What are you afraid of?

Note: This week on the blog I am trying out a little experiment - writing on the first five (or so) subjects that popped out at random from a cool little app called Writing Exercises. The app provides suggestions for topics, characters, first lines - that kind of thing. I tapped the 'Random Subject' button a few times and will (try) to come up with something for each subject I was presented. It may be good, it may stink - who knows? But whatever the topic, I am taking like 20 minutes tops to bang something out. So here goes...

Today's (and this little exercise's final) topic is a question: What are you afraid of?, and like yesterday's post, I am going to try and keep this more in a work/workplace/career context. I mean I am afraid of Sasquatch and the a guy sitting next to me on a plane who decides to take off his flip-flops and films with subtitles, but no one cares about that.

So what am I afraid of? Not sure I if I am still afraid of these things, but I probably was at one point or another (or should have been). Here goes...

1. Continuing to work with people that you don't trust - There is always a kind of weird and interesting dynamic in organizations and office politics where on the one hand if everyone succeeds then everyone is happy, but in most organizations 'everyone' isn't who or how we reward that success. Said differently, and hopefully in a way that makes sense, most organizations value team work and collaboration, but when come promotion and raise and bonus time it is literally every man and woman for themselves. Naturally these circumstances lend themselves often to people having to work in their own self-interests, and their self-interests are almost certainly not aligned with yours. Once you get the sense that the big, happy family of collaborating colleagues is actually a pack of loosely organized bloodthirsty pirates, you had better be able to either play the game to win or get yourself out of there. 

2. Staying too long in a job or at an organization that is making you unhappy - Similar to Item 1, I know that there has been a time in my career I lingered at a little too long at a place where I had ceased learning, developing, and being excited to be there. It was for all the usual reasons that I stayed - finances, location, family obligations, etc.  The same reasons you are probably gutting it out in a job you don't like either. But even though we can pretty effectively rationalize the 'stick it out' decision, in the longer term it is almost always one we will regret. 

3. Letting someone else (or expectations) manage your career choices. One of the things most folks should do, at least early in their careers, is take the time to experiment. I am talking about taking at least some time to try a few different roles/industries/kinds of jobs in order to figure out what you are actually good at doing. It is so easy to come out of college as say an accounting major and then take your first accounting job which leads to the next accounting job and so on and so on. Until 18 years later you are the Assistant Controller and you realize that you don't really like accounting. But your Dad told you to major in accounting because it 'Would be easy to get a job after you graduate' and so you did and then, well, you know the rest. So take some time to ty out some things when you are young and you only have to worry about supporting yourself. Finding something you actually enjoy and are good at will make you infinitely happier in the long run.

Ok, that is it from me for the week. And that is the end, (thankfully), of this week's Writing Exercises experiment. Thanks for indulging me. 

Have a great weekend!

Fear

Note: This week on the blog I am trying out a little experiment - writing on the first five (or so) subjects that popped out at random from a cool little app called Writing Exercises. The app provides suggestions for topics, characters, first lines - that kind of thing. I tapped the 'Random Subject' button a few times and will (try) to come up with something for each subject I was presented. It may be good, it may stink - who knows? But whatever the topic, I am taking like 20 minutes tops to bang something out. So here goes...

Today's subject: Fear

First of all, thanks a lot to the Writing Exercises app for following up yesterday's uplifting topic of 'Regret' with another pleasant subject, namely 'Fear'. Well, I am committed to this silly endeavor now, so plow on I shall. (19 minutes left on the clock...)

Fear comes from a few places obviously. The most urgent and primal kinds of fear are ones that are around physical safety, security, 'Will I have enough to eat today?' kinds of things. The next kind of fear that is probably more common among most of us is fear of failure. What if I don't hit the ball or know how to spell the word in the spelling bee or the client decided to award the business to my competitor? Those kinds of fears, fears of losing, while interesting to some extent, at least to me aren't the most compelling to think or write about. Anyone, heck pretty much everyone, has plenty of experience with competition and thus with losing. And most of us, eventually, tend to avoid the kinds of things that are likely cause us to lose, (saving for a moment the Powerball players out there), and consequently our fear of losing is addressed by avoiding competition and confrontation. Said differently, over time we gravitate towards things we are 'good' at.

