Author and columnist Thomas Friedman, and businessman Dov Seidman opened this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival with a discussion of situational versus sustainable values.   Friedman and Seidman argue that over the past decade our culture has lead the business world to relatively consistently [underprice risk, privatize gains, and socialize loss].

Friedman explains that, “if the situation allows me to issue a subprime mortgage to someone to buy a home even if all I’ve asked of them is can you <huff> fog up the knife then I will do it; sustainable values will tell me I shouldn’t. Situationally, I can buy 1000 acres of the Amazon and plant soy beans. Situationally, I can do that; sustainable values would tell me I shouldn’t. . .what we’ve had in the last decade is an explosion of situational thinking and situational values in both the market and mother nature.”  Sustainable values are more driven by the long term effects of decisionmaking and making choices that lead to the best possible outcome for ALL involved.

He’s concerned that our current generation of leadership will align with what Kurt Anderson refers to as the Grasshopper Generation.  “We ate through it like hungry locusts.”

Instead, he hopes that business, government and thought leaders can drive the “Re-generation.”  Accordingly, “the single most important task of the Re-generation is bringing the concept of sustainability, sustainable values, into both the market and mother nature…If we don’t bring sustainability to the market and mother nature, then I believe the next generation will be more unfree than had our parents lost the Cold War.  Because the market and mother nature will each impose on us constraints on how we live that will be worse than had the Communists won.”

Friedman breaks down the two key forces driving human trajectory.  On the one hand, “Mother nature is just chemistry, biology and physics,” as defined by environmental consultant Rob Watson. “She always bats last, and she always bats 1000. Do not mess with mother nature.”  On the flipside, “the market is just greed and fear. Greed and fear…It’s going to do whatever the balance of greed and fear dictate at any given moment. Do not mess with the market.  You can’t spin it. You can’t sweet talk it.”

Friedman argues that the only way to wrangle these ‘the two most autistic forces on the planet (autistic in the sense of feeling no emotion whatsoever)” is through sustainable values, which have grown increasingly important because globalization and interdependency of economy has more tightly linked us to the rest of the human race more than ever before.   Being aware of the social, environmental and fiscal costs of our decisions cannot be understated in world that experiences the pressure of crisis so often.

As Dov Siedman points out, “Used to be that we had a crisis every 20 years.  We’re now so interconnected that crisis every 20 weeks, certainly every 20 months.  Lehmen, Toyota, Greece, BP.”  The moral and ethical implications of the course corrections our leaders choose in the face of these crises need to be recognized.

“If we are connected, the nature of our connections is exposed.  Interconnection leads to moral and ethical interdependence.  For the first time, we have to understand what David Hume said.  ‘The moral imagination diminishes with distance.’ Where do we go when there’s no more distance?”

The BP oil spill created instant awareness for those hidden costs of being an oil dependent society.  Can this travesty provide the collective cognitive liberation needed to begin the transition from the Grasshopper Generation to the Re-generation?  At what point does personal consumer sacrifice become less of a cost than a continuation our insatiable razing of the planet we live on?

It’s not as though there is a shortage of alternate disposal methods that could benefit society.  Last month, the NYTimes covered the New York Clothing bank, which distributes $10 million worth of clothing donated by retailers and designers each year to over 80,00o needy individuals.  Feeding America supplies food banks with grocery overstock. DonorsChoose is one of many nonprofits that could help book retailers and publishers match their unsold stock with underfunded school districts and classrooms, like Ms. P’s, which needs 64 copies of Tony Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.

Doesn’t it make you wonder how many other businesses are letting perfectly good products go to waste? Excess inventory should never wind up in a dumpster when so many families and children are in need.  Thirty-nine percent of children (29 million) live in poverty in the United States and 1 in 8 Americans reach out to food banks to try to keep their families fed.

And you have to wonder how many businesses are changing the protocols for end of season leftovers or irregular products because no one at the company has even decided to question the status quo?   It’s just easier to keep on keeping on the way things have always been than to reconsider the current model and possibly create more work in rendering a more equitable and efficient system.

