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 |    My primary Writing.com blog. |
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Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics). Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:  "The Soundtrackers Group"  "Blogging Circle of Friends " "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" "JAFBG" "Take up Your Cross" Thanks for stopping by!  |
| There was an article in Fortune Magazine's website today titled, "Starbucks new CEO reveals his favorite coffee order after spending 6 months working side by side with baristas " that caught my attention. Not because I particularly care what Starbucks' new CEO Laxman Narasimhan's favorite drink off the Starbucks menu is (spoiler alert: it's a Doppio Espresso Macchiato with hot skim milk on the side), but because the other part of that title caught my attention. He's allegedly spent six months working side-by-side with Starbucks baristas at their stores. Apparently, this was the deal: Narasimhan honed his varied taste through the 40 hours he spent training—and six months he spent working—as a barista alongside Starbucks partners while gearing up for the CEO gig. And while some Starbucks employees pointed out on social media that they don't need the CEO of a coffee chain with just under 500,000 employees across nearly 36,000 locations to learn how to make lattes as much as learn how to solve grander-scale corporate issues like paying a living wage, unionization efforts, etc., I can't help but think while that may be true, spending a substantive amount of time in the trenches with employees is actually a great use of a C-suite executive's time when he's first starting the job, to better understand the good and bad elements of the public-facing aspect of the company. Of course, if it's just a PR stunt or a token amount of time (a lot of CEOs will spend, like, one day every so often with the rank-and-file for a photo op or bragging rights), that's different... but 40 hours of training followed by six months working in stores (although no word if it was full-time or not) is a real effort to get to know your employees' day-to-day successes, struggles, and concerns. I kind of wish this practice was required of all mid-to-senior level executives. Before starting a job, you should spent a significant amount of time learning about the rungs in the ladder below you and how they contribute to your job. I'm in a position now where I'm volunteering in a fairly high-level position at our small church (President of the Board of its nonprofit community development organization, and Director of Operations for the church itself), and I couldn't imagine hiring someone beneath me to do a job that I wasn't familiar with. Obviously there's a certain amount of tradeoff (it's hard to, say, learn an entire accounting system just so you can process payroll for a few weeks... or to learn how to send all-organization emails and maintain the organization's social media presence if that's not a core bit of knowledge that will be useful later), but actually getting to know what your employees' day-to-day experience is like is critical. At my day job, it's incredibly stratified. Within my own business unit of Marvel, which is much better than Disney as a whole, there are still situations where direct supervisors don't actually know what their direct reports do, and wouldn't be able to cover for even a day if something happened and someone was out. At Disney, there are some departments where supervisors only speak to their direct reports once a year (for their annual performance reviews), and go years without speaking to someone two levels below them. To me, that's a less than ideal way to run an organization, so I'm always happy to see articles like this where some new CEO or other higher up is taking the time to get to know their business on the ground level. That feels like time well spent and relationships well cultivated. |
| I just finished The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin and while it was... not really what I thought it was (full review is forthcoming for the "Book Brothel" )... I did find one particular piece of it really useful. Rick Rubin put together a list called "Thoughts and habits not conducive to the work" which I thought was worth posting here. THOUGHTS AND HABITS NOT CONDUCIVE TO THE WORK: 1. Believing you're not good enough. 2. Feeling you don't have the energy it takes. 3. Mistaking adopted rules for absolute truth. 4. Not wanting to do the work (laziness). 5. Not taking the work to its highest expression (settling). 6. Having goals so ambitious that you can't begin. 7. Thinking you can only do your best work in certain conditions. 8. Requiring specific tools or equipment to do the work. 9. Abandoning a project as soon as it gets difficult. 10. Feeling like you need permission to start or move forward. 11. Letting a perceived need for funding, equipment, or support get in the way. 12. Having too many ideas and not knowing where to start. 13. Never finishing projects. 14. Blaming circumstances or other people for interfering with your process. 15. Romanticizing negative behaviors or addictions. 16. Believing a certain mood or state is necessary to do your best work. 17. Prioritizing other activities and responsibilities over your commitment to making art. 18. Distractibility and procrastination. 19. Impatience. 20. Thinking anything that's out of your control is in your way. For anyone who struggles to write or otherwise complete creative endeavors... see anything that hits home? There are a lot of them that apply to me, but #6 and #9 and #13 and #17 and #18 are things I really struggle with. I think #6 and #17 are probably the core underlying problems, and the other three are manifestations of how those underlying problems play out. There are some other ones in there that I also definitely struggle with, and it's easy to see how one or more of these could quickly derail someone's ability to create art. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about this month as we head into the end of the year is what I want to accomplish next year. Every January, I think about goals for the new year and what I want to accomplish, and they're always some lofty thing that's tied to specific achievements (see the first part of #6). In preparation for next year, I'm trying to think about where I'm at right now, and an achievable goal I can reach that isn't some nebulous or arbitrary thing like, "Finish writing a book" or "Write X number of pages, words, etc." ... I'm thinking about how to go from near-zero to "back in shape." The same is true for me and physical exercise. I'm not at the point where I can think about wanting to run a marathon, or lift a certain amount of weight; I'm at the point where I'm severely out of shape and need to get back into healthy habits. The thing I like about lists like the one Rubin provided, is that they often name the hurdles we struggle with. And naming things can take away their power. Rubin's book is definitely one of those "take what works or makes sense to you and discard the rest" kind of nonfiction title, and this list is probably the best thing I've taken from the book. I anticipate referring to it a lot in the future, whenever I need a reminder of the habits I'm falling into that aren't conducive to what I'm trying to accomplish with my writing. |
My wife and I just finished binge-watching a show called Undercover Billionaire (Season 1 was released in 2019). The basic premise is that Glenn Stearns, the show's eponymous "billionaire" ... although I put that term in quotes because it appears he might be just a multi-hundred millionaire  ... decides to test whether the American Dream is still possible by getting dropped off in a random city somewhere in the country with only $100, a cell phone with no contacts, and an old pickup truck. His challenge? To build a company worth $1,000,000 at the end of 90 days. The bet he made was that if he couldn't build a company valued at a million dollars, he'd invest a million dollars of his own money in to ensure it had stable funding to give it a fighting chance.He's dropped off in Erie, Pennsylvania and the first ten days or so are more about survival: figuring out how to get more money so he can afford food and a place to live, trying to get a job, etc. This to me was interesting, but felt like it should have been for a different show (a how to build yourself up from rock bottom challenge, or something like that), but it detailed how he got his feet on the ground, basically investing all of his capital on ventures that would give him a positive return on investment, allowing him to invest more in the next thing. That's the part of the show I found most interesting. Not how he went from $100 to $3,000 to afford to live, but how he went from only having living expenses to getting capital to start investing in the business. The show repeatedly highlighted the value of motivating good people with helpful skills and convincing them to invest their time and energy in growing the business to the point where they could all benefit in its success. I don't want to give away too many more details about it because it really is a good show worth watching, but I had some thoughts in the whole thing. First, I actually know the guy (well, know of the guy) who was featured in the show. Stearns Lending was a leading mortgage company coming out of the Great Recession, and I recognize the name because their headquarters is about five minutes from my house. I see the company's logo on their building as I drive by it almost every day. Second, I learned a lot about local resources that entrepreneurs can use to help them with their businesses. There's actually Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) that operate (though the United States Small Business Administration) in many cities around the country, and they can help you with market research, putting together a business plan, access to computers, and even offering up meeting and/or office space as needed. It's an amazing resource for people who are just starting out, and I had no idea such a thing even existed. There's an office less than ten minutes from me. Third, I learned that there's a lot of risk and setbacks involved in pretty much every aspect of running a business. Not that I didn't already know that, but when you're watching someone actually try to build a business in realtime from scratch, it really highlights the unpredictability of the process. As much as I have a real issue with the income inequality in this country, I definitely think people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and build a successful company from nothing deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labor after such a rollercoaster of a process. Overall, I really enjoyed the show and it got that entrepreneurial part of my brain working again. I've always wondered if I'd be good at running a company. I have a really diverse skillset and I think I've got pretty good problem-solving abilities ... but I'm also really risk averse and have yet to really take a leap and put myself out there investing in something that might not make it (I've always preferred the security of jobs at established employers, and the few times I've gone to work for startups, they haven't panned out). At the moment, I'm on the board of my church's community development nonprofit corporation, and it definitely got me thinking about how to invest in that organization and take more risks to see if it can succeed. I definitely recommend this show to anyone who likes SHARK TANK or any other business-type shows. |
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