Friday, October 28, 2011

Jack Canfield's Simple Trick to Become More Optimistic | Building Personal Strength

Jack Canfield's Simple Trick to Become More Optimistic | Building Personal Strength

Jack Canfield's Simple Trick to Become More Optimistic

Jack Canfield
It may take some work to become a truly optimistic person, especially in challenging times.

But in this brief video Jack Canfield describes a simple technique that will get you behaving like an optimist so you can start enjoying the rewards that come with seeing opportunities...



Here's to your success!

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Haimish Line - NYTimes.com

The Haimish Line - NYTimes.com

Recently I did a little reporting from Kenya and Tanzania before taking a safari with my family. We stayed in seven camps. Some were relatively simple, without electricity or running water. Some were relatively luxurious, with regular showers and even pools.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

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The simple camps were friendly, warm and familial. We got to know the other guests at big, communal dinner tables. At one camp we got to play soccer with the staff on a vast field in the Serengeti before an audience of wildebeests. At another camp, we had impromptu spear-throwing and archery competitions with the kitchen staff. Two of the Maasai guides led my youngest son and me on spontaneous mock hunts — stalking our “prey” on foot through ravines and across streams. I can tell you that this is the definition of heaven for a 12-year-old boy, and for someone with the emotional maturity of one.

The more elegant camps felt colder. At one, each family had its own dinner table, so we didn’t get to know the other guests. The tents were spread farther apart. We also didn’t get to know the staff, who served us mostly as waiters, the way they would at a nice hotel.

I know only one word to describe what the simpler camps had and the more luxurious camps lacked: haimish. It’s a Yiddish word that suggests warmth, domesticity and unpretentious conviviality.

It occurred to me that when we moved from a simple camp to a more luxurious camp, we crossed an invisible Haimish Line. The simpler camps had it, the more comfortable ones did not.

This is a generalized phenomenon, which applies to other aspects of life. Often, as we spend more on something, what we gain in privacy and elegance we lose in spontaneous sociability.

I once visited a university that had a large, lavishly financed Hillel House to serve as a Jewish center on campus. But the students told me they preferred the Chabad House nearby, which was run by the orthodox Lubavitchers. At the Chabad house, the sofas were tattered and the rooms cramped, but, the students said, it was more haimish.

Restaurants and bars can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. At some diners and family restaurants, people are more comfortable leaning back, laughing loud, interrupting more and sweeping one another up in a collective euphoria. They talk more to the servers, and even across tables. At nicer restaurants, the food is better, the atmosphere is more refined, but there is a tighter code about what is permissible.

Hotels can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. You’ll find multiple generations at a Comfort Inn breakfast area, and people are likely to exchange pleasantries over the waffle machine. At a four-star hotel’s breakfast dining room, people are quietly answering e-mail on their phones.

Whole neighborhoods can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. Alan Ehrenhalt once wrote a great book called “The Lost City,” about the old densely packed Chicago neighborhoods where kids ran from home to home, where people hung out on their stoops. When the people in those neighborhoods made more money, they moved out to more thinly spaced suburbs with bigger homes where they were much less likely to know their neighbors.

In the 1990s, millions of Americans moved outward so they could have bigger houses and bigger lots, even if it meant long commutes. Research by Robert Frank of Cornell suggests this is usually a bad trade-off.

People are often bad at knowing how to spend their money — I’ve been at least as bad as everybody else in this regard. Lottery winners, for example, barely benefit from their new fortunes. When we get some extra income, we spend it on privacy, space and refinement. This has some obvious benefits: let’s not forget the nights at the Comfort Inn when we were trying to fall asleep while lacrosse teams partied in the hallways and the rooms next door. But suddenly we look around and we’re on the wrong side of the Haimish Line.

We also live in a highly individualistic culture. When we’re shopping for a vacation we’re primarily thinking about Where. The travel companies offer brochures showing private beaches and phenomenal sights. But when you come back from vacation, you primarily treasure the memories of Who — the people you met from faraway places, and the lives you came in contact with.

I can’t resist concluding this column with some kernels of consumption advice accumulated by the prominent scholars Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson. Surveying the vast literature of happiness research, they suggest: Buy experiences instead of things; buy many small pleasures instead of a few big ones; pay now for things you can look forward to and enjoy later.

To which I’d only add: Sometimes it's best to spend carefully so you can stay south of the Haimish Line.

