FAME! I wanna live forever...

I'm a Gleek, oh yes I am and maybe you are too. Okay, maybe you're not a fan of the show "GLEE", maybe you never even heard of it but you still might be a Gleek in some weird way. When you consider your school days there are always those few kids that stand out as something special. There are those kids that everyone jockeys to get near, they're attractive, they might be athletic or smart, everyone wants to flutter near their flame.

And then there was the rest of us. We sang in glee club or choir, we marched in marching bands or played in jazz band or stage band or whatever your school called it. We joined the debate club and focused on our arguments to win against the rival debate team. We auditioned for the school musical and we painted sets and sewed costumes. If we were lucky we did those things and still garnered a nod now and then from one of the annointed ones.

Ahhh, school days.

Adulthood levels the playing field a LOT. Adulthood allows us to be our true selves, embrace our not so inner geek. I remember several years ago going to see a favorite singer/songwriter in concert, she had recently turned 40 and she was wearing little red, sparkly ballet flats and said that turning 40 gave her the permission to wear little red, sparkly ballet flats whenever she felt like it. It made me wonder why we didn't give ourselves that permission sooner, I guess some people do.

I gave myself permission to let my geek flag fly when I was fairly young. For me it wasn't about being a geek so much as it was about liking what I liked and not being afraid of it. I liked to read, loved everything about it, the solitude, the magic created on the page, the portability of it (I could read outside enjoying the Summer sun or warm and toasty under my bed covers), I just loved to read from a very young age. That wasn't really "cool" but I didn't back down.

I liked things like glee club and choir and the school musical and I wasn't going to pretend I didn't. That's what GLEE seems to be putting out there, it's encouraging people to let their geek flags fly.

How do the popular kids become the popular kids? They aren't always the best looking or even the nicest, in many cases they're pretty damn mean. So few are the "chosen ones" but so many have so much going for them.

In my 50's I realize that most of my friends were also geeks in school. I didn't go to school with anyone I'm now friends with but I know from whence we came quite well. I wouldn't want any other group of friends. I hang with adults who still love music and theater and art and who crave that in their lives. My friends all classify themselves as "readers", every last one of them including the heart-of-gold bartender who has not had the most fabulous life, she's a reader.

My husband works with people of all ages in a creative field and one of the girls in her 20's is a GLEEK. She moved far away from home to a more urban area to take this job. She's had some days when she's wanted to just go "home" but she hasn't. I'm older than her mom (ugh, I can't even think of that) but we have our GLEE. We giggle and talk about it and argue the nuances of different song choices and scenes, we have the common ground of geekdom to hold us together.

I hope that GLEE lasts a long time, or at least a couple of seasons and I hope that it encourages everyone to let their geek flag fly. I hope the cool kids see how cool it is to be yourself and not care about being a Cheerio or getting a slushy in the face. Life's too short to not be yourself as much as possible.

It seems off topic to write this doesn't it? I mean a lot of this blog speaks to the corporate games people play so where oh where does letting your geek flag fly fit in? It speaks to how desperately we still play the games we learned when we entered school. We learned to try to fit in, to play well with others, not to stand out in a bad way. Standing out in a "bad way" though doesn't mean beating people up it often means standing out at all, don't draw attention to yourself. Do a good job but don't rock the boat. Don't tip the scales. Don't be a tattler (even if you could help things out). Who do you have to go and talk to in a corporation? Your boss? What if your boss is the problem? HR? They are there to protect the company and the managers. It's true, don't kid yourself friends, they talk a good game about employee relations but in most cases they are going to do what they need to do to support the company and the managers.

In most cases an innovative idea would be treated as a threat. What would you say to the president or CEO of your company if you could? Imagine you won the lottery and could just walk away. You didn't need any other job so you didn't have to worry about a job reference you could just let 'er rip. Would you tell them they were out of touch with the day-to-day business? Would you have viable suggestions to do things differently or would you give them a pat on the back and say "great job"?

I don't pretend to want the job of CEO or President of a company. I can't imagine why anyone would want those jobs, I really can't. I think you'd have to be amazingly narcissitic to want that much reflected back on yourself. I'm having trouble being CEO of my own life no less CEO of something with thousands of people depending on me to make the right decision and that's just it. We operate in an environment that is afraid to celebrate failure.

