On Boards

I have the pleasure of serving on a number of boards here in Philadelphia.  I do this because they are the confluence of a lot of things that are important to me: being civically engaged, building my professional network, getting the scop on what's going on around town, and learning exactly how things work.  So, far from being difficult time commitments to honor, boards are efficient uses of my scarce time. 

That being said, I fall far short of the time and energy I ought to and want to devote to each board.  Every organization deserves board members that are committed, and people who can't serve to a certain level should step down to let others who can have their seat.  And, looking at things from my perspective, it's important not to over-commit, and probably better to sacrifice quantity for quality when it comes to what I do commit to.

But I have made my peace with myself and with the leaders of the organizations whose boards I serve on, that a partial commitment is better than none at all, and that if I can focus on where I can add the most value, I can give quality time even if I can't give quantity of time.  Indeed, even people who have more time to give to a board role have to think about where they want to channel their efforts, since they can't possibly serve everywhere.

To wit, in considering the boards I'm on and where I tend to devote my efforts, here are some places I tend to focus on vs. not focus on:

Yes

Checking in with the executive director to let them know I have their back, talk out any issues that are helpful to talk out, and make sure they're feeling good about themselves and the organization.  I've written before about how I choose boards in part to spend more time with leaders I enjoy being with, and that is still true, so this role is a bit self-serving.  Still, I think it's important to take care of our leaders, and if I can play a small part in helping them stay sane, I am happy to do so.

Leveraging my professional networks to bring in funds and friends for the organization.  Fundraising is simultaneously expected of all board members and dreaded by all board members.  Very few of us like hitting up our colleagues for cash, but it's a responsibility I try to take seriously on behalf of the organizations where I serve.  Specifically, I annually download my professional network list and identify people I want to approach for each of my boards.  This process usually yields about 30 to 40 individuals that I can then target when it comes time for each organization's annual fundraiser or campaign appeal.

Participating in a multi-year strategic planning process.  I feel it is a board's responsibility in part to help an organization take a high-altitude look at the landscape in which it operates.  Questions like what are we good at, where is the market heading, and how should we be perceived are hard to tackle when you're in the day-to-day slog of running programs and making payroll.  It's personally enriching for me to deconstruct an organization and its competitive environment in order to get a sense of what we should be about and how we should then process new information and new opportunities.

No

I do not tend to get involved in supporting existing programs or envisioning new programs.  I am usually not involved in finances, personnel, governance, beyond being aware enough to identify red flags.  I care deeply about new board member recruitment and orientation, so will speak up about their importance, but have not typically been able to follow through and participate in these roles. 

Compartmentalization vs. Integration

I've been musing a lot lately about this notion of compartmentalizing your life versus integrating your life.  What do I mean?  A lot of different things. 

To begin with, you can think about two kinds of people in terms of their work schedules.  One has a bright light between work time/space and the rest of their lives, with the commute to and from being serving as the demarcation between the two, and not a whole lot of bleed from one to another (i.e. not spending any work time on non-work stuff and vice versa).  This largely characterizes me.  Although at times I need to deal with non-work stuff at work and increasingly I do work outside of work hours, it is not my preference.

Another type of work schedule has very little if any distinction between work time/space and non-work time/space.  Their life is one seamless blur of work and non-work elements, with little sense of work having to be done at certain hours or in certain places.  People that work from home, people that work for start-ups, or people in full-time ministry often fall into this category. They have supreme flexibility to handle whatever it is they need to handle, work or non-work, whenever and wherever they need to.  Which can be either really necessary or really headache-inducing (or both). 

I don't think I could hack this for very long stretches of time.  I strive to compartmentalize, so that I can focus on work matters when and where I am able to, and otherwise be free to handle non-work matters outside of that time/space.  Again, it doesn't describe how I actually live my life, but it does describe how I would prefer to.

And yet, in another sense, I am fairly strongly integrated rather than compartmentalized, in that I do not distinguish between work and non-work matters in terms of what I am interested in and how I socialize with others.  The proliferation of Facebook has been such that an increasing number of my Facebook friends are actually work-related colleagues.  And, far from being weirded out by this breaking down of barriers between knowing someone in a work sense and getting to see some facets of their personal lives, I am finding it to be an absolute joy.  For this blurring of work and non-work elements helps me in a work sense by adding texture to my professional relationships, and in some instances it is helping turn work colleagues into personal friends in a really wonderful way.