Innovation for the Public Good: An Open Agency Culture Is Key to Innovation

Innovation for the Public Good: An Open Agency Culture Is Key to Innovation:

Download this column (pdf)



Read the column in your web browser (Scribd)


Making your agency or organization into a center for innovation requires nothing less than a cultural transformation. You must change your agency from a cloistered, bureaucratic environment to an open and free-flowing organization committed to finding the best innovations.


There are several kinds of “permeability” necessary in an organization that truly wants to innovate. Your agency must be open to insights, suggestions, and feedback from both inside and outside the organization. You must be open to collaboration across organizations in your field. And you must be open to the possibilities created by new technologies. Together, these types of openness can lead to a more nimble and flexible organization that allows new innovations to emerge and take root.


Recent history is rife with examples of social innovations that succeeded in part because of organizers’ willingness to try new ways of operating. Let’s explore each type of permeability.


Openness to insights from employees and colleagues


Turning to your colleagues and employees is the first step toward fostering an open innovation ecosystem. Idea banks, competitions, and various forms of crowdsourcing have all proven effective at promoting a strong flow of innovative ideas in the public sector.


The government of the United Kingdom in 2010, for example, launched an initiative called the “Spending Challenge” to help identify potential budgetary savings nationwide. Public-sector employees and citizens could submit proposals through a website. One proposal that was adopted changed how citizens received their National Insurance Numbers, a code similar to a Social Security number.


Instead of mailing plastic cards to every person in the United Kingdom, the government began sending a letter containing the number. This simple change will save $1.5 million per year—all because of an idea from an employee.


Openness to input from outside your organizations


All too often, government agencies see themselves as responsible for devising and implementing policy and programs. But seeking input from outside government can lead to much better design.


For instance, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is quickly proving itself to be deeply invested in innovation and transparency as it works to redesign mortgage disclosure forms. CFPB has modified two mortgage disclosure documents that totaled five pages into one double-sided, user-friendly form written in plain English.


This summer, the agency field-tested two versions of the revised documents with consumers as well as with mortgage lenders, and the agency’s efforts earned plaudits from legislators, the American Bankers Association, and the Consumers Union, among others.


Comments from consumers and brokers will be used in revising the forms further before they are approved for use nationwide. As a result, the forms are much more likely to be effective at helping consumers make informed decisions about new mortgages.


Openness to collaboration with organizations across your field


The most innovative thing about the Department of State’s “Apps4Africa” public diplomacy project isn’t the immediate outcome—small cash prizes for the best mobile phone applications—but the process.


This year, Apps4Africa will bring together local innovators, entrepreneurs, NGOs, and government officials in 15 African nations to develop local solutions to mitigate the problems caused by climate change. Competitions will be held in East Africa, West and Central Africa, and South Africa. Three winners from each region will receive help from private-sector companies and foundations to implement and scale up their ideas.


“Climate change is an enormously complicated problem; it’s not something that any one group or country is going to solve,” says Jeffrey Fox, an American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, science and technology policy fellow in the State Department, who works on the Apps4Africa project. Fox calls the project “an all-hands-on-deck” approach that relies heavily on private-sector input and engagement with local partners.


Openness to new technology


The Internet helped enable many of these collaborations, and the web can be a powerful tool for innovation. But agencies should not discount the possibilities of other, more localized technologies.


In the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, regional innovation funds have been used to prototype more than 250 new ideas generated by nurses, doctors, and hospital managers. Many of their ideas involve using new technologies, from sending text messages to asthma sufferers about the day’s pollen count to patient check-in kiosks at hospitals in Birmingham. The kiosks embrace technology more commonly seen in the retail sector to reduce lines and make sure patients are seen promptly.


Of course, simply encouraging employees and users to share their thoughts and ideas may not be sufficient to identify the most innovative solutions. Next week, we’ll explore the importance of offering real incentives for innovation.


Download this column (pdf)



Read the column in your web browser (Scribd)


This is the latest installment of a weekly column on government innovation produced by CAP’s Doing What Works team in partnership with the Bellwether Education Partners and the Young Foundation, as part of the “Innovation for the Public Good” series.


Kristina Costa is a Special Assistant at the Center for American Progress.

Income Inequality Is Not a Myth - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic

Income Inequality Is Not a Myth - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic

Derek Thompson

DEREK THOMPSON - Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website.


