I successfully avoided government throughout the first 20 years of my private sector career. But in 2003, after a career first in industry and then as a road-warrior strategy consultant, I found myself as an accidental bureaucrat in the public sector.
I never saw it coming. After a weak attempt at retirement, my wife wasn’t in the market for a strategy consultant to advise on household operations. What I hoped would be a year at home to sort out options quickly became a not so subtle nudge out the door to find my next gig.
I naively raised my hand to the newly elected Governor of Rhode Island and the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) and asked how I could help. The next thing I knew I was at the RIEDC, first as the agency’s lead for strategy and development, and then as a member of the Governor’s Cabinet and Executive Director of the agency. I had become an accidental bureaucrat.
I spent six years in the public sector and loved every (well almost every) moment of it. It was an innovation junkie’s dream to catalyze a statewide conversation on how to transform from an industrial era to a 21st century innovation economy.
During my time with the state, many friends asked, “Doesn’t the public sector move too slowly for you”? After twenty years of working with big companies I am not sure they move too quickly, themselves. While it’s true government moves slowly, neither of these structures move quickly, have adequate capacity for trying new models and approaches, or work and play nicely together.
But given my background as someone who has worked in both sectors, I think there is much that the public and private sectors can learn from each other.
There’s a reason it’s called the public sector: Everything is public. My schedule, emails, comments — everything — was all out in the public and transparent. The private sector could take a lesson in this kind of transparency. It took a while to get used to but it was good training for today’s social media world.
Read the rest of… Saul Kaplan: Confessions of an Accidental Bureaucrat
By Jonathan Miller, on Sat Jun 29, 2013 at 2:30 PM ET
Of all the well-wishing emails, comments, and tweets I’ve received over the past 24 hours, only a critical one really stood out.
It came from my friend, Jim Fannin, a world-renowned mental performance coach, whose client list features an all-star team from virtually every major professional sport. I didn’t realize until we spoke that he has also counseled plenty of famous poker pros as well, including one of my favorites, Phil Gordon, a pro who once placed 4th in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Jim was taken aback by my negativity in the email I sent friends announcing my trip to Vegas — I had written that repeating my final table finish from last year would be “an absurd implausibility.” Jim let me know in no uncertain terms that this was the kind of attitude that could send me to the rail in a short time.
To help turn me around, Jim gave me a quick coaching session that was invaluable. His mantra, to “clean my mind” and “stay in the zone” — a strategy that was brilliantly described by Tom Chiarella in this Esquire piece — requires me to wipe away all of my defensive rationalizations of sure defeat (Jim calls this my “safety net”), and focus instead on my ultimate goal — winning a WSOP bracelet.
Indeed, my un-coached visualizations from last year proved prophetic. My goal — my dream — was to make the final table of a WSOP tournament. Indeed, I did, but I was so crippled by my tiny stack of chips and sheer physical and mental exhaustion, that I was soon eliminated — in 8th place. Of course, I couldn’t have been happier making the final table, but Jim urged me to think bigger this time and envision a championship.
Some other tidbits of advice from Jim Fannin:
Drink a ton of water. I’ve heard this continually from my personal trainer (see below) and every medical professional that’s treated me; but constant hydration in the uber-dry Vegas climate, as well as with the mental challenge of 12 straight hours of poker ahead of me, will be critical to keeping my mind sharp.
Stay away from caffeine. This seems counterintuitive — I credited Diet Coke with keeping me alert during the late hours of the grueling 4 day event last year. But caffeine’s high also has very deleterious consequences: It dehydrates you, clouding your mind; It has a boomerang crash effect once the caffeine wears off; and it keeps you from sleeping well to recharge the next day. That sure was the case last year — on Day 4 last July, I was the walking dead.
Breathe deeply at the table, take brief mental breaks, and keep my jaw unhinged and relaxed. Jim instructs that the world’s most successful performers think less thoughts than the rest of us. Keeping my mind clear and focused on the present (definitely not the past) is critical to empowering me to trust my math skills and my intuition that served me so well last year. As far as the jaw, Jim suggested that I think about how Michael Jordan stuck out his tongue on his greatest plays — he was in “the zone.”
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I’ve also sought counsel on how to stay in the best physical shape for the grueling week ahead. (And yes, sitting for 12 hours, focused on cards, may be nothing like a day of painful physical labor, but for this broken down, middle-aged man, it is grueling!)
