2012 Rewind: On Gates and Gatekeepers

Note: I am winding down the last, waning days of 2012 by re-running a few posts from this year that either I liked, were (reasonably) popular, or just didn't get a fair shake the first time around.  If that is not your sort of thing, then come back on January 2, 2013 when fresh and tasty content resumes. Thanks for reading in 2012!

This piece, On Gates and Gatekeepers ran in May as part of what seems like the annual blogging exercise of finding interesting college commencement speeches to write about. Of course I complied, and this was both my favorite post on the subject as it talked about the wonderful commencement address given by author and artist Neil Gaiman.

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On Gates and Gatekeepers

A week or so back I had a post titled, 'The Skilled Trades Need a Famous Commencement Address Too', in which I whined for 500 words or so about the prevalence of actors, politicians, ridiculously successful internet gazillionaires, and the other non-relatable types that seem to deliver just about all of the annual college commencement addresses, or at least the ones we hear about. My point was more or less that in a tough economic climate, and with an enduring and worsening need for talented people to enter fields such as the skilled trades, teaching, and other not-as-glamorous-as-acting-or-being-a-social-media-consultant, that the consistent set of messages stemming from the annual round of typical commencement speeches, ('Just go out there and be fantastic', 'You can save the world', 'Borrow $20k from your parents and start a business'), were all just getting tiresome.  If the nation truly needs more machinists or nurses or accountants, then could we at least start acknowledging that more openly and with more conviction?

So as I said, I don't really give two shakes about 99% of the latest round of commencement addresses. But once in a great while there is a talk worth talking about, and worth sharing, even if it does bear some similarity to the hacky, same-old same-old advice that gets recycled each spring.  The speech I wanted to call out was given on May 17th at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia by the author Neil Gaiman, famous mostly for The Sandman, a series of comics written between 1988 and 1996.

In the speech, (text here, embedded video below, email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), Gaiman, speaking to a graduating class from an art school, offers advice and wisdom gained over his career as a working, and certainly, highly successful creative. While the entire speech is interesting, I wanted to call out two passages that speak more broadly to issues about career planning and management, and to the pace of change impacting not just the creative industries, but almost all organizations these days.

On career planning and management:

When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.

This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not.

Value in the real world - In your organization, the people making the rules, setting the boundaries, (maybe that's you?), are inherently limited by their tendency to fail to envision a world outside those boundaries. Having a job setting rules, well it seems that is a path to a long career setting rules and enforcing boundaries. Maybe you are ok with that, maybe not. 

On organizational and business model change:

I've talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.

Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're supposed to's of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.

Value in the real world - In the arts, and probably your business too, the landscape two, five, ten years out is entirely unpredictable, and it is likely what works today will not work tomorrow. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. 

 Don't allow yourself to use that as an excuse to over-analyze or hesitate. The winning organizations are not waiting to 'see how things play out', by that time, it's likely that you'll be too late to adapt once the new landscape is revealed. Better to set off on the course you think will be successful than wait for some kind of signpost from beyond.

Anyway, that's it for me on commencement speeches, at least until next Spring. 

The video of the full speech is below, and I think definitely worth your time over lunch, or at night when you have a spare 20 minutes or so.

Have a Great Weekend!

The Obvious Wisdom of Turning Back

Late in 2011 the incredible Meg Bear gifted a number of her colleagues and friends with a neat gift - a Year 2012 'Despair' desk calendar - you may be familiar with it, but if not I am sure you are probably familiar with the cheesy, hacky, inspirational 'Successories' posters which the Despair calendar lampoons.

The image on the right of this post shows the 'October' page from the Despair calendar - a funny take on perseverance that reads:

Perseverance - The Courage to Ignore the Obvious Wisdom of Turning Back

Funny stuff, right? 

But also raises what is I think a pretty interesting question and points out a kind of pop-leadership paradox, or at least something that gives me pause for a minute which is this:

Failure, the need to have experienced pretty profound and sometimes public failure seems to get more and more acceptable all the time, (Yippee!). There are more and more pieces about the value of failure, and failing fast, and having fun with failure, you get the idea.

