5 Stages of Grief When Looking For A Job.

Here's a fun list that I saw on Madatoms: Denial I've got plenty of money! I'll start looking next week!

Anger Craigslist and Monster sucks! I've got a college degree! Jobs should be looking for me!

Bargaining I'll just drive around looking for help wanted signs. I hear that Starbucks has health insurance!

Depression Why did I major in Communications? I have no useful skills.

Acceptance I didn't know I qualified for unemployment! I love this country!

Keeping Unscheduled Time.

I love the The Practice of Leadership blog - and George Ambler hits it out of the park with this topic on buffering time:

“Every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.” – Dov Frohman

Making time to reflect and think is a critical leadership practice. In its simplest form, reflecting is just thinking about what happened. It’s the process of thinking about and examining what we’ve experienced, how we reacted and what changes we need to make to become more effective.

There are few people who make a conscious effort to learn from their experiences and fewer still learn from their mistakes. This is because reflection is not an automatic process for most people. Most of use make our way through life simply reacting to circumstances. To be effective leaders must make reflection a regular practice.

“Leaders like everyone else, are the sum of all their experiences, but, unlike others, they amount to more than the sum, because they make more of their experiences.” – Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead

A simple way to start the practice of reflection is by asking questions, questions about how we feel, about the results we are getting in our life, and what we can do differently to get different results. For example, find a quite place where you are not going to be disturbed then, take an issue that’s important to you, and ask yourself the following questions:

What happened? What was I trying to achieve? What went well and why? What didn’t go so well and why? How did it affect me? How did it affect others? What were the consequences (positive or negative) for myself and others? What could be done differently next time? Would this change improve the consequences?

“Reflection is asking the questions that provoke self-awareness” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

As leaders much of our success is dependent on the way we think. Given this, it’s important that we schedule regular time-out to reflect on how we are behaving, how we are thinking about a situation and what adjustments we might need to make to improve our effectiveness. When was the last time you spent reflecting on an issue that is important to you?

The New Joblessness.

The U.S. economy is not only shedding jobs at a record rate; it is shedding more jobs than it is supposed to. It’s bad enough that the unemployment rate has doubled in only a year and a half and one out of six construction workers is out of work. By Roger Lowenstein From The New York Times Magazine.

What truly troubles President Obama’s economic advisers is that, even adjusting for the recession, the contraction in employment seems way too high. As one administration official said, “This has been a very steep job loss.” One proof, he added, is that the country is deviating from the standard (among economists) jobs predictor known as Okun’s Law.

In the 1960s, Arthur Okun, a prominent economist, claimed to have discovered a mathematical relationship between the decline in output (that is, goods and services produced) and the rise in unemployment. It held up pretty well until recently. But this time around, although the decline in output would have predicted a rise in unemployment to 8 percent, the actual jobless rate has soared to 9.5 percent. So this recession is killing off jobs even faster than the things — like automobiles, houses, computers and newspapers — that jobholders produce.

The Federal Reserve now expects unemployment to surpass 10 percent (the postwar high was 10.8 percent in 1982). By almost every other measure, ours is already the worst job environment since the Great Depression. The economy has shed 6.5 million jobs — nearly 5 percent of the total, far outstripping the 3 percent that were lost in the early ’80s. Economists fear that even when the economy turns around, the job market will be stagnant. Keith Hall, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, sums it up as “an ugly picture out there.”

Explanations for the collapse of the great American job machine begin with the marked absence of what is called labor hoarding. Usually during recessions, firms keep most of their employees on the payroll even as business slows, in effect stockpiling them for better days. In the current downturn, hoarding seems to have gone into reverse. Not only are firms laying off redundant workers, but they seem to be cutting into the bone. Hall says the absence of hoarding means that firms do not expect business to pick up soon. This is supported by other evidence, like a doubling in the number of involuntary part-time workers (there are nine million of them) and the shrinking workweek, now 33 hours — the shortest ever recorded. Presumably, before companies start to rehire laid-off workers, they will ask their current employees to work more.

Those who hope for a rebound argue that employers, frightened by the financial shocks and the credit crisis of last fall, effectively panicked. That is, they cut deeper than necessary. And that may be.

But layoffs are only part of the story. The problem isn’t just that so many workers have received pink slips but also that companies are failing to hire. And this, unfortunately, has been a trend for most of the past decade (unnoticed, perhaps, because the mortgage bubble was papering over latent weaknesses). At the end of the Clinton era, which also marked the end of a decade-long boom, companies that were opening or expanding operations added nearly 8 workers for every 100 already on the payroll. During the recession of 2001, the figure dropped to 7 per 100: optimistic firms were a bit less optimistic. The surprising fact is that when the recession ended, the percentage stayed at 7. “We never got our groove back,” asserts Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com. In the current recession, the rate has fallen to 6 per 100.

