When Your Job is to Get a Job

A friend recently noted how he was not focused on his job hunt, which I could understand, as I have been out of work myself at times. But when I asked how he spent his day, he described mowing the lawn, picking up the kids and things like this. Here are the points I shared with him:

• Your job every day is to get a job, when you are out of work. Treat that goal with the same urgency you would  paid employment. You normally wouldn't leave the office to mow the law, defrost meat for dinner, watch TV, etc.
• Get into a routine as you would every day if you were paid full time by someone else. Start at 8. Or 9. End at 5.
• Get up every morning, shower and dress for your "job" (which is <repeat after me> to get a job). This will help you feel refreshed and more energized about the task at hand.
• Put in your eight hours or more at your "job." Sure, you can take a break, stretch your legs, get a cup of coffee, but stick to it.
• Network as often as possible. Set up meetings with people who can help you find what you are looking for. This is part of the "job."
• When you have finished your work for the day, stop. Unwind. Get dinner ready. Watch some news. Wait, the news is depressing, especially when they get around to reporting the unemployment rate. So watch Comedy Central or The Three Stooges instead.
• Review your day with someone else, such as a significant other or a friend. This will help reinforce that you actually accomplished something that day. And if upon review, it turns out you weren't all that productive? Well, reread the first bullet above, and implement tomorrow. It will be another day.

Awards Mean Little to Those We Serve

The president of the nation of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize, but she isstruggling to be re-elected.

The Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees were long the odds-on favorites to face each other in the  2011 World Series, having won the most games in National and American leagues, respectively. But most teams are home after losing in the first rounds of their playoffs.

In 2010, the movie The King's Speech was number one at the Academy Awards... and 18th at the box office.

Do you see a pattern here? Despite what we often say when we promote ourselves in conversations, press releases and the like, there is often little connection between our laurels and our sales (except for people who receive awards for sales, but that's apparent).

I know I have a little section of my resume carved out for my awards. That's because I was advised to do so to generate interest. And truth be told (and please don't spread this around; it's just between us), there are many other communicators to whom I look up who have not won any awards. In the end, it is our output that matters.

Consider these little tidbits: John Wayne was one of the biggest moneymakers in film history (and is still one of the most popular film stars in the world today, decades after his death!), and he did not win an Academy Award until near the end of his career. Ernie Banks, Mr. Cubs, is one of the most revered baseball players in the history of the game, yet he never won a World Series or even appeared in one. And Graham Greene, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertolt Brecht, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Franz Kafka and Henrik Ibsen are listed among the greatest writers of the 20th century, yet they are also distinguished by never having won the Nobel Prize in literature.

In the end, these folks were distinguished by what they accomplished, not by the citations they accepted, and by what they overcame, not that they were overlooked. Periodically, we should also take comfort in our own personal inventories. A highly successful sales rep once put it to me this way: "I want rewards, not awards." Customers, clients and our other stakeholders ultimately feel the same way.

When Planning Your Career, Rage Against the Machines

I came across an interesting opinion piece in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. The author wrote about how machines are doing much of the work that people used to do. We saw that in the last century, as robots could assemble cars more cheaply and efficiently than people do. It does make sense, as a machine can the work that eliminating jobs. (UAW members saw that, too, as rank-and-file members like my Dad fought against the encroachment of machines that would do the work of humans.)
I have discussed this very point in my book, The Six P's of Change, and I often mention it in my speeches: Those who are tied to a specific technology or type of work are often doomed to obsolescence. However, my own take is less fatalistic than that of the author of this article. I contend that such changes also bring opportunity. For example, while the auto industry once provided one in every seven jobs in the U.S., that ratio now belongs to the computer industry. (The automobile industry now accounts for one in every 16 jobs, still a significant number.) So, as the saying goes, fish where the fish are, and work in those areas that are not only in demand but which cannot be taken over by machines.
For example, how about a return to the trades, such as plumbing, carpentry and the like? I have not yet seen a machine that can cut pipe to length or crawl under a sink. There are also creative endeavors that no machine can do, such as writing, art, design and consulting. And if you can't beat 'em, join 'em: Since the auto industry produces more computers for their cars than IBM does, young people would be well served to learn the high technology of the car industry. t look That enmity was not limited to heavy industry.
Elbert Hubbard once note that "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." When we seek to be extraordinary, we can beat this trend and even make it work in our favor.


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"Rethinking Home Ownership," Credit Card Update Challenge, Illuminate Us

Two items I read this week have made our current economy more clear to me, and it points out our collective culpability for the situation.
In trying to figure out which is the chicken and which is the egg, let me begin with the cover story of the September 6 issue of TIME magazine, titled "Rethinking Homeownership," by Barbara Kiviat. Kiviat has covered business and economics for TIME for about eight years. She has long been an outspoken critic of the tax credits for home owners, and she's taken particular aim at the credits initiated by the Obama administration in November 2009.
Here is a link to the article. I encourage you to read it in its entirety. I hit some high points below, but no synopsis can do it justice.

1. While we take for granted that homeownership is an integral part of America, the U.S. government did not start instituting policies that supported homeowners until the 20th century. That was when Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover stated that "maintaining a high percentage of individual homeowners is one of the searching tests that now challenge the people of the United States."
2. In 1986, the tax code was rewritten to eliminate the deduction of interest from consumer loans, such as credit card debt. However, an exception was made for the interest paid on a mortgage, and this allowance has cost the government about $80 billion in lost revenue.
3. It was the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the agencies help keep mortgage rates low, that needed a $150 billion bailout. Additionally, it is our blind allegiance to the benefits of homeownership that, in part, led 11 million current owners to now owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
4. In this economy, mortgages can actually be a burden. When homeowners lose their jobs, their mobility to a new position can be limited, as they are tied to the financial capital that is tied up in their houses. This is especially pertinent when the homeowners' mortgage are under water.
5. The economic advantages to a community or nation of home ownership are greatly exaggerated. There are many vibrant economies in communities that have lower homeownership. It is the same story internationally. In Switzerland, one of the world's richest nations (GDP per capita: $73,798), two-thirds of the citizens rent. In Spain, with per capita GDP of less than $35,000, homeownership is near 90 percent. Where is the quid pro quo?
6. Homeownership enabled access to cheap credit, which masked fundamental foundational changes in the U.S. Kiviat writes, "For decades, income inequality has been growing, and middle-class wages have been stagnant. In the eyes of at least some academic observers, cheap credit, especially when used to buy ever-larger houses, has been a way to get people to feel O.K. with their lot....Pumped up on credit-card debt and home-equity loans, we kept spending away and felt richer than we actually were.

Switch now to a report from the Associated Press that credit card debt has fallen to their lowest level in eight years. Card holders continue to pay off balances in this uncertain economy. The average combined debt for bank-issued credit cards fell to $4,951 in the three months ended June 30, down more than 13 percent from $5,719 in the same period a year earlier, according to credit-reporting agency TransUnion LLC.
What all this tells us is that we Americans had a party for many years, and today we are paying the bill. Money that could be used to pay for goods, such as autos, home furnishings, and electronics, are instead paying down down. At least in part, this contributes to the stalling of our economy, for until there is more demand for goods, there is less need for the people who make them, sell them, service them, or insure them. To blame one presidential administration or another -- either "the one who spent our money on a stimulus program" or "the one who looked the other way while financial leaders were running amok" -- is purely political and overlooks the fundamentals problems in our economy.
Hubert Humphrey once said "We believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics." Many of us need to look into the mirror for our current state. Or in the words of that great philosopher, Pogo the Possum, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."