June 29, 2007 1:09
What's Gonna Work? Teamwork!
If you recognize that line, I empathize: your head, like mine, must be filled with the inane and insanely catchy ditties on TV shows beloved by little children. That particular lyric comes from Wonderpets, the grossly adorable show on Noggin in which a guinea pig, turtle and duckling fly from the classroom in which they live to Hawaii or Venice to save another small animal invariably stuck in a tree. It's scored in semi-operatic style, so the pets' lines are sung in recitative:
"It's a baby eee-lephant, stuck in a tree-eee."
"This is seee-wious!" (Ming-ming, the duckling, has a lisp.)
These lines ran through my head this week as I attempted to co-write a story for the magazine with a colleague. Teamwork defines many people's jobs. Not mine. Writing is solitary. Reporting isn't, necessarily, at least under the old TIME model; just a few years ago, maybe a half-dozen correspondents and stringers across the country would have reported a story like this, filing their notes to us, from which we would have crafted a story. No longer. The two of us are both writing and reporting this piece. The reporting isn't the issue; we each did our part. But pulling our reports into one cohesive, hopefully compelling piece? It's like building Frankenstein.
It takes a village to make most business projects come to life, and it's no different where I work. We'll turn our copy in to an editor, who, after she red-inks it, will turn it over to yet another editor. Then a number of copy editors will pore over it. Meantime two photo editors have arranged for a photographer to fly around the country taking portraits of photo subjects, sources from our story. Those photos and our copy will be placed in a layout created by the designers. Time was, a factchecker would track down all the sources again to verify their quotes, but at the new, lean-'n'-mean TIME we'll do that ourselves.
A story in TIME magazine is the work of many talented people, each working diligently to mould their stretch of sausage. My co-writer and I are just trying to work on our link together, and we're finding it a little tricky. When you see the end product, we hope you'll just enjoy the bratwurst and not ponder the pig we had to kill to make it.
June 28, 2007 11:09
Links to Interesting Workplace Articles
I'm crashing a story today so I offer you other people's writing:
From Knowledge@Wharton, a newsletter from the Wharton B-school: "Good News about Bad Press: For Corporate Governance, Humiliation Pays Off."
Also from Knowledge@Wharton: "Do Highly Educated Immigrant Entrepreneurs Help the U.S. Maintain Its Edge?"
From Inc.com, edited by one of the best editors alive, Loren Feldman: "Mid-Week Independence Day Causes Headaches for Employers."
By Stephanie Armour of USA Today: "High earners can still struggle."
June 27, 2007 10:20
Childcare Is Cheap--But Not to Us
There's a sobering article on Alternet today titled "Why Do We Pay Our Plumbers More Than Our Caregivers?" It caught my eye because my husband and I are already on the lookout for career opportunities for our two-year-old, and we determined early on that plumbing offers an attractive income and requires low-cost training (i.e., no particular need for a degree from a higher educational institution that would set Mom and Dad back a few hundred Gs). If we successfully implant our dream upon her and she decides to devote her adult life to the soldering of pipes, we would be delighted. If she grew up and said she wanted to be a babysitter, we'd hang our heads, crushed.
That's how little we value the people who care for our wee ones. Oh, we care about these workers, all right--there's proof of that in the bald-making anxiety of the selection process, the hand-wringing over how they perform their duties, the attachment of our children. We just don't mark their value with appreciation of the monetary kind.
Still, childcare costs are killing us. I don't know about you, but our extremely affordable daycare center-slash-Montessori school still sets us back a good chunk of our income. Then there's the after-hours babysitting for those days we work late (a frequent occurrence for a journalist and a musician). In our part of the country, the going rate is $10 an hour for babysitting. We pay under $1,000 for the daycare, which, believe me, is a great bargain in these parts.
I think I speak for working parents everywhere when I say we'd appreciate a little help. I recently talked to a scientist at Abbott Labs near Chicago who mentioned that his three kids are cared for day in and day out at his employer's on-site daycare, for free. He and his wife, who also works there, drop off their kids in the morning, visit them at lunch, pop over if one has the sniffles, and scoot out mid-afternoon to take them home. They do a bit more work from home in the evenings. These talented scientists wouldn't think to work anywhere else.
Now that's one smart employer, if you ask me. Not only is Abbott ensuring loyalty and retention, it's getting the best work out of its workers by giving them peace of mind. What's more, it's effectively giving them a bonus by taking on the cost of childcare.
More and more workers I talk to of every profession are selecting employers based on what HR folks call "family-friendly" policies. As this war for talent everybody's buzzing about gets roaring, my hope is employers will fight for our services by offering us a little help with the kids.
June 26, 2007 11:52
Dads Do Diapers, Too
I chatted today with Dana Glazer, a New Jersey filmmaker whose current project is called The Evolution of Dad. It's about how the role of fathers has changed dramatically over the past few generations. Glazer, a "work-at-home dad" himself, juggles freelance filmmaking jobs with childcare, as does his wife, an interior designer.
But check out one of Glazer's subjects in the clip below. Dallas Hayes is a former Navy man who quit his banking job to stay home with his son while his wife kept her job at a museum. My favorite line: "...and so I wipe his ass. But someday, he'll have to wipe mine."
Here's another clip Glazer made for Father's Day. Ready the tissues.
June 25, 2007 10:08
Jack Welch Book Review by Reader!
All hail John Struan, my hero reader who has written his second, I repeat, second book review for WiP. That's right, other readers to whom I've sent books and heard nary a peep (LaDawn, you're excused; the British post is probably still cycling to your house). This is a book about which I was particularly eager to read a review (note I didn't say I wanted to read the thing; I just wanted to read about it), mainly because of its silly title gimmick. John, take it away.