It’s hard to give a definitive explanation for this trend, but among the reasons are a decline in innovation in the aftermath of the tech boom, leading to fewer new businesses, and the aging of the population. More people have dropped out of the work force, and a smaller work force tends to dampen job totals. The percentage of adults who are working has fallen from 64 at the end of the Clinton era to only 59.5 now. Some of those dropouts are retirees, but some may be responding to the economy’s declining dynamism. Traditionally, it was a mark of Americans’ resiliency that, when times were tough, they relocated from state to state and region to region. Now, according to the Census Bureau, mobility is at an all-time recorded low. Perhaps people with underwater mortgages cannot afford to move. Perhaps the areas they used to move to, typically the Sun Belt, are too devastated by foreclosures. But the vaunted ability of the U.S. economy to renew itself seems a little tarnished. Maybe it’s no accident that this time around, folks on the unemployment line are staying there longer.

In terms of its impact on society, a dearth of hiring is far more troubling than an excess of layoffs. Job losses have to end sooner or later. Even if they persist (as, say, in the auto industry), the government can intervene. But the government cannot force firms to hire. Ultimately, each new job depends on the boss’s belief — or hope — that sufficient work will materialize. It’s a bit of black magic also described as confidence. Over the years, it is why America has not only attracted immigrants (whose arrivals are now slowing) but also generated more opportunities and — favorite word of politicians — hope for those born here.

The administration’s tilt toward so-called sustainable new jobs, in green energy and such, shows that it understands what is at stake, both for the country and for its political fortunes. Whether its plans will bear fruit is, of course, another matter. Along with double-digit unemployment, the country is facing a second potential scare headline: falling wages. Even during recessions, businesses don’t like to lower pay, because it reduces morale. But layoffs are also a downer. And in this recession, employers ranging from the State of California to publishers (including this newspaper) have cut back on pay. In effect, job losses have been so severe that businesses have been forced to spread the pain. In June, overall wage growth was zero. Zandi thinks the United States could see negative wage growth.

How would Obama, not to mention Congress, respond to declining employment and falling wages? The pressure for another stimulus (and greater deficits) would be intense. So would that for demagogic solutions like trade barriers. Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, says most lost jobs are not coming back. The huge question is when — or whether — new ones will take their place. Roger Lowenstein, an outside director of the Sequoia Fund, is a contributing writer for the magazine.

Ethical Leadership - Start With Gut Instinct.

This is Part One of a multi-part series on Ethical Leadership. "I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics." - Richard Branson

I thought I would start with the most apparent way to lead ethically - by your gut. Why? Because I feel that most people are good and try to live their lives from a position of doing good for others. I know — there are some horrible people out there — but overall, I believe that the majority of executives are guided by good rather than evil. Unfortunately, some are pulled to the dark side by a number of different reasons (found in my last post).

Leading with Gut Instinct means that you listen to an inner voice — what scientists call 'your intuition'. Intuition is a feeling within your body that something is right or just not right. Did you catch that I said "within your body" and not just "within your mind"? We've all had moments of intuition - a certain colleague or a business deal. Sometimes we listen and sometimes we don't —intuition is the signpost pointing us to the right way — unfortunately, we sometimes take the wrong way.

"Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level." – Dr. Joyce Brothers This is why I believe my gut. Our brain is made up of billions of neurons firing many times during the day. Thoughts, emotions, facts, knowledge, etc. all are accessible at one time or another. If you have a highly structured and organized mind, you probably don't use your intuition as much as the next person. You just go to the library, choose your book from the shelves, and access the info that you need.

Everyone else's brain uses a more complex system — intuition — to unconsciously make their way through that ball of wire we call the brain and access that one (or more) tidbit of information needed to make the right decision.

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself. – Alan Alda "Be yourself" — (how I love that term) — intuition allows you to make decisions from where you stand, not from anyone else's perspective. This is a sign of a true leader - one that makes the hard decisions, efficiently and effectively.

So next time you need to make the right decision — use your gut. It will keep you on the right track.

The Joy of Sachs — By Paul Krugman.

From the NY Times. The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?

First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.

Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.

Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.

Let’s start by talking about how Goldman makes money.

Over the past generation — ever since the banking deregulation of the Reagan years — the U.S. economy has been “financialized.” The business of moving money around, of slicing, dicing and repackaging financial claims, has soared in importance compared with the actual production of useful stuff. The sector officially labeled “securities, commodity contracts and investments” has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007.

Such growth would be fine if financialization really delivered on its promises — if financial firms made money by directing capital to its most productive uses, by developing innovative ways to spread and reduce risk. But can anyone, at this point, make those claims with a straight face? Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increased risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.

Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.

And Wall Streeters have every incentive to keep playing that kind of game.

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.

And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.

I won’t try to parse the competing claims about how much direct benefit Goldman received from recent financial bailouts, especially the government’s assumption of A.I.G.’s liabilities. What’s clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government’s provision of a financial backstop — an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.

