David Griesing | Work Life Reward Author | Philadelphia

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Adjusting to the Speed of Time

April 3, 2013 By David Griesing 2 Comments

I’m thinking today about how quickly our lives seem to be moving thanks to all our devices, how much we’re adapting to this acceleration, and whether pulling ourselves onto the fast lane over and over again is a such a good thing.

Every day my internal clock collides with the digital clock that never sleeps. It’s like those days barreling down the entry ramp onto the highway with my poor Corolla struggling to accelerate fast enough. I always manage to inject myself into the stream of on-line traffic—but some days, just barely. It’s the torrent of email, video clips, photos, tweets, commentary, the latest news from North Korea. The speed and magnitude of incoming data is different than it was just a few years ago.  What’s happening when we try to adjust to its demands?

We know from Daniel Coyle that your brain puts down tracks as you learn something for the first time through regular practice. The mastery of new tasks involves building new neurological highways with an “asphalt” in you brain called myelin. So when you are striving to get in sync with that digital clock day after day, where exactly are you headed? What are you becoming, what am I becoming with this new kind of machine-enhanced capability?

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In terms of adaptation, researchers have just discovered microbes that have figured out how to live in a daunting environment called “the Challenger Deep.” It is the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, 6.8 miles below sea level, where all the biomaterials that haven’t already been consumed by the ocean of sea creatures above them eventually come to rest as food. It may have taken them millennia to adapt, but these feeding microbial creatures have shattered our presumptions about the temperatures, pressures, amount of light, and other factors that are necessary to sustain life.

Other deep dives have found jellyfish and tubeworms that have learned how to survive near underwater chimneys that boil the surrounding water to 635 degrees Fahrenheit. There is an unnerving sense that we too are beginning to adapt to the harsh environment of on-line all the time.  The question is: at what cost?

In a recent article discussing his new book Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff argues that we need to do a far better job of protecting ourselves as we jump between biological and digital time. Each of us already inhabits a body with intricate timing mechanisms that balance and adjust the rhythms of everyday life.

The body is based on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different clocks, syncing to everything from the sun and moon to levels of violence and available water.

We can’t override the human clocks that maintain our equilibrium with the demands of today’s digital machine time without paying a price, but this is exactly what we are attempting to do.

[T]oo many of us aspire to be ‘on’ at any time and to treat the various portions of the day as mere artifacts of a more primitive culture—the way we look at seemingly archaic blue laws requiring stores to close at least one day a week. We want all access, all the time, to everything—and to match this intensity and availability ourselves: citizens of the virtual city that never sleeps.

Among other things, Rushkoff recommends that you “reclaim” your time, by making your digital devices serve your most basic human needs and not just struggle to keep up with them.

You usually need to know something’s wrong before you do something about it. Given the slow but steady acceleration of the digital onslaught in recent years, we are a bit like that frog in water that is gradually being brought to a boil and doesn’t know he’s cooked until it’s too late.

Of course our machines need to be tamed, even shut off now and then, so that it’s clear who’s in charge. On the other hand, it’s also true that every new use of technology tends to herald our next form.

Be careful out there.

 

Filed Under: *All Posts, Daily Preparation Tagged With: adaptation, being human, change, evolution, technology, time

The Real Thing

March 17, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Part of our fascination with the election of a pope is the opportunity we all have to meet someone real. Not the creation of a marketing campaign or focus groups, but someone we’ve never met before who has committed his life to something larger than himself and is defined by the web of those commitments. We don’t get the chance to meet someone new like this everyday.

Pope-Francis 254x244As we were introduced to Francis, much of what we had been hearing about over the past couple of weeks seemed either wrong or irrelevant. It wasn’t about changes in doctrine, sex scandals, political intrigue or financial mismanagement. It turned out to be about somebody who seems to be wired completely differently.

Francis didn’t surge onto the balcony at St. Peters when he was introduced and make it about him. Instead he asked everyone assembled in the square for their prayers. After he was chosen, he didn’t take the throne above the other electors to accept their good wishes and fealty, but instead stood among them. When the cardinals toasted him at dinner he told them they might live to regret it.

He didn’t take the limo. He didn’t have someone pay his hotel bill for him in Rome, or book his own ticket home to Argentina: he did all those things himself. He cooks his own meals too. This is different, telling.

Prayerful. Humble. Inclusive. Identifying with the poor and weak more than with the powerful.

A branding campaign could have come up with those words for him, and scripted his rise—but it didn’t, and that’s part of what grabbed our attention.  In an age when we package and re-package ourselves to achieve our objectives, it was compelling to meet someone new who just may be authentic, the real thing—instead of someone who is merely trying to appear that way.

Much has been made of his naming himself after St. Francis of Assisi, whose commitment to the poor and weak was a rebuke to the rich and powerful of his own time.  By forging this connection, the new Francis has connected himself to something essential in the Church (it is the poor and the meek who shall inherit the earth after all). His own ministering to AIDs victims and prostitutes at the margins of society for more than 50 years also connects him.

In the end, we will know this new pope not only by what he does today and tomorrow, but also by what he has already done.  Not the marketing of a life, but the living of a life that is connected to a web of obligations and commitments that speak eloquently about who you are.

In this regard, as we meet Francis we should slso be wondering about his personal courage on behalf of two of his priests when they were fighting a repressive regime in Argentina several years ago.  Whether he spoke truth to power in the way that he needed to is also at the core of his personal authority and authenticity.  When the dust settles, he may need to find ways to have this conversation with us too. There are many ways he can put the issue behind him.

In the following weeks and months, I think we will also get to hear from him things we have not heard in a long time: the Church speaking about more than its own scandals and failings. By taking up the cause of social justice that extends from the first Francis through Ignatius (the founder of his Order) and now down to him, this new pope is committing himself, and hopefully the Church itself, to something deep and abiding that it is for.

We know only too well what the Church is against: married priests, women priests, homosexuality, the fallibility of the pope himself as teacher, and not against enough, namely some of its own failed priests.  Against this backdrop, hearing in a clear and authentic voice what the Church is for is important.

This is not just about Catholics.

The whole world needs the Church of Yes and not merely the Church of No.

Filed Under: *All Posts, Being Part of Something Bigger than Yourself, Introducing Yourself & Your Work Tagged With: authenticity, branding, Church of Yes, moral authority, personal marketing, Pope Francis, speaking truth to power

Admiration Means You Must Be Doing Something Right

March 10, 2013 By David Griesing 1 Comment

What the Chinese are thinking about us is no laughing matter if we’re listening to experts talk about how they are holding America’s mortgage with one hand and stealing our most valuable secrets with the other. But our worries could become more realistic if we also considered just how much the Chinese admire us and the way of life they think we have going on here.

There is always something valuable to be learned when others are both coveting and admiring what you have. As La Rochefoucand famously said: “Sometimes we think we dislike flattery, but it is only the way it is done that we dislike.”  Thinking about what we like and don’t like about how many of the Chinese people view America today has some interesting things to teach us about ourselves.

I had the chance to visit China a couple of years back.

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I’m glad I went when I did and probably wouldn’t recognize much of the place today. It was a few months before the Beijing Olympics, and the country was moving so fast you could almost feel the wind. But what I remember most was how excited regular folks—particularly young people—were that we had come all that way to see them.

They tried out their English on us and surrounded us for pictures. We were their chance to sample America, in the same way that they were already sampling KFC and Polo Ralph Lauren. At the time, analogizing their admiration to eating or wearing did not seem entirely misplaced.

This inkling got some support when I came upon a piece about “architectural mimicry” in China. While the copycat buildings that are springing up there aren’t always American buildings, easily the most duplicated structure in China today is the White House.

The building serves as the model for everything from seafood restaurants to single-family homes to government offices in Guangzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai, Wenling and Nanjing.

There are duplicate Chrysler Buildings and other Manhattan skyscrapers too.

That “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is certainly part of it. But it’s more than this, and has many antecedents in this ancient civilization. Emperors regularly built parks with an Epcot Center of facsimile structures from remote lands.  Both then & now, it is a pretty straightforward effort to enhance their legitimacy by demonstrating China’s de facto appropriation of the known universe.

Today, the Chinese are trying to swallow other aspects of the American way of life as well.

Much of the dynamism you can feel in China today results from a billion people embracing capitalism all at once. It was a forest of timeless bamboo scaffolding clinging to a mountain range of 21st century construction projects that really brought this home to me when I walked around Beijing.  Since almost everybody in China wants to become the next Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, it is hardly surprising that the American rags to riches fantasy has also been made available for mass consumption.

It’s been turned into the equivalent of a fortune cookie.

The Chinese love short motivational phrases even more than Americans do, if that’s possible. They have been a vehicle for transmitting community values from Confucius to Mao, and they are still in active use today. Only now it’s so-called American values that are being conveyed, and what’s being shared has a lot more to do with individual fortune than collective harmony.

Evidence of this comes from the apparently spontaneous rise of 20 or so “allocutions” or commandments that many people in China today believe are written on the walls of Harvard’s library. These commandments speak to the commitment, diligence and self-denial that are supposedly bolstering their counterparts’ remarkable performance here in the States.