We're told from a very young age to learn from our mistakes but as we get older the primary teaching is that if you make a mistake you'd better not admit it. We learn CYA (cover your ass) from an early age and we work to perfect that skill over time. Imagine if we practiced what we preached though. Imagine if we told people to learn from their mistakes and then actually allowed them to admit to their mistakes...and what they learned from them. Maybe if we exercised this habit we would not have large corporations packed full of mediocre middle managers because they are the safest and the best skilled at CYA. I would love to be able to admit my mistakes to management and let us both learn from them but that would just put my job on the line and give them an out when they fired me so I can't do it. I would love for my bosses to admit to their mistakes and ask for input on how to come back from those mistakes but that would mean that a person in a leadership position would need to show a flaw and that might result in their downfall.

In our quest for perfection we have created a grossly imperfect design and that is disconcerting. In one of my Master's Degree classes (Hi Dr. Linda ... if you stop by again) we are following "The Quest for the Holy Grail" as it deals with sin, redemption, human flaws and heavenly aid but in our day-to-day world this type of quest would be frowned upon. What if I told my bosses that every bit of my work was a piece of my quest to lead a better life, a fuller life, a more productive life and not all of it was going to work right the first time I tried it? What if I asked for forgiveness for mistakes? As I ponder these thoughts I'm stunned and saddened when I think of what we are losing out on in our jobs by not being allowed to perform this way. Certainly repeated failures would have to have consequences but I think that we'd find more success than failure in this model.

What if you had to admit one failure everyday to yourself, could you do it and would you learn from it or would you say, "eh, that's a failure I can live with" (which might be okay,too)? What would your failure be today? Did you make a mistake this morning? A lot of life gurus tell us to give ourselves positive affirmation, look in the mirror and tell ourselves how smart or beautiful we are but what about looking in the mirror and telling ourselves how flawed we are? Maybe voicing it would be the beginning of paving a new road to walk down in our life.

If a company were to hire me as a consultant the first thing I'd discuss with them is how they handle employee mistakes.

To err is human, isn't it?

What's better than this?

In pursuit of higher learning I'm being driven to ponder lots of "things" and isn't that really the point in many ways? So I'm in a dialogue with a classmate about why we (Americans) can't live "smaller" and what would happen if we COULD.

When I was younger my memory of the "average" family was a mom and dad and ~3 kids. Houses were Cape Cods or split levels or older homes like Victorians, Dutch Colonials or Craftsmans. Of these the only ones I recall that had more than one bathroom were the split levels which usually had a "powder room" in the entryway, the others had one bathroom and usually 3 bedrooms. Kids shared rooms with their same-gender siblings. There was usually one, maybe two "living spaces" for the family to gather; a living room and a den or a living room and a finished basement. The finished basement usually had things like a ping-pong table, a bar, and some sofas.

What would happen if we could live "small" again? How would it be to not expect to move into a McMansion as your first home? Wouldn't it be great if we could learn to appreciate smaller things?

In the recent past a local official near me said that any house that didn't have a 2-car garage, 2 1/2 bathrooms and central air should be blighted! That would put me out on the street! It's shocking that someone would think that way.

Growing up in a series of increasingly bad apartments I sometimes imagine what it would've been like to grow up in THIS house, the one I live in as an adult. It's old, built in the late 1920's. It has 3 bedrooms of modest size and 2 bathrooms but one of those bathrooms used to be the downstairs pantry and looks like it was switched over in the 1970's sometime so if I'd lived here as a kid it would've had one bathroom unless my dad switched over that pantry himself (highly likely since he did nice tile work back in the day) so let's say that he did do that just for the added comfort of imagining my childhood self with two bathrooms (indulgent, I know).

I've tried to imagine which of the bedrooms would be mine. The front one has a better closet and since I'm a girl I think I would've gotten the bedroom with the better closet. My parents would've had the middle bedroom, it's the largest and also, being right at the top of the stairs they could've easily monitored me or my brother coming home past curfew. My brother would've had the back bedroom and would've done all the things bad boys do like climb out on the back roof to smoke (you decide what he'd be smoking out there) or just hang out.

I can often imagine myself bursting in from school and dumping my books on the stairs only to hear my mom remind me to bring my stuff to my room. I can see myself sprawled out on the bed, gabbing on the phone and looking down at the neighborhood sprawled out below my window.

Homework would be done in the kitchen maybe while mom pulled dinner together (remember, in my little world this is the 1960's not 2010). Everything I needed would be there for me. Nothing fancy but enough. I don't know that we understand "enough" in America anymore.