***
WHAT MADE jack welch JACK WELCH
By Stephen H. Baum
Review by John Struan
(Note: John rendered the title the way the author did.)
I wasn't particularly impressed by Stephen H. Baum's WHAT MADE jack welch JACK WELCH, and I'll explain why in a moment. But first, here's an excellent job interview tip from the book:
[A]sk the people you speak with to tell you about some of the company's successes and failures – ask for examples or stories. Also ask for stories about employees who have progressed successfully through the company ranks – and those who have not. Ask people to talk about individuals who are considered heroes of the company and those who are considered failures.
That seems like pretty good advice. However, the rest of the book was not nearly as illuminating. Baum explains that the world's best CEOs share common traits such as regularly seeking out challenges, showing good character, and making tough decisions. To prove this thesis, Baum shares anecdotes about a dozen or so CEOs in which they displayed that trait (the title is misleading, Jack Welch is but one of many individuals discussed). Then, Baum relates a supposedly formative moment from that individual's youth in which they "learned" the trait. The book flows like this:
A leader must have the courage to act. Once upon a time, a CEO faced a serious problem with his company. He had the courage to act and rectified the problem. When asked, the CEO attributed his courage to a schoolyard fight he won in elementary school. (Honest, the stories are told in only a bit more detail than that.)
OK, three main problems with the book: 1. The stories are not told with adequate detail or skill to be particularly enjoyable or memorable. 2. The elements of leadership Baum describes are not particularly surprising (I didn't need to be convinced that a good leader must be able to act under pressure). 3. Baum fails to prove any real correlation between the formative anecdote and the character trait. For example, one CEO may cite the support of his family as important in his development, while another cites putdowns by a teacher. So, which type of experience is important? Both? It depends on the person? Or is the answer "neither" since you're born a leader or not?
An anecdote about former Senator Bob Kerrey seems to unintentionally refute Baum's thesis. When Kerrey was 10 years old, he became dissatisfied with the state of his Bible class, and, convinced that he could improve the class, "took over the discussion." Kerrey apparently became the leader of the class and improved the situation for his classmates (I say apparently, because the author doesn't explicitly say so, or detail the number or age of the other students). Baum cites that experience as a "shaping experience" in Kerrey's "path to leadership." But didn't Kerrey already have to be a leader to not only try to take over the class, but also, at age 10, successfully do so? So was it a "shaping experience," or a signaling one? Either way, in the era of Freakonomics, it takes more than a few random anecdotes and amorphous categories to prove a thesis.
Finally, I leave you with an amusing anecdote about leadership. This is from Clive Thompson, writing for Wired:
Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident, bold and streetsmart.
But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat -- and asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice. I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and ...... realized he was an 11-year-old boy, complete with squeaky, prepubescent vocal chords.
June 25, 2007 8:00
I Don't Really Hate My Dog
But he does annoy the crap out of me sometimes. I suppose I overlooked a lot of his neuroses before I had a child, but now I simply don't have the time or the patience. Sometimes when I get home from work to find a giant dog dump on the kitchen floor, it's that one last straw after a long, hard day, you know what I'm saying?
I wrote an essay in this week's magazine that may turn some of you, my cherished and hard-won readers, against me. I'm already collecting hate e-mail, some of it so passionate and explicit that I'm sort of grateful for my employer's post-9/11 security detail. The essay is about my dog. His name's Hoover. He's a basset. And he's a pain in my ass.
But let me set the record straight. He's also my dog. He remains my dog. None of you, no matter what you threaten, will take him away from me. He is 11 years old. He will grow increasingly odiferous and incontinent as the days go on. I know this. He will continue to pile up the infractions, as he did yesterday, when my little girl proudly proclaimed she had pooped all by herself in her portable potty--but when we went to inspect her achievement, we found he had gotten there first.
My poop-eating, projectile shedding, Xanax-needing dog will remain by my side till the day one of us drops. I don't coddle him the way I used to before my child was born, but then again, I don't treat my husband the same either. While we're at it, I haven't pampered myself in three years. My point is that everything changes once you have a kid: your job, your marriage, your relationship with your dog.
Judge me all you want. But I'm still the one who feeds him, brushes him and walks him. I vacuum his fur, I mop up his accidents and I pick up his poo from the curb with a plastic bag and my bare hands. This is the contract I signed when I made him my pet. And it's one I won't break. No matter what you call me.
Don't let the googly eyes fool you.
June 21, 2007 3:11
Your Intern Was Born in 1989
What were you doing in 1989? I was completing my first year at college and about to turn 18. I had a huge perm and an acid-washed jean jacket. I daydreamed of ways to turn cheerleading into a career. I was a dumb-ass. But I hadn't been born yesterday.
In 1989, today's freshman had been born yesterday. The class of 2011 was born the year Seinfeld debuted. That's according to Fascinating Freshman Factoids from a consultancy called Twentysomething Inc., which, duh, markets to young folk. Take a read:
(1) When the Class of 2011 was born, movie theaters were showing Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, When Harry Met Sally, Little Mermaid, and Field of Dreams.(2) Chinese students sparked the Tiananmen Square Protest.
(3) Seinfeld debuted on TV.
(4) The first of 24 global positioning satellites (GPS) was launched into orbit.
(5) George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan as the 41st U.S. President.
(6) Ayatollah Khomeini placed a $3 million bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses.
(7) Births: Michelle Wie. Deaths: Lucille Ball, Salvador Dalí, and Bette Davis.
(8) The Dilbert comic strip was syndicated for the first time.