OCT 26 2011, 11:27 AM ET 95

A new study from the Congressional Budget Office tells us what we all (should) already know: income inequality is real and the causes are terrifyingly inextricable.

cbpp income inequality 2011.png

Income inequality is a myth.

That was the takeaway from five economic studies collected by James Pethokoukis that found income gains were shared fairly equally in the 30 years before the Great Recession. What little income inequality existed, he claimed, was off-set by inflation. The stuff that the richest 10 percent like to buy has gotten more expensive than the stuff the poorest 10 percent like to buy. So, not only are low-income households making real money, but also their income is going further every year.

These studies are important contributions to the broader debate about the working class. But they represent a minority opinion. Almost everything we know about wages and prices tells us that the typical household has suffered a Lost Decade for market wages. Just as important, the price of necessities -- such as health care, a college education, a house, and energy to heat your home and run your car engine -- is growing faster than our incomes.

I'm going to try to tell this story in five parts: What's going on with wages; why we're dealing with a global crisis; and what government can and can't do.

WAGES

after tax income.pngThe Congressional Budget Office's monsteranalysis of income inequality is a useful entry in this debate. What it found matches the graph that leads this article, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

CBO found that in the three decades between 1979 and the beginning of the Great Recession, real household income grew 60 percent overall. But it didn't grow evenly.

Among the poorest fifth of households, income grew 18 percent. For the next three quintiles, it grew just shy of 40 percent. For the richest fifth, it grew 65 percent. And for the top percentile, it grew by a whopping 275 percent, which means it nearly tripled. Bottom line: Income inequality exists.

market income.pngLet's focus on the median household: poorer than half the country and richer than the other half. There are two ways to look at median income growth. The first is "after-tax income," the first graph to the left. That's the money in your pocket after government taxes and benefits. This measure has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1979. That's not so bad.

The second metric is market income, the second graph to the left. That's your workplace compensation, plus any money you made from a small company (public speaking, quilt-selling, etc) and investments. This measure didn't grow between 1980 and 1992, and it's basically flatlined since the mid-1990s. This graph looks like two lost decades framing a window of real income growth between 1991 and 1999. Bottom line: Median wages had a rough time in the 1980s and an equally rough time in the 2000s.

And ... here's the kicker ... then the recession happened. Ten million people lost their jobs between 2007 and 2011. The economy has teetered on the edge of deflation for two years. Wages basically stopped growing, and that's for the lucky 84 percent of the labor force that had full-time work.

WAGES, PART II:
WHAT IF THE 1950s WENT ON FOREVER?


Income equality looks very real, and we can trace its explosion to the last 30 years. But what if the last 30 years didn't happen -- or rather, what if income gains from the 1950s and 1960s continued forever? How much more would the typical family make?

We posed the question to Michael Greenstone, the director of the Hamilton Project. Between 1950 and 1970, we saw fabulously high economic growth, he said. Earnings grew 44 percent per decade -- more than three times faster than they've grown over the last 30 years. If that trend had continued, Greenstone said, the median man would be earning a whopping $194,000 per year today!

median earnings men.png

That seems more than a little implausible, Greenstone admits (and we agree). A more plausible counterfactual is that median earnings kept up with average earnings, as they did prior to the 1970s. In this scenario the median man's earnings would be $41,875 instead of $33,000 -- $9,000, or 27 percent, higher.

mean median annual earnings for men.png

WHY INCOME INEQUALITY IS GETTING WORSE

The important thing to understand about income inequality is that the United States ain't unique. Across the world, the highest-paid households are getting richer, and the middle is getting left out of the growth game. Here are two graphs from the IMF that look at European countries and the United States. On the left, you see that from Portugal (PT) to the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), the highest-paid third are finding more work, and the middle third are finding less work. On the right, you see why. Manufacturing (Man) is losing share in every developed country, including in the manufacturing juggernaut Germany. Basically, an engine of middle class growth in the 1950s is losing steam.

productivity2.pngNouriel Roubini boiled down the factors behind this worldwide growth of income inequality to four issues. I'll boil them down to two. Trade and technology.

1. Technology. In the long run, tech tends to grow economies. In the short run, it can create a lot of carnage. (Definitely read this article: Why Workers Are Losing the War Against Machines). Machines can make most cars better than people. Computer programs can crunch data faster than people. If humans don't find skills that aren't more easily performed by non-human bots, they'll either go without work or have to work low-skill service jobs that haven't been automated yet.

