Solvation

Why He Hires People Who Fail - An HBR Article

Great thoughts on creating a resilient outlook, by Jeff Stibel, Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. 

Curious about this "fail wall"? Go read the original aricle. I have nothing to add.

Millenials (GenY) Believe in the Social Contract

It has come to my attention YET AGAIN that many feel that Millenials (b. 1981-2001) have a sense of entitlement; that they expect too much.

While I'm sure there are those within the generation who fit that mold, I disagree with its overarching characterization of the generation.

Every generation has its own culture. Individuals may or may not strongly identify with it (or identify much at all), and after all they might consider a different culture to be more relevant to them on a personal level (i.e. country-of-origin, socio-economic, professional - "jock" vs. "nerd", etc.)

Because every generation has its own culture, interactions between generations can be misunderstood in exactly the same way any representatives from any two different cultures might misunderstand each other: they look at each other through the lens of their own context.

Specifically in the case of Millenials, they were nurtured in groups. Watching Millenials as kids - they were like a litter of puppies: They were put onto project teams as early as preschool; my son actually took group final exams in high school. They were shoved into clubs and sports teams and then told to found their own in the competition to get into good colleges. They formed ad hoc "startups" with their roommates, and many of these lasted long enough to do at least one useful project. They want to land in big companies, do good for society, and generally approach life optimistically and positively. They BELIEVE in the concept of Social Contract.

Contrast this to the Baby Boomers and GenX: Boomers were encouraged to be individualistic. They revered the lone visionary, the breakthrough artist. They talk about and fought for personal freedoms. GenX were the ones who turned the tide, against unfettered individual excess but not willing to assume social cohesion, GenX were the kids who couldn't even trust the social contract their dad made with their mom... but because of that, they knew what it was, they valued it, and most of us spent our careers searching for ways to build that back in.

So what we've got here are Millenials - people who DEMAND that social contracts be honored. They're being evaluated by GenX and Boomers. There are GenX who either think they're spoiled ("Social contract? Dreamer!") or are misty-eyed that the world is being set right again ("You can trust? We've healed!")....and Boomers who are either used to heaping disdain on GenX and forgot to stop ("You made a bad choice? Whose fault is that? You disgust me!") or who are Shocked that their lovely, obedient children, who spent their childhood paying into the social contract by benignly taking parental advice, now have the expectation that they're to get something in return ("Well, there are no *promises*...") or continue to expect the social contract to work in their favor ("Oh you young people are so wonderful! Who wants an underpaid internship?")

Personally, I'm in the misty-eyed GenX group. I think Millenials demanding that they are considered part of the social fabric after following instructions and jumping through hoops is a healthy(ish) thing. I'm really sick of hearing about their sense of entitlement, when what we're actually saying is that their parents taught them to believe that if you are a team player, and you do what your team asks, you'll be rewarded. If greedy parents led those expectations to be too high, it's the parents' fault.

I think the Millenials are about to shock us all with their fierce allegiance to social cohesion and social justice. I think some GenX will come through as modern day Pattons, leading the Millenials through the ersatz minefields to get into a strong position from which to end the destruction of the planet.

Go team!

What Do We Name Those Kids that Follow Millenials?

LaughingSquid reports a phone application that has turned checking in with one's parents into a game, called ImOK.

In case you missed it, there it is: the Millenials have ended, and the next in the cycle of oppressed Silent Generations has clearly arrived... In fact, they're now entering 5th grade, poised for adolescence. This generation is parented primarily by "Gen Y" (the last few cohorts of Gen X) and Millenials.

After looking and finding no name for them as yet, I'm going to suggest calling them the Disruptive Generation. The past generation was called "Silent" because their childhood was in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II, spent looking up to their heroic elders who fought the battles and just being very good children so as not to cause any more problems. They were quiet, serious, married young, had babies right away, worked hard, and then after all that pressure, many just "freaked out" in a way that was terribly destructive to the young GenX, their kids (and made us the self-sufficient, innovative, and uplift-oriented generation we are today).

Another thing to note about the Silents is that the few who did disrupt, changed the world: Martin Luther King, Timothy Leary, Gloria Steinem, Jimi Hendrix...? They were all Silent Generation, not Baby Boomers!

