You Can Be A Successful Corporate Escape Artist, if. . .

. . .you read Pamela Skillings' new book, Escape From Corporate America.

I write about what's going on in the workplace and how to look at things differently or more accurately. My experience inside--and outside--of corporate life tells me that Pam has put together an accurate portrayal of what you need to think about and do to make a successful career change.

Eight Things That Will Keep You Engaged and Leave You Wanting More

1. A quick survey of your current state of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and why.

2. Statistics that help you understand you're not alone.

3. Tips to make your current situation better if you really do like your organization but feel lethargic or disgruntled.

4. A self-help guide for doing some "career dreaming" that leads to practical steps you can follow for action.

5. How to make yourself more valuable where you are right now.

6. How to go solo intentionally, practically, and successfully.

7. How to identify "corporate jobs that don't suck" as well as why they don't and why you might just like them.

8. Interviews with more than 50 "Escape Artists" who made it, how they did it, and who offer sound--and hopeful--advice.

(Any author who can get Dilbert's Scott Adams to provide tips in the same pages as Perez Hilton really is something special).

Note: This is a book to be devoured by managers and HR types as well. Every page includes some morsel that will lead to an awareness of what you need to do to get and retain good people.

Oh, yes. I highly recommend Escape From Corporate America.

Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw wish they had this one before they got on that plane.

Making Changes? Pay Attention to High Achievers

"Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time."
--Alvin Toffler

You already know that working more doesn't necessarily mean better results.

But we still do it.

In fact, we have more knowledge than ever about psychology, physiology, and well-being, but still fall into the "It'll be better if we work harder and longer" trap, followed by "We'll slow down as soon as we reach______."

Which is what people with addictions often say.

Whether you are a talented manager caught up in activity--or a talented worker at the receiving end--you may notice that, indeed, the results don't always seem to match the effort.

Maybe it's because you're talented and stressed.

Talent + Stress: Unproductive Combo

It turns out that, under pressure, talented people become distracted because the stress uses up their working memory. "Working memory" is something that highly accomplished people have in abundance; they rely on it to solve challenging problems. Under stress, they use shortcuts that undermine their normal strategies and make them less accurate.

This comes from the research of  Sian Beilock, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago as reported in Science Daily.

Professor Beilock also notes that those who start with less adequate supplies of working memory learn other ways of problem solving to compensate for their deficiencies. The downside: Although these folks aren't impacted additionally by working under pressure, their alternative problem solving strategies aren't highly accurate to begin with.

The punch line for organizations:

Watch the High Achievers

When initiating change, lots of attention is given to "the masses." It's assumed that the "best and the brightest" will embrace and lead large scale change. The research here shows that such conventional wisdom is neither conventional nor wise.

We want to believe that, under stress, there are organizational superheroes who will save the day. That kind of thinking just isn't borne out by the research cited here. In fact, putting too much of an extra burden on high performers may actually ensure decreased accuracy in problem-solving when good judgment is needed the most.

Stress levels are a somewhat personal thing, so there's no gauge that says,"When we hit 7.5, stop!" But this new information does say, "Pay closer attention to how much change can successfully take place in a given amount of time."

Ignoring the reality of the data may not only undermine a major change effort; it may also undermine the very well-being of the people needed to take the company into the future.

How do you think organizations can--and will--react to this kind of information?

Note: A tip of the hat to Shane at Zoomstart whose article got me thinking about this.

26 One-liners for Employee Engagement

When David Zinger put out the invitation for an alphabet soup of employee engagement tips, it was too good to pass up. Others felt the same way. So David ended up producing the results as the 300 Free Employee Engagement Keys eBook which you can also dowload here.

David's dedication to professional development generated an entire network devoted to the EE topic. You can look and join here for free.

The idea was to use each letter of the alphabet to offer up thoughts on engagement, so I give you:

Steve's EE, A to Z

Amour: Am I doing what I love to do?

Bingo!: We have work experiences that make us want  to yell this every day.

Croon: Our projects make us want to sing about them--at least sometimes.

Destiny: We have a sense of more than just today.

Echo: What we do reverberates across the organization. We listen, so we know whether or not to make adjustments.

Federline: We don't make the same mistakes as Britney and skip the engagement part. Which means we also understand that winning a "trip to Paris" isn't always a good thing.

Glad: We take time to celebrate when good things happen.

Harpoon: When something starts to drag us down, we nip it in the bud.

Isolate: Only problems, not people.

Java: We're skilled at drinking it while the plug-in is downloading.

Killer-apps: We know how to apply our work to real business solutions.

Latitude: What we give to our colleagues.

Mojo: What our competitors think we've got an abundance of.