(9) MTV was airing award-winning videos from Paula Abdul (“Straight Up”), Fine Young Cannibals (“She Drives Me Crazy”), and Guns N’ Roses (“Sweet Child O’ Mine”).
(10) The federal grand jury indicted a Cornell University student for releasing a computer virus – the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
That's whacked. Or is that word too 1989?
June 20, 2007 12:15
At Work, I Am Superwoman. At Home, Not So Much.
Are you in love with your Work Self? Do you fly from crisis to crisis, stop client bullets with your teeth, hoist massive accounts with one finger? Do colleagues speak to you with respect, laugh at your jokes, let you win--I mean, lose to your superior game at golf?
And then you get home, and does anyone praise you for mastering the universe that day? Noooo. There are dishes in the sink and kids fighting over the Transformer and a grumpy spouse who doesn't even feign interest in how you singlehandedly rescued your corporation. That joke that killed all day? Crickets.
Ben Dattner, a workplace psychologist at New York University, has this theory. "For many people, the most stressful part of the day is going home," he said to me recently. "Their most stressful moment at work is better than their least stressful moment at home."
Something strange is happening here. Dattner cites The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, the 1997 book by Arlie Russell Hochschild, for one explanation. At the office, we're all about team-building and collegiality and praise. At home, we're outsourcing childcare and managing schedules and booking dinner as we would a meeting.
This might explain another phenomenon that intrigues Dattner: the office spouse. You know: that colleague to whom you bitch and moan about your boss, who calls to check on you when you're sick, your lunch buddy. "Sometimes, people in the workplace confirm your greatest hopes about yourself," says Dattner. "They respect you and appreciate you."
"Home," on the other hand, "is much more fraught. At work, if you break something, you can fix it. Things are a lot messier at home."
So true. In my case, the mess is literal. As some of you know, we're mid-potty-training right now at the Cullen household. Yesterday I got home after 9 p.m. following a day in which I closed an essay for this week's magazine, interviewed sources for an upcoming feature, attended three meetings, met my agent, planned the upcoming launch of the paperback of my book with my publisher, oh, and posted a blog entry. King of the world, right? Me this morning: on my hands and knees mopping up pee-pee from the kitchen floor.
I couldn't wait to come home to work.
June 19, 2007 10:13
Without Affirmative Action, Diversity Suffers
Studies show that one of the only proven ways to increase the hiring and retention of minorities and women in the workplace is to impose quotas. "Quota" is one of those words that make business leaders cringe. I know because I dropped the Q bomb at a luncheon with Time Warner's COO, Jeff Bewkes, who roundly rejected such a measure at our company. That's why employers who enforce affirmative action tend to be government contractors, who have to meet government-imposed diversity requirements.
I thought about this as I read this morning on Inside Higher Education about what's happened at the University of Michigan Law School. Ever since the state made it drop its affirmative action program, diversity in admittance has plunged.
The percentage of African American, Hispanic and Native American students admitted to the University of Michigan Law School for next fall fell from 39.6 percent for those students whose applications were considered before enactment of a state law banning race-based preferences in December to 5.5 percent thereafter.
Wow! From 40% to 5.5%--that's a tremendous fall. Inside Higher Ed frames the argument like this:
While critics of affirmative action read the numbers as proof of the unfair impact of preferences based on race, advocates for affirmative action said the numbers were early indicators of just how damaging the law will be.
Michigan Law's change in policy hinged on Proposal 2, a ballot initiative voted for by 58% of Michigan voters last fall barring public colleges from using affirmative action in admissions. Most private employers, or course, aren't bound by laws to initiate or bar hiring quotas. I'm not suggesting they ought to be. But let's keep this stunning plunge at Mich Law in mind when we pooh-pooh the idea of affirmative action in the workplace.
June 18, 2007 10:22
Pay Your Interns, You Cheap #@$#%*
I just had lunch with a summer intern here at Time Inc. My employer pays its interns (though my friend was shocked that they categorize the housing stipend as a "signing bonus" and thus lop off a huge chunk in taxes). But many don't. These bosses seem to think of it as an even exchange: I give you experience, you give me free labor.
This is not how capitalism works. I too am gaining many things through my job--experience, exposure, cup after cup of piping hot water for my green tea. But I am also delivering a product that my company sells, and you bet your boots I expect compensation for my services.
I fail to see how this is any different for an intern. True, their services are slightly less specialized. At my company their jobs involve a lot of research and fact-checking. But those are services we desperately need, particularly after years of layoffs in which we got rid of the people who performed those services for full pay plus benefits.
Small businesses argue they can't afford the extra salaries. Phooey. According to Jobweb, the average internship pays $15.44 an hour. Some pay far more; Harvard Business School students make as much as $10,000 a month as consultants, according to HBS's internship salary survey. But even your neighborhood realtor can afford minimum wage for the high school senior maintaining its web site.
Naturally, internship pay should correlate with the intern's value to the organization (for 10 grand a month, those consultant-interns better be delivering a failproof profit strategy). But no intern provides no value. Pay them. They'll work harder.
June 15, 2007 1:59
Another Reason Working Parents Deserve a Hand
Let us now talk of poo. As in, my daughter's.
As she approached her third birthday still bubble-butted in diapers, I pondered this Zen koan: If both parents work fulltime, how is a child supposed to learn how to go on the potty?
We had no idea. The time-tested methods offered by other parents mostly involve letting the toddler toddle around sans pants and scurrying them into the loo when they began to dribble. You see the issue here for a working parent. Could the switch be achieved over a working parent's jammed weekend, in between grocery shopping, dry cleaning pickup, mowing the lawn, four loads of laundry and a visit to Grandma's?