My personal trainer, and this Web site’s regular Thursday columnist, Josh Bowen, sent me the regime below for tomorrow morning, with a picture that will help me visualize my ultimate goal. Between the visualization and the water recommendations, I think Josh and Jim are working in concert.
Want to do something nice for yourself this summer? Love yourself up by adding linen to your wardrobe. Men are relatively limited in their options for staying breezy on blazing hot summer days, but as I’ve mentioned before, linen is a hot weather essential due to its lightweight and breathable qualities. The reason it can keep you comfortable is that the cloth absorbs up to 20% moisture without feeling wet.
You can buy linen either off-the-rack or through a custom clothier (if you’re a R&Co. client, you know how crazy I am for custom). Check out these fabric swatches below for some linen sportcoats I recently ordered for two clients.
Fabrics can made solely of linen as with the shirt below from Hartford, or they can be blended with other fabrics for a more refined look. The fabrics for the sportcoats above are combined with cashmere and silk, which makes them drape beautifully. We’ll pair them with everything from jeans and a henley or v-neck t-shirt to dress pants and a dress shirt and pocket square.
I have written several blogs and articles on the importance of strength training, particularly as it relates to women. I have documented the reasons why women should pick up the weights. However, for some reason, some people don’t get it. Some think they are a genetic marvel that if they look at a 40 lbs. dumbbell that their quads will expand and it will prevent them from wearing pants. Remember this; any man that works out would love for that to be their problem. I wanted to take the time to profess that Strong is the New Skinny
To back up my claim for those non-believers let’s look one strong hormonal difference between men and women:
Testosterone- this hormone has a huge impact on muscle tissue growth (as well as other interactions in the human body). Men, on average, will produce 20 times more testosterone than women. This of course will determine the amount of muscle tissue a person can grow. That also is not to say women cannot build muscle, it just means you cannot build as much or as fast as a normal man.
So I bring this up because I firmly believe that strength training is as important, if not more important, for women than it is for women. Let’s look at those reasons:
Decrease in Body fat- women who strength train will naturally have less body fat than those that don’t. That looks good! Its ok to have a little muscle J
Increase in Bone Mineral Density- Women are more susceptible to osteoporosis than men and strength training helps combat that. The loading of the bones causes the bones to become stronger and increases the density, warding off brittle and weak bones
It is great for your health- Research has shown that women that strength train are in better overall health than those that don’t. So pick up a weight and start going at it!
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jun 25, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
More and more, public figures seem to be unable to extricate themselves from scandal gracefully, so much so that often the apology gets them in more trouble than the original misbehavior. Think about Bill Clinton parsing words about what ‘is’ means, Mark Sanford permanently making ‘hiking the Appalachian Trail’ into a joke, or anything relating to Anthony Weiner. In this day and age, it’s impossible to say or do anything without some sort of permanent online recording of it, and we are all human and likely to make mistakes, so it’s high time celebrities and politicians learn how to say “I’m sorry” without digging themselves an even deeper hole.
And the first lesson should be, say you’re sorry, you did something wrong, and then stop – don’t try to defend your actions, don’t explain it’s because your spouse didn’t understand you or your parents raised you that way. (This is a corollary of the advice my mother gave me when I became an instant step-parent of an 8-year-old through my first marriage. Mom said that when a kid asks a question, only answer the question, don’t volunteer additional details until asked. So if a toddler says, “Where did I come from?,” perhaps she only wants to know the city in which she was born, not how she was actually conceived. My first solo outing with my new stepdaughter was the week after we’d all seen the movie Look Who’s Talking, and sure enough she piped up, “You know those things swimming around in the very beginning of the movie? What were they?” Recollecting Mom’s words of wisdom, I answered, “Those are called sperm,” and held my breath. Nope, she was satisfied, she just wanted to know the word. Whew.)
