Rich Text

The other day, while driving and listening to the radio, I heard an interesting interview with Canadian author Yann Martel. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Martel’s Life of Pi, I implore you: run, don’t walk, to Amazon.com and order it. Then patiently await its arrival. It tells the story of a teen-aged Indian boy who finds himself stranded on a life boat in the Pacific Ocean, with an ape, a hyena, and a bengal tiger. Well…it’s about more than that…but I don’t want to ruin it for you. Martel’s text is as hearty and sumptuous as the chicken tikka masala at Namaskar, and possesses a vibrant, potent humanity that I refuse to blemish with a paltry attempt at description. If you haven’t already read it, do so as soon as possible. You won’t regret it.

In the interview, Martel described an event held by the Canadian parliament, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts. Martel and 49 other prominent Canadian artists were present, each one signifying one year of the Council’s existence. Of the 300+ MPs in the legislature, only some 20 odd members were present. Among them was Bev Oda, the Minister for Canadian Heritage, who delivered a 5 minute speech, which both began and ended the tribute.

Feeling that the Council’s contribution to Canadian culture had been given short shrift, Martel focused his attention on Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.

Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares not a jot for the arts.

Feeling that perhaps Prime Minister Harper’s perspective on the arts might be influenced with exposure to its more sublime works, Martel vowed that every two weeks he would send Harper and work of literature, “a book that has been known to expand stillness.” Martel also created a website, www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca, where he will post his suggested reading and any responses from the PM. The first book suggested thus far is The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy. Martel ends the inscription with a compelling charge:

I know you’re very busy, Mr. Harper. We’re all busy. Meditating monks in their cells are busy. That’s adult life, filled to the ceiling with things that need doing. (It seems only children and the elderly aren’t plagued by lack of time—and notice how they enjoy their books, how their lives fill their eyes.) But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep. And there are other possibilities, too. Sherwood Anderson, the American writer best known for his collection of stories Winesburg, Ohio, wrote his first stories while commuting by train to work. Stephen King apparently never goes to his beloved baseball games without a book that he reads during breaks. So it’s a question of choice.

My bedroom doesn’t have a nightstand, but less than eight feet from my bed is a makeshift shelf holding more books than I can ever hope to read. I make an effort graze through them in odd moments of leisure, although sometimes it’s hard to find the time. Nevertheless, Martel makes a charismatic argument for reading. I’ll be keeping track of PM Harper’s reading list, and may try to follow along, time permitting, of course.

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According to my handy-dandy “This Day in History” widget, today is the 218th anniversary of the mutiny against Captain Bligh of the HMS Bounty. A little bit of research on Wikipedia yielded some interesting details. For instance:

In a remarkable feat of seamanship and navigation, Bligh navigated the overcrowded 23 foot (7 m) open launch on an epic 47-day voyage first to Tofua and then to Timor equipped only with a sextant and a pocket watch, with no charts or compass. He recorded the distance as 3,618 nautical miles (6710 km).

After Bligh returned to England and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty, HMS Pandora, under the command of Capt. Edward Edwards (yes, that was really his name), was dispatched to scour the Pacific Ocean for the mutineers. Pandora arrived in Tahiti on March 23, 1791, and within a few weeks had caught 14 of them, who were placed in a make-shift cell on the ship’s deck (inexorably referred to as Pandora’s Box). Edwards spent 3 more months searching for mutineers, and then set off for England. As Gilligan taught us, however, no ocean voyage is complete without a minor calamity:

Heading west through the Torres Strait, Pandora ran aground on a reef (part of the Great Barrier Reef) on August 29, 1791. The ship sank the next day, and 31 of the crew and four of the prisoners were lost. The remaining 89 of the ship’s company and ten prisoners (released from their cage at the last moment) assembled in four small boats and sailed for Timor, arriving there on September 16, 1791.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Cat o’ Fine Tales

In other news, I just heard that my pal Sadie is going to be moving to Rhode Island. For those not familiar with Sadie, she is the most prolific - if not only - feline blogger on the internet. (I’ve always wondered how she managed to type without opposable thumbs, but I digress.) This is sad news indeed, as not only will she be leaving Cambridge, but she will also be taking my friends Britta and Kai with her. Please keep in touch, Sadie!

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Last night was the Sprout’s belated birthday celebration. Belated because she spent her real birthday in Central America, easing the plight of the world’s poor. How do you best celebrate the birth of such an altruistic spirit? To my thinking, nothing short of a full bore, multi-sensory assault would do.