I'd say the same things about the entire category of 'experiential' fears like fear of flying or of tall buildings or of public speaking. Eventually you get up the onions to conquer those kinds of fears or you don't. I just don't think in the big picture they matter all that much or are all that life-altering in most cases.

But the more interesting and sad kind of fear is the fear of not being needed or of being rejected and unwanted. The idea that no one really needs you whether it's in a workplace context, with family or friends, or in a relationship is pretty daunting and scary. Probably the saddest thing that one can hear is 'We won't be needing you anymore.' 

I think most of us want to be successful at what we do. We want to have good relationships with our families and a set of close friends that we can share experiences with. But behind most of those desires is one fundamental one - we want someone to need us. 

And waking up one day only to discover that no one out there, anywhere, really does need us is probably many people's greatest fear.

So tell the people in your life that you need and that you count on how much they mean to you today. You'd be surprised I think how important that is.

Dang, this content is kind of heavy, look for something more fun tomorrow.

First snow

Woke up this fine Monday morning to the first real snow of the season (see badly lit pic on the right), with maybe an inch or so of the white stuff coating the ground. I am not sure how much more (if anything) we are going to get today, I generally don't pay too much attention to the weather forecasts. Because the weather is pretty much almost always the same as yesterday. In fact there is a study somewhere (I am too lazy to go searching for it at the moment), that suggests that simply predicting a repeat of the prior day's observed weather leads to better, and more accurate forecasts than the ones that are developed by computer models and meteorologists.

But there is one 'truth' about weather that I immediately thought about this morning when I saw the snow: That weather (excepting for catastrophic events like hurricanes or tornados), is only interesting two or three times each year. 

The times when weather is actually interesting, (and exciting and perhaps even inspiring) are the first truly warm day in the Spring, the first cold, clear, crisp day in the Fall, and if you live in such a place that experiences this, the first 'real' snowfall of the year.

Aside from those two or three days each year, weather is more or less the same as yesterday, and consequently less and less interesting as the days/weeks trudge along.

I am on record as being totally done with the cold and snow of Western NY winters and am ready to move to somewhere like Vegas or South Florida as soon as I can pull it off. But even I got a little excited and enthusiastic upon seeing the puffy flakes coming down this morning. And I hate snow. Truly.

What's the bigger, more generally applicable point to this? 

Probably not much of one, sadly. Maybe that it is important to remember that while every day, day after day, can sort of feel the same, that there still exists the potential and capacity for excitement in the ordinary.

This little bit of snow here this morning actually foretells about five months of cold, wet, messy misery for me. But for today, at least for a few hours anyway, it looks incredibly exciting and full of possibility.

Have a great day - and stay warm if your day is a snowy one! 

What's bigger than the World Series? Watching people play video games

This is a short update in a semi-regular series of 'If you are not paying attention, the world is probably a lot different than you think' department I offer up this nugget courtesy of The Atlantic - 'More People Watched the 'League of Legends' Video Game Championships that the World Series'.

Here is the opening from The Atlantic piece, click over to read the rest if you like, but unless you are a fairly serious gamer the first paragraph is probably all you need, (or I need) to make the point:

In October, some 15 million people tuned in to watch Major League Baseball’s World Series in the United States. But that’s nothing compared to the other big sporting tournament that took place around the same time: In late September and early October, 32 million people watched the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship, according to a new report (pdf) from SuperData, a games research company.

Additionally, over 18,000 people (real, actual people) filled the Stapes Center in Los Angeles to watch the finals live. Also, it wasn't just the World Series total viewers that were topped by viewers of League of Legends - the NBA Finals Game 7, the average for the NCAA College Basketball Final Four, and the BCS College Football National Title game all fell short of the 32 miiion people that tuned in to the League of Legends finals.