You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we’re to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.

Now the last time there was a comparable expansion of the financial safety net, the creation of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s, it was accompanied by much tighter regulation, to ensure that banks didn’t abuse their privileges. This time, new regulations are still in the drawing-board stage — and the finance lobby is already fighting against even the most basic protections for consumers.

If these lobbying efforts succeed, we’ll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster a few years down the road. The next crisis could look something like the savings-and-loan mess of the 1980s, in which deregulated banks gambled with, or in some cases stole, taxpayers’ money — except that it would involve the financial industry as a whole.

The bottom line is that Goldman’s blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It’s good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it’s bad news for almost everyone else.

Ethics - The Only Way To Be A True Leader.

eth-ics (noun) - that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. Right and Wrong. Good and Bad. And the most important part - the motive and ends of such actions.

There are many executives out in the marketplace today that know what they are doing is wrong . . . and bad. But they still do it because the motives and ends of such actions will deliver one or both of these results:

1. The company will do better.
2. They will make more money, be more successful, and ensure a continuous launching pad to bigger and better positions.

Now here's the REAL question - Can they still achieve these same goals listed above if they do the right thing . . . good things?

Now we can get into the semantical argument that what I see as good might be bad for another (or vice-versa). Or that based on our differing opinions of ethics, what you might see as 'bad' might be 'good' viewed by another. But let's cut out the BS - as an executive, you absolutely know when you are doing something that is slightly (or gravely) unethical (until you do it so frequently that it becomes 'good' in your eyes).

I took ethics in college (I state that I am not an expert) and know that there are two arguments (or more) for every ethical issue. But I've also lived in the corporate world for 20+ years and coached top level executives for 10 years. I believe that in business, there is rarely gray, there is only black and white. Why? In business, everything is measured, everyone is conservative, and risk is constantly minimized. Most of the time (not all mind you), you can faithfully predict how your actions will affect your bottom line, customers, employees, shareholders, etc. Not on a granular scale - but more on a ballpark one.

But when it comes to bad and wrong, I know it when I see it.

Bad and Wrong decisions go against the company's natural grain of behavior. You've probably felt this if you have worked in corporate - you are marching down the street with a strategy, everyone is singing the same tune. Suddenly, management makes a 180° turn and states that we will be doing the exact opposite of what they were pontificating 6-12 months before.

Now I understand that markets change. Customer wants and needs change. But 180 degrees? We were going North, but now we are going South? That clearly communicates to me that the people at the top don't know what they are doing, are open to the fickleness of certain corporate soothsayers, or dramatically underestimate the market to the point that they were COMPLETELY wrong. Candidly, these people should be FIRED. But these are not Bad and Wrong decisions in an Ethical context.

I honestly think that when executives make bad and wrong decisions do so for three reasons (the motive and ends):

1. They're lazy. Going the 'bad' or 'wrong' direction is easier, less risky, more profitable in the short term, etc.
2. It's a personality thing. They feel that making contrarian decisions keep them above the rabble, they are smarter than the rest, and they are fooling the masses.
3. They believe that there is a LOT more money and power to be made by going bad.

Bernard Madoff was a #2 & #3. Not only did he realize that there was a LOT more money to be made by deceiving his investors and the market, it probably was a personality thing. Bottom line - most unethical executives have abnormal self-esteem (very low or very high) so they compensate by doing unethical things.

Many executives who testify in front of Congress (honestly - they've probably done something wrong!) usually have all three personality traits. Go back and view the testimonies of the investment firms, insurance companies, tobacco companies to get a good feel for #1, #2 and #3.

OK - That's enough for one day. My next post will discuss the treatment.

CEO's Must Trash Short-Term Thinking & Embrace Long-Term Strategy. Now.

I'm tired. And angry. And I'm not alone. For too long, the stewards of our most cherished institutions have been acting less than ethical. I call it "short term thinking for short term gain" — get in, make a quick buck, and move on to the next sucker. Not the best behavior for supposedly the best executives in this nation.

Now don't get me wrong — not all CEO's are like this. Unfortunately, many are. On the flip side, some are forced into this situation by unscrupulous board members and irrational investors. But as I frequently say to my clients: "This isn't Russia, if you ethically disagree with what your company is doing, move on."

Over the next few months, I will be focusing in on why CEO's do this and what they can do to re-focus and reset their behaviors to produce solid companies that deliver great products for a reasonable price and treat their employees and investors with respect. I'll be interviewing those CEO's that are thinking long-term and really care about their company, the shareholders, their employees and not their pockets.

To begin and see where my thinking is grounded, catch my earlier post: "Do You Trust This Man?"

The era of short term thinking is over. The era of ego is over. It's time to focus on doing the right thing.

Thwart Bad Management: EQ vs. IQ.

Is your typical communication channel to your direct reports not working? Are people dropping the ball, doing the wrong thing, or not understanding your stated vision for the company? Your EQ might need a little polishing.First - Run out and buy Daniel Goleman's Working With Emotional Intelligence. And I mean RUN.