But as we simultaneously embrace failure, and even celebrate the ability to admirably overcome failure, we also seem to fail to acknowledge that turning back, bailing out, walking away, and yes, even the Q-word, quitting, particularly early enough so that the inevitable failure doesn't even occur, at least not to the level that could cause real and enduring damage, perhaps should also be celebrated.

Sometimes it is ok, and even the prudent and wise thing, not just to experiment and fail, but to experiment and withdraw when all signs begin to point to failure.

One last thing, while the 'celebrate failure' meme seems to continue to take hold and perpetuate, I have a sneaky suspicion that the people in charge, owners, investors, heck - even HR folks and average hiring managers, 'embrace' people's failures a whole lot less than the meme suggests.

Too much failure in your story might not be as wonderful a thing as you've been led to believe.

A history peppered with a little less failure and a little more 'got out while the getting was good' is better.

Of course, a career litany of resounding achievement and success is best, but that advice is about as useful as the Successories posters themselves.

Happy Monday! Try not to fail too much today!

Just kidding. Kind of.

He toyed with me. He lied to me. He intimidated me.

Negotiating anything, whether its the sale price of that new, shiny Mercury Montego, or the details of a potential job offer, can be a difficult, tense, uncomfortable, and often a disappointing process.

For many, particularly those of us not inclined to enjoy the competition of a negotiation, or simply less practiced in the art of negotiation, it can be really easy to feel like you've come out second-best, that you've paid too much for the car, the house, or settled for less money or left something on the table when trying to hammer out that new or renewed employment agreement. When most of us are up against that car salesperson, who makes deals for a living, well drawing from our prior experience haggling over the Montego in 1977 usually doesn't provide enough foundation for confidence.I have no idea if this is true

But I think much of the angst associated with these negotiations arises from the mentality that one side has to win, and one has to lose, and that usually the 'house', (the car dealer, the employer, the merchant), has the upper hand. If someone is going to squirm and flinch first in the battle, it's going to be you with your paltry, limited experience in wheeling and dealing.

But it doesn't always have to be that way. Sometimes you do actually have the upper hand entering the deal, even if you don't completely realize it going in. And sometimes, maybe more often that we like to admit, even a spirited, aggressive, both sides all in kind of negotiation can end with everyone keeping their dignity and moving on with the understanding that negotiation is part of the game, and business is business, and you can even gain more respect for someone willing to fight for their side and not just give up, or conversely, to bully their way to a 'win'.

Case in point - check the comments (kind of said with a little bit of a smile, admittedly), from San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich regarding the recently concluded contract extension negotiations between the team, and their long time, and legendary player Tim Duncan, who certainly an all-time great, at 36 is in the twilight of his career.

Here's Popovich, (representing the house):

“He toyed with me. He lied to me. He intimidated me. He threatened me. In the end, it worked out. But I had to take much abuse to get it done.”

What's good about this, and Popovich's attitude about how the negotiations were conducted and how they concluded?

That the house respected the other side of the table, that the team knew that both sides had the right to negotiate hard, and that in the end, the house had to acknowledge the position and value of the talent, and take a little bit of abuse, in order to get a deal done that both parties could live with.

I get the sense that Duncan too, although he is not quoted in the piece, came away feeling the fight was fair, and that both sides walked away with their heads up, and more importantly, with continued respect for each other.

Big heavy take away from this story? Probably isn't one, unless it helps to remind all of us, no matter what side of the table we sit on, that the guy/gal across from us has just as much right to be sitting there, and if they did not possess something we needed, then no one would be sitting down at all.

The other guy has a point of view too, and if you have to take a little bit of heat to let them communicate that point of view, well don't take it personally.

Happy Monday!

On crazy ideas and taking action

Check the image on the right side of this post. That's me, or at least my hand holding a genuine, original, (sadly without the original packaging), Pet Rock, circa 1975.Pet Rock, unnamed, B. 1975

In case you're not familiar with the story of the Pet Rock, (read - younger than 35, you have some sort of life), allow our friends at Wikipedia to get you caught up:  

Pet Rocks were a 1970s fad conceived in Los Gatos, California by advertising executive Gary Dahl.

