Work(s) in Progress

Leading from Within

About a month ago I spent 3 days at the magnificent (Orvis recommended) North Fork Ranch in Shawnee Colorado. While it’s only about an hour from Denver, it feels inaccessible, as in there is no ATT cell service there. I was blackberry silent for 3 days although the lodge did have wireless internet in some areas. Karen her husband Dean are amazing hosts. Some from the trip are still talking about the food. The accommodations were great too. I had a private room, suite really, with King sized bed, sitting area, and walk in rain shower with heated tile floors in my bath. The location was breathtakingly beautiful.  

 

Going to a functioning Dude Ranch had never been on my "to do" list but in many ways it was just what I needed. I was there for a 3 day program called “Leading from Within” taught by Greg Giesen  & Steve Sorenson. A colleague had introduced me to Steve who’d invited me to sign up for the program. While Steve had attended the program in the past, this was the first time he’d been one of the facilitators. Most of the leadership training I’ve done in the past has either been predominantly skill based (e.g. HERS Denver Institute for women in Higher Ed Administration) or goal/vision/purpose based (e.g “Visionary Leadership” as taught by Ed O’Connor  at the Business School at UC Denver). This was different, and I knew it would be going in. We only had 8 people in our group which made for a very intimate & safe environment. Historically, Greg had been keeping these small by design. I can’t write many specifics because we all promised to keep each other’s secrets, and it’s a proprietary program and one of Greg & Steve’s businesses so…if you want more detail, sign up! 

My friend Luis writes often about “fast trust.”  Greg really has this mastered. How do you create trust in a group of strangers (or even harder, in a group of coworkers, some perhaps with adversarial or supervisory roles) in the first hour or two of meeting so that meaningful conversation and self work can begin? And perhaps more importantly, create a change that endures past the 3 day retreat so that people do not regret what they’ve shared once they’ve left the safe environment. At its most fundamental, Leading from Within, is structured around the premise that you cannot lead others effectively until you are completely certain that you know who you are. And that being your authentic self, all of the time, is the most effective and powerful place from which to lead. 

We did some mundane things to poke at our values and life purpose. We probed those barriers, insecurities and anchors that hold us back from our potential (Greg has another name for these and a way to release them). We shared our biggest fears, our most embarrassing moments, and our greatest hopes. And at least for me, all of those things were the easy part. I’ve done many of these exercises in some form before. I’m pretty clear on my strengths and weaknesses. I’m largely comfortable in my own skin. I know where most of my major issues are and how they get in my way and under what circumstances. And then we wrote our own eulogies with the choice of today or some future day but we had to write them as someone in our lives (not as ourselves), and I broke, a little; OK I broke lots. I am still looking for the pieces to put back together.

For some in our group the other exercises were the big challenges and this one was easy. For me, even one month later, I still do not want to examine it too closely. There be dragons. Unresolved. Not quite ready for the light of day. If the metaphorical bus runs me over tomorrow, what will be my legacy? Will anyone know me well enough to speak a eulogy that represents me truly? Why have I allowed so few to know me fully? In the perhaps half of my life that remains how can I do more, be more, have more impact? And while I’ve blogged about them, how many who count me among their friends really grok  my core values and life purpose and know how fundamental it is to me. 

For some this was so easy. They were incredibly certain in their roles as sons/daughters of god, as parents, as children, as spouses, as business people. I envy them. All.

And that perhaps is the secret of the Leading from Within 3 day retreat. One exercise may bring one person to their knees while the rest of the participants remained unfazed. But after 3 days, there will be at least one that will cut to the core. It’s not comfortable, and I don’t recommend doing it often, but every year or two, these things should be poked at. How big are your dragons getting? How can you shrink them? I am pondering mine. 

I’m thinking about impact and openness. ALL.OF.THE.TIME. I want to do more, be more, make more. But how? Where?

We’re hosting Greg & Steve (picture below is Greg, me, Steve) for a brief seminar on June 22 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM at the Bard Center. Let me know if you’d like a taste of what they offer. Else catch them in July in San Diego at the  Destiny Now event  or register for their next  Leading from Within workshop in September in Colorado. 

 

Where did our hunger go?

Happy Memorial Day. I am still thinking about my trip to China in January. 

As you might recall, I spent the first few weeks of 2010 touring China (Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong) learning how they approach entrepreneurship and economic development. Everywhere there were signs of patriotism and the desire to be not just the best in their nation but the best in the world. I was struck for example by the sign "Excellence Pursuer, Prevail Forever" over a toll booth outside of Hangzhou. The people we met were willing to work 11 hour days, 6 days a week, for the hope of some new better future.