Why? Leaders (like you) are not defined by their IQs or even their job skills, but by their "emotional intelligence": a set of competencies that distinguish how people manage their feelings, interactions and communications. This book explains what emotional intelligence is and why it counts more than IQ or expertise to excel on the job.

My Take: I've always found corporate leaders who have used those IQ skills that got them where they are today will find their IQ skills will not keep them in the position that they have attained. That's why many C-Level executives have a typical job duration of 2-3 years (or shorter) at a company.

Why? When you are moving up the ladder, you tend to use more IQ (Intelligence) than EQ (Emotion). You need to get work done. You need to meet deadlines. You need to show results. The closer you get to the top, the less IQ you use and the more EQ you leverage to manage people, communicate strategies, etc. Unfortunately, when you are at the top, your position is ALL EQ and almost no IQ - and that is where most C-Level executives fail.

Working With Emotional Intelligence will help you address this.

I Cried Last Night And Learned A Powerful Lesson.

I saw one of the most touching and inspiring movies of my life last night. Sitting in the movie theater with my family wearing 3D glasses, I was actually tearing up during many scenes of Pixar's new movie UP (by the way . . . don't walk - run out to see it TODAY. It will change your life and the way you look at life).

I'm a softie, but I NEVER cry at movies. And let me also state that I religiously see every Pixar movie. I will argue to my dying day that Pixar puts out the best movies for any age in theaters today.

But the best part - UP has a number of powerful messages. My favorite, and the one that should stick with you forever is: You are never too old to start your second adventure.

Many people go through life thinking that they only have one good 'adventure' in them. It might be their career, their marriage, their kids, college, etc. But let me say this - your life can be full of MANY new adventures! And here's the best part - they could get better and better!

So just when you thought it couldn't get better - go out there - grab life by the collar and make a new adventure for yourself. Take a risk, step out of your comfort zone, and push yourself to new heights. You can plan - or don't plan - just do. You might just surprise someone that is never surprised . . . YOU!

P.S. In posting this story, I just saw that I have no tags for the words "Adventure" or "Fun". Time to rectify that! More "Adventure" & "Fun" for Rich Gee!

The Most Powerful Force In Business.

When you think of a great executive or someone you respect, what qualities come to mind?

Ability to get things done? Knowledge of their space? Who they know? Schmoozability at parties?

What do you think is their most powerful ability to be successful?

The ability to LISTEN.

Listening is SOOO underrated. Most people don't even know it's happening — they are so engrossed in their professional soap opera. Why is it so important?

1. It allows you to listen to what is important and what isn't important - then you can comment. Not the other way around.
2. It makes the person you talk to feel more engaged, more important, more focused.
3. In addition, you look more engaged, more important, and more focused. If you talk too much, you are a know-it-all blowhard.

Our natural inclination is to talk, interrupt, and think about what we are going to say while the other person is talking. By listening, you turn the tables on basic business conversation — you seem more thoughtful, more introspective, and more calculating (in a good way) when interacting with others.

Try it — you might find that people treat you differently and you have the ability to truly understand situations before you dive in head first.

Get It Done. Make It Happen.

That's my mantra. And I make all my clients tattoo it on their arms. Why? Because it works.

It all comes down to ACTION You can plan all day — and that's a good thing. But planning isn't everything. In fact, most executives do have some type of plan — either zipping around in their head or on a piece of paper buried on their desk. Unfortunately, execution is the real culprit. They are afraid or they don't know how to take that first step to begin the process. That's where I come in:

Make It Happen Take the first step. Do Anything. It really doesn't matter what you do first — what does matter is that you do something . . . immediately. I liken it to entering a pool for the first time — you can go in slowly and get used to the water (we all know how that feels) or just jump right in and the shock of the temperature is gone within seconds. If you need to do a series of informational calls to key executives, call one right now! Don't wait to plan — don't procrastinate to build a talk track — ring them up and start talking! You will surprise yourself.

Get It Done Check it off your list — complete it. So many people take a half-step into an activity and decide that it's too hard, will take too long, or it takes them too far out of their comfort zone. Here's where my coaching comes in — stop being a baby. You are an adult — with adult responsibilities. You must get it done. You are not in school anymore where a teacher will say "it's okay - you don't have to do that". You HAVE to do it. And the faster that you get it done, the faster you can move on to the next step.

And here's the best part: Once you start down this path, it gets EASIER. Trust me, it always happens.

Not moving forward? Get It Done. Make It Happen. No Excuses.

Who's Got Your Back?

Once again, Keith Ferrazzi's new book flips the idea of a self-help book on its head. Ferrazzi contends that people who build meaningful relationships with others can attain greater personal and professional success. Why you should read this book?