In April 1975, Dahl was in a bar listening to his friends complain about their pets. This gave him the idea for the perfect "pet": a rock.

A rock would not need to be fed, walked, bathed, groomed and would not die, become sick, or be disobedient. He said they were to be the perfect pets, and joked about it with his friends. However, he eventually took the idea seriously, and drafted an "instruction manual" for a pet rock. It was full of puns, gags and plays on words that referred to the rock as an actual pet.

The first Pet Rocks were ordinary gray stones bought at a builder's supply store. They were marketed like live pets, in custom cardboard boxes, complete with straw and breathing holes for the "animal."The fad lasted about six months, ending after a short increase in sales during the Christmas season of December 1975. Although by February 1976 they were discounted due to lower sales, Dahl sold 1.5 million Pet Rocks and became a millionaire.

Awesome, right? I mean I still have my Pet Rock as you can see in the picture.

But the most important part of the story isn't how ridiculous the idea was/is, or the amazing gullibility or boredom of the American public who snatched up one and a half million of these 'pets', (in our collective defense it was a time before Cable TV and the internet, there was not all that much to do).

The key to the tale is in this sentence from the founder's story:

He said they were to be the perfect pets, and joked about it with his friends. However, he eventually took the idea seriously

Four buddies, kidding around at a bar, where they hatch pretty much the entire idea for the toy in one beer session. Three of them head home, forget the entire night, and go about their lives, (seemingly their names forgotten to history).

One guy, takes the idea, however silly/crazy/stupid and runs with it, sells a million rocks and gets rich.

And more that 30 years later here I am wirting about that guy. And I still have my rock.

What wild idea have you heard lately that you just laughed at, and swore would never work?

Unscathed, and still thinking you did the right thing

Of the many seemingly endless debates that rage in the workplace/human resources/careers blogosphere, ('How can HR become 'strategic'?, 'Do I need a cover letter?', 'My boss/colleague/HR lady is a jerk, what should I do?), one of my favorites is the one centered around the 'Following your passion at work', discussion.

The 'passion' dialog seems to be split fairly evenly, perhaps the 'You should stop what you are doing and follow your passion' crowd might have the upper hand, (slightly), but that could be because they seem to shout about it the loudest, and it just seems like something we should pursue, or at least aspire to. But often, even the most well-reasoned and reasonable arguments for chasing your passion usually fall a bit flat for me. If I tried to apply the most common passion arguments, even taken loosely, I'd either be trying to catch on with an (unaffiliated) minor league baseball team as a soft-tossing lefty reliever, or hauling a BBQ smoker behind the pickup while working the county fair circuit selling sandwiches. Neither option really seems like a wise choice at this stage.

Probably the most even-keeled recent take on the subject was from blogger and owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban, with the piece titled, 'Don't Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort', that recommends pursuing that which you most often find yourself pursuing, if that makes sense. It actually is a really good piece, tempered only with the knowledge that through hard work, good fortune, and impeccable timing, Cuban himself has countless options that he is free to chase, including things others might term 'passions.'

But past the passion/effort/I just need to keep the mortgage paid and kids fed discussion, which like the other endless workplace debates eventually, maybe already, get extremely tedious, I wanted to offer up one slightly different, and I think completely realistic, honest, and refreshing take on the matter, pulled from a profile of comic Marc Maron on the Vulture blog. Maron, who you'd classify as a working comic, not a household name, but beginning to become more well-known and recognized or a popular series of podcasts that have featured many comedy superstars, offered this telling observation about how he sees his work, success, and in a way seems to reconcile the 'passion' argument really neatly.

“Look,” Maron says before going onstage, “I just want to get out of here unscathed. I just want to leave here still thinking that I did the right thing with my life. That’s my only goal, to have a check that doesn’t bounce and still believe I’m on the right path.”

Nice. Unscathed, with a check that doesn't bounce, and at least a small feeling that you have made (mostly) the right choices and are generally heading in the right direction.

Maybe not passion, but definitely sensible. Definitely reachable. And a question that can be easily asked and answered by most of us each day.

Did I get out of here unscathed? Did the check clear? Am I heading in the right direction?

What say you?