Everything is connected to everything else, right? We are all part of the same organism or system if you prefer. Religion teaches this. Science confirms it. Even a child understands this. It's a simple concept.
But sometimes as we grow more (misunder)educated, sophistijaded and become “experts,” we lose sight of this concept by becoming specialized and too narrow in our thinking. We also learn to deny our senses and believe (mistakenly) that facts and figures connote the only truth, when any good statistician has probably read lies, damn lies and stats.
Let's play this out to one really worrisome possible outcome. Are we eventually all going to become datapoints with identifying signatures that define who we are and help those who should find us find us in the internether? What happens when the beauty of interconnectedness is turned on its head and we are turned into bits and bytes? When we are all just one degree separated? Is it possible to be too connected?
Interconnectedness is a beautiful idea; everything is ultimately connected to everything else implies a certain amount of responsibility to one another and stewardship of the planet. Doug Adams riffed in this idea in a few of his books when Dirk Gently’s (Holistic Detective Agency) expensed his trip to the Bahamas as part of the search for the woman’s lost cat which disappeared in London, justifying it by invoking the "interconnectedness of everything." (If you haven’t read any Doug Adams, you should).
Then there’s the butterfly effect, a related popular concept - "when a butterfly flaps its wings..." The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. While the butterfly does not cause the tornado, the flap of its wings is an essential part of the initial conditions resulting in a tornado. (Wikipedia). Wings flap in China, Hurricane in New Orleans, you know? It’s all connected.
From Buddhism we also know this to be true. There's karma - the law of moral causation which says basically that nothing happens to a person that he or she does not for some reason or other deserve based on present doings or past (life) actions (for Christians and farmers it’s "you reap what you sow"). Usually, you cannot see the actual and direct reason or reasons, but it's all connected.
But like you can’t know life without death, light without darkness, good without evil, is it also true that you can’t have interconnectedness without being found?
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Entry #12: Look@Me! I'm Jack Keourac
Facebook quizzes have to be the coolest apps on the site. They're even better than those 17 and Cosmo quizzes we used to have so much fun with in high school. According to the few quizzes I've taken:
- my 80s movie is the Goonies (admittedly a favorite),
- I'm the "lively center of attention" according to Dr. Phil (had to take that one twice cuz I so did not like his original indictment - vain, self-centered leader - as if; and am I the only one who sees his categories as condescending?)
- New York is my city (okay anyone who knows me knows that's true but I was kind of hoping for Paris)
- My goddess is Morgan LeFaye Celtic triple threat - sweet! Although my goddess knowledge is nil so is that good? what are the other choices? hmm. may have to take that one again
- The flower that represents me is the sunflower (fab)
- and, as referenced in the title to today's missive, my writer type muse idol is Jack Kerouac, renowned and infamous beat poet writer painter Buddhist lover of jazz. That one I own with pleasure - would love to have that on my epitaph, along with best mom & wife ever.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Entry #11: Not Really About Anything
I am apparently, according to my daughter, too old to blog. That cracks me up because in my mind I am of course barely formed. But worse, it shows (on her part) a decided lack of appreciation for the contributions Xers like me have made to the (d)evolution of communication in the 21st century.
Seems to me I read or heard somewhere that me fellow Xers (it depends on whose definition you believe, I choose those born between 1961 and 1981 to include Pres. O'Dreamy and exclude my husband just because I find it amusing to call him a boomer); anyway. Seems to me we Xers and our use of new tech / social media / networking were big time helpful in getting him elected. Didn't we create it even if most of the users are our children?
Also seems to me that Xers are big time dominant in the blogosphere.
Those of you skeptics who say it just seems that way to me because I probably know more people my age than any other group may in fact be correct. However I must note that this is the first time in my conscious life that I feel safe in claiming responsibility for anything.
Xers have the misfortune of being stuck between two really big generations - Boomers, responsible for screwing everything up, and Millennials like my kids who are well on their way to doing damage themselves. (Okay so the real intergenerational warfare is going to be between Boomers and Millennials; I know this, we Xers are just a speck on the windshield of god's great machine).
We Xers on the other hand, by virtue of our tiny tiny size have had minimal impact on the world. That is proven by our name (Xers? wtf?) and by our common reputation - as being disengaged, inactive, lazy, blah blah blah. When were were defined by Boomers, that is.
But, now that we have wrested power from those who came before, it's time for things to change.
More on that later. Right now I have to yamtwitinmailonFB.
Seems to me I read or heard somewhere that me fellow Xers (it depends on whose definition you believe, I choose those born between 1961 and 1981 to include Pres. O'Dreamy and exclude my husband just because I find it amusing to call him a boomer); anyway. Seems to me we Xers and our use of new tech / social media / networking were big time helpful in getting him elected. Didn't we create it even if most of the users are our children?
Also seems to me that Xers are big time dominant in the blogosphere.
Those of you skeptics who say it just seems that way to me because I probably know more people my age than any other group may in fact be correct. However I must note that this is the first time in my conscious life that I feel safe in claiming responsibility for anything.