Your Four Mindsets: Intimacy, Generosity, Vulnerability, Candor This follows up on the mindsets Ferrazzi explored in his first book, Never Eat Alone. Building relationships, and repairing relationships, using these mindsets will greatly enhance and fuel all types of relationships, and increase your chances of maintaining strong, successful alliances. These four mindsets are core to building trust.

Build a Dream Team We all have dreams, and we need strong relationships to help us realize those dreams. Once we've accepted that conducting our relationships through the lens of the four mindsets contributes to our success, building a dream team to help us fuel our success is the next logical step. Ferrazzi outlines nine steps to building a dream team. Not sure if the steps work or not, since Ferrazzi doesn't present hardcore evidence that actual, real live individuals have used these steps successfully, but Ferrazzi's nine steps includes many practical and tactical ideas that logically should work, and seem worth trying.

Hold Each Member Accountable Without accountability in the group and among individuals, teams become lazy, complacent, loose focus, and derail. Ferrazzi does a nice job of explaining safe ways to implement accountability measures into your organizational, or dream, teams.

Hands down this will probably be the best book I read this year (Keith does it again!). Run out and get this book ASAP!

The Future of Work: The Last Days of Cubicle Life.

Presenting Part Ten of a Ten-Part Series (finally!) on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By Seth Godin at Time.

When Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled the Johnson Wax Building in 1939, it showcased a new way of looking at work. One room, covering half an acre (0.2 hectare), was filled with women, lined up in rows, typing. Work didn't necessarily mean loud, dirty factories, but it still involved sitting in orderly rows, doing orderly work for a finicky boss.

In order to understand what your workplace is going to be like in five or 10 years, you need to think about what your work is going to be like. Here's a clue: employers no longer need to pay you to drive to a building to sit and type. In fact, under pressure from an uncertain economy, bosses are discovering that there are a lot of reasons not to pay you to drive to a central location or even to pay you at all. And when work gets auctioned off to the lowest bidder, your job gets a lot more stressful. (See pictures of cubicle designs submitted to The Office.)

The job of the future will have very little to do with processing words or numbers (the Internet can do that now). Nor will we need many people to act as placeholders, errand runners or receptionists. Instead, there's going to be a huge focus on finding the essential people and outsourcing the rest.

So, are you essential? Most of the best jobs will be for people who manage customers, who organize fans, who do digital community management. We'll continue to need brilliant designers, energetic brainstormers and rigorous lab technicians. More and more, though, the need to actually show up at an office that consists of an anonymous hallway and a farm of cubicles or closed doors is just going to fade away. It's too expensive, and it's too slow. I'd rather send you a file at the end of my day (when you're in a very different time zone) and have the information returned to my desktop when I wake up tomorrow. We may never meet, but we're both doing essential work.

When you do come in to work, your boss will know. If anything can be measured, it will be measured. The boss will know when you log in, what you type, what you access. Not just the boss but also your team. Internet technology makes working as a team, synchronized to a shared goal, easier and more productive than ever. But as in a three-legged-race, you'll instantly know when a teammate is struggling, because that will slow you down as well. Some people will embrace this new high-stress, high-speed, high-flexibility way of work. We'll go from a few days alone at home, maintaining the status quo, to urgent team sessions, sometimes in person, often online. It will make some people yearn for jobs like those in the old days, when we fought traffic, sat in a cube, typed memos, took a long lunch and then sat in traffic again.

The only reason to go to work, I think, is to do work. It's too expensive a trip if all you want to do is hang out. Work will mean managing a tribe, creating a movement and operating in teams to change the world. Anything less is going to be outsourced to someone a lot cheaper and a lot less privileged than you or me.

Godin is a popular blogger (sethgodin.typepad.com) and the author of 12 international best sellers. His most recent book is Tribes.

The Future of Work: When Gen X Runs the Show.

Presenting Part Eight of a Ten-Part Series on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By Anne Fisher at Time.

By 2019, Generation X — that relatively small cohort born from 1965 to 1978 — will have spent nearly two decades bumping up against a gray ceiling of boomers in senior decision-making jobs. But that will end. Janet Reid, managing partner at Global Lead, a consulting firm that advises companies like PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, says, "In 2019, Gen X will finally be in charge. And they will make some big changes."

They'll have to, because the workforce Gen Xers will be leading will have altered almost beyond recognition. For one thing, Generation Y — the tattooed, techno-raised bunch born from 1979 to 2000 — is unlikely to follow in their parents' footsteps. They think putting in long years of effort at any one company in exchange for a series of raises and promotions is pointless — not that they'll get the chance. "Paying your dues, moving up slowly and getting the corner office — that's going away. In 10 years, it will be gone," says Bruce Tulgan, head of the consulting firm Rainmaker Thinking, based in New Haven, Conn., and author of a new book about managing Gen Y called Not Everyone Gets a Trophy. "Instead, success will be defined not by rank or seniority but by getting what matters to you personally," whether that's the chance to lead a new-product launch or being able to take winters off for snowboarding. Tulgan adds, "Companies already want more short-term independent contractors and consultants and fewer traditional employees because contractors are cheaper. And seniority matters less and less as time goes on, because it's about the past, not the future."

