The Jobs Project Revisited

August 10, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

The movement of our work was captured by a troupe of gifted Philadelphia dancers in a performance last May called The Jobs Project. When I first posted about it, I promised footage of the ensemble when it became available. Now it is. You can follow this link to the current RealLifePeople(in)Motion newsletter, which includes a video excerpt.

According to the program notes, the dancers’ movements were “in a conversation with” recorded comments by an assortment of local workers about what they do, and remarks from the dancers themselves about their gainful commitments beyond dance.

I was behind one of those interview voices, and can tell you this: while there’s nothing quite like sitting in a darkened theater and suddenly hearing your voice coming through the speakers, the experience jumps several levels when highly accomplished performers start responding to what you’ve just said.

At the time of my interview, I’d just written a post called I am a Work in Progress. It was on my mind that day and the gist of it was captured in one of my recorded comments during the performance. It was these words, along with those from several others, which provided the counterpoint to moves you can now get to see for yourselves.

The medium of voice, music & dance was the message–and a very powerful one at that.

At Work I’m a Dancing Machine

May 19, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

We hear a lot about work, how it’s wearing us down, or covering the bills, or how much it lets us “contribute to the economy as consumers.”

Less attention is paid to looking at our bodies at work: the rhythm of routine, the mesh of collaboration and the reach of accomplishment. It’s how we’re sometimes reduced to a fist by what others think of the work we’re doing, or elevated to a higher state by the sense of purpose it gives us. It’s man as Icarus but also as machine.

The Jobs Project, playing in Philadelphia through today, is a bold, imaginative, and sharply executed dialogue in words and movement that captures familiar and unfamiliar truths about the work we all do.

We say it with paint or poetry or sculptural forms because they open up levels of meaning that are simply not available any other way. This is true of dance too, but The Jobs Project from a company called RealLivePeople(in)Motion, gets its singular edge by also being a hybrid. It pairs the cadence of one to six dancers with recorded comments from men and women about their work, and mid-dance interviews with the performers themselves about what they do when they’re not dancing—or do so that they can dance—all to an hypnotic score by Ilan Isakov.

This inspired mash-up of inputs provides take-aways about the workplace that add both layers and textures to what we think we know about what happens there every day.

The Jobs Project is the brainchild of Gina Hoch-Stall, its richly gifted choreographer and director. Gina dances too, with the precision clockwork of a troupe that includes Molly Jackson, David Konyk, Sara Nye, Mason Rosenthal and Hedy Wyland.

Ingredients essential to the whole were provided by others too, like Andrea Calderise (artist), Megan Quinn (dramaturg), Patricia Dominguez (costume design), Maria Shaplion (lighting) and those joining Ilya on the sound score (Four Tet, Garth Stevenson, Michael Wall, Nathan Fake and The Books). Grassroots support for a performance that’s been building for more than a year was given a welcomed assist by the Puffin Foundation (“continuing the dialogue between art and the lives of ordinary people”), the Latvian Society (by hosting) and Yards Brewing Company (by wetting the whistle).

Like a start-up company, almost as breathtaking as anything here was the ability of this dedicated core to make something this wondrous come to life.

You can see a bit of the magic for yourself in the rehearsal footage here (with some or all of the piece to be posted later). While you’re watching, I invite you to imagine an element in the performance that made one of the most important points of all.

The Jobs Project was crisp and precise, but improvised and spontaneous too, like the best work. It is one of the dancers, Mason Rosenthal, who interviews the other dancers as they crisscross the space. The fun he had throughout, and how his seemingly off-the-cuff comments both relieve and accentuate the rigor of the forms around him, said something essential about the work we all do.

That it can and should provide a measure of fun while you’re doing it.

Hats off to all!

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.

As 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.