CHAPTER 9

David Bowie is a rock musician whose longevity is due partly to his chameleon-like ability to reinvent himself every few years. He is also the namesake of the “Bowie Theory,” coined by Princeton University economist, Alan Krueger. Bowie, he said, had told the New York Times in 2002 that “music itself is going to become like running water or electricity,” which was a far-sighted reference to its current ubiquity and accessibility via the Internet. Professor Krueger’s theory points out how the increase in concert ticket prices can be directly attributed to the new methods by which consumers can access their favorite tunes. Rather than purchase LPs or CDs from a store as in previous decades, most people are now likely to download, often for free or for a very small fee, just a selected song or two from numerous artists.

With the revenue stream from record sales now substantially diminished, many musicians are recognizing the apparent reversal. Instead of cheap concerts fueling a demand for record sales, the tunes now must fuel a demand for the live show, for a live show experience cannot be reproduced digitally and that is where the big money is now to be found. In other words, the human contact experience has become a matchless commodity. As Bowie said to his fellow performers, “You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring, because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left.”¹

For those of us who are not rock stars, a similar Bowie effect exists. Many components of our professional offerings are being affected by new technologies: Hotel operators have to compete against teleconferencing and web casting; package tour operators must compete against online travel websites. Physicians must deal with patients who arrive armed with a great deal of medical information (and misinformation) gleaned from the Internet. Book retailers must take on Amazon.com and all the great media giants now recognize that consumers can find alternate sources of entertainment wherever and whenever they want. As discussed in Chapter 1, accountants, lawyers, consultants, and other professionals are seeing a growing trend of their “bread and butter” work being transferred offshore. Yet we soldier on, nose to the grindstone, moving from task to task, meeting to meeting, email to email, seldom looking up. Parkinson’s Law swoops in to fill every second with busy-ness, leaving no room for the future. We live, time-wise, hand to mouth. The future doesn’t have an appointment. The schedule is full.

In Chapter 2, in the case study of Bruno, Karen, Vern, and Lisa, we observed how a full 50 minutes or more could have been made available through the use of clear, direct communication rather than email badminton. Now it’s time to consider what could have been done with that block of 50 minutes of lost time. Four separate opportunities spring to mind, all of which do indeed belong to your future.

THE FUTURE OF YOUR CURRENT JOB

What Are You Doing to Network at Work?

What are you doing to consciously and consistently build the anchor points of your future? Are you giving yourself time to cool down and connect with the right people inside your company or your industry who can help you:

• Get in touch with the right resources for solving problems quickly

• Find the right answer for a procedure or problem

• Score prime resources for an upcoming project

• Help identify needs and opportunities

• Learn more about what’s actually going on, politically and strategically?

This is an example of how knowledge, which becomes power, is available to anyone who consciously chooses to seek it. By making sure you are closely tied to the grapevine rather than just being pressed constantly to the grindstone, you become more politically connected and your chances of thriving increase. Kathleen Reardon, author of The Secret Handshake, highlights how much of the information about project success, for example, who the key power-holders are, and how they might impact your own plans, comes from the ability to “read between the lines of politics and conversation.”² You’ve already seen this in some simple examples mentioned throughout this book. Consider the importance of:

• Allowing pauses and silence in meetings and in conversations

• Being able to read body language and subtle facial cues

• Active listening

• Managing up

• Managing conversation flow.

A well-maintained network may make the vital difference between staying employed and losing your position. It may be the element that determines whether you stay where you are in an organization or whether you will be able to move up. Those who are too busy to see which way the wind is blowing may not see storm clouds—or favorable breezes approaching—until it is too late.

More subtle, perhaps, but equally important are the personal talents that grow out of such connections. One of Reardon’s key strategies for political sophistication as it applies to career management is that of improving your powers of observation. “Listening for informational or emotional content isn’t enough,” she says, “… effective listening means not just hearing what your boss or peer said … but determining what he or she meant as well … it’s important to be able to tell when you’re being sent a message of encouragement.”³

Have you ever passed up on an opportunity to network or to have lunch because it seems like there’s no place in your schedule for it?

What Are You Doing to Spend Time with a Mentor?

What are you doing to ensure you have access to 50 minutes with someone who’s “been there and done that” already; someone who can give you the fruit of 20 years or more of his experience? Do you have time in your schedule to find a mentor, schedule time with him, and actually see this person? Richard Branson’s mentor was Sir Freddie Laker. Alexander the Great was mentored by Aristotle. No doubt your manager also had someone she turned to for advice and hard-won wisdom. In any area of business—sales, management, strategy, you name it—most successful people not merely had a mentor, they had the presence of mind to seek one out.