Superannuated boomers won't vanish from the workplace altogether: people in their 60s and 70s — because of either need or desire — will be among the 40% of the U.S. workforce that will rent out its skills. "Boomers will be working part-time as coaches, strategists and consultants," predicts Joanne Sujansky, a co-author of a book due out in June called Keeping the Millennials. "By 2019, there will be many more of those opportunities than there are now because boomers will need the income and companies will need their expertise." Says Reid: "We'll see an increase in job-sharing at very senior levels.

You might have two boomers who share the job of chief financial officer, for instance, which lets them keep working and also have some leisure time."

The Gen X managers who will be holding all this together will need to be adept at a few things that earlier generations, with their more hierarchical management styles and relative geographical insularity, never really had to learn. One of those is collaborative decision-making that might involve team members scattered around the world, from Beijing to Barcelona to Boston, whom the nominal leader of a given project may never have met in person. "By 2019, every leader will have to be culturally dexterous on a global scale," says Reid. "A big part of that is knowing how to motivate and reward people who are very different from yourself."

They don't teach that in B school — at least not yet. In fact, Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, thinks the best training for anyone who wants to succeed in 10 years is the online game World of Warcraft. Carter says WoW, as its 10 million devotees worldwide call it, offers a peek into the workplace of the future. Each team faces a fast-paced, complicated series of obstacles called quests, and each player, via his online avatar, must contribute to resolving them or else lose his place on the team. The player who contributes most gets to lead the team — until someone else contributes more. The game, which many Gen Yers learned as teens, is intensely collaborative, constantly demanding and often surprising. "It takes exactly the same skill set people will need more of in the future to collaborate on work projects," says Carter. "The kids are already doing it."

The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers.

Some background: First and most broadly, it doesn't make sense for America to try to maintain or enlarge manufacturing as a portion of the economy. Even if the U.S. were to seal its borders and bar any manufactured goods from coming in from abroad--something I don't recommend--we'd still be losing manufacturing jobs. That's mainly because of technology. By Robert Reich

When we think of manufacturing jobs, we tend to imagine old-time assembly lines populated by millions of blue-collar workers who had well-paying jobs with good benefits. But that picture no longer describes most manufacturing. I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades the robots.

Factory jobs are vanishing all over the world. Even China is losing them. The Chinese are doing more manufacturing than ever, but they're also becoming far more efficient at it. They've shuttered most of the old state-run factories. Their new factories are chock full of automated and computerized machines. As a result, they don't need as many manufacturing workers as before.

Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in twenty large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002--before the asset bubble and subsequent bust--twenty-two million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The United States wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11% of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16% of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20% decline, and China had a 15% drop.

What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity. As productivity rises, employment falls because fewer people are needed. In this, manufacturing is following the same trend as agriculture. A century ago, almost 30% of adult Americans worked on a farm. Nowadays, fewer than 5% do. That doesn't mean the U.S. failed at agriculture. Quite the opposite. American agriculture is a huge success story. America can generate far larger crops than a century ago with far fewer people. New technologies, more efficient machines, new methods of fertilizing, better systems of crop rotation, and efficiencies of large scale have all made farming much more productive.

Manufacturing is analogous. In America and elsewhere around the world, it's a success. Since 1995, even as manufacturing employment has dropped around the world, global industrial output has risen more than 30%.

We should stop pining after the days when millions of Americans stood along assembly lines and continuously bolted, fit, soldered or clamped what went by. Those days are over. And stop blaming poor nations whose workers get very low wages. Of course their wages are low; these nations are poor. They can become more prosperous only by exporting to rich nations. When America blocks their exports by erecting tariffs and subsidizing our domestic industries, we prevent them from doing better. Helping poorer nations become more prosperous is not only in the interest of humanity but also wise because it lessens global instability.

Want to blame something? Blame new knowledge. Knowledge created the electronic gadgets and software that can now do almost any routine task. This goes well beyond the factory floor. America also used to have lots of elevator operators, telephone operators, bank tellers and service-station attendants. Remember? Most have been replaced by technology. Supermarket check-out clerks are being replaced by automatic scanners. The Internet has taken over the routine tasks of travel agents, real estate brokers, stock brokers and even accountants. With digitization and high-speed data networks a lot of back office work can now be done more cheaply abroad.

Any job that's even slightly routine is disappearing from the U.S. But this doesn't mean we are left with fewer jobs. It means only that we have fewer routine jobs, including traditional manufacturing. When the U.S. economy gets back on track, many routine jobs won't be returning--but new jobs will take their place. A quarter of all Americans now work in jobs that weren't listed in the Census Bureau's occupation codes in 1967. Technophobes, neo-Luddites and anti-globalists be warned: You're on the wrong side of history. You see only the loss of old jobs. You're overlooking all the new ones.