Last I heard ~$57 million had been donated for Haiti from the special last Friday night which is great, but those people already knew how to live with less. Haiti had serious problems BEFORE that devastating quake hit. I'm not saying that we should be subjected to fire and brimstone but we do need to take stock of our needs again and get a bit more realistic. What would really be enough?

Windows of the soul

I was young in the 60's. We were poor, never owned our own home. My mom was a bottomless vessel of sadness, she really was. She lived for her unfulfilled dreams and sadly she had all the potential in the world to accomplish her dreams...but she didn't.

One of my mom's favorite things was to gaze into other people's windows as we drove by. She wasn't a peeping Tom or a voyeaur she just liked to sneak a peak into a world we didn't live in. I remember riding around in the old Dodge Dart, my dad at the wheel, mom in the passenger seat and me standing up on the floor of the backseat with my head next to my mom's (it was the 60's, seat belt laws didn't exist and kids ALWAYS stood in the car). The popular style of house at the time was the split level which sported big picture windows up front in both the living room and dining room providing us wonderful access into people's lives.

Dusk was the best time to enjoy this activity. Lights would just be coming on inside but the shades would still be open. Dusk also offered the most activity to view. Dinner was being prepared, homework was being done, family life was active at dusk unlike a few hours later when the family would settle in front of the TV or the kids would be shuffled off to bed.

I never remember seeing anything odd or even anything dicey. No women in lingerie were greeting their man at the door with a martini in one hand and a feather duster in the other. I never saw kids being beaten or anything that appeared to be a viscious family battle. I don't recall seeing women in tears alone at a dining room table or kids looking sad and dejected but there must have been bad times in these homes. Did I filter that out?

Most of what I remember seeing were blissful scenes of domestic life. Happy dogs chasing happy kids through the living room into the kitchen. Mom's bending over kids at the dining room table doing homework, things that a modern Norman Rockwell might render in paint.

I still do this. I can't resist. I even expect others to do this. I always open my dining room shades because I'm proud of my dining room and don't mind if people take a peak and maybe say, ohhhh, I like what they did with the light fixture or oh, we have that same centerpiece.

I still only seem to see simple scenes of domestic bliss but I'm older now and much more cynical. Now when I see that I wonder if I'm looking at a blended family and the kids are secretly hating their evil stepmother or if the family is happy or sad, are they broke? Did someone lose a job in the past year? Do they argue too much or not talk at all? I know better than to think that the snapshot I'm scooting past at 25 miles per hour tells the whole story.

But that's just it. We all have a story and we can make that story or let others make it for us. I've found that in adulthood I tend to make up stories for the families I get a sneak peek at. I'll see someone and imagine they are happy or sad, stressed or chill but I'll never really know.

I can write their stories but I can't live them, maybe by writing those little snippets of fiction I'm opening myself up to examining my own dreams and desires, too. Maybe even incorporating hopes and fears in the windows I skim past. Folks, pull up those shades and invite us in for a few fleeting seconds, I promise I'll do no harm, you won't even know I was there...but I'll know and I'll treasure the time we've spent together.

In the beginning...

There was a job. And because it was the beginning...there was just ONE job for just ONE person. And the person and the job were perfect together.

Flash forward thousands of years. Imagine that you envisioned the perfect job for you how would you go about getting it or even making it known that this "perfect job" exists? Could you write your perfect job description (and oh don't get me started on job descriptions)? What about after performing this perfect job for a while it's no longer a good fit? How do you make that adjustment? Do you turn this job over to someone who is now the perfect fit and you write a new one for yourself or do you re-write the job to fit you better?

I don't think many of us have this luxury. I think that some of us manage to wedge ourselves into a job that appears "okay" to us and to the HR person sifting through piles of resume. Some of us don't even know what a perfect job would be so any ol' job that is reasonably inoffensive and pays the bills does just fine. I question what would be the perfect job for me. It seems attractive to work from home but I don't know if that would wear thin sometime around week four after I hadn't showered for several successive days and was starting to think I was cutting a fine figure in flannel jammie pants and a tattered flannel shirt. I've always thought that working in animal rescue full-time (this is assuming that the money for this would come from somewhere) would be rewarding and desirable but then I think of the heartbreak that would accompany it and I wonder how long it would be before the heartbreak would become unbearable.

I think that we all want to do a lot of different things. I do. I want to do a lot of different things and reap financial rewards for doing them. I want to write for a living but not all of the time. I want to be a public speaker, imparting words of wisdom humorously and with passion...but not all the time. I want to do animal rescue including speaking and educating people about the need to spay/neuter your pet, get them vaccinated and feed them appopriately, but again, not all the time.