There are many types of mentors that can be approached for help:

• A retired professional. Such a mentor comes with decades of experience, whether within your own company or elsewhere and is someone who would probably be more than happy to share (or sell) his wisdom.

• Your manager. By asking the person to whom you report to be your mentor, you accomplish the dual victory of learning from an experienced guide as well as keeping in close communication with the person who assigns your work. This is an excellent way to renegotiate deadlines and balance priorities.

• A colleague within the company. Such a mentor can either provide answers or simply be the receiver while you hear yourself talk.

• A colleague at another company (within the bounds of confidentiality, of course).

• Your company’s own mentorship program. Many organizations have an established mentorship program run through the HR or Employee Assistance Program (EAP) department.

• An exterior professional coach or mentor.

• A volunteer steering committee. This is essential for self-employed entrepreneurs.

• Biographies. A world of mentorship awaits within the pages of biographies. There are thousands of books detailing the lives of all manner of people, famous and infamous, successes and failures, all of which provide mentorship through their experiences. It’s a far better use of your lunchtime, in my opinion, to take a walk and listen to a spoken-word biography or to actually read a biography rather than spend lunch working over your keyboard.

What Are You Doing to Become a Mentor?

Equally important to having a mentor is being one. Successful people from all stripes have learned the importance of giving, not just with their checkbook, but with something far more valuable: their time. Some actually refer to the time they give to others as tithing, since it carries the same types of importance and reward as those who tithe to their church. The act of giving is an essential component in the creation of a successful person, not merely in the altruistic sense in terms of what is given to someone else, but also in the personal development of a person as both a human being and a professional.

Every mentoring relationship in which I have been involved as well as those that I have talked about with others has proven to be of mutual benefit. Every mentor learns something about herself at the same time as she shares her wisdom with her student. That is what is so great about mentoring. There’s really no sacrifice, just double profit. I’ve already discussed the value of hearing yourself speak ideas as an exercise in personal proofing (Chapter 7). Cognitive psychologists will tell you that such activities serve as an act of mental programming, which firms up ideas much more strongly than if they stay sloshing about in your short-term memory. When you hear yourself dispense your own advice to a student, you become your own audience. Your own words and thoughts re-enter your mind through your ears and are vetted, assessed, and reinforced.

Can you find 50 minutes a month to be available to others in the business who can learn from you? Altruism aside, these people’s lives are as rich with promise and potential as your own. You never know where a mentored individual might end up and what mutual benefits might accrue in the future. Can anyone afford not to cool down enough to include at least one mentor in her network?

What Are You Doing to Manage Up?

We saw in Chapter 7 that “managing up” refers to the art of managing your manager. Now there’s a scary thought. One of the single greatest disconnects in corporate life is the inability for managers and their people to communicate effectively. When either side is always too busy, misunderstandings can quickly grow into larger, less productive relationships. Managing up is not about being confrontational, of course. It’s about informing your manager of your state of busy-ness and the projects you are working on; it’s about heading off surprises or crises before they happen.

Tips on How to Manage Your Manager

• Know what time orientation your manager has: Is he more receptive in the morning or in the afternoon?

• When are his busier times? His quieter times? During which do you think he would prefer to be approached?

• Is he a scheduler or an ad hoc type of person? Would he react better to a scheduled meeting or is it better to “pounce” on him?

• Is he a control freak? An egotist? How does he prefer to communicate with you? What do you know about his openness to discussion?

• What kind of personality is he? Type A or B?

• How much time do you think you should allow for a meeting?

• How will you prepare the agenda?

• Can you clearly identify your objectives?

• Remember that not only might you need to schedule this meeting, the onus might be on you to maintain the follow-through: to schedule the next meeting or to ensure that the next items happen as they should.

• Take responsibility for ensuring that clear communication is given the time and attention it requires.

Managing up is not unidirectional. Many times the onus may be on you to find out what your manager is up to, for instance, what travel plans she has made, what projects she is working on. Of course this takes tact and discretion, but overall, those who are able to manage up get more from their day and their career than those who keep their heads down.

Firefighting

Often I will be called in to a company to work with employees who say that fighting fires is a central component of their work. Not literal fires, of course, but crises: unexpected problems and short-term, urgent issues, usually involving a customer or a supplier. Though these staff members consider firefighting to be fundamental to their job, they also admit that it is a prime source of stress.