We went to dinner at Casablanca in Harvard Square. The food: delicious! She had the Grilled Striped Bass and I ordered the Stuffed Red Pepper in White Bean Crepe, with a Spriced Apple Tart for dessert. I would highly recommend it, although don’t go in a hurry. The service was a bit on the slow side, making us late for the next phase of our evening: drinks with friends at Redline. What a great time! We got to some some great people we hadn’t seen in a little while, and some that you just can’t get enough of. Whitney’s MSH colleagues were represented, as were the Living Root Dragons. My opera-singer friend Alexis even made the trek out from Hartford for the occasion.

The evening would have been a great success if I’d stopped there, but I was determined push the envelope. At 11:45pm, an hour when anyone with a lick of sense should be making a b-line for home, we went to the Brattle Theatre for the East Coast premiere of Black Sheep. This black comedy (presented by the Independent Film Festival of Boston) has all the elements of a great comedic slasher flick:

• A troubled hero, paralyzed by an irrational fear of sheep, caused by a traumatic childhood event;
• His evil brother, determined to use science to warp nature for profit; and
• A rampaging hoard of genetically engineered, flesh-eating, mutant sheep.

Comedic Genius Defined: imbuing docile animals like sheep with a snarling, slobbering blood-lust. My one criticism of this movie was that its creators suffered from a surplus of comic inspiration. 20-30 minutes of material could have been trimmed from this movie without a problem, particularly some of the gorier parts.

Boyfriend Folly Defined: taking Whitney to see this movie for her birthday. I don’t think I’ll ever hear the end of it.

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According to the Boston Globe (via Marketing Vox), some retail chains are branching out from loudspeakers as the means for announcing specials and encouraging sales. A device described as an “audio spotlight” beams low-volume messages directly into the eardrums of unsuspecting shoppers. This cuts through the clutter and din of the shopping environment, in an attempt to influence store patrons to buy certain items.

In related news, my apartment is filled with back-massagers from Brookstone that I felt uncontrollably compelled to buy.

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My parents have very talented dogs, two corgis (corgii?) named Della and Bryn. As any pet owner can attest, the mark of a truly talented pooch is its repertoire of tricks. Here’s a pic of my dad with the two pooches in question, Della (left) and Brynnie (right).

Della does a fantastic impression of Star Jones, post-gastric-bypass. It’s uncanny, right down to the bugged out eyes. Come to think of it, we didn’t even have to teach her that one. Brynnie has mastered “roll-over” with unbelievable zeal. Whenever he’s let in from the yard, he immediately gallops over to the shelf where his treats are kept. If anyone makes the slightest move toward them, he starts rolling furiously, as though his fur had spontaneously caught on fire and he were trying to put it out.

Talented as they are, I wish I could teach them this one:

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Like many people in their mid-twenties, I’m grappling with a career change. I know that I need to switch fields; that’s a no-brainer. But to which field should I be switching? And what guarantee do I have that the new career will be an improvement? Heavy stuff, definitely not the kind to approach by yourself, if you can avoid it.

I went to my learned sister Kara, who’s never at a loss to dispense advice. She loaned me a copy of Richard Nelson Bolles’ seminal book on the topic of job-hunting and career-changing, What Color is my Parachute? It’s a great book, very practical, useful, and witty. He has some fabulous advice on any job-searching topic you can imagine, and his website contains some interesting supplementary articles.

“To thine own self be true”

One of the things I like about Parachute is that he lays out a systematic, methodical approach to changing careers. Rather than diving into a premature dissertation on the best resume fonts available, he begins with a fundamental self-evaluation process. This is based on Bolles’ strong belief that everyone contains a unique and invaluable set of skills, traits, and interests. Where they intersect indicates an individual’s best career path (or paths!). This process of self-awareness and stocktaking is called the Flower Exercise (I might have chosen a different name). It begins with a sub-exercise used to identify your Favorite Transferable Skills.

Mad Skills

First you create a rough list of every skill you can legitimately claim. This is done by writing seven short stories, each describing something you have done in your life. Each story must start with a goal, something you wanted to accomplish. It must also have an obstacle you needed to overcome. You then write a step-by-step narrative of how you proceeded, followed by a description of the result (quantified, if possible).

