Category: Leadership

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Leadership Podcasts Technology Women Workplace

Does Marissa Mayer have an Ambition Gap?

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has a vision for the company, and we have a vision for her. Does Marissa Mayer have an ambition gap? Listen to the podcast here:

[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/MarissaMayerpodcast.mp3|titles=Does Marissa Mayer have an Ambition Gap?]

Transcript of this podcast:

Earlier this month, Comscore released numbers that showed, for the first time since 2011, Yahoo beat Google in traffic; Yahoo’s unique visitors were up by roughly 20% compared to July of last year, when the company came in third behind Google and Microsoft. For Marissa Mayer, it’s a success as one of the most scrutinized CEOs in America.

Hello and welcome to Kontrary, a different take on work and life. I’m Rebecca Thorman. Today, we’re going to talk about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and vision – first, her vision for Yahoo, and second, our vision for Mayer.

Let’s start with the recent profile in Business Insider, which they describe as an unauthorized biography. You can basically skip over the beginning which is really boring and not well-written at all, and start paying attention once you get to the lower bits about the transition from interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn to Mayer, and the dichotomy between their two strategies, which is essentially the decision between whether Yahoo is a technology company or a media company.

Marissa Mayer is a product visionary vs. Ross Levinsohn who is a businessman. Levinsohn was the interim CEO from May of 2012 until July 16, when Mayer took over, and was lead to believe he had the job. The strategy he presented to the Yahoo board was this:

Eliminate the majority of Yahoo’s products, increase Yahoo’s EBITDA (a fancy accounting phrase for income) by 50%, cut the workforce down to 4000 employees, and turn Yahoo into a media company. So essentially Levinsohn would be laying off 11,000 employees in order to make Yahoo profitable. From a purely economic standpoint this may makes sense, but it’s really devoid of any heart or inspiration.

Now remember, he’s been told to run Yahoo as if he will be and already is the full-time CEO. So he sends an email to all employees, and it’s this very typical rah-rah email, telling people, “I’m fired up and I hope you are too. I believe in the power of what we’re doing. We have an incredibly talented team, unparalleled strengths in key areas and most importantly, I see the purple pride building everywhere. Let’s move forward quickly with conviction and confidence.” Now, if I were a Yahoo employee, I can’t imagine getting that email one month, and then, if Levinsohn had been installed as the permanent CEO, being laid off the next month, or hanging around as one of the few remaining employees left.

The morale would have totally tanked. The purple pride would have turned black.

Levinsohn’s plan is very similar to the course of action that AOL took as well. AOL was founded in DC, I worked on their campus as part of a startup incubator for nine months in the past year. And I want to describe the campus. When you near the headquarters, there are all these identical buildings in a typical corporate park, and what you come to realize is that they all used to be owned by AOL, but now have the Raytheon logo emboldened on their side, which is a defense contractor. And there’s just one building left for AOL.

And it’s a beautiful building and workplace, to give it credit, and while the lunches aren’t free, the food is great with a lot of healthy options, there’s tons of natural light and so on and so forth. But the feeling at AOL and in the building is very dead. There are whole sections that are essentially abandoned. They’re not even blocked off, just abandoned and anyone can walk through and see the rows upon rows of empty cubicles under a set of dim lights. It’s depressing. And it’s this constant reminder that the company used to be something else entirely.

And I can imagine that Yahoo would have experienced a very similar downturn, and rather than Levinsohn’s plan bucking the system and reinvigorating the company, it would have taken a very long time to recover, because that’s just what happens with change, especially with something as drastic as that.

Levinsohn is a businessman, he’s about the content, and the bottom line.

Now, in contrast, the beauty of Mayer’s plan is that she believes. She believes in Yahoo and she believes in Yahoo products. She wants Yahoo to be a technology company. In the Business Insider piece, they describe how Yahoo employees created posters in the style of the first Obama campaign election, but instead of Obama’s face, Mayer’s face appears with the word Hope inscribed across the bottom.  Think about that. Mayer’s plan is just as drastic as Levinsohn; there will be just as much change, but it’s centered around creating something, instead of tearing something down. Mayer’s vision is about lifting up, instead of giving up.

While some people thought Mayer came off negatively in the Business Insider piece, I really thought she came off as a bit of a hero, or at the very least a compelling leader; her vision has heart and stays true to this notion of innovation, that of going after something larger than yourself or the shareholder’s bottom line.

One of the featured comments at the end of the BI piece actually says:

Yahoo is lucky to have Marissa as CEO. She has done what none of the previous CEOs could do. She has inspired Yahoo employees and [gave] them confidence…

And another:

My high school senior is devouring the article, and hopefully she draws inspiration from a talented and driven Marissa.

And I think that’s how a lot of women feel. We’ve created our own vision of Mayer, and are all looking up or at least over at Mayer to see what she does. She’s become a role model, and that brings responsibility, whether you like it or not.