The solution comes not from learning how to fight fires more quickly, but from careful planning and communication with the appropriate stakeholders. Since firefighting is perceived to be about dealing reactively to a situation that is unfolding right now, the challenge I set to people is to anticipate and ideally prepare for fires before they happen. That way, the crisis tasks become part of the norm, rather than an unwelcome intrusion into an overloaded schedule. The key to crisis preparation is threefold:

• Make time in your schedule to review the nature and frequency of past crises: Where did they happen? When? How? What caused them? How long did it take to resolve the crisis? How many people did it take? What was the opinion of those involved (clients, those affected within the company) to your reaction to the situation? Most important, what are the odds of the same crisis happening again? Next time, what will you do differently?

Notice that I suggested you make time for this. That’s because such review is easy to overlook when days get busy. But this is why the closure is so important. Closure is about ending a project or crisis and reviewing it, so you can learn from it.

• Allow enough time in your schedule to plan your future days and weeks, and include time for possible crises based on your knowledge of them to date. If the crisis doesn’t hit, there will always be more work that can fill the space, but if it does hit, both your schedule and your mind will be better able to handle them.

• Manage your manager to ensure all of you are on the same page about the present, the future, and all the possibilities that these may hold. This rule doesn’t simply apply across and downwards to the people you work with and who report to you. It also means upwards, to the person who is ultimately in charge of your job.

That is the challenge that I set for my clients, and it is the same one I ask of you:

• Do you have time in your day to slow down and connect with your boss to make sure the two of you are on the same page?

• Do you have time in your day to think clearly about all of the tasks and crises that make up your workload?

• Do you have time in your day to think clearly enough to plan the next meeting and to influence the manager to be there?

As Stanley Bing writes in his excellent book Throwing the Elephant, the onus may very well be upon you to influence the boss’s actions, to schedule this “managing-up meeting,” and to create its agenda.⁴ You will have to decide when and how the meeting will be held, taking into consideration your manager’s schedule and personality type. For example, some managers are attracted to regularly scheduled meetings, maybe at 8:00 a.m. every second Monday. Others may be less attracted to that type of structure, but will react well to a quick chat in the kitchenette or in the elevator. It may be up to you to schedule and strategize these meetings, to feed your manager the information you need to impart, and to extract from her the information you need to have. As Bing suggests, it’s up to you to look after your manager in the interest of proactive time management and to avoid future fires.

Strategic Managing Up

Managing up is not just about dealing with immediate crises, either. Those who spend their entire day with their nose to the grindstone are not necessarily the ones who will advance as far as they could. Part of the success that comes when managing up is combined with cooling down comes from being shrewd enough to see what and who is out there, and then to strategically make your presence known. Kathleen Reardon puts it this way:

Being dedicated doesn’t necessarily mean putting in long hours or being constantly available. To the contrary, it’s important to put in long hours and be available when it matters to those in a position to notice your extra dedication. Otherwise you’re headed for burnout, and your extra effort just becomes expected rather than the important contribution it really is.⁵

Time spent in a strategic huddle with one’s manager is an opportunity for self-promotion as much as it is for dealing with immediacies. This goes back to the concept of selling, in Chapter 7. What does your manager know about your current achievements? Your aspirations? Your ideas for innovation? You may have told him a year or more ago, but a year is a long time. It’s up to you to set up such a meeting, to schedule the agenda, and to identify the objectives.

Remember also to put yourself in your customer’s shoes—your customer in this case being your manager. Is the act of scheduling a strategic managing-up meeting with him really an unwelcome intrusion? Or might he see it as proof of your potential for more responsible assignments? By contrast, if you were to choose not to “bother” him in this way, would that leave him in peace, or would it demonstrate a lack of initiative on your part? Here again is the value inherent in cooling down: It’s not just about the time required to have a meeting—it’s also about the strategic assessment of the implications of having or not having such a meeting. Going through this process will have a great impact on your future.

Implementation

These four concepts—internal networking, having a mentor, being a mentor, and managing up—all require time and acceptance of the value of cooling down. I try to ask people to think about the tithing example once again. Traditional tithing, in the religious context requested that 10 percent of a person’s income be given over to their church. Could you assign 10 percent of your workweek to these types of activities? Probably not, because your calendar at this moment is likely already full. So let’s quantify your workload a little, just like a project manager would: How many hours on average do you put in at the office, not counting work that you take home (which you shouldn’t do anyway)? This number of hours might be available to you if you have been practicing the strategies in the “How to Cool Down” segments at the end of each chapter, specifically, in this case, Chapter 1. The higher the number of hours you admit to working, the more you need to put 10 percent away for mentoring, networking, and managing up. If you work a 40- to 45-hour week, then you should spend four hours, or 50 minutes a day on maintaining your career.