Last week Paula Deen could’ve used my mother’s advice – the celebrity chef faced a growing storm over remarks she’d made in a recent deposition, acknowledging she’d used a racially offensive term, as well as rhapsodizing over the charms of a ‘plantation wedding’ with polite dark-skinned waiters in nice uniforms (and commenting about how many jokes there also were about Jews, gays, and rednecks, thereby managing to offend everyone else). Ms. Deen rushed out a series of rather odd videos, in which she apologized, but then continued to explain that she grew up in the south, that’s just how they all talk, she wasn’t a racist, lots of people use the ‘n’ word all the time, and some of her best friends, etc. On top of her appearances strangely resembling hostage videos, she compounded the damage by attempting to explain herself, then no-showing a much-hyped Today Show appearance (and Matt Lauer didn’t hesitate to tell his audience what happened). As the controversy continued to build (and more former employees came forward with claims of discrimination and hostile work environment), Food Network abruptly announced they were not renewing her contract.
People rushed to comment, with strong feelings on both sides. Her die-hard fans swore never to watch Food Network again and claimed that she was being punished for using language everyone else used, while plenty of older southern ladies chimed in that they’d NEVER used the word in question and resented Deen for claiming that everyone in her generation did. Pretty soon the online comments veered off into condemning rap music, accusing Deen of hypocricy for hiding her own diabetes until she got a lucrative pharmaceutical contract, and claiming that peole who didn’t cook with butter were unAmerican. Meanwhile it’s not like Deen is going to be impoverished, between her cookbooks, her restaurants, and various product lines – she’s carved out a unique niche for herself as the former inventor of a bacon-cheeseburger with a donut bun, who now offers slightly more healthy variations on down-home southern fare, and there are multiple websites devoted to her ‘Deenisms’ (such as “The more cheese, the better,” “I’m not your doctor, I’m your cook!,” and “If y’all will excuse me, I’m gonna make love to this here potato”).
I don’t know if a sparser apology would have changed Food Network’s decision, but Deen didn’t do herself any favors by her awkward explanations, including insisting that she just adored all her African-American employees (one of whom she jokingly accused of blending in with a blackboard because he was so dark), and claiming that most plantation-owners treated their slaves like valued members of the family. I do hope she recovers from this debacle – partly because she’s just too darned entertaining to disappear (is there anyone else you can imagine teaching us how to make deep-fried stuffing-on-a-stick?), and partly because I think she sincerely regrets her mistake. (And also because thanks to her, news outlets didn’t have room to revel in details about the Kim Kardashian/Kanye West baby, other than the fact that they have probably topped Gwyneth Paltrow and Frank Zappa in the you-did-WHAT-to-your-kid? baby naming insanity contest.) (The baby’s name is North, by the way – seems way better than Apple or Moon Unit at first, but just think about it for a bit.)
Anyway, it’s been a very entertaining few days, so here’s a song commemorating the whole story:
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jun 25, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
I was watching Lena Dunham on Charlie Rose the other day and despite the fact that
I’m not loving her new haircut and the second season of Girls is proving to be overly ambitious, I was inspired. And I shouldn’t be so hard on her. It would be almost impossible not to choke under the pressure that she is facing at such a young age.
Emphasis on the almost impossible. Which brings me to the part of the interview that was so inspiring.
When asked about how she accomplished such a meteoric rise, Lena quoted her Dad as saying, “Love the possible.” That stuck with me. Especially because I am trying to make that kind of meteoric rise happen in my life. So I am embracing that idea. My new year’s resolution is, as I have told you previously, (see my blog that quotes Will Smith’s new movie) to be fearless.
When you are fearless, anything is possible. Or is it? I embarked on a quest to see what is possible and what is in store for me, on a Tuesday morning recently. I was hoping that a store front is in store for me. I was contemplating the fact that anything is possible if you believe that you can achieve it. How do you draw that line? Is it possible that I could go to one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city and procure a retail space by the end of the day without more than a stick of gum, $20 and a Metrocard in my pocket?
Well, let’s see what the universe said. I was able to procure a grilled cheese. And it was good. And then, as I was strolling around, following the path of whatever the universe sent me, I passed by an art gallery with a grafitti-esque painted canvas. It read:
“Enough is possible.” Thank you, universe, I have my answer!
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: Love the Possible
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Jun 24, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
How do you distinguish “old” in a city that was founded over 1100 years ago? When some of the “newer” areas are older than the United States of America, it’s all old to me, but to the Egyptians there is an old and new Cairo. The old part is called “Islamic Cairo”, which seems like another redundant name in Cairo, one of the largest Islamic cities in the world. To learn more we set off to explore this “old” Islamic Cairo…here’s what we found.
Signs such as this begin to get old, I mean really old, as almost every building was constructed before “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” which marks old for me.