One says, “Happiness will not be ranked, but success will—at the top,” while another envisions a slightly different, though related reward,  “If you study one more hour, you will have a better husband.” Struggling through exhaustion to get where you’re going is key in this messaging: “Nodding at the moment, you will dream. While studying at the moment you will come true,” and similarly, “Most great achievements happen while others are dozing.” Perhaps most succinct of all is this commandment: “Please enjoy the unavoidable suffering.”

Wherever it comes from, this distilled wisdom about American motivation clearly haunts the Chinese imagination. In an article about the phenomenon by Robert Darnton, Harvard’s university librarian, we learn that:

the allocutions took root in China’s educational system and were widely used in primary schools, in English courses, on exams, and even in interviews for admission to Beijing University.  They have appeared on bulletin boards, in newspapers, on telecasts, on a website of China’s Ministry of Commerce and on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. Above all, they have reached millions through the Internet, thanks to endless transmission by blogs, including one that registered 67 million hits.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that the most numerous queries on Harvard’s “Ask the Librarian” web page are about these allocutions, with many of the questions originating in China. When informed that no such commandments appear on the walls in any of Harvard’s 73 libraries, Mr. Darnton records the following responses:  “Well my teacher has been using this fooling me,” and “Are you kidding? We grown up with these mottos.” Or even more interesting: “Thank you for liberating us” and “When I know the truth I can’t stop crying.”

Of course, there are both comforting and disquieting things about tokens of flattery like this, as well as the fact that Chinese people will probably be eating fried chicken in a mock-up of the White House later today.

For example, we may like it that the Chinese think we’re this successful, but disquieted by their distortion of us into sleep-deprived automatons.  It’s like Eleanor Roosevelt’s ambivalence about one of her tributes: “I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”

The good news about admiration is the often accurate perception that there is something about us worth admiring.

Even when it is somewhat alarmingly expressed, flattery indicates that somebody out there still thinks you’re ahead in the big game.

But there can be another message too.

Whenever there’s a gapping hole between what’s being hungered for and what is actually true, it may be time to torque up that big game of yours before it’s too late.

(On this last day of the Chinese New Year, great prosperity to all!)

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Filed Under: *All Posts, Continuous Learning, Using Humor Effectively Tagged With: admiration, allocutions, appropriation, China, flattery, Harvard library, wisdom

How to Bring Your Reach Into Your Resume

March 3, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

How you want the world to see you no longer fits on your resume or comes from a few endorsements.

The words you use to describe yourself on a piece of paper are still useful—particularly when you give those words three dimensionality during face-to-face time. And yes, personal references still matter, because it says there are people out there who believe in you enough to step to the fore and say nice things. But more and more, who you are is revealed by the web of your connections: by what you say, by who responds and shares your conversation, and by how you pick up that thread the next time around.

The boundaries around you have changed. When it comes to introducing yourself effectively, your reach is also who you are.

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Part of it is your ability to engage and influence others. But while your Klout or Kred scores can speak to your success as a marketer or thought leader, that is really all they say.

What is most significant about the web of exchange around you isn’t your impact on others, but what all of these conversations reveal about you.  Your tone and content speak volumes about who you are to everyone who’s paying attention.

Not so long ago, literal word of mouth accounted almost entirely for your reputation. It was mostly impressions and feelings from one-on-one conversations that were leveraged into a frame of positive judgments around you–as long as the right people started blowing your horn. It was also a tightly managed process, because the older guy usually trumpeted the younger guy who was just like him. Women, ethnic and racial minorities all got their turns feeling the exclusionary aspects of this. Individuals who never fit the mold did too.

If the past seemed clubby, the present is much less so. Making the name that you want for yourself has a far more open and public dimension today. How public?

Well, a network provider just announced that it is accepting applications for a six-figure position via Twitter. The ad doesn’t call on you to make a 140-character argument for why you should be hired over somebody else. And it certainly doesn’t involve attaching your resume to your tweet, because nobody at the other end is interested. As the company’s chief marketing officer told USA Today:

The Web is your résumé. Social networks are your mass references.

While this well-paying job does involve managing the company’s network communications, there is something far more consequential going on here.

Assessing who you are and what you’ll bring to a job by “researching you on-line” is no longer about finding that errant picture of you after too much beer on Facebook. (Those pictures are becoming a thing of the past anyway, as people use Snapchat to forward images that automatically disappear shortly after they’re sent.) No, this is more about the conclusions that can be drawn from the mosaic of information that you’re generating and that swirls around you in the ether like so many “mass references.”