I worry that our complacency is killing us as a nation. We are fat both literally and figuratively. I came home with an image of the USA in my mind of us as a land of Homer Simpsons: fat, beer in hand, sitting on the couch in front of the TV. We may be the current Global leader but I worry that we will fast lose that status unless we get our hunger, tenacity, creativity and pride back. Some on my trip were more optimistic. They felt that while China was terrific at manufacturing and improving production processes that they did not know how to innovate. Surely, we as Americans are known worldwide for our outstanding educational system and ability to innovate.

Unfortunately, extensive data shows that we are rapidly falling behind in the USA. Recently there was on Op-Ed piece by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times on this same topic. He wrote in part, "It gets worse. Otellini noted that a 2009 study done by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and cited recently in Democracy Journal “ranked the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness — not great, but not bad. Yet that same study also measured what they call ‘the rate of change in innovation capacity’ over the last decade — in effect, how much countries were doing to make themselves more innovative for the future. The study relied on 16 different metrics of human capital — I.T. infrastructure, economic performance and so on. On this scale, the U.S. ranked dead last out of the same 40 nations. ... When you take a hard look at the things that make any country competitive. ... we are slipping.”

I remain optimistic, but we cannot delay action. It is critical that institutional silos and political battles and turf wars be set aside so that we can remain leaders in innovation, technology and biomedical research. We can learn from the business models of several international successes such as Biopolis in Singapore or Cyberport in Hong Kong which so far are wildly successful public-private partnerships supporting innovation, interdisciplinary research, new technology development and of course economic development. Now more than ever it is critical for us to focus on innovative high-risk, high-reward projects. We may be slipping but we have not yet lost. How do we get our hunger back? Our pride?

I hope our veterans did not give their lives in vain. 

Day 6: Traveling to Hangzhou

You can find pictures from my trip on Flickr.

Day 1 is here. The next two days were all about getting acclimated.

Days 2 & 3 are here. These days were pretty much spent as a tourist in Shanghai.

Days 4 & 5 are here. Lots of meetings with companies and other experts on Chinese business development.

Day 6 (January 7)

Thursday was largely a travel and cultural experience day. We had about a 2 hour bus ride to Haining China Leather City. The Chinese know how to build shopping malls. Haining Leather City is massive with about 2000 leather companies. All of the stores were selling leather or fur items. In the USA, it seems that malls will sometimes restrict the types of stores that are near each other so that competitors are at other malls, not across the hall. In China, the competitors are all grouped together. While it was jam packed, there were very few non-Chinese tourists here. Many in our group stocked up on coats, gloves, shoes, slippers, hand bags and luggage. There were many products that were crafted to look like well known American or European brands. The etiquette in this mall was quite different than I'm accustomed to in the US. Here stores throw their trash into the hallways of the mall as there are people who go around to collect the bits of trash. So it can be pretty surprising when you are standing in the hallway waiting for someone and the storekeeper comes and sweeps or throws trash at your shoes. Similarly, spitting is very common and men would simply spit onto the hall floors. Smoking is also pervasive; it was fairly common for shopkeepers to be smoking while trying to make a sale to you.

I'm not much of a shopper so that best thing about this leg of the trip was Chen Ji,  our host, talking about his experiences as a young man during the Cultural Revolution. From ages 17 to 25, he was sent away from his parents (University professors who'd done translations for Americans) to live in the country to be reeducated. While the conditions sounded fairly brutal and primitive, he spent a lot of time talking about the benefits of this experience to him personally and professionally. He also shared how the village he lived in, and China as a whole, have evolved since he had this experience in the 1960s and 1970s.

From Leather City it was another 2 hour bus ride to Hangzhou. The landscape became much more rural. The buildings were shorter with cultivated land and some farms. In many areas, old buildings had been turned to rubble with tall office towers being constructed in the background. They are also in the process of constructing a high speed train rail line (159 km) from Shanghai to Hangzhou.  All along the way the cement pillars had already been established and many crews were working to add the rail connecting them. The goal is to have this new line finished by 2011.

Hangzhou is a very rich city with many entrepreneurs. They even market it as such. This picture was taken at a screen (with a repeating marketing video) near Westlake just across the street from our hotel.
Our hotel, the Sofitel, was in a very impressive neighborhood. There were BMW & Mini Cooper dealerships on the first floor of our hotel. On our drive over, we passed by dealerships for Bentley & Lamborghini. I did not expect to see these in China. There are many VWs and of course Buicks and Chevys, but in Hangzhou there are also many Audis, BMWs & Mercedes. Mostly the larger sedans as people who can afford such cars typically have drivers.