The reason they're so easy to overlook is that so much of the new value added is invisible. A growing percent of every consumer dollar goes to people who analyze, manipulate, innovate and create. These people are responsible for research and development, design and engineering. Or for high-level sales, marketing and advertising. They're composers, writers and producers. They're lawyers, journalists, doctors and management consultants. I call this "symbolic analytic" work because most of it has to do with analyzing, manipulating and communicating through numbers, shapes, words, ideas.

Symbolic-analytic work can't be directly touched or held in your hands, as goods that come out of factories can be. In fact, many of these tasks are officially classified as services rather than manufacturing. Yet almost whatever consumers buy these days, they're paying more for these sorts of tasks than for the physical material or its assemblage. On the back of every iPod is the notice "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China." You can bet iPod's design garners a bigger share of the iPod's purchase price than its assembly.

The biggest challenge we face over the long term -- beyond the current depression -- isn't how to bring manufacturing back. It's how to improve the earnings of America's expanding army of low-wage workers who are doing personal service jobs in hotels, hospitals, big-box retail stores, restaurant chains, and all the other businesses that need bodies but not high skills. More on that to come.

The Future of Work: It Will Pay To Save The Planet.

Presenting Part Seven of a Ten-Part Series on The Future of Work from Time Magazine. By Bryan Walsh at Time.

It's no secret that U.S. workers are in trouble, with the unemployment rate at 8.9% and rising. At the same time, the world faces a long-term climate crisis.

But what if there is a way to solve both problems with one policy? A number of environmentalists and economists believe that by implementing a comprehensive energy program, we can not only avert the worst consequences of climate change but also create millions of new jobs — green jobs — in the U.S. "We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects," President Barack Obama said recently. "We know the right choice."

What's a green job? It depends on whom you ask. Some categories are obvious: if you're churning out solar panels, you're getting a green paycheck. But by some counts, so are steelworkers whose product goes into wind turbines or contractors who weatherize homes. According to a report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, there are already more than 750,000 green jobs in the U.S. (See the top green companies.)

Environmental advocates say that with the right policies, those job figures could swell. The Mayors' report predicts that for the next three decades, green employment could provide up to 10% of all job growth. As part of its stimulus package, the White House directed more than $60 billion to clean-energy projects, including $600 million for green-job-training programs. The hope is that capping carbon emissions, even if it raises energy prices in the short term, will create a demand for green jobs, which could provide meaningful work for America's blue collar unemployed.

To some critics, that sounds too good to be true. In a recent report, University of Illinois law professor Andrew Morriss argued that estimates of the potential for green employment vary wildly and that government subsidies would be less efficient — and produce lower job growth — than the free market. "This is all smoke and mirrors," says Morriss. "I don't see how you can replace the existing jobs that may be lost."

The reality is somewhere between the skeptics and the starry-eyed greens. We won't be able to create a solar job for every unemployed autoworker. But with climate change a real threat, shifting jobs from industries that harm the earth to ones that sustain it will become an economic imperative.

Convince Your Boss to Let You Become a 'Workshifter'.

Over the course of the life of this blog, other authors will approach this different ways. I convinced my supervisor at a wireless telecom company (this was in 2005) to let me become a workshifter for three out of five days a week. It wasn't easy, but I found several keys that got me the freedom to work out of a coffeeshop, and the flexibility to do more with the two hours a day that shift brought me. By Chris Brogan at Workshifting.com

Get On the Boss's Side of the Fence If you're going to convince your supervisor to let you workshift, it's not going to be because they really want you to enjoy an extra cup or two of coffee in the morning. Start the process by identifying what's in it for the boss. In my case, my commute was over an hour each way, so I told him that giving me a few days to work remotely would add two hours of productivity per day. Showing him the benefit up front gave him a chance to wiggle his eyebrows on what six hours (2 hours x 3 days) would give him each week: practically another working day!

Get Accountability Figured Out Right Away The biggest shift I encountered in workshifting was that my boss (like many supervisors) was still considering me productive as measured by "hours spent with butt in chair." Yes, sadly, with all the world has brought us in technological advances, it's human nature to equate physical presence with productivity.

The truth of the matter was, because of my position, people often sought me out at my desk to discuss technology changes and work-related issues. I pointed out to the boss that we had some fairly tangible deliverables to my work, and that if wasn't turning things in promptly, it would show pretty quickly, and he could reassess whether I should be a workshifter. He bought this reasoning, and I endeavored to deliver ahead of time as often as I could.

Touch: the Art of Presence Management When you're out of the office, silence on your part is always met with frustration and concern. It's again a matter of human nature. The cure? Connect with your supervisor often through electronic means. Send a brief email every hour or so with some work-related piece of information. If your company is cool enough to use something like Socialcast or Yammer, that would be the very best tool for the "touch" job.