2. Trade. "A basic principle of international trade theory is that greater trade with a labor-abundant economy will reduce the wages of workers in a capital-abundant economy," Roubini writes. That's why so many clothing manufacturing jobs have gone to China, and why even some Chinese jobs have gone on to still poorer countries, like Bangladesh and Vietnam. Cheap stuff is good for consumers, but not always good for workers in high-wage countries like the U.S.

But trade isn't just about making cheaper socks. The tradability of services threatens even white collar workers. With better information technology, more services are tradable and susceptible the same forces that sucked American manufacturing and IT jobs out of the U.S.

The U.S. doesn't have much of an industrial policy to direct funds away from manufacturing toward another industry that could accept these millions of displaced workers. Most of our "equality policy" is run through the tax code through the redistribution of income to poorer families. So how are we doing there?

ARE TAXES HELPING OR HURTING?


Let's come up for air and review. Income inequality exists. It's getting worse. And it's global. So what can government do? The simplest thing is to tax people who are benefiting the most from the market and redistribute some of that money in the form of income and services to the folks who are doing the worst.

What the CBO found in yesterday's report is that the federal income tax has become slightly more progressive. But the overall tax code -- which includes payroll taxes and excise taxes -- has not done much to dampen the impact of income inequality. In fact, the CBO found that the increase in inequality of after-tax income was greater than the increase in inequality of before-tax income. Another way of putting this is to say that the poorest 20 fifth of households saw their share of total transfer payments fall from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007. Over that time, transfer payments as a share of market income did not change.

This makes it sound like government is ganging up with capitalism on the middle class. That's not exactly the case, either. The lowest quintile's share of all federal taxes has fallen over the last 30 years. The top quintile is paying more. The top percent is paying about the same share as it did in 1982. Here's the picture:

30 years taxes.png

The upshot is that U.S. tax policy has given a break to poor families for a long time. It's not the enemy, and it won't be the entire solution. What we're dealing with is a vast, complicated conspiracy of incentives. Incentives for manufacturing companies to find cheaper ways to make cheaper goods. Incentives for white-collar employers to find cheaper ways to offer cheaper services. Incentives to offer higher and higher salaries to attract superstars across all sectors of the economy and offer nothing more than you need to keep workers who don't have skills to press for better pay in other jobs. This is complicated stuff, and I'd be lying to you if I said I understood all of it. But let's all agree about square one. Income inequality is not a myth, so what do we think we should do about it? If we can't agree on the question, we'll never find an answer.

Pretend Jobs « The Contrary Farmer

Pretend Jobs « The Contrary Farmer

Pretend Jobs

In Gene Logsdon Blog on October 26, 2011 at 5:21 pm

From GENE LOGSDON

It says here in the paper that it takes 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. No wonder we have so many people holding down unnecessary jobs. There aren’t enough real jobs to go around and besides, we are replacing people with machines as fast as we can to do the real jobs. Rather than trying to eliminate pretend jobs for the sake of efficiency as is now being proposed (lots of pretension in that too), we should be thinking up better quality pretend jobs— imaginative new positions in useless work that are more beneficial to society than the usual run of useless work.

The famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, first thought of this approach many years ago. He proposed, as useless but harmless work, burying tin cans full of money all over the landscape and then letting people without jobs hunt for them and pocket the contents. He claimed this would keep the unemployed occupied and happy without causing any costly harm to society. He didn’t say it, but I suppose if the money were buried out in next year’s corn fields, you could get the soil worked up for planting without burning a whole lot of fuel. Also you could create another bunch of useless jobs hiring people to bury the cash.

Agriculture is full of examples of beneficially useless jobs. Many of the positions in the Extension Service no longer serve any real need or purpose and are finally being cut in the current wave of “austerity.” But if county agents and consumer educators merely repeat work already being done by the private sector, at least such jobholders are not doing destructive work like manufacturing bombs. For awhile, I had a job that paid me for checking newly-installed drainage tile systems to make sure they were put in according to Soil Conservation Service regulations. It never seemed to have occurred to authorities that farmers were not going to deliberately put in drainage systems that did not work. But my job surely contributed more to the social good than if I had been employed to check the operation of roulette wheels at casinos.

The ticklish part of all this is that one man’s pretend job is another man’s real job. The financial conservative today, intent on reducing taxes, generally defines a real job as one that people will willingly pay for (private sector jobs rather than public sector jobs). I believe that definition sanctifies prostitution as good business, doesn’t it? Growing corn is certainly real work, but what about growing corn to make car fuel while people starve?

In case you didn’t notice, the Senate just voted to end direct payments to wealthy farmers. Direct payments are those a farmer receives just because he or she is a farmer, no other strings attached. These payments are despicable, really, and it is high time they were abolished. But again, I am wondering if it is better to shower money on a food producer rather than on a bomb producer. More benefit might come from spreading the direct payment folly out to everyone willing to brandish a hoe productively. How about paying people a hundred dollars a bushel for backyard corn? Backyard corn won’t hurt the environment. People would happily stay at home and garden rather than get killed on the highways so often. And look at the jobs that would be created for the army of inspectors needed to make sure the corn growers didn’t cheat. Food prices would decline with all that corn on the market. There would be an increase of fresh, healthful cornmeal, corn fritters, popcorn, sweet corn, corn chips, pancakes, corn bread, parched corn, tortillas and good old fat-producing corn-fed meat. The countryside would blossom into a beauteous land of peace and plenty with hundreds of new, small farms.

Many parts of Europe have been doing this for years, literally paying small farmers to preserve an oasis of local food and a healthy rural environment. In New England, there are areas where imaginative local government actually pays farmers to keep cows grazing out in the pastures. It attracts tourists and the money pours in. That’s the way to go.

Okay, so I’m being a bit facetious. But underneath I am deadly serious. We should not allow the abstract dictums of money to rule the real world of human life, love and the pursuit of happiness. That means creating more pretend jobs, not fewer.
~~

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: It’s Not About You

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: It’s Not About You

10.26.11

It’s Not About You

Leadership
It’s Not About You by Bob Burg and John David Mann, is the story of a leader’s journey. A journey any good leader has to take.

Ben begins with an agenda. His job is to convince or if necessary, to steamroll a manufacturer of high-quality chairs to accepting a merger. Ben’s company believes it to be a good thing, but the target company is not so sure. Ben’s mindset starts out contemplating, “how do I get them to do what I want them to do.”

Somewhere between getting people to understand him and slowing-down long enough to understand them, he found his answer.

Through a series of encounters with a mentor—Aunt Elle—and a lot of reflection Ben comes to understand that it is not about him. His journey causes him to reflect on five lessons:

Lesson #1: Hold the Vision. The hard part isn’t coming up with the vision, it’s holding on to the vision. “As a leader, your job is to hold fast to the big picture, to keep seeing it in your mind’s eye, with crystal clarity, where it is you are going—that place that right at this moment.”

Lesson #2: Build Your People. “People have all sorts of amazing qualities and natural abilities trapped inside them. With the wood, it’s knowing how to apply the heat. With people, it’s applying your belief.” If you give people something great to live up to, they usually will. “How influential you are, comes down to your intention. What are you focused on? Your benefit, or theirs?” The more you yield, the more power you have.

Lesson #3: Do the Work. Be humble and stay grounded. Aunt Elle said, “People who achieve great things that the world will never forget, start out by accomplishing small things the world will never see.”

Lesson #4: Stand for Something. Lead from who you are. People will figure it out anyway. People need to trust your competence, but they need to trust your character more. “Competence is simply the baseline, the thing that puts you in the game. It matters, but honestly, it’s a dime a dozen.” The authors remind us that you can only lead as far as you grow. Aunt Elle says, “What you have to give, you offer least of all through what you say; in greater part through what you do; but in greatest part through who you are.”

Lesson #5: Share the Mantle. It’s not about you. “You are not their dreams, you are only the steward of those dreams. And leaders often get it backwards and start thinking they not only hold the best of others but they are the best….The moment you start thinking it’s all about you, that you’re the deal, is the moment you begin losing your capacity to positively influence others’ lives.”
Whatever great parenting looks like, it is not about the parent.
It’s Not About You is a great presentation of solid life lessons. A book to be read and passed around. Unfortunately, “it’s not about you,” is not the kind of lesson that once learned, is always remembered. If it was, fewer great leaders would finish poorly after so many years of outstanding service. This is an issue that we face over and over again, but hopefully in ever diminishing frequency and intensity as our leadership matures. This book is a great reminder of the power of the right kind of leadership; leadership that comes from an inner strength of understanding, service and outgoing concern for others.

Quote
Sometimes the hardest thing to grasp about leadership is that it is not about you. It’s easy to make it about us. We want to do something, so naturally we push; when actually we should be pulling by considering the needs of others first. In leadership, as with so much in life, the more we give, the more we have.

Pretend Jobs « The Contrary Farmer

Pretend Jobs « The Contrary Farmer

Pretend Jobs

In Gene Logsdon Blog on October 26, 2011 at 5:21 pm

From GENE LOGSDON

It says here in the paper that it takes 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. No wonder we have so many people holding down unnecessary jobs. There aren’t enough real jobs to go around and besides, we are replacing people with machines as fast as we can to do the real jobs. Rather than trying to eliminate pretend jobs for the sake of efficiency as is now being proposed (lots of pretension in that too), we should be thinking up better quality pretend jobs— imaginative new positions in useless work that are more beneficial to society than the usual run of useless work.

The famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, first thought of this approach many years ago. He proposed, as useless but harmless work, burying tin cans full of money all over the landscape and then letting people without jobs hunt for them and pocket the contents. He claimed this would keep the unemployed occupied and happy without causing any costly harm to society. He didn’t say it, but I suppose if the money were buried out in next year’s corn fields, you could get the soil worked up for planting without burning a whole lot of fuel. Also you could create another bunch of useless jobs hiring people to bury the cash.

Agriculture is full of examples of beneficially useless jobs. Many of the positions in the Extension Service no longer serve any real need or purpose and are finally being cut in the current wave of “austerity.” But if county agents and consumer educators merely repeat work already being done by the private sector, at least such jobholders are not doing destructive work like manufacturing bombs. For awhile, I had a job that paid me for checking newly-installed drainage tile systems to make sure they were put in according to Soil Conservation Service regulations. It never seemed to have occurred to authorities that farmers were not going to deliberately put in drainage systems that did not work. But my job surely contributed more to the social good than if I had been employed to check the operation of roulette wheels at casinos.

The ticklish part of all this is that one man’s pretend job is another man’s real job. The financial conservative today, intent on reducing taxes, generally defines a real job as one that people will willingly pay for (private sector jobs rather than public sector jobs). I believe that definition sanctifies prostitution as good business, doesn’t it? Growing corn is certainly real work, but what about growing corn to make car fuel while people starve?

In case you didn’t notice, the Senate just voted to end direct payments to wealthy farmers. Direct payments are those a farmer receives just because he or she is a farmer, no other strings attached. These payments are despicable, really, and it is high time they were abolished. But again, I am wondering if it is better to shower money on a food producer rather than on a bomb producer. More benefit might come from spreading the direct payment folly out to everyone willing to brandish a hoe productively. How about paying people a hundred dollars a bushel for backyard corn? Backyard corn won’t hurt the environment. People would happily stay at home and garden rather than get killed on the highways so often. And look at the jobs that would be created for the army of inspectors needed to make sure the corn growers didn’t cheat. Food prices would decline with all that corn on the market. There would be an increase of fresh, healthful cornmeal, corn fritters, popcorn, sweet corn, corn chips, pancakes, corn bread, parched corn, tortillas and good old fat-producing corn-fed meat. The countryside would blossom into a beauteous land of peace and plenty with hundreds of new, small farms.

Many parts of Europe have been doing this for years, literally paying small farmers to preserve an oasis of local food and a healthy rural environment. In New England, there are areas where imaginative local government actually pays farmers to keep cows grazing out in the pastures. It attracts tourists and the money pours in. That’s the way to go.

Okay, so I’m being a bit facetious. But underneath I am deadly serious. We should not allow the abstract dictums of money to rule the real world of human life, love and the pursuit of happiness. That means creating more pretend jobs, not fewer.
~~

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: It’s Not About You

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: It’s Not About You

10.26.11

It’s Not About You

Leadership
It’s Not About You by Bob Burg and John David Mann, is the story of a leader’s journey. A journey any good leader has to take.

Ben begins with an agenda. His job is to convince or if necessary, to steamroll a manufacturer of high-quality chairs to accepting a merger. Ben’s company believes it to be a good thing, but the target company is not so sure. Ben’s mindset starts out contemplating, “how do I get them to do what I want them to do.”

Somewhere between getting people to understand him and slowing-down long enough to understand them, he found his answer.

Through a series of encounters with a mentor—Aunt Elle—and a lot of reflection Ben comes to understand that it is not about him. His journey causes him to reflect on five lessons:

Lesson #1: Hold the Vision. The hard part isn’t coming up with the vision, it’s holding on to the vision. “As a leader, your job is to hold fast to the big picture, to keep seeing it in your mind’s eye, with crystal clarity, where it is you are going—that place that right at this moment.”

Lesson #2: Build Your People. “People have all sorts of amazing qualities and natural abilities trapped inside them. With the wood, it’s knowing how to apply the heat. With people, it’s applying your belief.” If you give people something great to live up to, they usually will. “How influential you are, comes down to your intention. What are you focused on? Your benefit, or theirs?” The more you yield, the more power you have.

Lesson #3: Do the Work. Be humble and stay grounded. Aunt Elle said, “People who achieve great things that the world will never forget, start out by accomplishing small things the world will never see.”

Lesson #4: Stand for Something. Lead from who you are. People will figure it out anyway. People need to trust your competence, but they need to trust your character more. “Competence is simply the baseline, the thing that puts you in the game. It matters, but honestly, it’s a dime a dozen.” The authors remind us that you can only lead as far as you grow. Aunt Elle says, “What you have to give, you offer least of all through what you say; in greater part through what you do; but in greatest part through who you are.”

Lesson #5: Share the Mantle. It’s not about you. “You are not their dreams, you are only the steward of those dreams. And leaders often get it backwards and start thinking they not only hold the best of others but they are the best….The moment you start thinking it’s all about you, that you’re the deal, is the moment you begin losing your capacity to positively influence others’ lives.”
Whatever great parenting looks like, it is not about the parent.
It’s Not About You is a great presentation of solid life lessons. A book to be read and passed around. Unfortunately, “it’s not about you,” is not the kind of lesson that once learned, is always remembered. If it was, fewer great leaders would finish poorly after so many years of outstanding service. This is an issue that we face over and over again, but hopefully in ever diminishing frequency and intensity as our leadership matures. This book is a great reminder of the power of the right kind of leadership; leadership that comes from an inner strength of understanding, service and outgoing concern for others.

Quote
Sometimes the hardest thing to grasp about leadership is that it is not about you. It’s easy to make it about us. We want to do something, so naturally we push; when actually we should be pulling by considering the needs of others first. In leadership, as with so much in life, the more we give, the more we have.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

3 Keys To Creating Great "Good Places" | Co. Design

3 Keys To Creating Great "Good Places" | Co. Design

3 Keys To Creating Great "Good Places"

The liveliest public spaces share a few core ingredients.

In his book, The Great Good Place, the urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote about the importance of third places--the informal “public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact.” Unlike home (the “first” place) and work (the “second”), third places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. These are the places of “regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”

Consider the qualities of a third place. Is it something that we can design? Can a place be constructed to create a Cheers-like arrival of regulars? We may not aspire to be barstool-warmer Norm Peterson, who always got a warm reception from the the crowd when he walked in, but a sense of recognition and belonging is a powerful motivator for citizens to engage one another. Other times, we appreciate the ability to lay back and observe, perhaps be the greeter instead of the greet-ee. This begs the question: Can we design spaces that allow both interaction and anonymity? If so, what are the elements of space that encourage diversity, to include families, the young and older, extroverts and introverts?

As the world continues to urbanize, the importance of design and the idea of “place” will become more and more important to the livability of cities. Real estate development has already become less defined by building and more about the interstitial spaces the buildings create. In the future, value will be defined not by cost and capacity but by civic character and sustainable amenities.

Here are three ingredients that have produced some of the best civic spaces in the country.

1. Create a physical space that encourages social activity.

A place where we see and make friends, recognize and greet neighbors, and interact comfortably with strangers is a sociable place--resulting from a hundred decisions about form, choreography, and community interest. Vital third places contain the physical elements--seating, landscape, a connection to surrounding retail and other public activities--that make people feel welcome and comfortable. Spaces that are visible and easy to get to, stay in, or move through are ideal third-place territory, especially when located near public transit and other civic destinations.

Cleanliness and safety are also necessary components, as are comfortable areas to stroll and sit. These conditions attract a balance of men and women, young and old--diversity that is critical to a secure and attractive image for “place” in any community. Ultimately, the success of great spaces is their inherent ability, through constant management, to accommodate a wide variety of day and night activities.

2. Mix Public and Private

Does a third place have to be in an accessible, privately controlled space, or must it be in an area open to the public? The answer, of course, is yes--it must be clean and secure, well managed, and open to all of good will. Great civic space can be publicly or privately owned, but the best places are often a combination of both.

For example, Paley Park in New York City, often cited as one of the best urban spaces in the country, is a privately owned public space. This charming urban refuge defines the quaint idea of a pocket park. All the senses are engaged, via tree-filtered sunlight and the mist of a falling water fountain; a café provides light meals and snacks; and lightweight furniture invites friends to gather, while also allowing moments of solitude.


[Paley Park]

Like many successful civic places, this place is paradoxical. People love Paley Park because they can be alone in a busy city. While it’s perceived as a place of respite and quiet, it is, in fact, heavily populated and full of noise (albeit, the soothing sound of a waterfall).

Another example is the 3rd Street Promenade, in Santa Monica, California, which has been carefully curated over the years to achieve the right mix of tenants, entertainment, civic uses, and amenities by a public-private management company. The Promenade’s long-term success is the result of careful shaping by the agency that, according to its statement of operational objectives, oversees the creation of “a strong feeling of place.” The attention to detail has paid off: the area attracts tens of thousands of local office workers, tourists, families, and teens each week--all encouraged by the environment to dine, interact, and people watch. But the most important evolution of the promenade began many years ago with the ability to modulate the flow of pedestrian and car traffic.

Until the 1960s, 3rd Street was a normal commercial road with auto traffic. When it was converted into a shopping mall, it became a pedestrian-only zone. Eventually, after a period of commercial success, the mall floundered and eventually became blighted. In the 1980s, the street was redesigned and reconstructed to its current form and opened to automobile traffic as well as an enhanced pedestrian promenade. As its popularity returned, especially on weekend nights, the promenade closed to cars but reopened to traffic on the following morning. Today, the bollards that block autos are always in place but, if needed, could be reopened to establish the optimal balance of car and pedestrian access.

The pedestrian-car balance is one of the most important keys to creating a livable urban place. The Promenade demonstrates that flexibility is an important third-place characteristic, and one of the most challenging to achieve.


[3rd Street Promenade]

Rockefeller Plaza is another private place that has invited public use, making it one of the central gathering places in New York. Interesting stores and markets, outdoor seating and dining, and of course, the central skating rink, all encourage the gathering of diverse groups of tourists and locals that is typical of great third places.

The evolution of the plaza from private corporate space to national icon began with a change of attitude. Benches--a more gracious choice than the spiked fencing originally considered--were added to screen and protect the landscape. The public came, stayed, and appreciated the gardens, the shops, the people watching, and the interaction. Dozens of other attractive additions, including art, seasonal displays, and lighting, have increased the sense of place that seems to belong not just to New York but the entire country.

These best-in-class civic spaces are more than just convenient amenities. They attract a varied and even global constituency as the “living rooms” of our cities. They add value to property and livability on local and regional scales. In the near future, it will be unimaginable to consider, from an economic, civic, or community viewpoint, a significant urban development that does not aspire to be a third place.

3. Mix Uses

Our most challenging but rewarding projects result from all the live, work, and play environments coming together in urban mixed-use developments. If the leaded elements are skillfully blended, the results can be golden. What we gain is the opportunity to be involved in the civic realm--to be active as citizens of our communities. What we lose is the daily commute, stress, and pollution. Alchemy doesn’t get any better than that!
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The architect and former congressman Richard N. Swett, FAIA, wrote that “it is the unique responsibility of the architect to use space and design as a unifying force, to physically realize the insistent perception of community wherever it struggles to exist on its own.” Without the physical encouragement to engage socially, our built environment will, as it does in many places in America, lack the vitality of a free democratic society. These third places, which encourage diverse populations to come together and interact, may be the key to civility and the sustainability of our cities.

Carl F. Meyer, FAIA, is a principal at Perkins+Will and an Adjunct Associate Professor at USC’s School of Policy, Planning and Development. As a Principal and leader of the corporate + commercial + civic practice of Perkins+Will in Los Angeles, Carl brings a strong background in major urban mixed-use projects; commercial, community, corporate and institutional facilities; and university projects.

[Rockefeller Center photo by Asterix611; Paley Park photo byChristine Graziano; 3rd Street Promenade photo by A Better Stay]