From the Barnstable Patriot
It might be the only one. Anywhere.
It’s the business book club at the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, and among the entrepreneurs and business managers who attended its second meeting recently, not one knew of a group anywhere else that is devoted to reading and discussing books about leadership and work in the twenty-first-century.
A few months ago I acted on a goal I have had for a long time—to start a business book club.
Although we have only met a few times, the coming together of this like-minded group of professionals has been more delightful than I could have ever anticipated.
Instead of being limited to my own conclusions on a particular book, I now have access to the ways that others with different backgrounds and expertise take in, interpret and utilize the same information.
It’s like arriving late at night to a vacation destination you’ve only seen in brochures and waking up in the morning and opening the curtains to find a beautiful, expansive view of the world your imagination could never have fully pictured.
With his usual talent for organization and clarity, Daniel Pink, the author of Drive, offers the following tweet-sized summary of the book: “Carrot and stick are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose.”
In these challenging economic times, it may seem strange to suggest that people are not primarily motivated by external rewards, but Pink makes a compelling case for the fact that internal motivation is what is really driving us, once basic living needs are met.
If you don’t believe this can produce something of real value, he is saying, just consider the many open-source Internet initiatives, e.g., OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, WordPress, Linux, etc., with new ones cropping up almost every day, run by volunteers who have chosen to put their energy where their authenticity lies.
Summertime and the living is easy—but not for a Mini-Mart cashier at a rest stop on the Mass Pike.
That was the assumption I made when I stopped there for an iced coffee on a hot, sunny Saturday last month on my way to visit family in Connecticut.
The store was packed. A long line of customers in a hurry to be somewhere else snaked its way around the junk food displays, inching slowly toward the older woman on the other side of the counter.
“What an awfully hard job,” I thought, as I watched her selling lottery tickets and sodas.
The weather outside is beautiful, and you’re stuck inside. You’re on your feet all day, under constant pressure from impatient, sometimes rude people. You’re exhausted at the end of your shift and you don’t have much of in the way of material reward to show for it.
But even as I was creating this scenario in my head, I still was able to take in the attentive cheerfulness with which she waited on those who preceded me.
The US government reports two different unemployment statistics. The one we are most familiar with is the one most talked about in the news media, something called the “U-3 unemployment rate.” It currently hovers just under 10%.
There is also the less well-known “U-6″ rate, which is now over 17%. It includes what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “involuntary part time, underemployed workers” and “discouraged” workers who have stopped looking.
For people struggling to stay positive after a year or more of unemployment, I’m sure that even the higher number must seem too low.
“Looking for work using the old methodology is a form of insanity.”
“If you are driving your professional life by an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper, you are not doing all you can.”
“I’m trying to get people to be comfortable enough with looking for work on an ongoing basis, because that’s what a business owner has to do.”
August 2nd through 6th, I will once again serve as class assistant for Edith and Charles Seashore’s program, “Intentional Use of Self: Strategies and Skills for Consulting, Coaching and Change.” Edith Whitfield Seashore, M.A., specializes in Organizational Development and change and has over 40 years of experience training and consulting with corporations and government agencies as well as non-profits. Charles Seashore, Ph.D., is chair of the faculty of the doctoral program in Human and Organization Development of the Fielding Graduate Institute. Both are NTL pioneers and amazing people. This is my fourth time serving as their assistant.
Sometimes it comes on gradually—the pressure you feel to find work, get your business in the black again, or restore stability to your financial future accumulates, causing sleepless nights or mornings when you sit at your desk not knowing what to do next.
Or there may be a trigger—one rejection too many, a bill you can’t pay, or a depressing headline saps your belief in yourself and better days ahead, and you have that sinking sensation of fear taking you over for a few days or a week or longer.
Fear is a natural reaction to change, and you can expect it to be particularly active when your work-life, that part of your existence that provides sustenance, purpose and identity, has been shaken like a snow globe.
All we know about the woman in this photograph is that she was 80 years old in November, 1936, when Dorothea Lange took her picture, and at the time she was living in a camp for migrant workers outside Bakersfield, California.
If we think of her in the context of the times, we can deduce that she and her family were probably among the thousands of farmers forced to migrate from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California in search of work. This would mean that she had been enduring dislocation and acute poverty for some time.
Yet the old woman’s look is strong and her demeanor is positive. The shadow from the hand that shields her eyes from the bright sunlight obscures much of her face, but we can see enough to know that she is looking straight ahead and determined to keeping moving forward.
On August 18 at 5 PM, I will facilitate a conversation about Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, at the second session of the Cape’s newly formed Business Book Club. The meeting will take place in the conference room of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, 5 Shoot Flying Hill Rd, Centerville, MA. The group is open to the public. Come have your entrepreneurial energy revitalized by a lively discussion of the best practices for achieving success in any business venture.