I want a portion of these jobs. Maybe the animal rescue job includes giving talks to PTA meetings about the need to spay/neuter but it also includes the heartbreak of deciding if a dog is vicious and needs to be put down. Guess what? I want the public speaking part. But remember a lot of people would HATE the public speaking part, they have what it takes to handle the tough decisions but they'll never be coaxed up in front of an audience, no way, no chance, no how.

In consulting companies I know there are a number of people compiling the facts and figures and loving it but they don't want to get up in front of an audience and defend those numbers, but I'd like that.

Writing, hmmm, that one's a bit tougher. That one I want to do for fun, for money, for recognition. But how do I write that job description and then FILL IT? Tough challenge but others have done it before me. Some seem to do it with ease; maybe they're fearless. Maybe they don't worry all the time about money, maybe they laugh rejection in the face and keep moving, fast and furiously.

This blog feels like I'm rationalizing writing by writing. Hmmmm. I'm not tackling topics (well I am but not really moving forward) but writing about business beefs (of which there are many, I'll admit). Writing is exercising our observation skills and then some; and I observe, oh yes I do. I observe all sorts of things that I could and SHOULD convert to something more but instead I'm tickling the keyboard here pondering the vast confusion of corporate life.

To be honest...corporate life kinda sucks. It does. Now if I ever get any readers some of you may want to dispute this point with me and I'm good with that. Go ahead, dispute away, someone better be able to defend corporate life because if not we've got more people than I could've imagined working at jobs they either hate or find completely meaningless.

America used to be a manufacturing society. We MADE THINGS. MADE IN THE USA! Now, we don't make things. Near where I live there used to be several factories, now there are NONE. It's unimaginable. The loss of factories seems to have taken the middle class with it. In the past a factory job could provide a very nice salary, some good benefits and job security. There was shift work which kept other things in the local economy going; things like 24 hour diners. You might get out of work at 7AM and go for some bacon and eggs with a few co-workers before heading home and sleeping off a night of work. Now, even the diners aren't open 24 hours anymore.

Factory work provided a sense of satisfaction at having a hand in making something as well as the satisfaction of providing for your family without bringing your work home with you. Corporate workers talk about work/life balance all the time but then expect everyone to tote around a blackberry and start the day by answering e-mails before leaving the house. The real work/life balance would come by being able to walk out the door after 8 hours and not have to give another thought to your job until you walked back in the door the next day. What a joy that would be. Wow! No e-mails to check or meetings to worry about.

We need to make things again. We need to give people the option to earn a living without sacrificing their soul to corporate life. What does corporate America make? It makes "decisions" I suppose but decisions are often flawed and biased, imperfect as the humans that we are.

Imagine going to a meeting and deciding NOT to play the game. To let go of YOUR agenda and really listen to everyone else's and then side with the one that sounds the best, REALLY THE BEST and despite whatever consequences you might experience for speaking up you do it. You say, "s/he's RIGHT...I want to do THAT!" Could be really liberating or maybe it would get you fired...

Make something today. Make a cake. Make a story. Make love. Make a mess. Make art. For heaven's sake make a FRIEND if that's the only thing you can make.

Don't get used to it...

Honestly, I won't be coming back twice a day on a regular basis, although posting at my every whim is extremely attractive to me the fact is that I do have to do other things, if I didn't have to do other things it wouldn't have taken me this long to start a blog in the first place (right?).

More on that "reverse mortgaging" of careers. Here's what I see. Companies tout their advancement and retention policies to recruit people. People eagerly apply for jobs, the business grows, more jobs, more applicants, more new employees as this is happening the company itself becomes more desirable to work for making retention easier and easier. Now people are there for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and more and their expectation is to advance through the ranks and the company feeds that expectation and encourages employees to expect advancement and to work towards the advancement. What if an employer offered employees the opportunity to reverse mortgage their career? What if you could honestly say that you've gotten as high in the organization as you want to go but you still want to work and actively contribute and be respected for your longevity? Wouldn't it be great to walk into a goal setting meeting and say that you were happy right where you were and wanted to propose ways that you could contribute more from the perspective of long-term company knowledge? Oh wouldn't honesty be great?