So I suggest it's time to find a name for this generation. To get the party started, I've suggested Disruptive Generation because of its ability to bring courage to those who would disrupt (though it will also be mortifying to the rest of them, and it might encourage the generation's worst behavior to hang on...), but I'm hardly a tastemaker. I'd particularly love to hear from the Silents themselves, 67-83 year olds.

Integrity vs. Loyalty

A friend posted a link to the Media Matters blog post, "Michelle Malkin hates politics in her sports, except when she doesn't"

I was just thinking this morning that the reason why people cheat (in my son's school) is because in-group loyalty is more important to them than personal integrity/ethics. In fact, if I had known a certain ex-boyfriend in High School, I would have loathed him, because he would have been exactly the guy who kept batting his eyes at me asking me to let him cheat on his paper: his attention as a football star in exchange for my willingness to put myself at risk on his behalf. (And.... No. Actually I once was kicked out of a housing situation for not letting my roommates cheat off me. So, I know exactly how averse I am.)

Extrapolate that out. You get a set of people who believe that the value of being part of the group is so high that they justify doing all sorts of contemptible things: horrible hazing rituals (hazing in general is just idiotic; but some is more funny than hurtful) and of course lawbreaking.

But maybe a bit more subtle, when people arrange their values in this way, they assume "everyone else" has the same motivations. So if you wear Los Suns jerseys, then presumably you're saying it's more important for you to be part of the group of Hispanic activists (and their progressive-libertarian allies) than it is to be part of the group "Arizona." You're not just expressing solidarity, you've switched loyalties.

In contrast, Tebow making a "pro-family" advertisement was him expressing a personal belief that this woman clearly thinks that everyone who follows sports already has.

So this woman is just biased in what she sees and ignorant of the idea that there's an potential reality beyond her own experience of the world.

We all are guilty of observational bias. That's the one thing that science education should be able to teach each and every student, but has missed.

Metrics and Outcomes and Intuition, Oh My!

Well, it's Thanksgiving, and time to think about what we're thankful about. At the Social Capital Markets blog, we've started a blog roundup (#socap #thankful) and of course this first abbreviated month is about stories of thanks.

During the discussions about topics, Kevin Jones at one point said, "Quantify the good for which you are thankful. Does measuring it make it grow in your mind or memory? So what's the good of social metrics? If they take away from thanksgiving, what earthly good are they?"

As it turns out, this is a topic near and dear. (HINT: What that means is this is going to be a long, rambly post, and now you've been warned!)

 

Transcript of Shiller on Charlie Rose

I am moderating a week-long forum on Skoll's SocialEdge on "What is Wealth." In that, I refer to the video of the interview Charlie Rose did of Robert Shiller. It was brought to my attention that as broadband is limited in areas where many Skoll participants are, that this would be useless to them.

So I sought to provide a link to the transcript, but unfortunately, Charlie Rose's site has a layout problem, and it's unreadable, at least to me.  So I copied-and-pasted it here and cleaned up the tags until it laid out like it should.

Dave McClure's Talk: Shock and Oh!

Evidently, Dave did a talk, and there was brouhaha. I didn't see the presentation, and my response was written into a comment. While the comment is awaiting approval, I posted the link to Tracey Ullman to my Facebook profile.  Well, I guess Tracey piqued interest.

Here's the comment on Susan Mernit's post.

Wynton Marsalis on Colbert Report

Wynton Marsalis was a guest on the Colbert Report, a show on Comedy Central hosted by Stephen Colbert, whose schtick is satirically mocking pompous and superficial hosts.  Marsalis took one of Stephen's snide taunts and gave such a beautiful quote, I had put up this mini-post:

Stephen Colbert: How do you win at jazz?  Is there a point system?

Wynton Marsalis:  Let me tell you what.  When you start to play and you see people jumping up and down in the audience, and hollering and screaming, and wanting to get up on the tables... and then some other people next to them have tears coming out of their eyes and another person is sleeping, and the whole room erupts in a volcano of feeling?

Stephen Colbert: Yep.

Wynton Marsalis: You won.

Stand Up to Cancer - SU2C

A quick post on an event tonight that raises funding for cancer research via your passive participation. Like many people, my life has been drastically altered through losing people I love to cancer: my mother and father both died of cancer (1990, 2004 respectively), and my son's other grandmother also (1994). I have had other relatives and friends who have themselves been afflicted by cancer, or have their lives changed by the affliction of others they love.