Like the argument over bottle vs. breast, I believe the challenge of potty-training is completely different for parents who work than it is for those who don't. I knew that when I first learned about the diaper-free baby movement. These mamas potty trained their wee ones at as young as three months. In an article I read, they spoke confidently--even smugly, I thought--of knowing and responding to their child's every cue so as to time the potty runs. Once again, you see the issue for a working parent.
I'm not setting this up as an us vs. them smackdown. Boomer journalists love to think we parents are all about tearing each other down for our choices, and I won't have it in my tiny corner of the blogosphere. I'm just saying that there's a dearth of help, advice or praise for parents holding down jobs who still try to hurdle the many challenges of childraising.
So we began by preparing Mika with the Potty Time with Elmo video, which I got free when I met Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind the red monster (he wrote a nice book that came out last summer called My Life as a Furry Red Monster). It's really cute, and when you meet Kevin it'll make sense that the monster that plays Elmo's daddy sounds like a black man from the South. She loved the video. She hated the potty. That's not true: she liked to use it as a prop to act out scenes from the video.
Elmo (aka Kevin Clash) prepares my kid for the potty.
Then we switched her to pull-up diapers, thinking this would prepare her for underpants. Pull-up diapers, if you are not familiar, often fail to hold the contents of a two-year-old's bladder. I learned this at a crowded Barnes & Noble in Edgewater, N.J.
As I was dressing her Monday morning, I simply put her in underpants. And--I swear on my Opapa's grave--that was that. She's had a couple of accidents, and she still wears diapers at night. As working parent, we get to thinking nothing, but nothing is ever easy for us. Maybe our kids figure that out early and cut us a break sometimes.
Speaking of potties: job site Vault.com released a survey today of gender issues in the workplace that, among other things, found that unisex bathrooms are becoming a workplace norm. Over half of offices have single-occupancy bathrooms that are open to both sexes. That's not exactly the unisex made famous in Ally McBeal, but Vault says "this reflects a significant increase from a decade ago, when workplace bathrooms were more likely to be segregated by the sexes."
Said one female respondent: “Most folks have co-ed bathrooms in their houses, right?” However not everyone agrees that sharing a bathroom is good for business. One male respondent said: “We have a unisex bathroom here and it is in a constant state of zoo- cage cleanliness.”
Ew.
June 14, 2007 10:14
New Book Review by Reader!
A while ago, out of sheer, eyeball-clawing desperation, I sought to reduce the mountain of books covering every surface of my office by Tom Sawyering some readers into reviewing them. Many of you wrote in offering to take on my workload. I didn't really expect anything to come of this purely selfish exercise, but reader John Struan is apparently a) really bored or b) really conscientious. I prefer to think b). (Struan, btw, runs a funny blog with lots of weird links called SuperPunch.)
Struan reviews Allen Rosenshine's Funny Business: Moguls, Mobsters, Megastars and the Mad, Mad World of the Ad Game. Which isn't really a workplace book per se but is about the fascinating world of advertising. Only Struan didn't find the book so fascinating. Here's his review below. Thanks, John! Sorry, Allen.
Allen Rosenshine's Funny Business: Moguls, Mobsters, Megastars and the Mad, Mad World of the Ad Game is not a good book. Rosenshine makes clear in the foreword that his book is not a primer about the advertising business. It's just a collection of approximately seventy anecdotes about his career, told in no apparent order. Sounds like an ok idea - - he was the head of one of the most important ad companies in the world, divorced his wife, married a beautiful coworker, and met presidents, actors, and athletes. Sounds ok, except the stories are not interesting. Here's a summary of three of the first few chapters in the book:
Once, Rosenshine worked on an ad campaign featuring Muhammad Ali. Rosenshine was worried that Ali would be difficult to work with. However, Ali was friendly and professional. Their day together was uneventful.Once, Rosenshine had a business dinner related to an ad campaign for Pepsi. On the following day, he became concerned that his wife had ordered a Diet Coke during the meal. If she had, it might have jeopardized his relationship with Pepsi. However, he was mistaken. She had not ordered a Diet Coke.
Once, Rosenshine was contacted by someone seemingly connected with the mafia. The man wanted advice regarding a business idea. Rosenshine was frightened of the man, but told the man that the idea was not a very good one. The man thanked Rosenshine and never contacted him again.
Now, Seinfeld taught that in the right hands even the most trivial events can be hilarious. But this book demonstrates that whatever skills are needed to create a good ad are not the same ones needed to write an interesting sentence:
"I met Frank Sinatra twice, although it would be more accurate to say that I encountered him, since our meetings were mostly a matter of being in the same place at the same time."
"For a company unaccustomed to spending heavily on the production of advertising, in addition to the media costs in delivering their messages to potential customers, the idea of writing checks in the millions of dollars to Hollywood personalities, singers, athletes, and assorted other subjects of popular adoration, who will neither produce nor deliver any product to market, is a very difficult proposition."
In short, not a good book on any level. No steak. No sizzle.
June 14, 2007 10:01
How Consultants Earn Their Keep
Last year, my company hired the consultancy firm McKinsey to--okay, I don't pretend to know what exactly they do. They buzzed around the offices for some time and when they left, a bunch of people were laid off. But they left behind this gem:
My company paid God knows what for their services, and this is what we get: an Idea Prioritization Matrix. I can barely spell it, let alone divine what it means. I'm going to fill in the blanks with a big fat marker. I believe I'll start with the upper right quadrant, in which I shall write, "LUNCH." Tell me what else I should write and where; I'll fill it in and photograph it for a future post.
June 13, 2007 10:12
Five Ways to Go Green at Work
In this week's TIME, I wrote about a burgeoning workplace trend: green offices. Over the past year, I'd begun to hear from employers touting their various green efforts: "we're the most environmentally correct law firm in L.A.! We use recycled printer paper! We built a tree house on the corporate campus for meetings!" (Honest to John: Capital One tells me they've got a tree house.)
It got me to thinking: as much as we conserve at home, we toss our green badges aside as soon as we arrive at the office. Which of us hasn't printed out 50 pages of notes so we could read them on the bus? Or grabbed a wad of 10 napkins at the cafeteria when one would do? Or ignored the toilet with the running flush (someone from maintenance will be here soon, probably)?
It's okay to waste resources, so long as we're not paying for them. Right?
So wrong. As I wrote in the story:
One office worker can use a quarter ton of materials in a year--which includes 10,000 pieces of copier paper. Heating, cooling and powering office space are responsible for almost 40% of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. and gobble more than 70% of total electricity usage. Commuters spew 1.3 billion tons of CO2 a year. Computers in the office burn $1 billion worth of electricity annually--and that's when they're not producing a lick of work.
Yikes! Here, then, are five small ways to be a green office worker.
1. Turn out the lights. Lighting eats up 44% of electricity used in office buildings. We'd collectively save enormous amounts by turning out all those little desk lamps and overheads. If you sit near a window, rely on natural light.
2. Don't flush. No, for the love of Pete, flush--just don't use more water than you need to. Like, don't leave the water running in the sink as you chat with your colleagues about America's Got Talent. Urge your boss to install low-flow toilets.
3. Stop wasting office supplies. Seriously. What's the point of having a job if you can't plaster your wall with Post-Its, you ask? Think of it this way: it's not about denying your access to free stationery; it's about not being responsible for the felling of 1,000 trees. Turn your greed into guilt.
4. Turn off the computer. I know, I used to do it too: leave the computer running during mid-day Pilates class so the boss thinks you're still toiling away through lunch. Computers are energy monsters. Just by setting your computer to power down automatically after 15 minutes of non-use, you cut the machine's energy use by 70%. Seventy percent! That's worth a hairy eyeball from the boss, no?
5. Bike to work. Or take the bus. Or train. Just get out of the car. Says About.com,
At an nationwide average drive-time of about 24.3 minutes, Americans now spend more than 100 hours a year commuting to work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.
That's 100 hours of spewing noxious fumes into the air. Encourage your employer to make this a company-wide effort by rewarding workers who find alternate means of transportation; tell them Nike, Google and other companies earned props from the Environmental Protection Agency for their efforts. If not for the earth, then do it for the PR, tell them.
June 12, 2007 10:39
The Sopranos Were (Blackhawk) Helicopter Parents
I realized on the bus ride home yesterday (yes, I was still mulling over the final Sopranos episode, because I apparently have no intellectual life) that Tony and Carmella are the most fearsome breed of helicopter parents: Blackhawks.
That, I learned from (of all places) The New York Post, is what we call Baby Boomer parents who not only hover incessantly over their Gen Y offspring but meddle to an uncommon and even harmful degree. My colleague Deirdre had handed me a copy of The Post and its very good weekly @Work section, which featured a photo of a 20-ish guy in business attire being spoonfed by his mommy. The lead article, titled "The Parent Trap," led with a tale of a young woman whose father tried to storm her office to complain to her boss about her boring assignments. She'd been employed all of three days.
My recent post, "Gen Y Workers Are 'Spoiled But Smart,'" ignited some debate about the youngest generation of workers--their values, their attitudes, their abilities. I know, I know, it's not fair to lump. But as my friend Gerry pointed out in the comments, my own Gen X suffered a slacker stereotype for years before we became old enough to write our own generational trend pieces (just you wait till you lose your death grip on the media, Boomers...payback is a female pitbull).
Back to the Soprano household. Granted, Anthony needs more handholding than your average college-age kid. He's not a fair example of his generation. And as a parent, I can only imagine the heartbreak of watching your child struggle with suicidal depression. And given the state of the world right now, I can see why his folks would scramble for another option when Anthony announces his intention to join the Army. But to finance a movie with the sole purpose of landing their utterly spoiled son a job fetching producers' coffee? Imagine if poor Anthony came home sniveling one day because a producer yelled at him for falling asleep on the job. You know who'd pay.
Blackhawk helicopter parents. Not all of them have guns, but they're still a dangerous breed.
June 11, 2007 2:23
Performance Reviews: Better Than Nothin'
My manager announced a week ago that my unit would be undergoing performance reviews. This would not be news at most American corporations; from Whirlpool to IBM, General Electric to Microsoft, regular reviews by management of staff performance have long been, well, regular. But my manager may as well have told us that the Pope had just agreed to blog on Time.com. Truth hurts, but here it is: the organization I work for prides itself on communicating the news to the people, but when it comes to communicating with its staff, it's as inscrutable as the Latin mass.
Having never in my six years at TIME undergone a performance review, I thought I'd prepare with a little research. I reached out to George Lenard, an employment lawyer in Chesterfield, Mo. He pointed me to articles he's collected on his excellent (and funny) blog, George's Employment Blawg (which is how lawyers spell blog--you get it). I came away feeling not a little worried.
Don't get me wrong: I'm ecstatic that we're being reviewed. Contrary to many employers' beliefs, we workers like to know how we're doing. We want clear assessments, constructive criticism, praise and acknowledgment if we deserve it, and, most of all, advice on improving at our jobs and building our careers.
But research shows that most employers don't meet those seemingly simple needs. Three in 10 employees feel performance reviews actually improve performance, according to a study of large companies by Watson Wyatt. In other words, most employers fail at their own performance reviews.