Thus I direct you to a great story about five monkeys;  traditions (workplace and otherwise) don’t always serve a meaningful purpose.  Sometimes just asking “why” will help move you in a better direction.

photo by moriza

Last week, Rachel Maddow delivered the keynote address at the Invent Your Future Conference For Women.  On Tuesday, I stumbled across a blogger who attended the event and shared her takeaways:

Rachel works very hard preparing for her show by reading volumes and volumes of material. She spends 10-11 hours a day getting ready to bring us a great show that over 1.9 million people watch. She also said that it is critically important to only do what you are BEST at and to be true to yourself!

If you watch Maddow’s show, you know she’s well read on the topics, so the first conclusion comes as no surprise.  Her deep dig into the background material allows her to have very informed discussions with guests, unlike hosts such as Joe Scarborough, making her show engaging and enjoyable to watch.

With regard to the second conclusion, doesn’t it make sense to focus on your strengths?  I used to work for a company that had an arbitrary list of accomplishments that must be achieved before a promotion was possible.  Leadership explained they wouldn’t hold you back indefinitely for not doing everything on the list, but it was made clear that crossing those items off the list made a big difference when it came to speed of promotion.   That system never quite jived with me.

When hired at a company, you sign on for a particular job description.  As you settle in and hit competency, it starts to become obvious where you excel and where you struggle.  Since a company is typically focused on a singular bottom line: money, isn’t it a waste of time to try to make every employee perfectly balanced and well-rounded?

Once it becomes clear to you and your colleagues what your company-specific assets are, why wouldn’t you be encouraged to gravitate towards full-time use of those skill sets?  And wouldn’t you be a more productive employee if you were working on projects that you enjoyed, rather than dreaded?

A 2006 study by UPenn grad student Gordon Parry cites a 2005 Towers Perrin study that found:

only 14% of employees worldwide indicate that they are highly engaged.  Roughly a quarter are genuinely disengaged, and the remaining “massive middle,” 62% are only moderately engaged in work [or willing] . . . “Willing employees get the job done as required.  Engaged employees redefine the job to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and results.

Engagement makes for better employees.

Workplaces psychologists have previously identified three types of work: jobs (taken primarily for the financial incentive), careers (focused on the perks attained through promotions and increased power), and callings (with the work being more inspirational than the payment and benefits of the role).

Positive psychologist Seligman suggests the workplace satisfaction can be maximized by trying to make strengths the focus of individual’s work responsibilities.

His “recipe” is as follows: 1) identify your signature strengths, 2) choose work that lets you use them every day, 3) re-craft your present work to use your signature strengths more, and 4) make room for employees to re-craft their work

So Parry put this recipe into play using a team of corporate human resources professionals from the same company.  Half of the participants increased their job satisfaction and increasingly identified with “careers” and “callings.”

While it seems like a truly American habit to want to be good at all we do at the work place, what with the historic American penchant for rugged individualism, it seems you and your employer might be better off if you focused on your assets and left your weaknesses on someone else’s task list.  You’ll enjoy your job more, and your employer will get your best efforts.

photo by ruudvanleeuwen

The latest issue of Fitness Matters (an American Council on Exercise publication sent to anyone certified through the organization) featured an interesting article on procrastination.   Fifteen to twenty percent of the population can be considered procrastinators, and that tendency to delay the inevitable is an issue in the workplace, not just at the gym.

Toronto-based hypotherapist Debbie Papadakis noted that

people think that procrastination is done intentionally, but there’s always an underlying emotional cause stored in the subconscious.  This is our permanent memory, like an organic computer that holds all our emotions and limiting beliefs.

Everyone procrastinates at intervals, even if not clinically inflicted with the detrimental behavior. When prepping you to-do list for the day, the work you want to be doing easily floats to the top of the list.  Why do certain activities seem to always be sent to the end of the line?  For items that have been pushed off until the last minute at the office, what were you waiting for?