So non-work considerations have crept into my work relationships.  And the opposite is true, too.  I am completely comfortable with and quite enjoy talking about work with my friends and family.  This may seem obvious, but it is not always true of everyone.  Among my extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins, there is exactly zero talk about our professional livelihoods.  When we gather, we talk about health and vacations and kids and sport, but there is not so much as a quick word of congrats about a recent promotion or a brief anecdote about an office-related snafu.

As a consultant, I am tempted to draw a two-by-two grid, showing these two axes of compartmentalization versus integration, and ask others where they think they fall on this grid.  But I won't nerd you out in that way today.  Still, I find it interesting to be high compartmentalization in one sense, and high integration in another.  And you?

Lazy Linking, 162nd in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

162.1 Unofficial SEPTA map shows routes AND frequency bit.ly/1WDtW15 @phillymag

162.2 MLK economics: discrimination costs us all dearly, copyright laws make his speeches/writings less accessible bit.ly/1Uik9vU

162.3 Couple trying to live off thrown-away food learns just how much we waste in America read.bi/1SaNHwe @businessinsider

162.4 SEPTA generates back-up power by harnessing electricity from braking trains bit.ly/1PKYLvj @phillymag nyti.ms/1S1RsG6 @nytimes

162.5 Helpful guide for eating street food anywhere in the world without getting sick bit.ly/1OFk7KE @legalnomads

Work and Life in the Balance

As recently as 18 months ago, Jada and Aaron were the only kids between the ages of 0 and 13 represented at my firm; all my co-workers either had no kids or older kids.  Fast-forward to the present, and, in addition to Asher, there are now three other kids under the age of 5.

But kids are obviously not the only non-work responsibility employees face.  Caring for a sick parent, going to school on the side, and buying or fixing up a house also count as major things to juggle along with a demanding job, and the list goes on and on.  Plus there are funner and more restful pursuits, like romance and travel and sports and the arts and civic engagement.

We are a professional services firm, which means we only survive if we are responsive to our clients.  Which means, at times, high stress and long hours and uncompromising devotion to getting something done or being somewhere.

But, because we are a professional services firm, our only real assets are our human assets.  And our employees, as humans, need to have a life outside of work, in order to be happy and tend to things that matter and cultivate the whole of their being.

This may seem obvious, but not all firms provide space for such non-work pursuits.  The business model for some companies is to work people such insane hours that there is practically no time for anything but work.  Or, even if you are not pushed to the brink, the not-so-subtle culture rewards long hours and looks down on people who leave the office at a reasonable hour or that have other allegiances besides the firm.

Such is the balance I seek for myself, both for my own well-being and to set an example for my co-workers.  For there are times when work has to take a backseat to non-work pursuits, and vice versa.  And, if we value our employees and want to keep them healthy and engaged, we need to push them when they're needed but also give them space when that's what they need.

For me, that's meant being home for dinner most nights.  It's also meant taking client calls during my Aaron's karate practice, Jada's choir rehearsals, and even while I was in the hospital during Asher's first days of life.

It's a constant struggle to know you're never doing quite as much as you'd like in either place.  But it's good to know I have flexibility and time to give myself fully to both.  It's important to me for me, and for the good people I have the honor of working with on a day to day basis who are watching me and who are taking in a message about how we are as a firm based on my actions and decisions.  Hopefully we're getting it right.  Our firm's future, and people's well-being, are both at stake.

Too Short for a Tweet, Too Long for a Blog Post XXVIII

Here's an excerpt from a book I am reading now, "12 Years a Slave," by Solomon Northup:

"Oh! how heavily the weight of slavery pressed upon me then. I must toil day after day, endure abuse and taunts and scoffs, sleep on the hard ground, live on the coarsest fare, and not only this, but live the slave of a blood-seeking wretch, of whom I must stand henceforth in continued fear and dread. Why had I not died in my young years—before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondman’s chain was round me, and could not be shaken off. I could only gaze wistfully towards the North, and think of the thousands of miles that stretched between me and the soil of freedom, over which a black freeman may not pass."