Xers have the misfortune of being stuck between two really big generations - Boomers, responsible for screwing everything up, and Millennials like my kids who are well on their way to doing damage themselves. (Okay so the real intergenerational warfare is going to be between Boomers and Millennials; I know this, we Xers are just a speck on the windshield of god's great machine).
We Xers on the other hand, by virtue of our tiny tiny size have had minimal impact on the world. That is proven by our name (Xers? wtf?) and by our common reputation - as being disengaged, inactive, lazy, blah blah blah. When were were defined by Boomers, that is.
But, now that we have wrested power from those who came before, it's time for things to change.
More on that later. Right now I have to yamtwitinmailonFB.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Entry #10: It's Not the Economy Stupid
You do not need a degree in economics to know the same rules apply to finances as to calories: spend less than you earn, eat less than you burn. Duh. Not hard to comprehend. Yes hard to do -especially the calories part - but not hard to understand. This is what's missing from the current conversation and what's been missing from the consumer culture ethos. People, please, take responsibility for actions and choices.
Take calories. I need to lose weight. I know I need to lose weight. I know I need to eat more healthfully and exercise more. I choose - consciously - to let myself eat badly, work to exhaustion and not move enough. I know first hand the likely consequences (is it first hand when family members have the usual weight related diseases of heart and sugar?) and I have witnessed what it takes to overcome them - time, the third rail of a good life along with money (security, not billions) & food (wine, olives, cheese, chocolate), and commitment to use that time wisely by, for example, exercising and being conscious to hyper-vigilante about food choices.
I am probably harming myself. And if I don't take care of myself, I may cost the economy in terms of healthcare spend in the future. I will deal with it. Eventually. As soon as the morning temps are consistently over 40, I can resume my morning skate.
Now reader, you may think I've written myself into a rabbit hole. I am in effect not taking responsibility for my health actions just like I am charging myriad others did not take responsibility for their financial actions. Glass houses, stones. Have I contradicted myself? Just wait.
People who spent more than they earned and let the naked emperor get away with deceiving them are no different than me eating more than I should and blaming the food industry and advertising for making it hard to be healthy. Oh wait - I didn't do that, did I?
It would be very easy for me to say it's too hard for me to eat / exercise appropriately because advertising promotes an eat eat eat culture and our food industrial complex is as out of control as our financial system. Except it's really hard to deceive myself.
I'm blind about many things but I know the difference between a bag of chips and an apple. I know that going home and sitting is not the same as going home and doing sit-ups. I know that I have less energy than I would were I to exercise regularly.
Let's not deceive ourselves or the American people any longer. Let's call a spade a spade, make decisions that don't simply enrich the individual but also sustain the community.
I am of the opinion that greedy power mad crazies were for the past 20 years on a quest to further consolidate wealth and power. They used every trick in the book to distract us from that sad slimy truth. And we let them.
We are just beginning to understand level of effort exerted to create a (highly un-American) culture of extreme consumption to distract us from reality (Oh I smell a(n) (un)reality TV rant coming on). One of those realities was that we were spending way more than we earned - individually and nationally.
Let's stop letting them get away with it. The good news is, with the rate of delevering going on, there's hope for Americans. Too bad it takes a crisis to do what we should've been doing all along. And hopefully we'll have a post-depression period of responsibility longer than the 50 years preceding the creation of the easy credit era.
And maybe we’ll all lose some weight too.
Take calories. I need to lose weight. I know I need to lose weight. I know I need to eat more healthfully and exercise more. I choose - consciously - to let myself eat badly, work to exhaustion and not move enough. I know first hand the likely consequences (is it first hand when family members have the usual weight related diseases of heart and sugar?) and I have witnessed what it takes to overcome them - time, the third rail of a good life along with money (security, not billions) & food (wine, olives, cheese, chocolate), and commitment to use that time wisely by, for example, exercising and being conscious to hyper-vigilante about food choices.
I am probably harming myself. And if I don't take care of myself, I may cost the economy in terms of healthcare spend in the future. I will deal with it. Eventually. As soon as the morning temps are consistently over 40, I can resume my morning skate.
Now reader, you may think I've written myself into a rabbit hole. I am in effect not taking responsibility for my health actions just like I am charging myriad others did not take responsibility for their financial actions. Glass houses, stones. Have I contradicted myself? Just wait.
People who spent more than they earned and let the naked emperor get away with deceiving them are no different than me eating more than I should and blaming the food industry and advertising for making it hard to be healthy. Oh wait - I didn't do that, did I?
It would be very easy for me to say it's too hard for me to eat / exercise appropriately because advertising promotes an eat eat eat culture and our food industrial complex is as out of control as our financial system. Except it's really hard to deceive myself.
I'm blind about many things but I know the difference between a bag of chips and an apple. I know that going home and sitting is not the same as going home and doing sit-ups. I know that I have less energy than I would were I to exercise regularly.
Let's not deceive ourselves or the American people any longer. Let's call a spade a spade, make decisions that don't simply enrich the individual but also sustain the community.
I am of the opinion that greedy power mad crazies were for the past 20 years on a quest to further consolidate wealth and power. They used every trick in the book to distract us from that sad slimy truth. And we let them.