Don’t go to war with current models and systems. Too many are in love with them and you will lose. Create the future through connected adjacencies.
Why are innovators so quick to go to the mattresses? Like a scene right out of The Godfather innovators are wired to assume a war footing. Innovators start from a premise that intransigent models and systems are the enemy and the only way to win is to gear up for an inevitable fight. Status quo is the enemy in an innovator’s cold war and must be vanquished. Innovators prepare for war by steeling themselves, building large armamentariums, and recruiting passionate soldiers to join their fight. War cries may get people’s attention but taking to the warpath, as a theory for change, doesn’t work. There are too many people in love with current models and systems. Going to war might feel good but in the end you will lose.
Existing business models and systems have evolved over a long period of time. It’s true most were built for an industrial era that is long gone. It’s also true we need to design, prototype, and test new models and systems if we are going to solve the big social challenges of our time including health care, education, energy, and entrepreneurship. However going to war with the current systems will not work. Too many people are vested in them. Anything threatening status quo is too scary to contemplate for most.
Big bang approaches to change seldom work. Occasionally we see examples of organizations that disrupt and transform themselves because they are either one payroll away from crashing nose down into the K-Mart parking lot (IBM comes to mind) or they have an other-worldly leader that personally wills the organization to transform (Steve Jobs comes to mind). For most organizations transformative change is elusive and we need another way. To enable transformative change consider creating connected adjacencies as innovation platforms.
Read the rest of… Saul Kaplan: Innovate Through Connected Adjacencies
Mandals: the name alone evokes snickers, sneers, and talk of Volvos and wheatgrass. Urban Dictionary defines them as, “An unfortunate fugly fashion mishap involving sandals.” But I’m here to tell you that the wearing of mandals doesn’t have to be such a hot mess. If you choose wisely, you can avoid embarrassing questions like “how was your hike?” when all you are doing is riding the cross town bus.
When it comes to mandals, less is more. Think fewer straps, buttons and buckles, just say no to velcro, and you’ll be in good shape. As Tim Gunn says, “The more seriously one takes the mandal, the more ridiculous one looks.” Here are some of my fav options available now…
$100 and under
Barneys Sanuk Saddle Up Thong $29
You can’t go wrong with a classic leather thong sandal like these. They’re simple, easy and summery but not as informal as your standard beach flip flop. Throw them on with jeans or chinos, and it’s a done deal.
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J Shoes Mirage Sandal $49.99
I’m also very into these Mirage Sandals from J Shoes. The stitching, canvas and rivets give them a cool industrial feel. Originally $148, they’re now marked down to $49.99. Check them here.
Read the rest of… Julie Rath: How to Wear Mandals: Tips on Avoiding a Fugly Fashion Mishap
It is said that 80 percent of communication is non-verbal. It is also common knowledge that there is a psychological effect to touching. In fact there are several scientific research articles stating that when a person is touched by a person they trust, it elevates oxytocin levels and decreases the stress related hormones. Touching has also been shown to develop relationships between two people. However, in the Western Hemisphere touching can often times be looked at as inappropriate and taboo. While that may be correct, one form of touching is always acceptable and has the power to show appreciation, respect, care and develop the trainer/client relationship we are all after; the high five.
Right, wrong or indifferent I touch my clients. I give them high fives to show they have done a good job; I give them a hug when I feel they need it and I tap them gently on the muscle being worked. The power of the high five allows me to do the following:
1. Develop a great relationship- when I give a high five to a client I show them respect and gratitude for the work they are doing. Sometimes that message is difficult to convey through words. For my super competitive clients this takes them back to athlete days and puts them in an environment they are use too. For everyone it shows appreciation for their work, something sometimes their out-of-the-gym life doesn’t supply.
2. Conveys to potential clients my relationship with my clients- In a gym setting, during a 60 minute session on average 14 people will watch at least 20% of the session. This is marketing at its highest! I want to produce the vibe that I care about my clients, especially for potential clients watching me.
Read the rest of… Josh Bowen: The Power of the High Five
During my time with the state, many friends asked, “Doesn’t the public sector move too slowly for you”? After twenty years of working with big companies I am not sure they move too quickly, themselves. While it’s true government moves slowly, neither of these structures move quickly, have adequate capacity for trying new models and approaches, or work and play nicely together.