And with responsibility, comes a lot of pressure. In an article on Time, Charlotte Alter writes:

Mayer still describes her success as almost effortless. ‘It’s not like I had a grand plan where I weighed all the pros and cons of what I wanted to do,’ she told Weisberg, ‘It just sort of happened.’

It’s a misguided attempt at modesty, but it’s the same ‘little ol’ me’ rhetoric that Mayer’s friend Sheryl Sandberg is trying so hard to stamp out. And it’s the same fairy tale reasoning that girls have internalized for generations; girls don’t ‘do’ things, things ‘just happen’ to them.

Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy responds, first by defending Mayer a bit:

Marissa Mayer isn’t actually allowed to make decisions for herself, her company and her family– somehow we all read those to be decisions she is making for the world.

and then draws a line in the sand:

We’re seriously supposed to believe Mayer just accidentally landed in a top CEO job? … Not owning up to a certain level of ambition is not only disingenuous, but it perpetuates the idea to the young ambitious women reading Vogue that ambition is somehow bad.

Leaders, regardless of their position, are always role models. It is part of the gig, inescapable, just by assuming such a position. While I find it hard to believe that Mayer doesn’t realize this, I also wonder, how far can we go in deciding and assigning responsibility? Our institutional leaders are only human, but man, if we don’t wish them to be more.

While I agree with both Pando Daily and Time, I don’t agree with the people who criticized Mayer’s recent Vogue profile and photo shoot. Is it disingenuous to make judgement on one message and not the other?

To answer that, let me share what Jezebel founder Anna Holmes has to say:

Ms. Mayer’s Vogue profile make me yearn for a time when female competence in one area is not undermined by enthusiasm for another, in which women in positions of power are so commonplace that we do not feel compelled to divine motive or find symbolism in every remark they make, corporate policy they enact or fashion spread they pose for.

I’ll end there. We’ve been talking about Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, the most scrutinized CEO in America, and her vision for Yahoo, and our vision for her. I’m Rebecca Thorman, and this is Kontrary, a different take on work and life, broadcasting from Washington, DC. Talk to you soon.

What do you think? Is Marissa Mayer’s vision for Yahoo the right one? And is our vision for Marissa Mayer fair? Should she try harder or is she doing well?

Categories
Career Generation Y Leadership Management

The Young, Motivated & Unsatisfied

I recently met a young woman who wanted to start a blog from a teacher’s perspective that revealed a teacher’s real and true thoughts. Like how bratty the kids are. How she cusses at them in her head and makes fun of how they dress.

She wasn’t alone; a whole group of her teacher friends were planning to anonymously co-author the venomous expose together. I felt sorry for her students. So very deeply sorry and guilty, but Ryan had left my side and I didn’t know anyone else at the party and I was stuck and uncomfortable and anxious for the future of kids I didn’t know and would never meet.

So we kept talking, and she told me more of what she wanted to do: Get into education administration, lobby reform to politicians, overthrow outdated lesson plans, revolutionize school requirements, change the whole entire educational system.

Turns out? Not so jaded. Just so desperately and achingly unsatisfied.

“Worker satisfaction in the United States is at an all-time low,” reports the New York Times.  “Only 45 percent of workers are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61 percent in 1987. The findings show that the decline goes well beyond concerns about job security. Employees are unhappy about the design of their jobs, the health of their organizations and the quality of their managers.”

And it’s not just those people that have settled and resigned their dreams to the attic who are so unhappy, but a large percentage of what the Harvard Business Review calls “high-potentials” – those young rising stars that have the ability to have an enormous impact on how we work and live.

“One in three emerging stars report feeling disengaged from his or her company, and admits not putting all of his effort into his job,” the HBR study reports. These highly disengaged high performers have more than doubled from 8% in 2008 to 21% in 2009. And one-quarter of these highest-potential people intend to jump ship within the year despite the recession.

High-performance workers are being consistently and abhorrently under-utilized. Companies and managers must give motivated and ambitious young employees the ability to perform or risk irrelevance.

“When emerging talent is never truly developed and tested, the firm finds itself with a sizable cadre of middle and senior managers who can’t shoulder the demands of the company’s most challenging (and promising) opportunities,” the researchers warn.

So maybe it’s time to stop making young people pay dues. And stop assigning fluff projects. And maybe managers could stop putting the kind of hold on workers that is so tight that they’ll pop right out of their slippery control.

We are your sick, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free of the industrial age molds that keep us shackled in our desks from nine to five. Your greatest challenges are our greatest thrills. Let us execute, and then execute again. Let us fail, let us win. Let us do. Let us work.

“True leadership development takes place under conditions of real stress – indeed, the very best programs place emerging leaders in ‘live fire’ roles where new capabilities can – or more accurately, must – be acquired,” the researchers report.