The research of Piers Steel, PhD, of the University of Calvary seems to indicate that confidence is a key factor.

Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task. Perfectionism is not the culprit.  In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more.

So perhaps we should all take stock of our skill sets and reconsider our to-do lists.   When you have a major case of the “tomorrow is another day” syndrome, what types of projects do you typically put off? Do they utilize skills you’re not as comfortable with?

Perhaps instead of avoiding the issue, you might source out a workplace buddy that you know is strong in that area.  For me, knowing I have a direct line to someone that can help, makes it a lot easy to tackle a difficult and time-consuming project.

In return, you can offer to be that life line for someone else.  If everyone in your department is willing to lend a helping hand to a colleague, won’t you each be better for it?  Repetition makes people more comfortable with tasks, so eventually everyone in that tangled web of assistance will be more confident when it comes to using certain skills.   Sort of a corporate no-man-left-behind policy that can defeat the most pernicious procrastination.

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Thursday night, Cramer voluntarily took part in a lengthy dialogue with Stewart about the culpability of the financial media in the economic meltdown.

I blog at wordpress.com, which means I can’t embed flash, sooooo I have to send you away to The Daily Show to view the unusually lengthy interview. Pundits and commentators will hopefully be talking about this interview today like adults, not snarky adolescents.

Go here, and bask in the glory of real journalism disguised as pseudo-journalism. Like a pit bull, when the interview gets uncomfortable, Stewart wouldn’t let go.

Ask yourselves why people who claim to report “real news,” don’t go in for the kill like that and do their job. Based on the failing economic models of newspapers, it seems pandering to advertisers (not writing too negatively about the companies that ante up) might not be the way to go. I’d buy a paper that went for the jugular and did some real investigative reporting. But maybe that’s just me wanting to stick it to corporate America.  Would you?

PS. For the record, I’d like to be adopted by Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. How cool are they?

I knew it was not just me that thought the lack of online sales was a problem.

Since I spent a few years in  Brownie, and then Girl Scout, troop as a kid, I thought the least I could do would be to order 2 boxes to support my local girls.  Since I don’t actually know any Girl Scouts, I headed over to GirlScoutCookies.org to place an order.

There’s no way to order online, which seems to be a big short coming of their system.  I impulsively wanted cookies “now”, so it would seem getting my credit card info BEFORE I changed my mind might be a good strategy.  Instead, I shared my contact info so someone could get in touch with me about an order.

The next day I received a follow-up message regarding my cookies.

OK.  I can wait.  Since I submitted my info on a Friday, February 20th, I figure I’d hear back during the following work week.  But nothing. Silence.

On Wednesday, March 4th, I finally get a response!! YAY! I will be able to order cookies. . . or not.

TWELVE days after submitting my information because I really wanted a box of Lemon Cremes and maybe a box of Samoas, they directly tell me they might be too busy to take my order.

TWELVE days ago, I really wanted those cookies so I could SUPPORT local girls, because I bake a better cookie than I could ever buy from a Girl Scout.   But after following their instructions to pre-order, I essentially get told they’re too busy to take my order, and I should track them down on a weekend, probably in front of a grocery store.  Are they intentionally playing hard to get, even with sales down?

At this point, I don’t want cookies anymore. So that’s an $8 sale they lost.

It seems absurd that you can’t order Girl Scout cookies online and either pay for shipping or pick them up at a designated location once they become available.   Take my money while I’m of the mindset to part with it.

Could you imagine going to JCrew.com and after picking out some new threads being told to go to your local store to purchase them?  They’d be losing a lot of business, which might be a good lesson for the Girl Scouts’ “leading business and economic literacy program.”

Why even offer a pre-order option if the troops won’t actually take your order? Wouldn’t it be better just to have prospective buyers submit their contact info and zip code so they can automatically be sent a list of dates and locations that cookies will be available for purchase?  In that case, I’d at least think they wanted my money.

Instead, I’ll going to spend my $8 on the chocolate chip cookie ingredients on the back of a bag of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips.