Love in the Time of Economic Indicators

Matt’s in love.

This may seem pretty mundane given that it’s Spring and a young man’s fancy is supposed to turn that way.  But Matt is a first class Explorer.  Traveling man for a lot of his professional life.  Not exactly a bon vivant – too hardworking for that – but not a cocooner by nature.

When the economy was rocking, Matt was an executive in the human capital industry, hitting the bright lights in the big cities with pretty young things and being surprised when nothing evolved into the long term.  He’d lament, and I’d laugh and say, you need a Watchdog.  An Explorer needs the one who’ll make a home base for him (or her), even if those travels are just on the web or in the cerebral cortex.  But Watchdogs don’t go for flashdancing.  They’re more the ‘comfort food’ of the relationship world.

So I asked Matt if he was familiar with the theory of one of the world’s great economic experts who said something like this: when the economy is up, it’s easy to find a great job but harder to find love; when the economy’s down, good jobs are hard to find but love is easy.  He guessed Galbraith.  I laughed.  It’s Helen Gurley Brown, former Cosmopolitan editor and author of Sex and the Single Girl.  (I never actually referred to her as an economist but really, her pronouncement is more accurate than the predictions of the average pedigreed academic.)

Matt put it together pretty quickly and realized how distracting his success was to his goal of finding love.  He also admitted how right I was about who he’d really fit with.  But of course I had all the theory behind Role-Based Assessment at my disposal.

So here’s the moral of the story.  The economy is off and is likely to stay that way for a while.  You might as well look for love.  And don’t restrict yourself to the personal kind either.  (Caveat: Do not confuse love and sex!)

Find people you love.  You’ll know when you’re there because you can work easily with them and feel great about it.

Figure out how to create an organization with them and do something.  It doesn’t matter what as long as it’s something you enjoy doing together.  When the economic smoke clears, you might find yourself with everything you ever wanted – a great job and great love.

Lessons From My Mother

My mother passed from this world last week at age 85, having suffered from Parkinson’s and dementia for too many years.  This was my eulogy, which I called Lessons From My Mother.

—

When I think of who my mother was, I think of her as a woman much younger than I am now. I think of the time when I was on my late teens and she was around 40, when it was her mission to teach me everything she knew about being a good woman.

She was an excellent manager of money, as many who survived the Great Depression were, but she was never stingy, neither with her money nor her time, even when there wasn’t much of either. She could figure out how to spend the same dollar twice and how to make you feel there was all the time in the world, even when she had to get ready to go to work. She could turn what she had into what you needed, whether that was a bargain basement dress she made special by changing the buttons or the time she found – or made – to play Scrabble with me. Like most valuable lessons, that is something you teach by being an example and letting your protégée see how you do it, step by step.

Her second lesson was about accomplishing. That was her word. Whatever it was we set out to do, whether a trip to S. Klein’s On The Square to shop for my trousseau or spending the morning with a can of Johnson’s Glass Wax cleaning the windows of our apartment on Walton Avenue, when we were done, she would get a satisfied look on her face and say to me, “We accomplished.” I realize that was the beginning of my understanding that things that have meaning, the big and the small, are done by teams. It is an illusion that we are so powerful that we accomplish things in a vacuum by ourselves. It was not my strong point but interdependency – what we call teamwork – came naturally to her and she was my model for how I do it now.

Her third lesson was to respect everyone, no matter who they were or what they did. By this, she meant not to forget them, not to assume that they were taken care of. Again, the Great Depression was probably an influence on her, but she also had such a good example in her sister Jeanette, may she rest in peace.

So to honor her memory, I ask that you do three things today.

First, be pleased with what you have been granted and make it into what you need. Try spending it twice, whether it is in money that you use to create more value to the world or time that you not waste on trivial things.

Second, accomplish something with someone else. It doesn’t matter what it is, only that it’s something you’re both proud of.

Third, remember people you would not ordinarily think of and find a way to make their lives easier in some way.

And as you leave today, remember, as I will, that she was not a weeper and wailer, but rather a rememberer of good times. Even as her own memory failed her, she could speak of the past, always of family and friendships, of trips and adventures. Remember her at in the most wonderful times you had with her – the birthday parties of our childhood, the hot dogs at Coney Island, whenever it was that you were with her. And wish her well on her newest journey, the one we will all someday join her on.

—

She was a Watchdog.  (If you are unfamiliar with the Roles, you can find out about them by listening to the webcasts on The Ten People You Really Want on Your Team!)  She enjoyed it and she was good at it, both at home and at work, where she was in senior management and patiently taught her reports how to do things right.

She taught me all the favorite tasks of the Watchdog – budgeting, accounting, repairing and making do with what you had – but I never really enjoyed doing them.  She didn’t understand why I did the things I loved – starting businesses, speaking, writing, networking.  She was just happy that she had done her job right and I could do something to make a living.  We respected, trusted and had faith in each other.  She is on my team, and in my heart, forever.

The Making of an Entrepreneur

Teaching is almost always a trip into the unknown.  This time, teaching Entrepreneurship in the Health Professions at Temple, the light has been turned on.  We gave the class access to the assessment at www.Tools4Entrepreneurs.com and by the time I got to class Monday, it felt like I knew all of them.  In fact, I did, since when you know someone’s Role, you know the most important things about them.  Case in point, a fabulous Watchdog.  I commented that Watchdogs were generally drawn to work in the financial world and she said she’d worked in the field but left because she didn’t like that people were sold products that were wrong for them.  Just like a Watchdog, such a great protector!  She’ll make a wonderful team member in whatever she ends up doing.

We had a guest entrepreneur share her story with the class.  What an inspiration!  Marie Frisbee is a single mother of three who is driven by a dream.  She started The School of Medical Massage in Philadelphia to teach massage without funding or an MBA – just a huge amount of heart and the soul of the social entrepreneur.  She’ll do well by doing good.  Providing people with HIV/AIDS and other diseases, pain and injuries with services that are complementary to the the usual medical modalities, her students have a waiting list for their $30 hour-long massage.  You don’t even have to be sick or in pain to enjoy that!  The best part is she is growing the next generation of Medical Massage Practitioners, just in time for we, the Baby Boomers, to have a happier old age.  Thanks Marie!

What makes a great CFO?

“CFO’s don’t bring in money – we force others to bring in money. We then complain that it is not enough and force them to go back out and get some more. When we get money, we hate to part with it and we arm wrestle with those in the organization who think money grows on trees. This is pretty much what we do – should anyone ask at a cocktail party where we try to get others to buy our drinks.” -John Marshall, the very funny but totally functional CFO of CBI Group

It’s always nice to see your friends get quoted and realize you were the one who caused it. John serves on a board with me and since he’s the only CPA on tap I asked him to do the budget. That didn’t make much sense, as he quickly pointed out, since this is a new organization and there’s no income to budget. Not one to waste talent, I said, well figure out where to get some. That was his tongue-in-cheek answer. And yes, I did buy him a drink.

This had all been by email and it was so funny, I passed it on to my R&D team who, of course, are always amused by the absurdities of the C level. Today, it showed up as the quote in a Tools4Careers report, an example of what good Watchdogs aren’t like.

Watchdogs are found at all levels of organizations.  They’re often found in the finance department but also show up in HR departments – any place, in fact, where limited resources that need to be stretched are an every day reality.   Functional companies respect them and value that special ability; dysfunctional ones disrespect them and meet their ability to spin gold out of straw by taking their meager supply of straw away bit by bit.

So what makes a great CFO?  If you’re a CEO wanting one, start by deserving one.   Figure out how you’re going to keep John’s description something to laugh at, not the reality of your organization.