One major problem seems to be a lack of standardization. One boss might hold a five-minute chat over coffee and consider it done, while another subjects his worker to a two-hour conference guided by a spreadsheet with a point system. Experts seem to think that the more rigorous and clear the guidelines, the better--for both parties.
But even black-and-white guidelines don't eradicate bias. According to an article about bias in performance reviews on Management-Issues.com,
...of the 5,970 evaluated employees, 80 percent received an "above-average" rating from at least one boss. Yet of those who received this "above-average" rating from one boss, 30 percent of the other bosses rated the same person in the bottom third of the distribution.
So one manager's star worker was another manager's lazy, good-for-nothing yahoo. The worker's performance didn't change; the manager did.
The most rigorous of systems--forced rankings, which slot workers into performance quartiles and reward (or punish) them accordingly--appears to be going out of style, in part because of legal snags. Lenard writes in an e-mail to me:
The legal risks include "grade inflation." An employee terminated for "poor performance" may have a performance appraisal paper trail showing good or even excellent performance. Such a contradiction, coming directly from the employer's personnel files, is great ammunition for lawyers to use in proving "pretext," which is one of the primary ways of proving discrimination. Pretext means that the reason given for the challenged employment decision, here termination for poor performance, is untrue. From this, a jury may reasonably infer that the true reason was a discriminatory one (assuming the terminated employee established a prima facie case, which is not that difficult.) You might be surprised how often this occurs.If forced rankings are out, 360 reviews are in, though these, too, are not free from controversy. Susan Heathfield explains on About.com:
360 degree feedback is a method and a tool that provides each employee the opportunity to receive performance feedback from his or her supervisor and four to eight peers, reporting staff members, coworkers and customers. Most 360 degree feedback tools are also responded to by each individual in a self assessment. 360 degree feedback allows each individual to understand how his effectiveness as an employee, coworker, or staff member is viewed by others. The most effective 360 degree feedback processes provide feedback that is based on behaviors that other employees can see.
She adds,
Implemented with care and training to enable people to better serve customers and develop their own careers, 360 degree feedback is a positive addition to your performance management system. Started haphazardly, because it’s the current flavor in organizations, or because "everyone" else is doing it, 360 feedback will create a disaster from which you will require months and possibly years, to recover.
Months or years to recover from a performance review? ...and that's just the employer! Imagine the damage to a mere worker's career caused by a flawed system of reviews. Still, I feel flawed performance reviews are better than none. There's always the chance my supervisor will be biased in my favor. Especially after I give him a bottle of my family sake.
June 11, 2007 9:56
Sopranos Ends,* Thank God
*Spoiler alert, you Tivo-ers--although I don't know why you'd bother delaying viewing of a cultural event like this one; it'll require serious strategizing to avoid hearing the outcome.
Is anyone talking about anything else at the office this morning? I think not, so let's hash. Did anyone else hit rewind five times to make sure they didn't miss something? Talk about jarring. Long after we'd gone to bed, I was noodging my husband Chris with questions: "So what was up with the parallel parking? And why that Journey song? And why'd that creepy guy go into the men's room?"
Chris sighed, and said something about how the many red herrings in that final scene--the SUV roaring past Meadow as she crossed the street, the shifty man at the counter--pointed to the uncertainty of daily, modern life. Yes, this man and his family face real and mortal danger more often than most, but the point is that even those of us who lead "normal" lives brush against mortality every day.
At least I think that's what he said. He used the word "manifestly." Me, I didn't even get till I read it this morning that the FBI agent gleaned Phil Leotardo's whereabouts from that female agent he'd just bedded.
Anyway, I'm relieved it's over. I loved The Sopranos, in the same way I love The Shield; at the beginning of every season, I swear I can't stomach another--but after watching one episode, I'm completely and horrifyingly inured to the violence and sucked in to the plot lines and characters. I'm glad to be rid of Tony and bratty Anthony and psychotic Paulie. I'm glad HBO no longer holds my Sunday nights captive. I plan to make some new friends to hang with. Has anyone checked out that show about Army wives?
(For a genius analysis by an actual TV critic, go to Jim Poniewozik's blog.)
June 7, 2007 3:15
LinkedIn Tricks for Networkers, Job Hunters and Hirers
Kay Luo, director of corporate communications for LinkedIn, just came to our offices for an in-house tutorial. It was geared toward journalists, but I thought many of the tips were helpful to anyone with or looking for a job.
1. Get to know the "advanced search" function.
This is a great and probably underused tool. The page allows you to narrow a search with industry categories and titles, but the most handy search weapon is the keyword search. Say you're looking for a new job in your industry and you want to find out about corporate culture at Apple. Type in "'IT consultant' and Apple" (you can use quote marks to search for a phrase and the connectors "and" and "or"), and you'll get two categories of people who define themselves as such: those in your network of connections, and those in the wider LinkedIn universe.
2. Scale the six degrees of separation.
Whenever you view someone's profile, LinkedIn shows you in a handy chart on the right the degrees of separation between you and the person profiled. I, for one, respond more friendly-like to friends of friends, so if I'm going to say whazzup to Steve Jobs, I know it would help if I had an intro from his nephew, who went to school with my next-door neighbor. (That didn't happen, btw. But you get my drift.)
3. Check out a person's history.
You can learn a lot about someone on their profile page, if they let you (LinkedIn's "accounts and settings" function lets you set privacy controls). For instance, a little dinky called the "one-click reference" at the top of the page tells you all the people on the network who worked with the person at the company. That's hugely useful for journalists digging for sources, but also if you're expanding your business contacts.
4. Seek some "answers."
Members can ask questions of their network and/or the LinkedIn universe on the "answers" page. If you're a freelance menu copywriter, you might want to know if someone asks, "Hey, anyone know any great freelance menu copywriters?" You can subscribe to the answers category that interests you on an RSS feed.