The Gore-Tex company is often cited as a model of a well run company. There are many business school examples based on Gore-Tex but the question that I've never gotten an answer to is "why isn't this model implemented everywhere?" From what I recall they have no titles they are all "team members" they become a "leader" when their team makes them a leader by natural selection and leadership traits. You can choose the team you want to work with. Studying this model over and over again in different courses has led me to think about it quite a bit as I look at the day-to-dayness of corporate America in the news.

Ever notice that the least important jobs range from approximately Associate Director (or some equivalent) to somewhere just below VP? Think about where you work (if it's a corporate job) the higher managers hold the least value. If you're a "worker bee" at a manager or below level or some sort of specialist, think about the people one or two levels above you; if they were gone how much of a negative impact would it have on actually getting the work done? My guess, NONE! Think about it for a while and really give some thought to what some of these people do, from my window into that world what I see is the people occupying those levels are the ones who are most viciously positioning themselves to acquire more power.

Life imitates video games.

What does a director do (or an Associate Director, an Assistant Director, a Sr. Director, Sr. Assoc. Director, Exec. Director, Sr. Exec. Director...I could go on but you get the picture)? They don't actually DO the work; they negotiate with other people in the organization for whatever will get them more power to advance to the next round. Very often they are far removed from the actual work being done because that has diminished in importance for them and been replaced with the need to create political liaisons internally and wrest work, power and/or recognition for themselves. How sad really. How exhausting...work, just WORK is so much easier to deal with.

But this speaks to the "team" environment. No one wants to intentionally do a bad job (or at least MOST people don't) so if everyone was told that they should pick a team and work on it and that's how they would be judged instead of being judged by a superior questing for power it would be even greater incentive to do a good job for the sake of doing a good job.

Imagine that the head of your company brought everyone into a room tomorrow (or Tuesday for those of you that have tomorrow off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day) and told you that he/she had ordered new business cards for everyone and everyone's title was now the same...Team Member. That's it, no flowery title just "Team Member". You would retain your pay level because you clawed your way there, you earned it through longevity or perseverance but you would no longer know what someone was by their title.

You would no longer report into a manager but your contributions would be judged and governed by your other team members and HR would be there to intervene in a really dicey situation. You would not plan your goals each year and be reviewed with harsh or flowery language by someone who holds your fate in their hands but would be subject to what your team members thought of you. You could opt to move on from your team if things weren't working out with that team.

This person is also going to tell you that while you were off enjoying your weekend all the offices had been dismantled and team areas had been created instead. There would be no need for offices because there's no more direct reports, no more "confidential" meetings, etc.

Where would you fall in this? Would you be happy? Scared? Relieved? Excited? Challenged? Disgusted? Would you be one of the displaced powerful or one of the newly empowered team members? Would you work with more dedication? Feel more vested in your job?

When I think like this it makes it difficult to believe that everyone doesn't see this but it also begs the question of the human need to exert power over other humans. We claim to be the most evolved species but I think we're fooling ourselves. Thoughts from the universe?

Time is on our side...

It's that time of year again in corporate America when the HR cheerleaders convince the managers that everyone needs a 5-year plan. This has become a tremendous source of discussion between me and at least one other hale and hearty friend, blogger and member of the corporate grind. She lists on her blogs some excellent issues with that elusive five-year plan. For me I want to look at just one aspect...retirement. Yup, that would be my personal five year plan but how would that sound in a goal setting meeting?

Mgr: So, I hope you've considered where you'd like to be in 5 years?
Me: Yes I HAVE! In 5 years I'd like to be lingering over a second cup of coffee while enjoying an ambush makeover on the Today Show, then I'd like to take the dogs to the park for a brisk hike then back home for an early lunch with hubby then maybe an afternoon nap (why not) and then perhaps take in some live music a few evenings of the week. Thanks for asking.
Mgr: Ummm, yeah.

See it doesn't play out and I think one of the reasons for that is because we have placed a very high value on advancing up the corporate ladder in the US but have not considered the aging babyboomer population (of which I am riding the tail end of) and the options they would like to have. I think a lot of us would almost like to "reverse mortgage" our careers. We work and work to attain some level of recognition and success but then get to a point when that loses it's luster but we still have a lot to offer the corporate world.

I think the bottom line is that despite all the great buzz about how worker-friendly corporate America is, well, it isn't. The culure doesn't truly encourage honesty despite all the talk that it does.

I just wanted to get this out there to slip and slide on those ever dangerous wet roads of life, there will be more later...there always is, isn't there?

Hey, and join me here on the wet roads, fasten your seatbelt, secure your beverage in the cup holder and enjoy the ride.