The SU2C website gives more details on the overall campaign, or watch

Father's Day - In Memoriam

As is the case nowadays on Father's Day, I am in remembrance mode. I know it's a "Hallmark Holiday," but it doesn't really matter. It's more poignant this year, though: a friend's father is dying, and he's taking on the burden of primary caregiver. It takes a lot of courage, but then again he's an admirable man.

For those who don't know, my dad was a child and adolescent psychoanalyst who did a lot of work regarding suicide, and later moved into the legal system providing a friend of court brief on behalf of the children involved in custody hearings.

In Memoriam:
Lionel Margolin's Top Platitudes

Many people like to bring up Yoda's line: "Do or Do Not; There Is No Try." I don't like this phrase -- on the surface, it's great; but probe a little bit deeper and it's anti-learning, as it ignores the importance of intent: intent is intangible, but nevertheless often the most important aspect to consider when a mistake is made.  Instead of this, I would choose my father's wisdom, something also media-inspired: the combination of "Be Your Own Hero" and "There is No Finish Line." *

In response to "Life isn't fair!" (something I evidently said rather frequently during my adolescence), my father would reply, "Who ever told you life was fair? I never said that! You're right; life isn't fair!"

About Childrearing, "You can raise children to be obedient, or you can raise them to have character. You can't do both." What he meant by this was that in order to have character, you have to confront and question the established order. In fact, I mildly disagree, because there's a bridge: if part of your character is to be generally a proponent of social structure, then it would make some sense to have a "default" of loyalty, causing you to behave obediently as evidence of your willingness to support the existing social infrastructure, at least conceptually, and at least until there's a reason not to.

And in general, from as far back as I can remember, "Always Be Coachable!"  He intended this in the same way as people say to have a Beginner Mind.  I'm sure sometimes he meant this as "Jessica!, would you LISTEN?!?" but he also meant it as a general rule, to step into the swing (and not sideways) when swinging the baseball bat.

He had plenty of annoying, smart-ass comments -- I won't dignify them with the term "platitude" -- because he said out loud a lot of jokes that were clearly designed for his own amusement, and no one else's. I admit, I am not so funny to other people, either (just ask my son).  What can you do? No one's perfect.

So, Happy Father's Day, everyone.  And if you have a remembrance, add it to the comments.

- Jessica

* = "There is No Finish Line" was a Nike slogan poster so long ago that Nike was a startup.  At his request, I scoured Berkeley back in the day, until I found one. The irony!

My Story, and I'm Sticking To It.

Micropost: the NYTimes reports that distractibility is a sign of better problem-solving. Aging Brains Take In More Information, Studies Show.

Attention Boomers! This is the new face of Leadership

I love "GenX." I really do.

Wired ran a fabulous article: SXSW: 2008, the Year the Audience Keynoted.  Undoubtedly there are prescient Boomers whether early or late technology adopters, and also Boomers who are current evangelists of these dynamics (I even know a few!), but I gotta step on my drum-beating soapbox for a moment to point out that this is classic change-making GenX power. 

This isn't mob-chaos; it's rapidfire transparent consensus-building: documentable, traceable, and with plenty of post-mortem to evaluate efficacy.  This is fluid.

Any Boomer who is professionally bemoaning issues with succession planning should put on some rose-colored glasses for a moment and really take a look at the strength in this.  Most importantly, understand the trust inherent in this world, which remember is an increasingly diverse community filled with the children of those 50%-divorce-rate years.  The level of communication sophistication and boundary management is astounding.

I've finally begun posting some writing I've done in the past about Generation X leadership style and why it keeps getting overlooked.

Alive in Baghdad reporter killed

I found this via a Vox-originated-friendship via her Facebook post. Alive in Baghdad was a social media reporting site run by a young man who at 22 was evidently the last surviving male in his family.  Mica Scalin has a link to the chip-in site if you want to make a holiday season donation.  He died Dec 14, two days before turning 23.

Favorville

Bartering on Favorville, where residents can list favors they need and those they're willing to perform.  Favor-exchangers can rate each other with a feedback system.

Favorville

Bartering on Favorville, where residents can list favors they need and those they're willing to perform.  Favor-exchangers can rate each other with a feedback system.