Nah!: What we say when others try to tell us we're too committed.

Oh yeah!: The kind of thing we say to each other when someone does something really good.

Prada: The stuff we'll never wear because we're too engaged to go shopping.

Quirks: What we admire in each other that the disengaged choose to criticize.

Rigor: We think this is a good thing, since the opposite is rigormortous.

Serious: About our mission, not ourselves.

Telemarketing: What we don't do with good ideas because we know the importance of face time.

Utopia: What we shoot for even though we know it doesn't exist.

Vacuum: We avoid operating in one. Because of our level of engagement, we may avoid using one as well. Life challenge: Learn the difference.

Why Not?: One of the first things we ask after hearing "Why?"

Xenogamy: We practice cross-fertilization of ideas. We also never say this word out loud in meetings.

Yin & Yang: We look for the complementary relationships in opposites.

Zone: What this is all about, as in, "We want to be in the . . ."

What would your alphabet include?

Talent and Learning: When Someone Moves Your Mouse

We've been talking about talent, learning, and generations for the past couple of days, so I thought you might like the little I Am Looking For My Mouse from professional friend Jo Jordan in the U.K. Jo tipped us off to the Clay Shirky video in the same article.

Off to NYC. Thanks, Jo.

Talent: Generational Differences That Do Make a Difference

Yesterday's Talent: Does Generational Difference Really Matter? drew a series of insightful comments. Most zeroed in on the fact that, regardless of the scenario, we humans want others to be more like us--and respond the way we want them to respond--regardless of what the perceived difference might be.

So, What Is Different Across Certain Generations?

1. Longevity. When it comes to a view of long-term employment, about 70 percent of the boomers born in the late 40s/early 50s say they see themselves sticking with an employer for more than three years. That figure drops to a little less than 40% when GenXer's are asked the same question.

I'm assuming that, for the boomers, retirement is in the back of their minds (or maybe the front), and a 3-year horizon would enable many to fulfill the related financial goals by not changing employers.

However: There's a clear business implication. Companies intent on retention and knowledge transfer are faced with a double-whammy. If one group is churning and the other simply won't be around for a long time, the problem becomes obvious. It's not new, it's discussed a lot, and it's real.

Which leads to:

2. How knowledge gets transferred.

Karl Kapp made a presentation to Lockheed-Martin Corporation titled Bridging the Boomer/Gamer Knowledge Gap. He underscored the fact that learning preferences do come into play:

• Boomer knowledge is formal, structured, hierarchical, and based on a distinction between the interface and information.

• Gamer (Net Generation) knowledge is informal, unstructured, non-hierarchical, and based on the assumption that the information is the interface (my italics).

Regarding the knowledge transfer that must occur as the baby boomers retire and the Gamers enter the workforce, Kapp recommends that organizations break out of the “class mentality” and think in terms of learning events.

Here's what that means: As soon as someone recognizes a need to know something, a person, group, or online resource is put together almost immediately to handle the need. It can happen from beginning to end in 10-15 minutes.

That also means knowing "who knows what" and having a process--and a culture--that enables learning to happen.

If you think that getting together in a classroom for a day is the way to go, ask yourself this: "How many minutes of learning really took place during the years I spent inside the classroom?"

3. Expectations of Work.

The silent generation--those born before 1943 and now in the retirement bracket--express a need for work that's interesting, fair pay, and recognition for a job well done.

Gen X folks say they want work schedule flexibility, bonus pay for outstanding accomplishment (vs. pay for seniority), and a path forward in the organization.

What to think?

When we compare similarities vs. differences, it's clear that all age groups have common needs that they want to have satisfied. The differences are pretty well known to most organizations and consultants; #2 is probably the one with the largest potential impact right now and, from my daily consulting work, the one that has real urgency.

What I hope will be a relief to readers of all organizational ilks is this: the fundamental desires of people remain consistent through the ages (and age groups). We want to be respected and acknowledged in some way for who we are and what we bring to a task; we want a good quality of life for ourselves at work and for our families at home; and we want our employers to treat us in those terms and not as a commodity that can be replaced without consequence.

Regardless of how many generations are seated at the conference table, each is looking for leadership that acknowledges the above. It's not complicated.

It does require a unifying heart, an understanding mind, and the willingness and ability to connect the two.

________________________________________________________________________________________

For more on generations:

Lisa Orrell focuses on just this topic at her Generation Relations site.

Jennifer Fisher is working on a research project and would appreciate your input at Generation Soup.

For something from the marketing side: James Chartrand's post at Copyblogger .

Photo acknowledgments:
www.celebheights.com/starimages/snoop-dogg.jpg
abcnews.go.com
alifecycle.blogspot.com
commons.wikimedia.org