5. Raise your LinkedIn profile's Google ranking.
Have a web site that touts all your professional accomplishments along with your reality-defying bust-waist-hip measurements? Goody for you. For those of you who don't, you could use your LinkedIn profile as your professional home page. If you do, you'll want it to show up high in the rankings if a potential employer Googles your name. Go to "edit my public profile" and claim your name--in other words, name your site after yourself. Without this step, your LinkedIn profile simply shows up as the URL, and tain't no boss person Googling that. (Don't forget to allow the public to see your profile by selecting "full view.")
6. Fuse your e-mail network with LinkedIn's.
Under "my contacts," there's a tool on the right that allows LinkedIn to search your Gmail or Yahoo accounts to see if anybody you've ever e-mailed is also a member. That's an easy way to build up your network without tediously typing in everybody's e-mail addy.
Got more LinkedIn tips? Share, share. For useful tips for journalists, check out my friend Penelope Trunk's post here. Users in other professions will find tech guru Guy Kawasaki's post enlightening.
June 6, 2007 2:45
Gen Y Workers Are "Spoiled But Smart"
And no, I'm not writing this because of the fresh batch of summer interns who turned up in the offices this week. I got no bone to pick with you lot, especially if you help me fact-check my articles.
Stef Witteveen, CEO of Randstad USA, stopped by today on a visit from its headquarters in Atlanta to discuss the staffing company's new report, World at Work, its eighth annual survey of workplace attitudes. The survey looked closely at young workers in particular and their relationship with work.
Witteveen has a vested interest in understanding this group: his 2,000-employee company hires a bunch of them every month. They also make up a good chunk of the 49,000 people Randstad USA places in businesses.
One finding: Gen Y demands personal contact. "This is the texting generation, but in fact they want face time, coaching, attention, help with life-work balance, attention to ethics," says Witteveen.
Many Gen Y workers were raised by helicopter parents who hovered over their every decision. Put simply, "they're spoiled," says Witteveen. "You're not going to change that as the employer. You do have to manage it, even embrace it. I don't feel I have to raise them," he adds. "I feel I do have to coach, help and grow them. And I recommend all employers to do so."
Why should they? For one, you got to dance with what brung you--or, in this case, what you brung. As a recent Fortune cover by Nadira Hira said, you raised 'em; now, you manage 'em. It's not like Baby Boomers can run the world forever, much as they might like to. "These will be the leaders of the world, the leaders of my company," says the CEO. Plus, he adds, Gen Y workers are savvy, smart and generally worth the trouble.
By the way, if you want a job at Randstad, there are three openings--that is, fake openings for fake jobs on SecondLife. From its web site:
Candidates get paid in Linden dollars, the official currency of Second Life. The branch also offers real jobs, there are three vacancies at this moment; one as a manager of the 'avatar' (a virtual character on Second Life) of a Dutch law firm and there are two positions at ABN AMRO as the manager of the virtual hostess at ABN (the candidates get paid in real life euros).
Check out the promo. I like how the guide avatar walks, with his head down and really fast. I'm going to walk like that the rest of the day.
June 5, 2007 10:22
It's Hard to Be a Woman in a Male-Dominated Field
I thought about this as I--okay, I didn't actually watch the debates last night. I raced home late after meeting a deadline to pick up the kid from the sitter and then the kid wanted a cookie and had to read Paddington which is like 80 pages long. But I read about the debates in the paper and heard about them on NPR this morning.
This being an unusual, pared-down event, CNN and what was described as a liberal evangelical group called Sojourner hosted Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards last night in a discussion about faith. Besides being a front runner in the Democratic scrum for president and the wife of Bill, Hillary Clinton will bathe in an even more intense spotlight this week as two Very Important Books about her by Very Important Journalists land in stores. Okay, I haven't actually read the books, but I read and heard about them. And from what I read and hear, they dissect how the woman became who she is today.
Which got me to thinking: what kind of woman enters presidential politics--or any male-dominated field, for that matter?
I found some answers in a long essay written by Amy Sullivan in a 2005 issue of Washington Monthly. Our boss announced today that Sullivan is joining our staff as nation editor. She'll take a seat at a long, shiny conference table where only a handful of faces will be of other women. You see, we, too, work in a male-dominated field. TIME has historically been written and edited and designed and photographed for the most part by men. There are women here, of course, including one of our top editors, Priscilla Painton, and our top marquee writer, Nancy Gibbs. There are women on staff who shape our political coverage, including Karen Tumulty and Ana Marie Cox (both of whom also blog over at Swampland).
Sullivan acknowledged the gross lack of women's voices in journalism, particularly in opinion pages and political coverage. Studies show 10% to 20% of opinion pieces in major newspapers are written by women: about one female byline for every nine male. She writes:
Gender gaps have narrowed in other fields--women have gained ground in computer sciences, math departments, and science labs, and women now constitute the majority of incoming medical school classes. In journalism, too, newsrooms and television studios are filled with more female reporters and--to a lesser extent--editors and producers than ever before. On the op-ed pages of major newspapers, however, the number of female columnists is roughly that of 25 years ago. Political magazines--with the notable exceptions of The Nation and Salon--are run, edited, and written by men (indeed, the masthead of our own magazine, which has launched some of the sharpest pens in journalism, includes only four female names in the list of 36 former editors; that's 11 percent.) Even in that brave new democratizing world of blogs, the professional bloggers all have names like Mickey and Eric and Andrew and Josh.