Too busy to contemplate that? Perhaps the lunch hour could be your salvation. Keith Ferrazzi is a great proponent of lunchtime networking. In his book, Never Eat Alone, he demonstrates just how valuable it is to allow the time to identify and connect with people, not just any people, even though everyone we meet has connections to other people, but, specifically to what he calls “super-connectors,” those people who are hubs in the network of survival:

… what’s most important is developing deep and trusting relationships, not superficial contacts. … I believe friendships are the foundation for a truly powerful network. For most of us, cultivating a lengthy list of mere acquaintances on top of the effort devoted to your circle of friends is just too draining. The thought of being obligated to another hundred or so people—sending birthday cards, dinner invites, and all that stuff that we do for those close to us—seems outlandishly taxing.

Only, for some, it’s not. These people are super-connectors. People like me who maintain contact with thousands of people. The key, however, is not only that we know thousands of people but that we know thousands of people in many different worlds, and we know them well enough to give them a call. Once you become friendly with a super-connector, you’re only two degrees away from the thousands of different people we know.⁶

Your 50 minutes of career management could unfold like this:

• Reserve 40 out of those 50 minutes a day for the actual lunch, whether you eat with a colleague/mentor/friend or enjoy a biography as mentioned earlier. And lunch, by the way, need not be in an expensive restaurant. Great conversations can happen equally easily over sandwiches.

• Reserve the other 10 minutes out of those 50 minutes a day to contact someone, whether to invite them to meet you for lunch, or simply to drop them a line, asking how they are doing. No sales, no pressure, just a simple, genuine inquiry as to how they are. There’s no need for them to call back, if they don’t wish to. It’s enough that you just remind them you’re around. This is network maintenance, and it inoculates your livelihood against rot and atrophy by rebuilding your fading image in the minds of people whom you’ve met. If you can do this almost daily, each weekday of the year, you will be able to keep up to 240 people (as well as all of the people they know) aware of your presence and potential.

THE FUTURE OF YOUR CAREER

Careers are dynamic. The progress of a career is seldom linear and predictable. Careers have a life of their own, just like companies do. It’s hard to picture companies as mortal, but they are. They eventually die, or they get eaten (bought up) by someone else. The average life expectancy of a multinational Fortune 500 company is now between 40 and 50 years. “A full one-third of the companies listed in the 1970 Fortune 500, for instance, had vanished by 1983—acquired, merged, or broken to pieces. Human beings have learned to survive, on average, for 75 years or more, but there are very few companies that are that old and flourishing.”⁷

With such instability comes an absolute need to pave your own path and to hunt down your own destiny, whether your preferred stomping grounds are within the walls of your current organization, or out there, in the wilds of commerce or entrepreneurship. And this applies whether you consider yourself to be a go-getter entrepreneurial type, or a quieter craftsperson. There comes a time in many a professional’s life when she recognizes the true value of networking, and that is usually the day just after she has been let go, or downsized, or depending on how you look at it, “rightsized” from her employer. I have worked with many people in this situation over the years and have observed and empathized with them as they sat, shell-shocked and paralyzed, suddenly seeing themselves as a PWI: a person without identity. In North America, as with much of the business-oriented world, we define ourselves by our work. It’s very difficult to maintain the flow of a conversation in a social situation without quickly coming to the phrase, “So what do you do?”

The moment the axe falls, unless a person is well prepared, shock and stress override everything, and depression is quick to follow. To have met this person just a month or so before he was aware of his fate, he would most likely have appeared very busy—too busy with the work of the day to entertain the notion of networking events or mentorship. He was probably grabbing a quick sandwich over the keyboard but had no time for anything purely social.

Once again the speed of the present distorts clear vision into the future. Strategy is overruled by the immediate. It’s difficult, when a person’s mind is busy processing three, four, or five simultaneous urgencies, to reflect on the strategic value of networking, since its value cannot always be quantified on some intellectual balance sheet. Its payoff might occur somewhere in the months and years to come in ways not immediately imaginable or predictable. When faced with another high-speed day, a networking event is a sheer impossibility: Seen through the tunnel vision of the daily To-Do List it appears as a frivolous waste of an hour—an hour that (it seems) could be better spent clearing off an extra task or two. And that’s where the problem starts to fester. In the trapeze act that is your career, your personal network represents one of the two ropes that hold up the bar on which you swing. When paired with the other rope, representing your talents and experience, you have the tools to keep moving. But if one should fail, the show is over.