Black Lit

Lately, I have had the pleasure of reading some good books by African-American authors, although not nearly enough.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to shore that up.  I welcome book and author suggestions, particularly as it relates to fiction, since I just don't read any fiction so I have practically zero exposure to good fiction by black writers.  But any book or author that I absolutely need to read, let me hear it, and why as well.  Thanks!

Getting Engaged

Given that I began my freshman year at Penn 25 years ago (!), I'm old enough to be several generations removed from this current crop of college students, in terms of what moves them to select a particular school.  To be specific, I count four.

 

I was really into business in high school, so I literally looked up the top undergraduate business schools in the country (probably on US News and World Report), and that informed the vast majority of my college applications: Penn, Berkeley, Michigan, and MIT were four of the six schools I applied to, and all had nationally ranked undergraduate business programs.  The fact that they were located in Philadelphia, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Cambridge was secondary and practically irrelevant; for me, and I know this is true for many of my peers who were similarly into whatever it is they wanted to study.  (One of my closest friends, an engineering geek, applied to Rice despite having no information on or feelings about Houston.)  

I lived in fairly spartan accommodations during my four years at Penn, but not long after I graduated they and other schools started to really spruce up their on-campus amenities.  Gone were unrenovated and dingy dorms, and in their place sprouted up comfy rooms and spacious lounges with flat screen TVs, as well as state-of-the-art fitness facilities, rock climbing walls, and gourmet dining options.  Affluent boomers and their kids would settle for nothing less.

Cities enjoyed a renaissance starting about 15 years ago, and so place began to matter in the college selection process.  You wanted to go to Wellesley (or NYU or UW or UT), yes, but you also reveled in the thought of spending four years in Boston (or Greenwich Village or Seattle or Austin).  Schools had always mentioned their locations as a selling point, but now this elevated in stature in marketing materials and sales pitches.

Place still counts with today's 18-year-olds, but what matters is not as much partaking of local amenities and is more so about engaging in a locality's societal issues.  Today's youth want to connect with and participate in the contemporary struggle over race or inequality or power or injustice, and they see the city their school is in as the laboratory where they will "study" for four years.  More and more universities are creating formal avenues for this, whether academic or programmatic, and are hyping these outlets as they woo prospectives. 

I'm being simplistic here, of course, but it is interesting to see how both students and universities evolve over time in response to expectations and trends.  It makes me wonder how I would decide where to go if I was 18 again, and how my kids will choose where to spend their undergraduate years.  By then, who knows how many generations of preferences will have passed.

Race is a Thing

I recently read a book by Bill Nye the Science Guy in which he laments that we humans have made such a big deal about race when scientifically there's really no such thing.  Whether or not the science is true, race is in fact a thing, and it's important to acknowledge so. 

Color-blindedness is of no help when it closes down the conversation and absolves us of dealing with skeletons in our past, prejudices in our hearts, and the effects of the residue of both in our relationships and systems.  These are hard discussions, and saying we're past them is tempting and can even come across as enlightened and big-hearted.  But it's not helpful.

Why Who You Know Matters

"It's not what you know, it's who you know."  You've heard this saying before, I'm sure.  You probably agree.  But many smart young people chafe at the notion.  Talented, ambitious, and impatient, it can seem like a cop-out substitute for actually knowing stuff, or even worse a valuing of nepotism over merit.

So is the old saw true?  At least in my line of work, yes.  And here's why.  

 

First, while I agree that it's who you know that's more important, that doesn't mean that what you know is unimportant.  Far from it.  Knowing people might get you the interview or even the job, but if you can't cut the actual work, that gets exposed real quick.  So, by prioritizing who you know, it doesn't mean you don't need to know your stuff.

Second, who you know matters because people are people and not robots.  And people want to work with people that they can trust, whether it is bosses hiring underlings or entities hiring consultants.  And people trust who they know.  Again, knowing stuff (and the credentials that signal that you know your stuff) are important.  In some cases, they are extremely helpful in opening the door.  But closing the deal requires actually trusting someone, which requires knowing someone, which requires taking time to cultivate a real relationship.