Next you analyze each story for the Transferable Skills you used. To make this easier, Bolles had created a hierarchy of Transferable Skills. It contains nearly 70 skills, divided into three categories: Physical, Mental, and Interpersonal. They progress from being highly prescribed (”Serving, Taking Instructions, Helping”) to very discretionary (”Mentoring” and “Negotiating”).

You have now created what amounts to a random statistical sampling of you life experience, and the Transferable Skills they have called upon you to use. Some of them you may not have enjoyed using, and some may not be your greatest talents, but they encapsulate a rough description of your core competencies. They are part of what makes your contribution to the workplace truly unique.

Once you have a tally of your Transferable Skills, you strike off those that you don’t enjoy, or that only appeared infrequently.

Next you must prioritize your Transferable Skills. Bolles has created a grid that simplifies this process. You list each of your skills on a chart, and compare it to each other skill, one at a time. Each time, you pose the question, “If I could only use one of these two skills, A or B, for the rest of my life, which would I rather it be?” Each time you choose a skill, it receives one point.

After you’re finished making your comparisons, rank and each skill based on the number of points it received, and re-order the list. You just systematically prioritized your list of Favorite Transferable Skills. Would the Dead Poets Society approve of this method? Probably not, but consider the possibility for human error engendered by the use of naked intuition. Is the process mind-numbing, time consuming, and soulless? Yes. Does it ensure that you get a thorough, objective picture of your preferences? You betcha.

“Come Mr.Tally-man!” My Prioritizing-Process

I’m a big fan of Dead Poets Society. I’m not such a big of manually crunching numbers. Perhaps it’s necessary, but it’s also boring beyond comprehension. After a while, my eyes begin glazing over, and my brain starts begging for the opportunity to do something more interesting. Twenty minutes after trying to do the Prioritizing Grid by hand, I knew there had to be a better way. Heeding Peter Drucker’s First Element of Effective Decision Making (The Effective Executive), I accepted that the problem was generic and scalable, and would be best addressed by the creation of a system.

I created an Excel document with three worksheets, each of which would be able to handle lists of different sizes: 10; 24 (a tribute to Jack Bauer); and 40. I spent about two hours, and created what seemed like a great formula for tabulating the final score of item. It didn’t work. So, I labored for another 45 minutes, and crafted an even better second version. No dice. After another hour, I realized that my algorithm was “backwards” (not sure how that happened). I corrected it, and voila!

The Proof of the Pudding

With my template document in place, I handily prioritized my Transferable Skills. I also plowed through my Favorite Subjects, which came from another of Bolles’ career-changing exercises. In fact, many other exercises from What Color is my Parachute requiring prioritization; each one was readily dispatched by my fantastic tool. Generating the formula was a bit of a task, but it’s saved me hours of heartburn and carpal tunnel.

In case you were wondering, my prioritized Favorite Transferable Skills:

1. I am a proactive, thorough, planner.
2. I am a methodical organizer.
3. My managerial style is marked by a deliberate attempt to be both decisive and supportive.
4. I’m an adept instructor, with a teaching style that is flexible and fun. I love teaching individuals, but also enjoy running larger educational events.
5. I try to remain patient when getting things done; persistence is the key to consistent results. Act in haste, repent in leisure.
6. Written communication is one of my favorite conduits for creativity. I employ a writing style that is slightly jocular, without losing its tact, professional tone.
7. I make thoughtful appraisals, and diplomatic recommendations.
8. When assessing individuals, I always strive to make evaluations incisive and objective.
9. My mind works in unusual ways, which often allows me to find unique ways to synthesize information.
10. I’m a sensitive, responsive coach.
11. When communicating to groups, I try to be commanding, succinct and personable.

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Gentle reader, I ask for your indulgence.  I’m preparing to take the GMAT some time this summer.  As part of my loin-girding process, I’m drilling vocab, memorizing theorems, and covering the walls of my bathroom with Algebra equations (reminiscent of the shed from A Beautiful Mind).  I’ve resolved to beef up my writing skills for the Analytical Writing Assessment portion of the exam by spending 30 minutes every day responding to a sample topic from my GMAT book.  If the resultant essay isn’t complete dribble, I’ll post it here for your enjoyment.  Without further ado:

“In any business or other organization, it is better to have managers with strong leadership skills than managers with expertise and work experience in a particular field.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above.  Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Some contend that it is more valuable for a business’ managers to have strong leadership and managerial skills than it is for them to have a thorough understanding of their field.  I’m in an interesting position to evaluate this contention, since I’ve spent the last four years working in a technical consulting firm owned and operated by a gentleman fitting the latter description, serving clients who fit the former.