We are just beginning to understand level of effort exerted to create a (highly un-American) culture of extreme consumption to distract us from reality (Oh I smell a(n) (un)reality TV rant coming on). One of those realities was that we were spending way more than we earned - individually and nationally.
Let's stop letting them get away with it. The good news is, with the rate of delevering going on, there's hope for Americans. Too bad it takes a crisis to do what we should've been doing all along. And hopefully we'll have a post-depression period of responsibility longer than the 50 years preceding the creation of the easy credit era.
And maybe we’ll all lose some weight too.
Entry #9: Oh Dear, Socialite Wears 10 Year Old Dress
People, please. Or perhaps I should say, newspaper people, puhleese. The days of conspicuous consumption are over! A new more altruistic time is upon us! Rather than compulsive shopping, it’s the era of responsible spending! Oh for god's sake, did everyone lose their minds?
Today’s missive is shaping up to be a rant. And it is directed at the New York Times. My hometown paper that I love. But yesterday, above the fold, on the front page, this headline: "Extravagance Has Its Limits As Belt-Tightening Trickles Up".
Really? I'm supposed to have sympathy for socialites and other well employed people who have to spend less than they earn? Was I also meant to have envied them their extravagant lives prior to the tsunami? Give me a freaking break. Where is the voice of the real people who were responsible pre-tsunami and are still responsible -and still spending, therefore keeping the economy going as it were - post-tsunami.
Today's NYT has an interesting juxtaposition of above the fold headlines: "As Jobs Vanish, Motel Rooms Become Home" with a heart-wrenching photo of nice middle class kids sharing a bed in room jammed with stuff, placed next to the headline: "Madoff Will Plead Guilty; Faces Life for Vast Swindle".
Surely I am not the only one to see the problem here, am I? Am sure Times did not mean to be ironic. That's the exact problem. They are serious.
Here's the shadow storyline that drove the shadow economy: let swindlers get away with bilking investors - separating fools from their money - for as long as possible, than bemoan the fact that individuals pay by giving up lives they couldn't afford in the first place. Don't mean to be cold but, if it's too good to be true than it's TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE and 1+1 does not = 3 (the arithmetic many seem to have embraced over the last 20 years) instead of the depression era generation's 1+1 = I can't afford to buy that right now I will have to save for it and, dear heaven help me, wait (delay gratification).
That's what I think is missing from the current mainstream story line - a lot of people knew the emperor was naked, the financial system was headed for a breakdown and that they were over leveraged. A lot of people gambled and lost. It would be far better for America if we were to simply acknowledge this fact, learn from it and move on rather than bemoan the destruction (we brought on ourselves) and proclaim the death of a lifestyle that is well known not to deliver fulfillment.
And hopefully we won't forget that living well does not require stuff and does require responsibility for self and others - which includes holding self and others accountable through political and civic action - and a meaningful free press.
Today’s missive is shaping up to be a rant. And it is directed at the New York Times. My hometown paper that I love. But yesterday, above the fold, on the front page, this headline: "Extravagance Has Its Limits As Belt-Tightening Trickles Up".
Really? I'm supposed to have sympathy for socialites and other well employed people who have to spend less than they earn? Was I also meant to have envied them their extravagant lives prior to the tsunami? Give me a freaking break. Where is the voice of the real people who were responsible pre-tsunami and are still responsible -and still spending, therefore keeping the economy going as it were - post-tsunami.
Today's NYT has an interesting juxtaposition of above the fold headlines: "As Jobs Vanish, Motel Rooms Become Home" with a heart-wrenching photo of nice middle class kids sharing a bed in room jammed with stuff, placed next to the headline: "Madoff Will Plead Guilty; Faces Life for Vast Swindle".
Surely I am not the only one to see the problem here, am I? Am sure Times did not mean to be ironic. That's the exact problem. They are serious.
Here's the shadow storyline that drove the shadow economy: let swindlers get away with bilking investors - separating fools from their money - for as long as possible, than bemoan the fact that individuals pay by giving up lives they couldn't afford in the first place. Don't mean to be cold but, if it's too good to be true than it's TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE and 1+1 does not = 3 (the arithmetic many seem to have embraced over the last 20 years) instead of the depression era generation's 1+1 = I can't afford to buy that right now I will have to save for it and, dear heaven help me, wait (delay gratification).
That's what I think is missing from the current mainstream story line - a lot of people knew the emperor was naked, the financial system was headed for a breakdown and that they were over leveraged. A lot of people gambled and lost. It would be far better for America if we were to simply acknowledge this fact, learn from it and move on rather than bemoan the destruction (we brought on ourselves) and proclaim the death of a lifestyle that is well known not to deliver fulfillment.
And hopefully we won't forget that living well does not require stuff and does require responsibility for self and others - which includes holding self and others accountable through political and civic action - and a meaningful free press.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Entry #8: Retirement
The current issue of The Actuary (Society of Actuaries publication - yes I occasionally read it and yes I know that makes me a geek but it is technically work related since it helps to understand the business you are marketing even if it's a field no outsider ever truly has a hope of comprehending); anyway. The current issue of The Actuary has an article on redefining retirement.