Third, trust matters because ultimately it's the only thing that undergirds a transaction, whether it is an employer getting the most out of her employee or an entity getting the most out of its consultant.  Taking as fact that you know how to do what you have been hired to do, the motivation to actually deliver comes from the fact that you are on the hook to do so from someone who has given you his or her trust.  You are far more likely to shirk on someone who you won't see again; you are far more driven to perform if asked by someone whose ongoing presence in your life you value.  

I've gotten in the habit of orienting my younger staff on these concepts.  It's helpful context for them, to take a well-known adage and be able to own why it is true rather than wonder or bristle instead.  And it's helpful encouragement for them to take it upon themselves to develop their own personal networks so that they can advance themselves personally and professionally. 

2015 Car Usage

This is the seventh year I have tracked car usage, so I think it's safe to say this has become a habit. As has the nerdy tracking and graphing of it in Microsoft Excel. (You can check out 2014 here, 2013 here, 2012 here, 2011 here, 2010 here, and 2009 here.)

As before, the Philly totals represent, in order, number of trips, number of legs represented in those trips (i.e. going to and from my in-laws, making one stop to get gas, counts as three legs), and number of legs in which I was driven (rather than driving).

The other city totals represent, in order, number of times I was in that location, number of days I was in that location, number of trips, number of legs represented in those trips, and number of legs in which I was driven.  (Note how unnecessary a car is in northeastern cities like NYC and Wilmington, vs. how often I drove in other cities like San Jose or Oklahoma City.)

Jan 10/23/3 Mansfield 1/1/1/6/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/0 DC 1/1/0/0/0 Wilmington 4/4/0/0/0
Feb 9/25/0 Wilmington 3/3/2/6/0 Mansfield 1/2/2/6/4 NYC 3/3/1/2/0
Mar 11/29/1 Wilmington 3/3/0/0/0 Mansfield 1/2/2/12/0 Honolulu 1/2/0/0/8
Apr 12/39/0 Wilmington 3/3/0/0/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/0 OKC 1/9/10/30/1
May 7/16/3 Newark 1/1/1/2/0 Dover 1/1/1/3/0 Wilmington 2/2/0/0/0
Jun 10/24/0 DC 1/1/0/0/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/0 Wilmington 2/2/0/0/0 Phoenix 1/1/1/4/0 Honolulu 1/2/0/0/6
Jul 13/41/0 Wilmington 3/3/3/6/0 Newark 1/1/0/0/0
Aug 11/29/1 Mansfield 1/2/2/9/0 SJ 1/8/9/34/7 Wilmington 7/7/1/4/4
Sep 8/17/0 Newark 1/1/1/4/0 Wilmington 5/5/0/0/7 SJ 1/8/5/16/2
Oct 10/23/3 Wilmington 6/6/1/2/10 Altoona 1/1/1/6/0
Nov 16/38/0 Wilmington 4/4/3/6/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/0
Dec 10/32/5 SJ 2/9/17/49/0 NYC 1/1/0/0/0 Wilmington 1/1/0/0/0

So my Philly total is 129 trips involving 340 legs, plus another 16 legs in which I was driven.  So that works out to about 10 car trips a month, and 1 leg per day.  A hair more than before, which I chalk up to the kids having more extra-curriculars that involve driving (Jada has gymnastics in Conshy, while Aaron's swim meets are rarely transit-accessible).

Lazy Linking, 161st in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

161.1 Forget "peak oil" - are we at "peak demand"? econ.st/1MrMZoB @economist

161.2 Are subsidies the solution to OR the cause of rising college tuition? bit.ly/1OicCbu @nberpubs ht: @margrev

161.3 Is the biggest cause of income inequality the fact that smart ppl only marry other smart ppl? nyti.ms/1YWDadJ @upshotnyt ht: @margrev

 

161.4 Does Chipotle prove that "natural" & "healthy" are trade-offs? on.wsj.com/1Vp6hAP @wsj

161.5 CAPA kids say no to racist musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie" bit.ly/1RgNJCf @phillymag ht: @angryasianman