Writing in the margins
When I graduated from college I was given two great pieces of career advice.
- You will have 15-20 careers before you retire. Gone are the days of going to work for one company and staying with that company until you retire.
- You always have 2 jobs. The one you have now, and looking for the next one.
I have reflected on and repeated these nuggets at least a hundred times since then and they still hold true. And then I thought about a very old recipe book that was my grandmothers and how she had taken these recipes, these instructions that were tried and true and she made notes, changes, additions to original instructions to add her spin on them. She took what lessons and experiences she had and put them down in the margins so that she and anyone else that read them after her could benefit from her trials and efforts.
I won't be so bold as to claim I have all the answers, but I have enough miles on my career to have formed some definite thoughts on the matter.
1) You will have 15-20 careers before you retire. Gone are the days of going to work for one company and staying with that company until you retire.
Here is another myth, social security will be gone long before you are old enough to collect on it. Not only is it your responsibility to plan for your own retirement, but you have find and maintain employment in something that will pay you enough to be able to save. My mom told my brother and I that we could study anything we wanted to in school, but we had to also study something we could make a living and provide for a family with.
2) You always have 2 jobs. The one you have now, and looking for the next one.
Sometimes you have to work harder on one than the other, and sometimes the next job is at the same company. If you want to be a manager, director, vp, or a c-level then you have to set your goals and work hard for it. Something I have learned recently is that you must also find someone you can bring in and mentor to take your current job so that you can move up yourself. This roughly translates too "For the love of all that is good find a job that will let you move out of your parents basement".
3) At some point in your career, hopefully early on, you should get blindsided and be downsized, right-sized, or plain 'ol fired.
That which does not kill you makes you wish you were dead.....or something like that. pssst... you are not entitled to anything, life is not fair. Experiences like this are character building and will teach you a valuable lesson. Once...a long time ago...from my first job out of college I was blindsided. It sucked, I was upset, and you know what... I got over it. Along the way I read this great book, Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove the former CEO of Intel. Even though this book was published nearly 15 years ago, it is still relevant. The whole point of the book is that in work, life, anywhere there are inflection points. Points in time that even though you may not realize it have a profound impact on your career, business, life. Learning to recognize these inflection points earlier, hopefully as they are happening, will help you shape your path.
4) At some point in your career, again hopefully early on, you should work for a complete a**hole.
That which does not kill you makes you wish you were dead.....or something like that. pssst... you are not entitled to anything, life is not fair. Experiences like this are character building and will teach you a valuable lesson. (I know I cheated and copied the same line from above) What this will do for you is to help you to appreciate all the good and great bosses and managers that will come after. I hit this one 4-5 years into my career, and it was brutal. There were days I would wake up and sit on the side of the bed and sigh, my wife would say "please don't quit today". I spent 2 years in that cycle and I am sure it is the source of my grey hair. Catch me at Web Analytics event and maybe I'll share some passive agressive practical jokes I may have been a part of that helped me "cope" 
5) Determine what "work-life balance" means to you.
A company can not create a great work-life balance for you. This feel good term gets tossed around a good bit and the expectation that seems to exist with most folks is that this is something that can be packaged up and handed out to everyone. The balance I choose for myself will be vastly different that what balance works for you and your situation.
6) You work for You Inc.
Yourself, your family, your pets even...they are your primary shareholders. No one else. I am not saying you should be a pure self serving person, but you have to know at the end of the day that the work that pays the bills is serving to provide for You Inc, and sometimes it is necessary to put them first. Sometimes you have to stay in a job that is not your dream job to provide for You Inc. This is different that staying in a job like I described in #4, but this is knowing that sometimes a short term (2 year) stint in a job that will serve as a platform to bigger and better things is worth any sort of personal sacrifice you are making.
7) Dance like no one is watching.
Also known as....don't be afraid to fail, give it your all, do your best. My mom pushed us hard in school, but she did not expect us to be perfect. She did expect us to be perfect in our effort and to give everything we did our very best, and as long as we gave something our true best effort then she was proud of us. Do the same thing for yourself, give your work, your colleagues, your company your best and let the chips fall where they may. If at the end of the day you can truly say that you gave it your very best, then that is all you can do. Oh and no one wants to see me dance. Eliane on Seinfeld can dance better than me.
Like any recipe these items are open for interpretation and modifications. The secret is to take your experiences and apply them to see if you can make it work for you. Go and make your own notes in the margins.
Calling a tail a leg dosen’t make it a leg
“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.” - Abe Lincoln
My dad has a more colorful version of this. "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining". The point is the same, be transparant. It has been nearly 20 years since I was in high school, I did not partake in the childish cliques, gossip, and other things that kids do to torment each other back then and I am damn sure not going to do that today. Like me, don't like me.... that's up to you. Ask me direct questions and you will get direct answers. I expect this of others. Those that I am truly close to in this world have this same trait, and I will always respect that even if I strongly disagree with them. Long ago my mom told me to "not ask questions that you do not want to know the answers to". It took me a while to really get the full meaning of that, but the core message is that you should not only be transparant and honest people but you should be accepting of that honesty when you get it in return.
There is no I in Team
If you have not heard the quote "There is no I in Team" before, where the hell have you been living? This is one of those lines that every coach of every team sport at every level from t-ball to the major leagues has used over an over again to try and get the players to buy into the vision that the team is more important than the individuals on the team.