When she asked why so few women worked at Washington Monthly, her previous employer, she was told that very few women applied. She found this answer "surprising and unsatisfying." But it turned out to be true. "Where bias does exist, men are not exclusively at fault," she writes: women take themselves out of the running even before the race begins.
Still, society plays a large role in why. Sullivan cites studies that show bias among grade-school teachers in how they select and encourage boys and girls to speak up in class. Girls' confidence diminishes as they wend their way through school to college. And finally, studies show a selection bias in both men and women: when shown paintings by "male" painters, both genders valued it higher than when the painter was identified as "female." A famous Princeton study showed a dramatic surge in the hiring of women by symphonies when screens were erected during auditions.
In journalism, the effect of a society that shapes "silent femmes" is deep:
I've seen plenty to convince me that self-selection is a major reason that women's voices are generally absent from our pages--I can count on one hand the number of pitches I have received from women. But it's also clear to me that this profession is tougher than it needs to be for women. I've interviewed a dozen women who have worked in opinion journalism over several decades, and we all have similar stories and frustrations. To even get to this point, we've survived the socialization gauntlet and are more opinionated and driven than most women. But once we get in the boys' club, we find out that's not enough--we also have to play by the boys' rules.
Almost every woman I talked to dreads editorial meetings, the time when writers float their ideas and vigorously debate the content of future issues. The meetings can be intellectually stimulating and exhilarating, but they also involve a lot of yelling, with each writer fighting to be heard. For many women who have become writers precisely because they find it easier to argue in a written format, the meetings can be exhausting. If she's willing to yell, and to keep yelling until everyone stops and listens to her, she then gets to defend her proposed article against withering attacks from colleagues who are trained to tear it apart (and sometimes see the exercise as sport). If "not interesting, not new, not worth publishing" is the declared verdict, she is supposed to persist in efforts to convince the room. But it takes sterner stuff than most of us are made of to set your shoulders for one more go-'round and head back into the fray. While there are outliers, the average woman just doesn't enjoy full-contact political sparring as much as the average man.
So far, I feel Hillary Clinton has conducted herself like a lady, even while taking blows like a man. Whatever her faults, she's giving my daughter's generation--and mine--a lesson in what it means to be a woman in a man's world.
June 4, 2007 1:19
Could You Do Your Boss's Job?
In America, it's all about No. 1. CEOs, heads of state and police chiefs get all the press. No one spends a lot of time thinking about No. 2, the guy standing with his hands folded behind the podium as the star of the show hogs all the spotlight.
I was thinking about this last night as I watched The Sopranos. With Tony's demise lurking like an FBI agent who won't quit, who, I wondered, would--or could--take over the family business? Notwithstanding that episode earlier in the season where Tony appeared to promise the reins to his gentle brother-in-law, Sil would seem to be the obvious choice. He's toiled long enough as No. 2, after all.
It's not without precedent. At TimeWarner, my own employer, COO Jeff Bewkes is set to ascend to the throne once CEO Dick Parsons steps down. Bewkes proved his stuff by working long and hard at HBO, whose longtime chief, Chris Albrecht, was recently ousted after a public altercation with a woman. Now it seems Albrecht's next-in-line, Michael Lombardo, is set to step into his shoes.
Two chiefs on the outs: HBO's Albrecht and James Gandolfini's Soprano.
It's not easy being No. 2. But apparently, a lot of No. 2s think it's easy being No. 1. According to a new survey by Korn/Ferry, the "global provider of talent management solutions":
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of executives believe they can perform their boss's job better than their current manager, according to the latest Executive Quiz from Korn/Ferry International. Moreover, nearly two-thirds (65%) of executives surveyed indicated that they aspire to attain their boss’s job.
But all those years of playing second fiddle leaves its mark. Many remain loyal:
Nevertheless, when asked to rate their boss’s performance, the largest percentage of executives (42%) marked it as either “excellent” or “above average,” while another 23% cited it as “average.” Fourteen percent of executives ranked their boss’s performance as “below average” and 11% deemed it “poor.” Additionally, when asked if they trust their boss, almost two-thirds of executives (65%) indicated that they did, while the other 35% said they did not.
Could you do your boss's job? Could Little Stevie do Big Tony's job? Full disclosure: I'm an episode behind in my Sopranos-watching, so don't nobody spoil my speculation.
POST SCRIPT: Resident Sopranos expert Jim Poniewozik notes:
But remember, Sil did take over for Tony, beginning of season 6, when Tony was shot. Sil became a nervous wreck, and his health suffered. He revealed that he had been offered an opportunity to take over when Jackie Aprile died and turned it down.
I totally forgot. So clearly, the answer is no. And if you, like me, are Tivo-ing and an episode late, don't under any circumstances read Jim's blog.
POST-POST SCRIPT: I finally watched that last Sopranos episode. I guess Sil isn't taking over anytime soon. Nor Bobby. Mama mia.
June 1, 2007 12:00
Career Change Isn't About Bigger Paychecks
I had lunch the other day with Marci Alboher, the author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success. Her book sprung from her own experiences as a former lawyer-turned-writer/speaker/teacher. Note the slashes; they're key to her message.
Marci Alboher slashed her way to a new career(s).
"I was in a part of law that I hated," she says. Her expertise in vetting advertising and promotions for publishers earned her a boffo salary, but Alboher, now 41, grew increasingly discontent. While pulling a stint in Hong Kong, she began writing an e-mail newsletter to friends and family. One, a journalist, praised her way with words. "It was the push I needed," she says.
Though by now eager to try her hand as a writer, it took a few more pushes--namely, one last hideous but hideously high-paying lawyer job--before Alboher took the plunge. That's key to her message, too: it's really hard to leave a job you're trained for, rewarded for and perform well. A friend told her, "I can't