There are a lot of trends and factors that are changing the way employers and employees think about and get ready for retirement - we've all read or heard about most of them: aging workforce, multigen workforce, economic tsunami, death of DB, low to nearly nil savings rates, trillions lost in DC plans, longevity, and so on. The traditional orderly flow of older workers out to allow younger workers in has been radically disrupted.
As I said in my last entry, I've always known I was going to work longer and harder than the mainstream myth. But I'm not sure anyone really could have foreseen what we're facing now. We've got the intersection of "can't afford to retire" with "don't want to retire" and it is creating a blockage in the workforce that may truly limit not only my career growth options but worse, may impede my children's entry into the workforce.
If older workers don't leave or only leave on their terms - that is keeping the fun work for themselves and leaving the boring stuff for the rest of us - that may have the down the line impact of delaying my kids' departure from my home (the ultimate goal of parenting: get them out of the house. didn't you learn anything from Bill Cosby?).
Some of the other important things we need to talk about for redefining retirement are communicating how much it costs to retire (think 20 to 25 times your current household budget); saving for healthcare or, in the US moving toward national healthcare as an economic necessity (if we haven't saved enough to live on, we certainly haven't saved enough to pay for healthy longevity); and starting a national debate about who should be the conduit for retirement: the individual, the employer or the government; same goes for healthcare.
Also, we need a robust debate on the nature of work. The great management consulting theory of the 80s (delayering enabled by technology) is the corollary failure of the current economy. Think about it: eliminating several layers of management and workers without eliminating the work and without really replicating or replacing the control those managers and workers provided must have had a direct impact on both the risk taking behavior that seems to have surprised the world in today's crisis and the similarly bad behaviors that led to the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley. Why was everyone surprised leadership, executives and the board didn't know what was going on? How could they? We all have too much on our plates to really know.
It's no wonder therefore that older workers (the ones stuck holding the bag after the intensive restructuring and delayerings of the prior decades) want to keep the best work for themselves and leave all the crap to the rest of us - in some ways they've earned it, being the survivors they are. But what does that mean for the rest of us who are aware of the scope of the challenge we face fixing the American economy and way of working (think Grand Canyon) and the type and extent of the tools currently offered to cross the chasm (tissue paper wings anyone?). Personally, if I wasn't already midstream, I'd choose to stay on my side and learn to live with the limits rather than kill myself trying to get to the other side.
So, really, rethinking retirement should be a discussion on the subject of rethinking work and must include workers, employers and the government and must cover education, healthcare and money. And we must look at it in the context of lifestyle and longevity. Maybe a period of sustained economic woe will force the inward looking internal work we as Americans must do to reflect on and remedy our excesses. And maybe we'll find a cure for cancer, end global poverty and find world peace.
There are a lot of trends and factors that are changing the way employers and employees think about and get ready for retirement - we've all read or heard about most of them: aging workforce, multigen workforce, economic tsunami, death of DB, low to nearly nil savings rates, trillions lost in DC plans, longevity, and so on. The traditional orderly flow of older workers out to allow younger workers in has been radically disrupted.
As I said in my last entry, I've always known I was going to work longer and harder than the mainstream myth. But I'm not sure anyone really could have foreseen what we're facing now. We've got the intersection of "can't afford to retire" with "don't want to retire" and it is creating a blockage in the workforce that may truly limit not only my career growth options but worse, may impede my children's entry into the workforce.
If older workers don't leave or only leave on their terms - that is keeping the fun work for themselves and leaving the boring stuff for the rest of us - that may have the down the line impact of delaying my kids' departure from my home (the ultimate goal of parenting: get them out of the house. didn't you learn anything from Bill Cosby?).
Some of the other important things we need to talk about for redefining retirement are communicating how much it costs to retire (think 20 to 25 times your current household budget); saving for healthcare or, in the US moving toward national healthcare as an economic necessity (if we haven't saved enough to live on, we certainly haven't saved enough to pay for healthy longevity); and starting a national debate about who should be the conduit for retirement: the individual, the employer or the government; same goes for healthcare.
Also, we need a robust debate on the nature of work. The great management consulting theory of the 80s (delayering enabled by technology) is the corollary failure of the current economy. Think about it: eliminating several layers of management and workers without eliminating the work and without really replicating or replacing the control those managers and workers provided must have had a direct impact on both the risk taking behavior that seems to have surprised the world in today's crisis and the similarly bad behaviors that led to the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley. Why was everyone surprised leadership, executives and the board didn't know what was going on? How could they? We all have too much on our plates to really know.
It's no wonder therefore that older workers (the ones stuck holding the bag after the intensive restructuring and delayerings of the prior decades) want to keep the best work for themselves and leave all the crap to the rest of us - in some ways they've earned it, being the survivors they are. But what does that mean for the rest of us who are aware of the scope of the challenge we face fixing the American economy and way of working (think Grand Canyon) and the type and extent of the tools currently offered to cross the chasm (tissue paper wings anyone?). Personally, if I wasn't already midstream, I'd choose to stay on my side and learn to live with the limits rather than kill myself trying to get to the other side.
So, really, rethinking retirement should be a discussion on the subject of rethinking work and must include workers, employers and the government and must cover education, healthcare and money. And we must look at it in the context of lifestyle and longevity. Maybe a period of sustained economic woe will force the inward looking internal work we as Americans must do to reflect on and remedy our excesses. And maybe we'll find a cure for cancer, end global poverty and find world peace.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Entry #7: Socialism & E-Mail
Yesterday's NY Times printed an article in the Tech section on managing one's email that I must riff on this morning. I'm old enough to remember the advent of personal computers, fax machines and e-mail in the workplace. (Remember the debate about legally / contractually binding signatures on facsimiles? Ah, the olden days, 1987). I'm also old enough to remember mimeographs, punch-card computers in massive, air-conditioned computer rooms and actual inboxes on desks into which the daily mail arrived, sorted, stamped and anticipated twice daily - once in the morning, once in the afternoon - by professional administrative staff that know what to do with most of the incoming mail and how to direct their bosses to get their work done. This would be the same century as secretaries, filing systems and no concept of business casual.
Aside, this was also the time when the employee-employer contract was a straightforward deal, at least in the white collar space and union shops. Worker gives employer soul for 40 hours a week, leaving life, family and opinions at the door, in exchange for salary, healthcare and pension benefits. We call this the paternalistic model. The company (sociopath that it is - oh, wait, that's the corporation and a different topic, nevermind). Anyway, the company took care of you - HR, formerly known as Personnel, made sure you got paid, could pay for the odd hospital visit, and could afford to retire when it was time for you to go.
Fastforward to today and the contract has changed. We've been through HMOs and cost-shifting (also downsizing, the end of loyalty and the broken contract), and now we are facing a choice: fully free market individualism (give me the cash, my preference, to spend on health and retirement or Las Vegas as I see fit) or Nationalized Healthcare - Socialized Medicine.
As I said in my post yesterday, I would love to believe health care is a human right - and basic health care is - like access to clean water, safe food, medicines like antibiotics that save children and adults from the most common, pervasive illnesses like the flu, preventative care and vaccines, all (not so basic in most the world) human rights. But the way healthcare happens in the US of A? Not a right - not even a privilege - insurance bar association money fueled spending on ridiculous health services that most Americans are a) appalled at and b) not interested in has so warped what constitutes good healthcare that we can't distinguish among good and bad choices nor can we improve outcomes because we've created such disparates in health that you either have more than you need or none at all.
Wow. Didn't see that rant coming. Anyway, you know what I mean. System broke. How to fix? Free market individualism or socialism?
But wait - back to e-mail. So the essential premise of this article yesterday is that one should maintain a pristine (read: empty) inbox. That one must not let e-mail rule one's life. That e-mail is not work, work is work and e-mail must be managed appropriately.
God save me from preachy reporters who've obviously never held a professional full-time job. Or is it my perspective that is warped? Entirely possible. Many people in many jobs don't face an avalanche of daily e-mail. Doctors, teachers, store clerks, call-center employees, construction workers, farmers, artists and other entire employment categories don't rely on e-mail to get the job done. But for business people of all stripes - from finance to advertising, bureaucrats and certain other "white collar" fields, e-mail is the life blood of work. Me and my peeps - you know who you are - receive easily 100-150 email a day at work (and most of us maintain separate personal e-mail addresses for the social, family, friends, political, civil, spiritual stuff that makes life worthwhile). I'm not sure where journalists fall on the spectrum but I'd always assumed they like me are inundated. I mean since media & PR are part of my scope, I know we send press releases and other really important, meaningful, newsworthy tidbits to the journalists and editors in our world as part of our strategy to raise visibility and get the word out. Multiply that by everyone else who does and those journalists have to be in the same boat as those of us who have routinely out of control email inboxes.
Now, I checked in with some of my team members and colleagues, and also of course my husband who is the benchmark by which I measure most of my perspectives. There are one or two among them that do maintain a pristine inbox. But when I delved deeper I began to discern two very important factors: no one reported to them and they weren't married with children. (my biased presumption being they had fewer responsibilities and therefore more time to devote to managing their inboxes.) (note to self - step into the working mother vs stay-at-home mother vs the career woman, no children debate in a future blog.)
Everyone else faced out of control e-mail and didn't particularly think the empty e-mail was a reality. There is one other exception I know of - a really smart IT guy who is aggressive about his inbox and has a fairly complex system of reading, responding, filing and creating tasks. But he's a workaholic and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any kids either.
The rest of us, we know what we're supposed to do and sometimes we do it. We tend to delete the emails we don't need, respond quickly to the ones that are easy to respond quickly and even file the ones we can file easily. But there are two other categories of e-mail that require more attention, consume more time, and pretty much blow us out of the water. One type of these e-mails are the work related ones - those that require more than two minutes of action, contain documents to review, project plans to approve, budgets to cut, guidance for performance management, links to other systems or resources for research, management and basic daily work activities like contracting, paying bills and managing people. You know, work? I haven't done a scientific study of this category but probably a good 40 - 50% of my inbox is this type of email.
Then there's the other type. This is the water cooler type. Not gossip per se but you know you're connected when you are on the right email chains. Ya'll know what I mean. A certain group of emails are a measure of how well connected you are to the political structure of the firm - that informal but all powerful network of minds and groups that truly influences the direction and focus of the firm. Not the outward, on paper structure but the linkages among groups that are the engine of every organization. I'm guessing I could eliminate at least 20% of my email if I got off some the email chains that weren't directly related to my work except that these are indirectly relevant and have a far greater impact on my work like and success than the actual work emails. So, I'm thinking getting out of the political net would be akin to professional suicide. And I'm not saying I'm that connected - just enough to know some of what's going on.
So in the good old days when the inbox was actually a box on your desktop -two boxes actually, one for incoming, one for outgoing mail, and what a sense of accomplishment one achieved by getting through one's inbox - in those days you both measured your worth by the volume of inbox items and measured the length of your day by the volume of incoming mail since the amount of mail directly tied to how long you'd be working or how much disruption from your real work you'd have to deal with. I may be rewriting and romanticizing the past and it's hard for me to judge the difference between early, entry-level, junior jobs and my current status, but I think there is an order of magnitude difference in difficulty keeping on top of the inbox that has more to do with technology and less to do with accumulating responsibility as I progress in my career.
Let me clarify what I mean. In the good old days, technology (and protocol) limited the number of items that could arrive in the inbox, be processed for the outbox and generally kept down the amount of (printed) communications. Remember writing a memo? Typing a letter? Strategically planning the cc list? Old fashioned office technology kept the inbox in check.
Fast forward to today. We know that technology, rather than ending the paper chase, exploded paper. It has also undermined the protocols and actual costs that served to limit communications. In isolating us from our teams - and enabling global workforces - technology has also exploded the water cooler (and annual meeting) networks that kept people "in the know". More than anything though, e-mail has dramatically increased the volume and type of communications. Many of them may be unnecessary but most of them are legitimate work-related communications. The problem is the boundaries of technology, the elimination of protocols and the associated "controls" that were erased in the "downsizing, rightsizing, flattening" of organizations in the 80s and 90s, and the explosion of not just a globalized but also the freed untethered from the office workforce have made it all but impossible to achieve the pristine inbox. When we finally learn new ways to work - and finally take back our lives from the choking, smothering, ever increasing inbox - when we finally shout from the roof tops - enough already, I'm not going to take it anymore - then maybe we'll gain control of the inbox. But until then, I say to the journalist who wrote the article that set me off on this riff, get real, get a real job and stop making those of us with less than pristine inboxes (right now mine has 1946 items and that's just Feb/Mar) out to be the disorganized, out of control bad guys. (Basics: An Empty In-Box, or With Just a Few E-Mail Messages? Read On By FARHAD MANJOO Suggestions for maintaining an empty in-box).
Concluding note: I was also going to write about socialism today and the trade off among security and creativity and freedom. The idea is with socialized medicine and pensions, will we also be required to continue to allow the erosion of our civil liberties or will we get the best of all worlds - nationalized health and freedom of speech? Think France. Similarly, does socialism actually stymie creativity? Again, think France. I touched on the topic yesterday and have some more thoughts but you've had enough, dear reader, haven't you? ttyl
Aside, this was also the time when the employee-employer contract was a straightforward deal, at least in the white collar space and union shops. Worker gives employer soul for 40 hours a week, leaving life, family and opinions at the door, in exchange for salary, healthcare and pension benefits. We call this the paternalistic model. The company (sociopath that it is - oh, wait, that's the corporation and a different topic, nevermind). Anyway, the company took care of you - HR, formerly known as Personnel, made sure you got paid, could pay for the odd hospital visit, and could afford to retire when it was time for you to go.
Fastforward to today and the contract has changed. We've been through HMOs and cost-shifting (also downsizing, the end of loyalty and the broken contract), and now we are facing a choice: fully free market individualism (give me the cash, my preference, to spend on health and retirement or Las Vegas as I see fit) or Nationalized Healthcare - Socialized Medicine.
As I said in my post yesterday, I would love to believe health care is a human right - and basic health care is - like access to clean water, safe food, medicines like antibiotics that save children and adults from the most common, pervasive illnesses like the flu, preventative care and vaccines, all (not so basic in most the world) human rights. But the way healthcare happens in the US of A? Not a right - not even a privilege - insurance bar association money fueled spending on ridiculous health services that most Americans are a) appalled at and b) not interested in has so warped what constitutes good healthcare that we can't distinguish among good and bad choices nor can we improve outcomes because we've created such disparates in health that you either have more than you need or none at all.
Wow. Didn't see that rant coming. Anyway, you know what I mean. System broke. How to fix? Free market individualism or socialism?
But wait - back to e-mail. So the essential premise of this article yesterday is that one should maintain a pristine (read: empty) inbox. That one must not let e-mail rule one's life. That e-mail is not work, work is work and e-mail must be managed appropriately.
God save me from preachy reporters who've obviously never held a professional full-time job. Or is it my perspective that is warped? Entirely possible. Many people in many jobs don't face an avalanche of daily e-mail. Doctors, teachers, store clerks, call-center employees, construction workers, farmers, artists and other entire employment categories don't rely on e-mail to get the job done. But for business people of all stripes - from finance to advertising, bureaucrats and certain other "white collar" fields, e-mail is the life blood of work. Me and my peeps - you know who you are - receive easily 100-150 email a day at work (and most of us maintain separate personal e-mail addresses for the social, family, friends, political, civil, spiritual stuff that makes life worthwhile). I'm not sure where journalists fall on the spectrum but I'd always assumed they like me are inundated. I mean since media & PR are part of my scope, I know we send press releases and other really important, meaningful, newsworthy tidbits to the journalists and editors in our world as part of our strategy to raise visibility and get the word out. Multiply that by everyone else who does and those journalists have to be in the same boat as those of us who have routinely out of control email inboxes.
Now, I checked in with some of my team members and colleagues, and also of course my husband who is the benchmark by which I measure most of my perspectives. There are one or two among them that do maintain a pristine inbox. But when I delved deeper I began to discern two very important factors: no one reported to them and they weren't married with children. (my biased presumption being they had fewer responsibilities and therefore more time to devote to managing their inboxes.) (note to self - step into the working mother vs stay-at-home mother vs the career woman, no children debate in a future blog.)
Everyone else faced out of control e-mail and didn't particularly think the empty e-mail was a reality. There is one other exception I know of - a really smart IT guy who is aggressive about his inbox and has a fairly complex system of reading, responding, filing and creating tasks. But he's a workaholic and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any kids either.
The rest of us, we know what we're supposed to do and sometimes we do it. We tend to delete the emails we don't need, respond quickly to the ones that are easy to respond quickly and even file the ones we can file easily. But there are two other categories of e-mail that require more attention, consume more time, and pretty much blow us out of the water. One type of these e-mails are the work related ones - those that require more than two minutes of action, contain documents to review, project plans to approve, budgets to cut, guidance for performance management, links to other systems or resources for research, management and basic daily work activities like contracting, paying bills and managing people. You know, work? I haven't done a scientific study of this category but probably a good 40 - 50% of my inbox is this type of email.
Then there's the other type. This is the water cooler type. Not gossip per se but you know you're connected when you are on the right email chains. Ya'll know what I mean. A certain group of emails are a measure of how well connected you are to the political structure of the firm - that informal but all powerful network of minds and groups that truly influences the direction and focus of the firm. Not the outward, on paper structure but the linkages among groups that are the engine of every organization. I'm guessing I could eliminate at least 20% of my email if I got off some the email chains that weren't directly related to my work except that these are indirectly relevant and have a far greater impact on my work like and success than the actual work emails. So, I'm thinking getting out of the political net would be akin to professional suicide. And I'm not saying I'm that connected - just enough to know some of what's going on.
So in the good old days when the inbox was actually a box on your desktop -two boxes actually, one for incoming, one for outgoing mail, and what a sense of accomplishment one achieved by getting through one's inbox - in those days you both measured your worth by the volume of inbox items and measured the length of your day by the volume of incoming mail since the amount of mail directly tied to how long you'd be working or how much disruption from your real work you'd have to deal with. I may be rewriting and romanticizing the past and it's hard for me to judge the difference between early, entry-level, junior jobs and my current status, but I think there is an order of magnitude difference in difficulty keeping on top of the inbox that has more to do with technology and less to do with accumulating responsibility as I progress in my career.
Let me clarify what I mean. In the good old days, technology (and protocol) limited the number of items that could arrive in the inbox, be processed for the outbox and generally kept down the amount of (printed) communications. Remember writing a memo? Typing a letter? Strategically planning the cc list? Old fashioned office technology kept the inbox in check.
Fast forward to today. We know that technology, rather than ending the paper chase, exploded paper. It has also undermined the protocols and actual costs that served to limit communications. In isolating us from our teams - and enabling global workforces - technology has also exploded the water cooler (and annual meeting) networks that kept people "in the know". More than anything though, e-mail has dramatically increased the volume and type of communications. Many of them may be unnecessary but most of them are legitimate work-related communications. The problem is the boundaries of technology, the elimination of protocols and the associated "controls" that were erased in the "downsizing, rightsizing, flattening" of organizations in the 80s and 90s, and the explosion of not just a globalized but also the freed untethered from the office workforce have made it all but impossible to achieve the pristine inbox. When we finally learn new ways to work - and finally take back our lives from the choking, smothering, ever increasing inbox - when we finally shout from the roof tops - enough already, I'm not going to take it anymore - then maybe we'll gain control of the inbox. But until then, I say to the journalist who wrote the article that set me off on this riff, get real, get a real job and stop making those of us with less than pristine inboxes (right now mine has 1946 items and that's just Feb/Mar) out to be the disorganized, out of control bad guys. (Basics: An Empty In-Box, or With Just a Few E-Mail Messages? Read On By FARHAD MANJOO Suggestions for maintaining an empty in-box).
Concluding note: I was also going to write about socialism today and the trade off among security and creativity and freedom. The idea is with socialized medicine and pensions, will we also be required to continue to allow the erosion of our civil liberties or will we get the best of all worlds - nationalized health and freedom of speech? Think France. Similarly, does socialism actually stymie creativity? Again, think France. I touched on the topic yesterday and have some more thoughts but you've had enough, dear reader, haven't you? ttyl
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Entry #6
I have a few things on my mind this morning. Social Media. Healthcare Reform. Retirement & Pensions. These are things that matter to me and since marketing is my field and my firm is in HR consulting, I get to have opinions about them and it's related to work. At this point I should say: do not construe anything said here as advice and anything I say is my opinion and not representative of the firm I work for. In fact, what I really hope will happen is that you will comment and share insight and provide feedback to help shape a collective perception (think wisdom of crowd sourcing).