Yes, let us work.  Stimulating and meaningful work that leads to compelling career paths and the chance to prosper if you do.

We’ll hide the red tape in the breakroom.

Categories
Leadership Links Women

No-nonsense advice from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz

Ever since Carol Bartz became CEO of Yahoo, I’ve been watching her closely. I love that she’s a woman leading a tech company, I love that she’s outspoken, and despite all her detractors, I think she’s going to do amazing things for Yahoo. Every interview she does is awesome, and I particularly liked these quotes from a recent piece in the New York Times:

When people come to me and say, “I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,” I say, “Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?” People want to take a bad situation and say, “Oh, it’s bad.” No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something.

—

I grew up in the Midwest. My mom died when I was 8, so my grandmother raised my brother and me. She had a great sense of humor, and she never really let things get to her. My favorite story is when we were on a farm in Wisconsin; I would have probably been 13. There was a snake up in the rafter of the machine shed. And we ran and said, “Grandma, there’s a snake.” And she came out and she knocked it down with a shovel, chopped its head off and said, “You could have done that.” And, you know, that’s the tone she set. Just get it done. Just do it. Pick yourself up. Move on. Laugh.

—

Via the New York Times.

Categories
Career Leadership Women

Career women should try harder – especially in the Midwest

Ryan and I recently celebrated one year of dating officially. What makes this more impressive is that we’re both extremely career-oriented. Even more extraordinary is the fact that we’re not married with babies.

There’s a lot of pressure to settle down, never mind the fact that I don’t feel anywhere near ready to have children. And while I can imagine my life with Ryan, I don’t see the rush. With previous boyfriends, things could have ended at any moment. Now I have time.

In the Midwest, however, I do not. Twenty-six years of age is starting to get old and the female role models to dispel such rumors are few and far between. I can’t, in fact, think of a single woman in Madison that I look up to and follow for her career. Perhaps because the women I know in leadership roles exemplify negative stereotypes, and perhaps because there are simply more men than women leading business here.

It’s difficult, yes. When I graduated college and entered the real world, I had no idea how difficult it would be. Even in the start-up world, women are barely a consideration. When it comes to founding successful companies, apparently old guys rule. Young guys have a shot too. But women aren’t even part of the equation.

And while I love my job and am lucky to have been given opportunities I wasn’t afforded in previous positions, the patterns, however unintentional, are still there. It’s predominately male in our office and women are predictably relegated to the customer service and marketing departments.

The same pattern is propagated throughout society. For instance, Nisha Chittal reports on a study from Media Matters for America that shows on average, Sunday Morning show guests are 80 percent male (on shows like Chris Matthews, Fox News Sunday, Face the Nation, and Meet the Press).

And yet women do seem to make great strides career-wise. Ernst & Young went so far as to say that the world needs more female bosses. “Investing in women to drive economic growth is not simply about morality or fairness. It’s about honing a competitive edge,” Ernst & Young chairman and CEO Lou Pagnutti said. “Women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.”

But the Midwest seems to be particularly fond of holding onto the old formula of success for women: meet, marry, opt-out. This is purely anecdotal of course. The newest Census study shows it’s actually a myth that privileged, well-educated women are opting-out. Even when broken down by geographic location, the Midwest has drastically more married couples with children and both parents in the labor force, compared to say, California or New York (see page 15 in the report).

Which makes me think we’re not telling the right stories.

I recently broke down to Ryan, “I don’t want to be like the young couples we sit with at weddings or the rich ones we meet at events. Their eyes are so vacant. So disappointed. They’re stunned or seemingly regretful. It scares me.”

“Rebecca,” he replied, “do you think we’re anything like those couples?”

I sniffled and agreed, maybe he was right. But I need women to be stronger role models and more outspoken – whatever path they choose. I don’t want to be afraid of motherhood. And I don’t want to be afraid of missed opportunity either.

There are some enthralling stories about the beautiful complexity that is marriage and motherhood. But these stories just don’t exist about being a woman in the workplace. We need to start telling those. Now. Not just recognizing powerful career women, say on a list or with an award, but telling the stories that infuse society. I need to hear more stories with women that inform my consciousness each morning. And I need to hear them right here in Wisconsin.

Categories
Career Leadership Management Self-management

Become an expert quickly

There are two ways to approach life. Read about it. Or live it.

I read a lot. I like to synthesize information together, saturate my brain synapses, make connections, and curate the exact pieces that will fit my life. Knowledge is my thing.

But it doesn’t matter how much I read, or attend lectures, or watch TED talks, or troll Twitter for the next most interesting blog post. Most of that learning stuff is useless; there’s no better way to learn than to just do.

Become an expert {Phase 1}
 Action is the first step. That’s why I encourage job-hopping. Most people don’t know what they like or what they’re good at. Like you could really want to be a CEO, yearn for it with all the matter in your body and brain, and then regrettably discover that you suck as a CEO.

Or maybe you’re really fabulous. A veritable genius! The point is, without working it out for yourself, you’re stuck on the path that others have already laid out. And yeah, that’s a safe plan, I don’t blame you. Our education system is certainly not set up to handle exploration or deviation from a set course. And entering the real world closes the door all together.

In school and at the workplace we’re told exactly how to do tasks, without learning the full explanation behind it. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of a young woman who is trying to solve a mathematical problem. She’s not told the way others have solved the problem, but instead is problem-solving on her own.

Gladwell recounts that when she figures it out, her face lights up: “Ohhh. Okay. Now I see. The slope of a vertical line is undefined. That means something now. I won’t forget that!”

The young woman is working with a professor who encourages his students to unlearn the mathematical habits they picked up on the way to university. Because it’s not about memorizing the right way to do something, but your ability to try that determines your success.

“Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds,” Gladwell reports.

In order to drive innovation, we need time and space to explore, not regurgitate. To become the master of a topic, you need to understand its underbelly, where it came from, where it’s going, not just the flashy exterior.

Become an expert {Phase 2 – quickly}
Most people are stuck in the land of daydreams and don’t actually reach action, so if you’ve mastered that, pat yourself on the back. I just gave myself a little pat. Go on, you too. Now we’re moving into advanced world domination.

Exploring a topic from top to bottom is all good and well, but what if you don’t have 10,000 hours to devote? What if there was a short-cut? A way that actually helped you make more fiery synapses connections?

I realize I’m starting to sound like an infomercial here, so stay with me.

First, let me preface by saying there’s no substitute for action. And what I’m about to propose isn’t something you should do in lieu of cooking every night if you want to be a chef, but it is the way to super-size what you learn from cooking every night. In an Einstein sort of way, not Mickey D’s.

So tell me, how well can you explain what you do? How well do you understand your passion? Could you teach someone else to do it?

When you do something like send a pitch, for example, you’re learning. You’re testing your ideas and theories through the reaction you receive, the resulting outcome. In this paradigm, it’s okay to fail, you discover through trial and error, and through persistence and hard work, you win.

But there’s an entire level of awesomeness missing. And you can only ascend to the next level by then teaching someone what you have learned. Because then you’re testing your values, ideas and theories with another person’s values, ideas and theories. You understand the underlying challenge more by defining it for another. Teaching – good teaching – requires you to exchange knowledge, not simply impart it. Learning is individual. Teaching is collaborative.

“Nobel laureate physicists such as Enrico Fermi and Leon Lederman took pride in teaching bright undergraduates,” reports Michael Schrage in Harvard Business, “because it forced them to keep in touch with the fundamentals of their field and express themselves simply and clearly.”

I had no idea how to write a stellar cover letter and resume until I started teaching others to do theirs. Groups comprised of individuals in different skill sets – say, marketing, design and finance – thrive when they teach each other. Life-coaches may be so prevalent right now because the coaches help themselves as much as they help clients.

Teaching is sharing knowledge, sharing empathy, sharing ideas. It’s pushing you to understand with entirely different lenses. Just like your body needs both cardio and strength training, your mind needs both learning and teaching.

Teaching is the definitive learning experience. And it’s the quickest way to expertise.

Categories
Creativity Generation Y Leadership

Is Gen Y teamwork killing creativity?

Generation Y is a kind generation. Our conservative lifestyles and penchants for quiet opinions have led us to work together happily with healthy doses of idealism. We are a teamwork generation, fully in line with each other.

Top-down management and the clutch of hierarchal authority no longer illustrate the strokes of success, but instead lead to siloed rows of depressed employees and opportunistic managers.

Gen Y, in contrast, is all about the team, preferring conformity inside the lines over pushing boundaries or ourselves. “In many respects,” psychology expert Jeremy Dean argues, “[these] norms have a beneficial effect, bolstering society’s foundations and keeping it from falling into chaos.”

We’re the soothing wall fountain over a fire of greed, instability and unethical behavior. We dislike ambiguity and risk and mitigate the risks that we have inherited accordingly. We “provide a stable and predictable social world, to regulate our behavior with each other.”

The world these group norms create are so safe and sound that one research study found that “groups don’t even need to be that well-established, people will conform to others with only the slightest encouragement.”

It’s incredibly easy for crowdsourcing and group-think to take over. The wisdom of the crowd is everywhere.

“The power of groups, the clout that crowds can exercise to get what they want, is nothing new,” one trend briefing reports. “What is new, however, is the dizzying ease with which likeminded, action-ready citizens and consumers can now go online and connect, group and ultimately exert influence on a global scale.”

We can no longer buy a camera without checking the product recommendations, go on a trip without researching hotel reviews, or visit a new restaurant without the prodding of a friend. Wikipedia is one of the best known examples of the concept at work. Revering social media “influencers” is another. Do other people like it? What do they think? Have they legitimized it, given it their stamp of approval and a gold star? And did their mother try it?

Such trends make it incredibly easy to live in society, but also threaten the individual mind, intuition and originality. Consensus isn’t all gravy.

“Unfortunately groups only rarely foment great ideas,” Dean reports, “because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave. Norms influence what people believe is right and wrong just as surely as real laws, but with none of the permanence or transparency of written regulations.”

Teamwork threatens creativity.

Reverting back to a command and control structure is obviously not the answer, but decentralized leadership doesn’t mean we all have to hold hands. We can’t let the pendulum swing so far from one extreme to the other that we miss that happy medium where innovation soars.

Groups do such a good job breeding mediocrity that we can’t be so afraid to be alone and listen to the sound of our own voice and let out a real note while we lip-synch. March to the beat of our own drum as it goes. We can’t be afraid to sit with our own thoughts where that nugget just needs some dedicated commitment to the state of flow to turn into something wonderful.

Groups are for brainstorms, not conclusions. Teamwork is for energy, not leadership. Conformity is overrated.

And while it’s important to be the healing generation, the calm ones, the group that will bring people together to make things okay again, there’s no reason not to leave some solitary footprints on another path for future generations to follow.

Breaking Out.

Categories
Career Knowing yourself Leadership

How to step up and have anything but a normal career

You know, I get that change is hard. But it’s also inevitable. The world in which today’s young “will make choices and compose lives is one of disruption rather than certainty,” argues this report.

Indeed, when I started my current job, there was much disruption. In the beginning, it was the challenge of transitioning from being an employee to running an organization. Of being lonely. Of complete work/life distortion.

And when I say challenge, I am being polite, because what I really mean is not all unlike the walk of shame after a particularly rowdy and untoward night of college drinking. That is, what exactly did I get myself in to?

Lately, it’s been an entirely different type of challenge – that of being in limbo because the responsibility and possibility of it all paralyzes me more than I’m willing to admit.

Because, really, given the opportunity to change the world, would you take it? We all think we would, but it is so very hard to look in the face of what you truly want and take it. It is so very hard to fight the war of what really matters.

So Generation Y isn’t always stepping up. And those that do, often think about stepping right back down. Because unless you’re in the fight to make change, it’s difficult to know how ridiculously hard it is. I thought that this might have just been me, that maybe I’m just not cut out for all this leadership change stuff. But I recently met with a thirty-one year old vice-president. She told me no, we’re all neurotic. Really. Neurotic was her word.

“This next year will probably be one of your hardest,” she said. “But you know and I know, once you’ve tasted this, you can’t turn back.”

I think about her words on the days that I don’t want to strategize, or build encampments, or be so obsessed with seeing a CEO or colleague or client on the street that I spend fifteen minutes trying to look vaguely presentable before going to Walgreens just to buy some toilet paper. Really. Some days, I just want to buy toilet paper in peace. Some days, I just want to be normal.

“Being normal,” Hercules replied, “gets you a middle-class life in the suburbs. It’s fifth place, and you know you want to be in first.” All successful people then are understandably eccentric. They take risks that normal people wouldn’t.

There’s this thing about risks though. It’s easy to sign up, but it’s the follow-through that’s hard, the follow-through that decides your character.

Like when I went skydiving two weeks ago (here and here). I wasn’t nervous. Honestly. They tell you to get nervous because if you’re not, you’ll freak out when the door opens at twelve thousand feet. So I was trying to be nervous, but I just wasn’t.

But in skydiving, eventually the plane does fly up to twelve thousand feet, and the door does open. When that happened, my tandem instructor put my hand out into the wind. “That’s not so bad, is it?” he asked. No, I nodded; it wasn’t so bad. I was a rockstar, invincible to anything and everything. I was a rockstar, that is, until we moved to the edge of the plane and I had to put one foot out into the air. It was then that I thought oh, holy crap, I can’t do this. What have I gotten myself into?

That’s the moment, see. Where you have to muster strength from somewhere you didn’t know you had. The moment where you face all your fears. It’s only a split-second in skydiving. Literally. A split-second where you decide if you’re going to smile or cry. Move forward or turn back. Jump or freak out.

When you’re pushing adulthood, however, it can last months. It’s easy to say you’re going to do something. It’s easy to be eager with words. Actions are much harder. That pesky day in and day out stuff.

Like putting down the potato chips and going to the gym. Or not taking things personally when it would be so easy to join the fray. Or putting down your guard, opening yourself up, and then – and this may be even more difficult – letting someone else in.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world, to do what we want,” this character says. “And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. Because it’s such a big responsibility – really to want something.”

Oh, and in case you were wondering… I jumped. With a smile on my face.

Risk normalcy.

Categories
Career Generation X Generation Y Knowing yourself Leadership

The most important thing for a decision in politics

Today, I wore a sweatshirt at the same table as someone wearing a suit. Today, I had lunch with someone who I like. He’s intelligent, successful, good-looking. Today, I had lunch with someone who listens to my ideas, and doesn’t agree with me all that much. I respect that.

So, it shouldn’t have surprised me that today, I had lunch with someone who isn’t voting for Barack Obama.

And yet, never has my stomach risen to my heart so violently after eating just a regular ole’ hummus sandwich.

My whole body wanted to reach out and envelop him in all that is Obama.

If this sounds a bit hysterical, it should be.

Unity is not easy. Hope is not rational.

And as much as we’d like it to be, neither is politics.

It would be easy for me to argue for an Obama candidacy on the basis of the issues. I’ve researched those. And if I were voting on issues alone, settling for any one candidate would prove to be easy, because any one candidate is remarkably similar to the next.

But I’m not voting on issues alone.

I’m voting on something entirely more powerful.

That is, the first feeling you get – your gut instinct – which, as it turns out, is remarkably accurate.

We are highly instinctive creatures. We know how to read people and situations for survival, for love, and for power.

A recent study looking at the faces of successful CEOs proves it. The “experiment lends support to a growing argument among psychologists who study decision-making that when people come to quick conclusions without much information, their decisions are often good ones.”

Our human instinct is among our greatest strengths.

It’s why a woman can tell within the first five to ten minutes of meeting a man whether or not she will sleep with him.

It’s why Ryan Healy spent months going over idea after idea for his new company, only to return to his original thought.

It’s why individuals who hone the gift of fear – the most primal of all instincts – are able to save their own lives.

You cannot hide from instinct.

Across the ocean, there are those who use their instinct just like we do, and will look at Barack Obama and notice “first and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy,” argues Andrew Sullivan.

In fact, everything you need to know about Barack Obama is available in his face – his authenticity, first and foremost, and then the change he wishes to create, as well as his imperfections as a leader, husband and father, and his great hope for this country, his wife, and his daughters.

It is for this reason that Generation Y and Generation X have embraced Obama like none other. We know that “authenticity is not the product of manipulation. It accurately reflects aspects of the leader’s inner self, so it can’t be an act,” just as Harvard Business Online reports.

And yet, we have to be weary. Instinct is easily muddied. It can be dragged through lies and panic and deception, much like the sludge seen on the streets of Madison, WI after blizzard, upon winter storm warning, upon wind advisory.

You can call your instinct an evolutionary reaction, or maybe your soul, Nature, the Universe, your heart, or perhaps even God helping you throughout life, but don’t ignore it. Protect it. Learn to trust it.

Know yourself better than anything or anyone to change the world.

My instinct is that Barack Obama is the leader to unite this great country. You don’t have to agree with my gut, but I urge you to listen to your own.

Yes We Can.

Categories
Accountability Engagement Generation Y Leadership

Generation Y is too quiet, too conservative

I was sitting in a classroom. The walls were covered in plaster and moldings, but behind all that was red brick, so red that the color seeped through the cracks of the old windows, and the sun, and the light, and the energy filled the almost summer air.

It was a time when I was – more or less – happy, and we were seated, twenty or twenty-five of us. Our desks outlined a jagged circle, and I was trying not to check out the young man three desks to the right, because I was still dating my first real boyfriend, trying to make it work from four hours away.

We sat and spoke of our beliefs, the environment, of possibilities. It was the discussion I had come to college for. One that I had looked forward to since the movie Dead Poet’s Society. One that I thought I would have again and again when I moved into my own apartment someday, with paint on the floor and ink stained on my fingers, groups of friends visiting at all hours. Rules would be broken, the establishment dismantled, dreams fulfilled.

But soon, too soon, the imagination of the discussion in that classroom petered out like a mandatory orgasm. And we didn’t stay long after either, filing out of the room like an Orwellian army.

No yelling, no protest, no change. Not even the slightest smell of melodrama lingered in the air.

That was the day that I learned we weren’t like other generations. And it wasn’t all gravy.

Thomas Friedman calls this phenomenon – our generation – quiet. Too quiet, in fact. Penelope Trunk calls us conservative. Not like politically conservative, but lifestyle conservative. As in none of us, except me I guess, are found in dark corners balling our eyes out. Generation Y is balanced like vanilla. Idealism with a cherry on top.

You know, that’s not all bad either, contrary to my sarcasm-infused tone. We’re vanilla vocally because we mainly agree on things. It’s not like the Vietnam war, or women getting the vote, or abolishing slavery where there were clear sides, right or wrong, multiple or few . You know, like, opinions – impassioned and defining.

We don’t really have opinions much anymore. We have beliefs. Opinions are contested. Beliefs are “the acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something,” and offensive to question.

These beliefs include that global warming is a problem. The Iraq war sucks. We should all be treated equal. We’re nodding our heads in unison like bobble heads lined up on a bookshelf. Smiling bobble heads, of course. We can’t forget about our idealism.

We are a teamwork generation, fully in line with each other. This, again, is a good thing. Top-down management will not survive the knowledge economy. And so, teamwork, and thus, Generation Y, is inherently conservative precisely because there is consensus, Trunk argues.

But when you seek only consensus and you don’t strongly encourage- nay, require – opinions to be voiced, challenged, turned upside down and explored like a mother searches for lice on her child’s head, then you aren’t coming to a rousing, exciting, and motivating consensus.

Generation Y is so overly focused on the yin of consensus that we’ve lost its yang of conflict. Like Seinfeld’s black and white cookie, the idea of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy is that positive and negative forces act together in order create energy. They are in constant battle, each trying to gain dominance, and if one succeeds in doing so then we are left without balance.

So, without conflict, consensus is a less than thrilling one-night stand.

Nowhere is this as painfully obvious as it is in social media, where we think we’re making a difference by adding the “Causes” application to Facebook, commenting on blogs in such a way as to not offend, where mediocrity reigns supreme, and we insist on engaging in a large amount of narcissistic navel-gazing every Monday morning.

“Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms… Virtual politics is just that – virtual,” Friedman states.

Ah, when will we learn? Conflict is good, fabulous even! Patrick Lencioni builds an entire fable around this exact idea in his popular book Death by Meeting. He discusses why most meetings suck, the main crux of his theory being that there is no conflict, no drama. No one voices their opinions loud enough in order to be hypothesized, tested, revised.

Think about decisions by committee (read: team). It’s a long, drawn out, excruciating process. The resulting consensus is often a watered-down version of what could have been.

This is the status of Generation Y – a watered-down version of what we could be.

We’re all about the team, but don’t exactly know how to use that effectively, preferring to be quiet, conservative, coloring inside the lines. Meaning, we play by the rules to create change and aren’t aware of what those rules are. Meaning we’re perfectly content not to push boundaries or ourselves.

There is good reason for this. “There is a strong, strong millennial dislike of ambiguity and risk,” Andrea Hershatter says. If the directions aren’t clear, we’re not going on any road trips.

This hesitancy creates a lack of urgency. Change is necessary, but there are no sands through the hourglass urging us that these are the days of our lives. No, we believe our children will deal with it, or someone will deal with it, somewhere, and we’ll just try not to make it worse, and probably – hopefully – make it better. We hope.

Hope. Guffaw.

Screw hope. Where’s the outrage?

If Generation Y is “not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention,” Friedman argues. “That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country.”

To light a fire, you have to have conflict, and to have conflict, you have to have an opinion.

That’s a good place to start for now. Stop being so nice.

Respect other viewpoints enough to challenge them.

Respect other ideas enough to disagree.

Moon the entire left side of the highway from your car window with your opinion on your backside. Put it out there for all to see.

Look to the cookie.

Categories
Generation Y Leadership Social media

Social media doesn’t create new generation leaders

This post was originally published at Conversation Agent. Thank you to Valeria Maltoni for the opportunity.

We have a deep desire to feel that rise in our chests, the quickening of our breath, the spread of a smile.

Generation Y wants to change the world.

Not the environment. Not healthcare. Not education. Not poverty. Not racism. Not sexism. Not war. Not cancer. Not anything, really.

Just the world.

We want to change the world.

And in wanting so much, we get so little.

Restlessness courses through our veins, for we are never doing enough or being enough. Volunteering, leadership, and entrepreneurship, nor the eventual acceptance of the mundane satisfies our edge.

And there’s a majority of us who just sit back. We sit back, content to lead mediocre lives. To never step out. To work, to love, to lead good lives. To lead good lives, but not extraordinary.

Who among us will lead an extraordinary life? Who will be the leader who steps out on an issue? Who is strong enough in their beliefs and convictions to not only sell their Volvo for a hybrid, but to tell the world about it and get others to do the same? Who will stand up for the horror and revulsion that plagues our world today?

Because the warmth from our laptop screens does little but light our idle faces.

Who will be loud enough? Who will scream?

There’s an acceptance that it will all get done. And social media will help us do it. This idea that we can bring groups together over the internet through blogging and Facebooking, and that it will create significant change is ridiculous. It’s hiring a gardener for the privilege of missing the sensation of earth between your fingers.

It is powerful, this online community.

But it is not enough.

In finding so many ways to communicate, we are communicating less and less in a way that is valuable and meaningful.

Like the placement of a candle in a window was once long ago, social media is merely an instrument. You still have to show up.

You still have to get dirty.

Sam Davidson tells a good fisherman story about a man that finds another man fishing, and explains to him that if he catches many fish, well he could eventually buy a boat. He could then catch many more fish, and could buy another boat, and another and another until he had a whole fleet of boats. And he would sure catch a lot of fish then, and with all of that he could do whatever he wanted.

And the man replies, “You mean, fish?”

So it goes with social media. There is a man talking to another woman in a coffee shop. He says to her, “you know if we stalked each other on Facebook and cuffed ourselves to our crackberries and twittered it up, we could communicate, and reach out to each other, and have great conversations, and you know, change things!”

And the woman replies, “You mean, like right now?”

We’ve created social media for the privilege of missing the look from someone across the table, face to face, secret to secret, ambition to ambition.

We create online communities that secure our quasi-anonymous lives, and moan about not being able to connect with someone.

When all we really have to do is simply say, “Hello.”

Don’t get me wrong. Facebook is great for all the reasons people say it’s great. But when you focus on how a tool can change the world, instead of the cause itself, you mitigate the importance of taking action.

The amount of effort we put into our relationships is what will create change, not the amount of effort we put into building and maintaining the printing press, the telephone, the television, or the better, more collaborative, more inclusive web.

We have to show up, face to face. Our actions, not the means – technological or not – propel change. Our effort makes the difference.

It will be quite easy, really. If only we paid attention to the rise in our chests, the quickening of our breath, the smile spreading on our face.

Eye to eye leadership.

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Categories
Leadership Women

12 reasons why being a woman leader is challenging

1. Being nice is seen as flirting.

2. Men say in response to your success, “I always knew you were beautiful, but I had no idea you were intelligent as well,” and you just smile.

3. The female commons is tragic.

4. A meeting is never just a meeting.

5. You’re told to use your sexuality. But not too much.

6. You’re told to ask. But not too much.

7. You’re told to be ambitious, but ambition makes you a dirty word.

8. You’re told that you’ll never marry, but married men love you.

9. You don’t know if it’s safer to be walked home or to walk home alone.

10. Pearls, candles, and lotion are supposedly better gifts for you than iPods, books, and domain names.

11. Shoes determine whether you’re a prude or just plain incompetent.

12. And if you’re a feminist, you have better sex, which doesn’t matter because feminism has “completely screwed you.”

Rise above.

Categories
Leadership Self-management Work/life balance

Life as a Gen Y leader – week eleven

I texted Skinny last Friday night, “I’m just not up for it.” Which really meant that I had sixteen meetings last week, and I was exhausted, and however appealing a nice relaxing dinner sounded, Skinny would have just been a landfill. I would have dumped my entire life on him. And who is that fun for? No one.

The thing is, I’ve been saying “I’m just not up for it,” to my friends more often than not, and I’m quickly losing whatever semblance of balance I used to have. Big Brother claims he keeps his personal life separate because it’s difficult to be a public figure, but I’m increasingly wondering if the real reason is because he doesn’t have one.

And I’m wondering if what I really want is to become a workaholic.

The thing is, when you surround yourself with a certain type of person, you become like those people. Take, for instance, a meeting I was at last week. I sat nervously on the edge of my chair as we started the meeting with a WIGO (What Is Going On), where people described what’s been happening in their lives. When every single person talked about work except for one, I breathed a triumphant sigh of relief. They didn’t have lives either!

At the time, I was grateful to hear that others were just as crazy as me, but as Belle and my sister amuse me with their updates on promise rings and wedding plans, I’m anxious for the whole “not having a life” thing to be over with. Because I do want it all. The family. The career. And everything in between.

This idea of priorities came up earlier in the week. I was on a panel and one participant asked me, “If I’m more efficient during afternoon meetings, but my employees or volunteers are more efficient in the morning, what do I do?”

“You have meetings in the morning,” I replied. “That’s what you do. That’s a sacrifice you make for being the boss. The point is to make your employees or volunteers as successful as possible so that you’re as successful as possible.” You want to lift them up. You want to help them reach their goals. You should lead them to be as good, no, better than you.

I’ve wanted to be a lot of things in my life. A journalist, a teacher, and a designer are among the more prevalent. But the one thing that remains the same throughout is my desire to help others reach their dreams. I want to create environments where others succeed. I want my job description to simply read “empower.”

And in the end, isn’t that what a leader does?

So, I’m thinking it’s not so bad to be working so hard if I remember these things. In fact, I feel like I need to be working a lot harder, if not smarter. But that’s another discussion all together. Nevertheless, I’m going to make the commitment to take more time for myself, my friends, and my family – publicly, here on this blog – so that I become accountable to the promise I’ve made to myself.

In the meantime, if someone wants to give me the key to changing the world, or if you simply want to introduce me to Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome, I very much doubt that I’ll reply “I’m just not up for it.”

Up for it all, baby.