Why mention this story? Well, it is a Friday and in a nod to yesterday's crowdsourcing post, I kind of am out of other ideas. But seriously, I think this is an incredibly interesting story. Think about it in your own work or personal context - would you ever have thought about the growing popularity of watching other people play video games?

It sounds so silly, right? Who would actually want to watch someone else play a video game?

I am not really sure, but if you think about it for half a minute (and non-emotionally), watching 'real' sports like baseball or football is just as silly as watching people play video games. What is the difference really, except just that baseball and football have been around longer. But those of you who take 4 hours out of your Sunday afternoons to watch your favorite NFL team all Fall/Winter don't have the right to claim any kind of intellectual high ground over the video game fans.

In fact, most of the people who watch the pros play video games do it to try and actually improve their own game playing ability - something that can be said for very few football or baseball fans.

The world is not at all what we think it is at time.s I think it helps our work in HR and Talent, although I could not tell you precisely how, to keep aware of what is going on out in the big, scary world where millions of people are watching video games when you are watching football.

Have a great weekend!

The best line I've read all year, and trying not to deliver what's expected

A few days ago, in this piece, Marketview: Huge in Japan on the finance blog Dynamic Hedge, I read what I believe to be the best line I have read anywhere this year, and quite possibly my favorite line ever, (although the last line of Song of Myself is tough to beat).

Here it is:

The Yen carry trade is basically driving risk markets globally and will eventually destroy everything you love.

Boom.

Right in the middle of a pretty standard piece on the Yen currency fluctuations and the recent volatility in the Japanese equity markets, the author drops in that amazing line about everything you love being destroyed and now you're not reading a standard (and dreary) financial analysis piece anymore. This is something else entirely, and entirely unexpected. (I am so stealing this line).Flowers, Andy Warhol, 1964

I'm heading out the big SHRM Annual Conference next week, and presenting on Monday afternoon. While at the event, and certainly before and during my session I will be thinking about this piece from Dynamic Hedge, and that line and how it ambushed me from out of nowhere.

SHRM and the most of the other big, mainstream events succeed largely by meeting expectations I think. They are very clear about what is going to happen there, the speakers they select are if not familiar individually, are familiar in the aggregate. There are always the lawyers and consultants and advisor types speaking, and they are all kind of interchangeable. They all say (again, mostly), the same kinds of things to the same kind of audience that comes back each year. It is a kind of 'cycle of the expected' if you will.

And that is pretty smart I suppose, and good business. SHRM Annual especially is a pretty large commitment of time and money for attendees, and the risk of not delivering to them what they know and expect is pretty high for the organizers. While it feels hard to break in to the SHRM Annual line up as a speaker, it seems much easier to stay there once you are in (and if you have figured out how to deliver to those expectations).

Having said all that, or having said that little, I press on towards the event and the other things I am up to - thinking about the idea of meeting audience, reader, or even public expectations. 

It's all pretty safe, the assessing, defining, and meeting expectations game. If I do that in my session on Monday, I will probably get decent ratings, and maybe get invited back to speak again. It's just a formula really. The speaker is going to talk about X, the attendees are coming to hear him or her talk about X, and they leave knowing something about X. It's simple.

But it all seems kind of boring, kind of forgettable even.

The best events, speeches, ballgames, picnics, movies, songs, books, etc. - the ones that you remember and that resonate beyond their allotted time horizon for your attention - only do that when they ignore, (or at least pretend not to care about) your expectations and deliver on their vision, and not be beholden to yours. But it can be hard to do that. And scary. And that's why it's done so rarely. But I will give it a try on Monday. Probably fail. Probably not be back in 2014.

Let's test it out:

The HR technology landscape has been transformed in the last 5 years, and if you don't keep informed, markets will shift globally and will eventually destroy everything you love.

Maybe.

Have a great weekend, and if I see you at SHRM, please say hello!