In Person: The Value of Slowing Down and Networking

There are many great books out there that teach great things about networking—why it is important and how to do it—so I will restrict my comments to talking specifically about how cool beats fast in this vital area of career management. Quite simply, speed networking doesn’t work terribly well. When busy people find themselves at an event such as a Chamber of Commerce meeting where networking is the primary reason for being there, or at an association lunch event where networking is the unspoken reason for being there, they can easily become overwhelmed at the prospect of choosing which people to connect with, how many is the right number, and whether it is of any use at all. An easy rule of thumb is three. Three new people. Any more than that and networking becomes too hard to manage. But it is easy to move to three different conversations during a one-hour event or during the breaks of longer functions. Just set yourself a time limit, of perhaps 10 minutes for each conversation, and then move on. The magic number three has been used for thousands of years as the truly functional collection of people, and it applies to meeting new people too. Aim for three. It makes the challenge of meeting new people less onerous, and you will remember each of them better.

Remembering Names

This is a fundamental rule of positive networking, but very often a person’s name can go skipping out of our memory because it’s new to us. This leaves people in an awkward or at least less-impressive situation at the close of the conversation. The secret to easily remembering names is in word association: Creatively connect a person’s physical resemblance or a feature of their appearance such as clothing or hairstyle to a word or person from your past. There’s no real magic to it; it just takes a prepared, cool mind. If a person’s name starts with F, such as Francis, and she wears glasses, you might be able to associate Frances with Frames. A bald-headed man called Mike might remind you of a microphone. A person with black hair whose name is Cameron might remind you of the black case of a camera. Anyone can train themselves to remember three names, at least, during a social situation, but the mind must be open to and primed for the opportunity by not being overrun by thoughts and speed during the social function. When the opportunity presents itself, you must slow down just enough to silently and discreetly commit this name to memory by way of this word-association technique. The speed of reaction that is the hallmark of a social introduction must be replaced by slow. In return you will be able to add polish to the relationship, concluding it with the most impressive, memorable, and noteworthy words in the English language: the name of the person to whom you are speaking.

Just for a moment, pretend your name is Pat. Think to yourself which of the following two closures would make a greater impression on you:

• “It was really nice to meet you. We should talk again soon.”

• “Pat, it was really nice to meet you. We should talk again soon.”

Most people will be far more impressed by the second one and will be more likely to stay warm to the possibility of further involvement with you.

Know How You Look

This topic is covered in depth in Chapter 7, so there’s no need to repeat it here. In short, best impressions are made when you not only look the way you want, but when you know you look the way you want. Grooming and personal presentation are of paramount importance in establishing and furthering business relationships. Yet people who rush seldom get the chance to make sure they look as good as they can. Slight imperfections such as a misaligned tie or windblown hair may seem minor, while more serious imperfections such as a stain or food between the teeth can be outright embarrassing. The main point, though, is that the memory of the imperfection will last in the minds of those you meet.

Listen Actively

A further benefit of slowing down is realized through the practiced art of delivering social satisfaction, that is, in demonstrating active listening. This concept was touched upon in Chapter 7. Active listening requires more than just appropriately timed head nods. It refers, first and foremost, to allowing your conversation partner to do most of the talking and then demonstrating you have heard and that you care about what she is saying by repeating the key facts and inserting positive commentary or questions as appropriate. Whether these social situations occur inside or outside of the work environment, every person with whom you interact will be affected by your actions and image.

Give Business Cards “Face”

Regardless of where your social interactions take place, whether inside or outside the work environment, every person you relate to is affected by your actions and image. When it comes to meeting new people, even their business card needs to be “listened to.” When handed a business card, expert networkers don’t simply glance at it quickly and then pocket it. No. They use the power of slow. They receive the card and give it a good look-over, examining its design, the address information, and the person’s name and professional designations. To use a phrase from Eastern culture, this is called giving “face.”

Such prolonged attention to a small piece of cardstock? It may seem strange to the uninitiated and certainly seems to have no place in a time-pressed business world. However, when giving a card face, you’re not really giving your prolonged attention to the card; you’re giving attention to the person whom the card represents. Face is a gift of legitimacy. It recognizes the hard work and effort the owner of the card is putting into her career, and it telegraphs to her that, yes, you care about her effort. That’s what the card-reading activity does, and that’s why active listening is so important and so profitable. People need to feel they are important and to know they are important—two different concepts. They need to receive the message that the time they spend in the company of another person is valued and that they are being taken seriously.