Now, on the subject of social media: I get it; I like it; I use it. I'm on FB, I'm in LinkedIn, I tweet. But I'm charged with developing the social media marketing strategy for my firm and I don't get it for business. I can see maybe for internal communications, alumni relations and knowledge sharing, but for building business? Developing customer relationships? Even creating client/prospect community is a stretch for a B2B firm (although I'm open to possibilities here, what it will take, how it could work, what kind of resource and other investment). So that's the first thing: how can I make social media an effective part of my marketing strategy? At least that's a fun problem to have.
Healthcare: should be free for all, right? I'm not sure - consider the tradeoffs and costs. But I will say this for sure, healthcare is broken in the US of A. My friends and family who are physicians vacillate among hating their jobs because of what's happened to the practice of medicine to hating insurance companies because of what's happened to the practice of medicine to hating lawyers and not just because it's fun to hate lawyers. I have access to excellent healthcare and still I'm generally not in love with most of my care. Also, I see what my parents deal with as older, sicker people who have a lot of interaction with the healthcare system and it is not pretty or easy or reassuring.
Retirement: hah. I knew a long time ago that I wasn't part of the demographic who could expect to retire set for life at 55. I am part of the demographic that has been facing a social security system expected to go bankrupt right around the time I should be retiring. That reality has shaped most of my career and work expectations. Think about entering the workforce just when they say your pension system will be bankrupt when you are ready to retire. What impact would you think that would have? Naturally I figured I have to work until I died. But today's unprecedented cataclysm has me rethinking the concept of pensions and retirements. I would gladly trade off circumstances for security. What I mean is, teachers slog away for years at a rewarding but exhausting job for relatively low pay when you consider they're shaping our future. Part of their trade off is the board of ed pension - less now for future security. That is a compelling value proposition. If the state wants to give me that kind of security for less take home now, it's hard to argue; it takes off a boatload of pressure - if it's not the children monkey than it's the financial security monkey on my back; I could do with one less monkey. And for me it's not like less take home now will create a deprivation. I am one of the lucky ones. I'm not living the gossip girl life but we are the Huxtables. People like me can afford to give up something now and sorry but I'm not buying the argument that higher taxation stifles creativity. That's part of America's rugged individualism myth which is useful propaganda for creating a divided community. Opps. Went there. Ciao for now.
Now, on the subject of social media: I get it; I like it; I use it. I'm on FB, I'm in LinkedIn, I tweet. But I'm charged with developing the social media marketing strategy for my firm and I don't get it for business. I can see maybe for internal communications, alumni relations and knowledge sharing, but for building business? Developing customer relationships? Even creating client/prospect community is a stretch for a B2B firm (although I'm open to possibilities here, what it will take, how it could work, what kind of resource and other investment). So that's the first thing: how can I make social media an effective part of my marketing strategy? At least that's a fun problem to have.
Healthcare: should be free for all, right? I'm not sure - consider the tradeoffs and costs. But I will say this for sure, healthcare is broken in the US of A. My friends and family who are physicians vacillate among hating their jobs because of what's happened to the practice of medicine to hating insurance companies because of what's happened to the practice of medicine to hating lawyers and not just because it's fun to hate lawyers. I have access to excellent healthcare and still I'm generally not in love with most of my care. Also, I see what my parents deal with as older, sicker people who have a lot of interaction with the healthcare system and it is not pretty or easy or reassuring.
Retirement: hah. I knew a long time ago that I wasn't part of the demographic who could expect to retire set for life at 55. I am part of the demographic that has been facing a social security system expected to go bankrupt right around the time I should be retiring. That reality has shaped most of my career and work expectations. Think about entering the workforce just when they say your pension system will be bankrupt when you are ready to retire. What impact would you think that would have? Naturally I figured I have to work until I died. But today's unprecedented cataclysm has me rethinking the concept of pensions and retirements. I would gladly trade off circumstances for security. What I mean is, teachers slog away for years at a rewarding but exhausting job for relatively low pay when you consider they're shaping our future. Part of their trade off is the board of ed pension - less now for future security. That is a compelling value proposition. If the state wants to give me that kind of security for less take home now, it's hard to argue; it takes off a boatload of pressure - if it's not the children monkey than it's the financial security monkey on my back; I could do with one less monkey. And for me it's not like less take home now will create a deprivation. I am one of the lucky ones. I'm not living the gossip girl life but we are the Huxtables. People like me can afford to give up something now and sorry but I'm not buying the argument that higher taxation stifles creativity. That's part of America's rugged individualism myth which is useful propaganda for creating a divided community. Opps. Went there. Ciao for now.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Entry #5
Still love the concept but now realize what a time suck blogging can be. Am not going to let this wither on the vine. But, am feeling social media isn't going to delivery on its premise. It can't.
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