There is certainly something to be said for possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of your field.  No one with a lick of sense will dispute that a firm’s frontline workers and supervisors must understand the technical aspects of whatever it is that they are supposed to be doing.  My current employer is considered by many to be the preeminent expert in his field.  He has spent the last 30 years actively engaged in his specialty, executing work that is arguably in the upper 10th percentile of quality for his industry.  Added to this wealth of practical experience is his academic background: he has completed doctoral coursework in his field.  This is truly a distinction, and it has enabled him to provide expert services on matters of great complexity and technical sophistication.  But does this level of technical mastery a guarantee of business success?

Unfortunately, it isn’t.  Businesses succeed or fail based on factors unrelated to the depth of their field-specific knowledge.  This is because businesses are little more than loose groups of people, individuals with their own interests, aims, and desires.  These interests, if unmanaged, may very well conflict with the interests of their employer.  The fact is that groups of people are unpredictable at best, and unruly or uncooperative at worst.  Managing them requires a very specific set of skills, and amorphous toolbox filled with impossible-to-quantify things like empathy, EQ, and leadership.

This is not to say that leadership trumps knowledge in every instance.  Most of my employer’s clients are very shrewd leaders and businessmen.  They have inadvertently neglected some fundamental technical principal, and now find themselves dealing with a problem that is beyond their ability to correct.  They require the services of an expert to mitigate this loss and correct the issue.

One should not think that these managers are irresponsible or negligent; quite the contrary, most of their project are executed well, owing to their abilities to effectively manage their employees and contractors.  Most people cannot be universal experts, equally facile in project management, website development, and the translation of ancient biblical texts written in archaic languages.  Limitations on time and energy require us to specialize.  These managers have judged that the likelihood of a major technical problem is so slight that, when it does occur, it is more cost effective to hire an expert than it is to invest the energy to become experts themselves.

My experience indicates that managers would do better to master the art of dealing with people.  The rudiments of a field can be learned, and will help avert the most common disasters.

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At the b^tt-crack of 2:45am this morning, Sprouty left for Central America, where she’ll spend the next two weeks healing the sick, helping the poor, and avoiding the local produce. It won’t be a picnic, holding down the fort by myself, but fortunately for me, Skype is on call, ready to close the gap. It’s not exactly a “pin drop” kind of connection, but it’s better than pigeons or ESP.

She called my cell during a 45 minute layover in Texas to check in, in case I might have been overcome by irrational visions of Canada geese being sucked into jet engines. Fortunately, that image only came to me after she had landed (while writing this post, to be precise). Something else occurred to me after the conversation, and I’m p.o.-ed that it didn’t pop into my head during our call - Whitney was in Houston!! Yeah, you heard me. I’m so damn witty, I can’t stand it.

Take it away, Whitney…

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This Sunday, the Sprout and I took a lovely walk from Boston’s North End down to Faneuil Hall. It was one of those crushingly beautiful early Spring days: a vibrant blue sky, with light wisps of cloud to accent the purity of its coloring; a constant, cool breeze brushing our faces, a foreshadowing of the following week’s gray dreariness. Altogether, a magnificent day.

Our path took us along the wharfs of the North End and Financial District. Looking out at the harbor reminded me of a picture I’d once seen, in a coffee-table book I happened upon in some-or-other bookstore. It was a book about the waterways of Boston, and it contained a fascinating map of Boston, hand-drawn in the late 18th century.

I’m not sure if this is that picture or not, but it certainly is striking. Imagine all that land, created the hard way: Man-Made Land, “terra infirma”, if you will. The proper name is something like “filled land”, or “claimed land”, I’m not entirely sure. Imagine all those throngs of Bostonians, living, working, playing, what-ever-ing on places that didn’t exist two hundred years ago. Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Charlestown, Southie: like pieces of dried fruit that have been pumped full of hydration, and swelled to twice their customary size. Gives new meaning to “Back Bay”, doesn’t it?

As a kid, I remember hearing that should Boston’s long dormant fault line (a fairly active one, by geological standards) once again start quaking, the motion would cause all that fill to assume the physical properties of a liquid, compromising scores of buildings and crippling the city. Perhaps there’s some validity to that story, or maybe its an urban myth, best kept in a drawer with stories about Pop Rocks and spontaneous human combustion.

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