Long ago when I was a senior in high school there was a brand new football coach. And that season the players had shirts and shorts that they would wear that had the word "TEAM" in large print. But lower and off to the side was also the word "ME". The thought behind this was that while the players understood that they were part of a larger team, their contributions as individuals was also important and valued. This really stood out to me as it challenged the concept of the team first AND team only philosophy. It worked, that group of kids played beyond everyones expectations. This is not one of those mushy stories where I tell you through this team mantra they won titles and ended the season toting some huge trophy off the field. But is one about how by getting all of the individuals on the team to buy into the vision, they were able to do some amazing things together not the least of which was they had a lot of fun. You could tell they had fun in the way they wore those shirts with pride all through the week, and that no matter who you asked on the team from the starting QB to the bench warmer about the TEAM/ME shirts, all of them could instantly explain what it meant and why it was important. For the first time ever I regretted not playing football, and not being able to be part of that experience.
I asked the folks on twitter a while back, "How do you teach passion?" The majority of the responses agreed that there is not way to teach passion, instead you must inspire it. Jennifer Day wrote a great follow up blog post on the topic as well. She states:
“You don’t teach passion, you inspire it ...kindle it. Like building a fire – passion as a burning thing is pretty apt.”
I do love the quote above, it speaks to my core beliefs and philosophies. But then I think back to high school and I say that the new football coach taught those kids on the team passion, and he did it by address not only the importance of the team but the importance of the individual as well. Maybe it is that shared focus on the value of the individual that is the key, and by highlighting that basic need in all of us to feel valued, accepted, and part of a group/team/family is the way to "teach" passion.
Value the team. Nurture the individual. Provide the vision. Provide a stage/field for the team and the individuals to show others what they can do when a group of talented folks come together with a common goal. To paraphrase a line from Jennifer's article....build the fire.
There is no I in team. But there is in passIon, vIsIon, drIve, and fIre. Go light some fires.
Thoughts from Thirty Thousand Feet
I have written and deleted and re-written this opening paragraph about six times already as I try and pull together my thoughts. It being Mother's Day I thought of writing a post about all the life lessons I learned from my Mom. But as I got into it, I got a little emotional as the last time I saw my mom was two years ago on Mothers Day. So then I thought I would do a post based on the "Wind in the Willows" and go about mocking folks while referring to them as Mr. Toad or Mr. Mole or Ratty. That was a fun 20 minutes of writing but I ended up deleting that too. As as I am sitting here on this flight after spending a glorious weekend with my family I thought about what I would say to my son about the recent events. So this is what I ended up with.
1) Be proud of yourself. The things that you have worked for are great things and you should be proud of accomplishing them. I know your Mom and I sure are.
2) Stand up for what you believe in. Don't be afraid to draw a line in the sand and hold to it. You are descended for a long line of stubborn folks and despite a few bumps in the road, that determination will serve you well in life.
3) Do not begrudge anyone else for the things that they have accomplished. Just because you do not have the same things as others or are not able to do the same things, it is no reason to whine and complain and pitch a fit like a three year old. It makes you look foolish and people will wonder how your parents would let you carry on that way.
4) Choose your friends carefully. People that hang around only when things are good will soon vanish when times are tough. Find a friend that will not only bail you out of jail, but most likely be sitting there next to you. You know what I mean here.
5) Do not be the "I'm taking my ball and going home kid" no one likes him, he gets picked last at the playground, and ends up taking a cousin to the prom.
6) Stealing this one from Abe Lincoln. "It is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
7) If you poke the 400 pound bear with a stick long enough, he will rise up and remove your head from your shoulders. Think carefully about your actions and the reactions they will cause. I am not telling you to not stand up for yourself, or to not react when provoked. Just to think about whether is this a fight you want to get into. Are you willing to try and take that hill?
8 ) Lawyers are for wills, house closings, and for keeping large corporations in line. Any other use of the legal profession is shameful ambulance chasing and equates to calling for "mommy" when you pick a fight you can not win.
9) When someone kicks your friend. Do not stand by and do nothing.
10) There are just some things in life you will perceive as unfair. Suck it up. Rub some dirt on it. Move on to something else.
So now that I have typed this up and I am reading back through this, I know without any doubt that I would indeed tell these things to my son as these lessons were passed on from my parents. If only all kids these days had the benefit of a solid foundation.
Like sand through the hourglass.
“RAY: This week's puzzler is historical in nature, and it doesn't need any additional obfuscation or declarification. It has built-in obfuscation. Here it is:
I'm thinking of two inventions from long ago. One of them has thousands of moving parts. The other has one part, and it doesn't move.
They both do the same thing.
TOM: Are they still around?
RAY: Of course. Are they still in widespread use? Of course not. What am I thinking of?”
Right before they gave the answer they gave out one more hint . Each item measures something. Naturally whenever I hear the word “measure” my ears perk up. Both of the mystery items measured time. An hourglass and a sundial. Thousands of pieces of sand in the hourglass all working together to perform their task and the classic sundial which does not move, but only reports on what the world around it is doing.
Sure each and every piece of sand on its own might seem pretty insignificant but we know that is not true. The amount of sand needed was measured, the size of the hourglass measured, the opening between the two halves of the glass measured, to make sure that the end result was as accurate as it could be. Sound familiar?
The trick is to recognize the importance of each and every detail in a digital measurement project but at the same time to not get lost in the sand. If we get consumed by just one small item, and it derails the whole project then we might as well be the sundial. Just sitting there, waiting on the world to turn and our shadow to be cast in order to provide meaningful data.
So which one are you? The hourglass or the sundial?
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