You never know what you'll see in China. We passed the following sign and message “Excellence Pursuer, Prevail Forever” as we went through the toll to enter the city.
Similar signs, with similar messages of optimism, perseverance and dominance are everywhere (and I'm only noticing the ones with English translations). I find myself wondering about the long term impact on the people being exposed to such messages daily and the lack of similar messaging in a meaningful way in the USA. Instead we now give trophies to youth for just showing up. Everyone is a winner. This concerned me before I came to China but I find my concern and worry about this American practice to grow more each day I am here. I'll write more about this in the coming days as I find myself wondering how we as a nation will remain competitive in the future.

Learning some HTML part 2

I registered my own domain about 6 weeks ago.

I'm making progress learning some HTML & CSS. I still can't always get the code to do what I expect, but it does seem (at least to me) that I'm getting there.

My big project recently has been assembling and organizing resources for businesses that want to locate or grow in Downtown Denver. I'd love feedback on this test resource in terms of usefulness, format, missing items, etc.

Thank you in advance!

Go Dilbert

I'm a big fan of Scott Adams' blog. While I don't always "get" Dilbert, I do like to read about Scott's writings that go behind and beyond his work.

Scott recently paid for a survey of economists to assess their opinions on the ability of the two major US Presidential Candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, to have a positive impact on the major economic challenges facing our country. You can learn more on CNN and Scott's blog.

A strong majority of economists are democratic, a fact which surprised me. Scott had the surveyed economists rate the major economic issues and then rank the presidential candidates with respect to those issues.

Education was #1. Let me say that again, Education was #1. I have always believed this in a very visceral way. If you want to change the world in the long term, education is the only answer. Clearly, I am not alone in this belief. The next key issues were Health care, International trade, Energy, Encouraging technology and innovation (let's hear it for Entrepreneurship! of course I am biased.), and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (homeland security).

On these key issues, Barack Obama was the clear winner, except for International Trade. I found this to be funny since so many people around the world hope that Obama will become our next president (see e.g. this article). Of course, the entire survey is biased given that most of the economists are Democratic (and thus lean towards Obama); in spite of this limitation, I found the data very interesting.

 

Of course if you don't want to ponder the substantive issues (or data), watch this parody instead. As the fake Hillary challenges the media to grow a pair, so to do I offer mine. Get some.

Career Mapping

These days, I frequently meet people with very interesting job titles, most recently a "Chief People Connector" for an executive recruiting firm. I think she may also have been the founder and CEO but she did not use those titles. Even when I meet people with more traditional titles, I often have no idea what their job entails or what skills and credentials were required to get there. I may have found a place to find the answers.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a book each year called the "Occupational Outlook Handbook." How did I not know about this resource until this week? It's freely available on-line and searchable. I looked up my old career running a biomedical researchlab and the content and career path were incredibly accurate. Importantly, it describes how one spends their day and what credentials, training, and skills are needed to succeed at the job. Fun.

Transparency

I moved from a private university to a public one on January 1. In the private world, compensation was sometimes whispered about but few really knew how their peers, subordinates or supervisors were compensated. Oh speculation abounded, but having been in a position to know some real numbers, the speculators were often very wrong.

I have discovered that my new university opens everything up not only internally but externally as well. I've been typing in names of friends, colleagues and acquaintances all evening. The data have been fascinating. It pays to be hired now. So many newly recruited assistant professors out earn their long tenured colleagues. If you are job hunting, I strongly encourage you to plow through the data batch by batch so that you negotiate well.

University salaries not your cup of tea, well one of our local papers, the Denver Post, has made all sorts of data freely available in their Data Center.Crime, compensation, foreclosure maps, sex assaults by graphical map, truly whatever interests you. I really did not need to know that my teenage neighbor is listed as a sex offender (yes really) in one of these databases.

I have mixed feelings about all of this transparency. I got a memo in my work email today. There is a now released "sexual predator" who has moved near one of our campuses. This memo had a summary of his record, his name, his address, his photo - with this description "Fondled 8 yoa female at work site, and had her perform oral sex." Do you feel safer now? How long before this man, with his photo and name given to thousands of us, is lynched? Should I feel better that I'm decades older than his alleged target? That I have no kids? Can this guy move forward on better behavior without paying for this every day, even now that he's served his time? How can he possibly get work with a memo of this type following him wherever he moves? This does not mean I don't feel his crime was heinous. I do. But I wonder whether and how all of this transparency is serving us.

Do you feel better knowing that your colleague is earning $750 more or less than you per year? That a released felon is in your neighborhood? That your new neighbors bought your old neighbor's house for cheap in a foreclosure auction?

Me? I like data. Data comforts me. Or perhaps I should say, the analysis of data comforts me. But some of these random facts...oh those I could really live without.