Another point on this: brief emails with very succinct needs listed are better for you (and your boss) than longer emails that bundle things together. It would seem that bundling things is better, but most times, this serves two purposes: it allows you to properly thread pertinent conversations, and it keeps your supervisor abreast of situations. Is this the best? No. Does it ease tensions? Yes, indeedy.

Be Very Available and Flexible Early on in my workshifting efforts, I found myself suddenly saddled with lots of local chores. Because I was down the street at the local coffeeshop (I prefer to work out of the house, because if I stay home, I play with the kids too much), I'd be tasked with things like picking up prescriptions or all the other various family-related things. This was okay, but it meant that I had to stay very available.

Simple things like answering the phone as often as you can when the boss calls go a long way towards easing relationship tensions and management concerns around workshifting.

Sometimes, the boss might need you to come in on your "away" day. As long as this doesn't become a habit, I've taken the stance that it's still a job and that onsite is still the primary way of doing business. As a concession, you might ask for a different day that week. That said, be attentive to whether or not your supervisor might be potentially abusing your agreed-upon experience. Tread gently here, but be firm. It may be a sign that things aren't working out.

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, as well as the home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.

Care and Feed Your Key Contacts.

Dipchand "Deep" Nishar, vice president of products at networking site LinkedIn Corp., doesn't view online networking as something you do only when looking for a job. By Jennifer Saranow at WSJ.

The 40-year-old spends about 15 minutes every morning reading his business contacts' status updates and responding. To keep up his connections, he sends congratulatory notes to those who have received promotions, restaurant recommendations to those who have moved, contact suggestions to those who have changed jobs, and article links to those he thinks might be interested.

About two to three times a month, he reads his social connections' status and news updates and sends them similar kind or helpful notes. He also posts his own status updates weekly, sharing what he's reading or a personal project he's working on -- sticking to topics he thinks his networks would be interested in.

Keeping in touch in this way, Mr. Nishar says, helped him get his current job: His connections recommended him for the post before he even knew about it. "Your network is most valuable when you don't need it," he says.

To get the most out of his networks, Mr. Nishar is picky about whom he lets in and ignores invitations that don't make the cut. He restricts his LinkedIn network to professional contacts he knows well and would want to do business with. (Those he's just met once or twice wouldn't make the cut.)

He limits his Facebook network to friends and social acquaintances. (Very few present or past coworkers can be found there.) All this eliminates the need to delete contacts down the road. "I try to keep my network unpolluted so I don't have to sift through it later," Mr. Nishar says.

Mr. Nishar uses Facebook to stay up-to-date on the lives of those who want to share their videos and photos there -- but he doesn't include himself in that category. Seeking a greater degree of privacy, he posts his family photos and videos to Picasa and YouTube but makes them available only to those he invites to view them. With close friends, he keeps in touch by phone.

Read more great career-oriented articles by Jennifer here.

One Step Back, Two Steps Forward.

Most people don't realize the power of personal connection on the job. I have many clients today that have lost their jobs and are looking for new employment. Unfortunately, they have worked at their respective companies for a very long time and they find themselves unable to get back that one specific position.

Even though I do coach them to 'reach for the stars', there is a law of diminishing returns. After a certain amount of time (let's say 4-6 months), one needs to be realistic about their search. If you are busting your butt getting interviews and not getting that position, it may be time to click your search down a notch and focus on easier pickings. This happens frequently with C-Level clients that NEED to have another C-Level position. Honestly — they're not many C-Level (or others of that ilk) spots out in business-land today.

My suggestion — instead of beating your head against a wall — take a lower position that will be easier to attract/lock-in. When you get into the invite-only party, show them you're able to do much more than you've been hired to do. Most likely, they will see your capabilities over time and offer you increased responsibility or a better position (with increased pay).

But this scenario only comes with a successful and clear set of personal connections in the new job (I will talk about building personal connections later this week). And you will only get those if you are On The Job.

So don't be so picky and go get that position. Good things sometimes don't come to those who wait.

The Best Kept Secret In Business.

It boggles the mind. I can't tell you how many times in my career as an adviser and coach to executives that I've heard phrases like:

• "You're a lifesaver Rich — I don't know how I could have done this without you."
• "You're there when I need you."
• "You helped me reach farther than I've ever reached before."

But I'm not here to extol my accolades . . . I just wanted to let you in on a little secret many executives use to climb up the corporate ladder and stay at the top for a very long time:

They all have a Personal Coach.

You would be quite surprised how many of us are out there working in the background, helping our clients jump from one great opportunity to another, celebrate success after success, and have fun doing it. Oh — and along the way making gobs of money.

If you just asked them if they have a coach, you would be surprised by their answer.

So I have a little bit of homework for you to do next week:

Sit down and think of the most successful person that you know. Call them up. Ask if they have a coach.

They probably do.