What will the onlookers discover about you when they start looking? They’ll see conversations you’ve had with friends and comments you’ve left for strangers. They’ll note how you said it in a blog or restaurant review. They’ll get a sense of your sarcasm, your curiosity or your politics.  Maybe they’ll learn about new talents or unexpected commitments. Most of all, they’ll find what you’ve left for them to find. Check out this recent infographic which lays out several of the ways you can use your on-line platform to tell the world what you want it to know about you.

The first impressions that we make today come from several directions at once. Your digital footprints tell the world a lot about where you’re been, where you’re going, and who you are. It’s useful to think about that whenever you put on your shoes.

 

Filed Under: *All Posts, Introducing Yourself & Your Work Tagged With: digital footprints, mosaic of information, on-line identity, references, reputation, resume

Your Past’s Role in Future Work

February 21, 2013 By David Griesing 1 Comment

I read a remarkable story today.

Pirated copies of the movie Argo are being viewed on TVs, laptops and at internet cafes across Iran, riveting almost everyone’s attention there on a shared history that has been difficult to recall with any clarity given the hardship of those intervening years.

What’s remarkable is that millions of Iranians seem to be using a Hollywood movie to come to terms with their past so they can stake a better claim to their future.

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Presenting truths that can set you free always has its consequences.  It will certainly provide a more reverential cast to Argo’s Oscar buzz this weekend. It may also prove to be far more worrisome to Iran’s current leadership than all the Israeli bombers, economic sanctions, and stuxnet computer viruses that can be hurled at them. However, Argo’s apparent truth serum in not just for countries that are intent on managing the hearts & minds of their citizens.

A deep dive into personal history can also bring with it the clarity of truth-telling when it helps us recall valuable information about ourselves that we can build upon today to make a better tomorrow. Argo’s impact on hearts & minds in Iran today provides a sense of the “kinds of truths” that are worth rediscovering, both collectively and personally.

Argo is a true story about a fake movie whose filming enabled several diplomats to escape from Tehran during the hostage crisis that engulfed the American Embassy in 1979. The film also captures some of the thuggish violence that characterized the early days of Iran’s revolution.

As depicted in Argo, today’s Iran didn’t arise the way state propaganda says it did. The land of ayatollahs and nuclear threats results, at least in part, from the fact that the thugs have been an essential ingredient in Iran’s revolution all along. The emergence of a new brand of religiously sanctioned violence is what Iranians are learning about in their past. Only it can explain the continued violence and hardship they are experiencing in their lives today—and what’s to be done about it.

The irony is that thuggish violence wasn’t the point of Argo. It merely provided a backdrop for the comically successful rescue of several endangered foreigners. On the other hand, perhaps it was the incidental portrayal of violence and zealotry—its matter-of-factness in a story that was really about something else—that has enabled Argo to strike a collective nerve among Iranians today. This is how.

Even more elemental than their current suffering is the fact that the Iranian people are, at their core, hospitable to strangers. From this perspective, the act of turning diplomatic guests into terrified hostages is now being recognized by many Iranians as the pivotal incident when things took a terrible turn for the worse in their country.  A woman named Shohreh explains it this way:

Violence entered our [recent] politics with the takeover of the American Embassy. Our leaders figured they could interact with the world with aggression and eventually this trickled down to the way they deal with their own people.

The people of Iran will eventually build a future for themselves that is better than anything their leaders are providing today.  Their future will be shaped by several factors, but perhaps none will be as important as reconnecting with their own basic hospitality.

In much the same way, we are hardwired to traits like “hospitality” or “curiosity” in our own personal histories. (For me, the sense of “gratitude” was particularly important.) Whenever we reach a fork in the road and need to make consequential life and work choices, reconnecting to our most basic impulses exerts a powerful influence. Of course, this is even more so when our experience over the intervening years has obscured what we were “most like” when we started out.

In his Shift: How to Reinvent Your Business, Your Career, and Your Personal Brand, branding master Peter Arnell uses a vivid image to describe how the past can propel the future vision we have for ourselves when we decide to make a change.

[C]reate a story line about yourself that you want to perpetuate. . .  Wire it into your personal DNA.  It should carry the energy and excitement of the ongoing change you want to make in your life.  Like DNA, it needs to be coded in a way that is simple and strong and won’t unravel at the first hit of challenge or trouble.

You succeed by hardwiring your game plan for the future into basic information about you that’s been there all along. When done right, it has the simplicity and the strength of DNA.

As we tune into the Oscars this weekend and see the cheering section for Argo, it is worth stepping back to consider some of the remarkable ways that the past can influence the future when we make the effort to tell our best stories.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: *All Posts, Building Your Values into Your Work, Introducing Yourself & Your Work Tagged With: Argo, change, choice, core traits, decision-making, hardwiring, personal history, storytelling, the movie Argo

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David Griesing (@worklifeward) writes from Philadelphia.

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