Whatever floats your boat

I've done extensive diversity training in higher education. I suspect that educational institutions are among the most tolerant and accepting organizations on the planet. Color, gender, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, whatever. You name it and we have a special training about it. In general, the ivory tower is a tolerant place, first by mandate and ultimately by familiarity. There are exceptions but they are rare. Even so, I am occassionally surprised.

I got an email today from a genetically female colleague whom I've known as "Alice" for several years. She/he wrote: "I have been working toward formally transitioning my gender for some time now. Effective this Monday, I will be living full time as a male and my new name will be "Adam". I understand using the new name and different pronouns may be difficult, however I am eager to help things go smoothly. If you have questions or would like to talk about this, please let me know. This is our workplace and I intend to maintain the same professional standards I always have."

Of course, the first thing that jumped into my mind was the headline I saw today about the pregnant man.

I know heterosexual folks who've taken to calling their spouses their "partners" to be more inclusive. I have married male friends (to each other) where I am unsure whether to ask of their husband, partner, spouse, wife (is one of them the wife?!). Is there some website that has the correct nomenclature somewhere? Yes I've had tons of training but it's a moving target.

I guess mostly this stuff leaves me befuddled. If sexuality is a continuum (I believe this), I'm at one of the ends. I'm a gal and I like guys. It would take Angelina Jolie for me to even think about experimenting. So, while I can accept it (if that is your thing), I don't feel it. I once had a more balanced female friend grope me in the communal college shower. Um, yeah, really not my thing. But if it yours, more power to you. I apologize in advance if I lack the correct vocabulary. It's not that I don't accept who you are. I do. You just may need to educate me a bit more.

67 Myths of Entrepreneurship

I just finished The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By by Scott A. Shane a Professor of Economics and the A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University (my undergraduate alma mater). The book received great publicity in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.

It's a terrific scholarly work that shattered some of my illusions of entrepreneurship. Scott crushes 67 myths or shares 67 truths depending on your perspective.

 Let's start with #1: America is NOT becoming more entrepreneurial. The rate of start-up creation has been declining over the last 20 years. This ties to #2 - there are many countries that are much more entrepreneurial than the USA.

A few things surprised (and depressed) me:

• immigrants are not more likely to start their own businesses (#18)
• networking skill does not matter (#19)
• venture capitalists fund less than one-tenth of one percent of all start-ups and account for less than two percent of all small business financing (#35)
• the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he would have earned had he worked for someone else (#39)
• compared to start-ups led by men, new businesses led by women have lower sales, fewer employees, less productivity, lower profits, and worse survival rates (#54)
• blacks create new businesses at only one-third the rate of whites and this pattern has persisted for decades (#56)
• encouraging start-ups is lousy public policy because ... we have a lot of evidence that these policies lead people to start marginal businesses that are likely to fail, have little economic impact, and generate little employment (#62)

All this painted a pretty bleak picture of entrepreneurship in America for me. Unless you are a job hopping, now unemployed, 40 year old white male who is sick of working for others (yep that stereotype is true) you might as well give up your dream. Sigh.

But the book smartly ended with some recommendations. What businesses are likely to succeed and drive economic growth? More importantly, what should we do? Scott's advice is somewhat like Castor oil - good for you but hard to swallow. Here is a snippet:

A strategy that revolves around increasing the number of new businesses created every year is flawed. Increasing the number of people founding construction firms and hair salons and taxi services that don't do anything innovative isn't going to do us much good. In fact, it might hinder our economic growth because new businesses are, on average, less productive than existing ones.

Instead of believing naively that all entrepreneurship is good, we need to recognize that only a select entrepreneurs will create the businesses that will take people out of poverty, encourage innovation, create jobs, reduce unemployment, make markets more competitive, and enhance economic growth. Therefore, as unfair as it may sound, we need to "stop spreading the peanut butter so thin." We need to recognize that all entrepreneurs are not created equal. We need to think like venture capitalists and concentrate our time and money on extraordinary entrepreneurs and worry less about the typical ones.

There is more, much more. Importantly, all of these recommendations tie to decades of data. Get your own copy: The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By

Choose Research

A former lab technician of mine who is now a graduate student in a Department of Biological Sciences sent this to me today.  It may not be meaningful to anyone who has not spent time as an academic scientist but it made me laugh. Sadly there is much truth in this. If the text is hard to read, then click the image and it should open in a new larger format (warning, profanity).

People ask if I regret my career shift which is moving me away from the lab, away from research. Um, no. Never.

Do I still believe that basic biomedical research is the best way to understand and one day cure disease? Absolutely. Does it need to be me doing the work? Not anymore.