensive training to institutionalize learning. They were so effective at institutionalizing learning, that competitors were inevitably attempting to steal their employees. These two organizations represent vastly different kinds of institutionalizing processes. Yet both were very successful. 

What I haven’t alluded to in this blog is the very relevant issue of the politics of organizational learning. That’s an issue that can’t be omitted--one I’ll get to at a later date. 

Photo by Sean Dreilinger, Flickr.com

"Selling Out, Or Buying In?" Three Keys for Decision Making

There are few things we hate more than uncertainty. When our work situation is ambiguous and not clear to us, it’s easy to feel uncomfortable. Just being “different” from others may cause you to wonder whether you’re “selling out” when you join a new company. Those “differences” may be the result of race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or language. You know the feeling: uncomfortable, unaccepted, different and unique. 

The more different we feel in an organization, the more we look for someone to explain—or some rules that make sense. Renee Blank and Sandra Slipp have identified three very useful guidelines for helping you decide whether you’re “buying in” or “selling out.” Their guidelines will help you determine what you’re trying to do. 

• Your basic value system. Those values that you hold close to your heart are the final “decider.” If your values—which you learned as a child and solidified as an adult—are in direct violation of the organization’s values you’re in trouble. If you have to discard those beliefs that are important to you, you could be in danger of “selling out.” 

• If you know yourself—you’re certain about your talents, skills and abilities and you’ve validated them over time—and you’re performing a function or accepting a position well beneath them, you could be in danger of “selling out.” 

• If you accept the culture of an organization that flaunts its discrimination against or disrespect for your culture, you could be in danger of “selling out.” 

These are very personal matters. The organization is trying to help you become a part of their culture, but you must decide if that organization is asking you to give up too much. 

You’ve got several options in that kind of setting. If you decide that becoming a part of the organization means you’re going to have to give up too much of your own culture and that you will not be accepted no matter what, you can leave and seek employment elsewhere (if the economy and your skill set will make that possible). More and more, the quality of your skill set is the determining factor for work success. There are jobs out there—if you’ve got the skills for them. 

 You can also remain in the organization and drastically change your style. Finally, you can adapt to the organization’s values while maintaining your own values and political views. That’s schizophrenic, but it’s a possibility for many of us. 

In today’s economy, seeking employment at another firm is not always an easy task. You may find yourself splitting your personality between work and home. Some of us can do that for a long time, but eventually it catches up with us. It’ll impact our work productivity, but more than that it’ll affect our emotions and personal life. Our family and friends may notice it before us, so you’ll want to pay attention to them.  

One of our favorite family stories was the result of my decision to leave a job where the organization’s values and mine were just too much in conflict. Unlike her husband, my wife has no history whatsoever of using expletives--aside from one single situation. So I’ll never forget sitting on the living room sofa, telling her that I was going to leave my decade-long position and go elsewhere. Without missing a beat, she said, “It sure as hell took you a long time to make a damned obvious decision.” Two expletives in one sentence. So out of character, she got my attention instantly. She had refused to make a recommendation prior to my own decision because, wisely, she knew the decision had to be mine. But she had known all along that my job was causing deep, personal conflicts in my life. 

I suspect that most of the significant people in our lives can tell rather clearly when we’re facing a serious value conflict in our work setting. So. . . when deeply conflicted about your job, . . . get on with whatever.

Blank, R. & Slip, S. From the Outside In: Seven Strategies for Success When You're Not a Member of the Dominant Group in Your Workplace, AMACOM