Close Memorably

The old expression “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” may be true, but there is an addendum to that rule: You always get a chance to make a last impression. In psychology there is a concept called the mental “law of primacy,” which states that when given a line of faces or a list of objects, most people remember the first face or object more vividly than the rest. But this law is complemented by the “law of recency,” which states that people are also very good at remembering the last in a list of items. Both are possible simultaneously within the same person, which means that the faces or items in the middle of a line or group tend to fade the fastest. This is important to remember when choosing your place in a receiving line at a corporate function. Aim for the beginning or the end, never the middle, if you want to be remembered. It’s also why receptionists are (or should be) counted among the most important people in any organization. The receptionist is the first person a visitor encounters (primacy), and she is also the last person a visitor deals with upon leaving (recency). The receptionist’s greeting and tone of voice, her “thank-you,” and overall demeanor leave a mark that will be remembered as part of the overall emotional impression of a company or organization.

In the business of networking and career management, this is yet another avenue where the power of slow pays off big time. Consider the following items; together they form a closing sequence that ensures ongoing benefit to the person who slows down enough to use them:

• Maintaining eye contact during the closing conversation. Are you able to transfer your mental state during this face-to-face interaction from reactive to proactive? Are you able to consciously maintain clear eye contact? To deliver genuine warmth, interest, and respect from your eyes to those of the person you’re talking to?

• Making full use of the other person’s name. This is described in more detail above, as in “Pat, it was a genuine pleasure to meet you.”

• Following through. After the conversation has ended and the person has moved away, take the time, before doing anything else, to discreetly note all the important information about that person, especially reminders regarding any follow-up activities that were promised. I prefer to do this on the back of their business card in preparation for the next step, below.

• Ensuring time to actually enter the reminders and follow-ups into your calendar system. These reminders may refer to actual documents or information to be sent; they may also refer to “ticklers,” as in, when you should next touch base with this person. Is she a once-every-three-months contact or a once-a-year contact? Based on the 50-minute principle of networking described earlier, are you going to be able to slow down enough to keep in touch with this person, before your memories of each other fade away? It’s a great shame, the number of people who get forgotten during a professional’s lifetime. All people have a limited memory for faces and names, and most will forget a new person within six months if not reminded. One of the benefits of working a little slower is that time is made available to contact at least one person in your network each day; you can let them hear your voice, simply be reminded of your existence, and therefore keep the relationship warm.

• Sending a thank-you note. If this person warrants a thank-you note, will you have the time to send one? Will you have the time to remember why it’s important to send one? As corny as it may sound, there are few things more effective in terms of getting ahead than a handwritten thank-you note. One reason: they take time to write. Another reason: they’re personal. Just a simple hand-written note, on a blank card. People often ask me why thank-you notes can’t be sent by email, which is, after all, much quicker. But the answer lies within that very question. To take the time to thank someone with a handwritten card demonstrates to the recipient that you are using your most precious commodity—time—to express in a very human way the value of the relationship or of the time spent together. Not everyone, of course, has a calligraphist’s talent for ornate penmanship, but that doesn’t matter. Provided the time is taken to hand-write clearly and legibly, the message will get through positively and memorably.

So there. We have just described five powerful ways of making an impact on people in any social situation. These activities are all dividends that come from slowing down enough to be a) aware of and b) capable of exploiting the positive elements of human interaction. People need to feel they are important. They need to receive the message that they are valued and that they are being taken seriously. They will open the door to your next opportunity, whether they themselves become a buyer of your services, a supplier of wisdom, or a conveyer of your positive reputation to others.

The reasons for these techniques—remembering, listening, closing, and following up—is not to be nice for the sake of being nice, but to market, to develop, and to leverage your personal brand in order to build an insurance policy for career furtherance or career salvation. Jobs don’t last. Companies don’t last. But mortgages, payments, and bills do. If you’re too busy right now to cool down and touch base with someone, keeping their name alive in your system and your name alive in theirs, then you really do risk erasing part of your own future.

LIFELONG LEARNING LEADS TO LIFELONG EMPLOYABILITY

It is extremely rare for a company to be able to guarantee job security, and why should they when the nature of business, of work, and of consumer demands change so fast? And when the marketplace changes so fast, it only makes sense that we, as active participants in it, do the same.

There was also a time when higher education meant investing three or four years or more of full-time study at a college or university before starting a career. Thankfully, there are now other options. Lifelong learning offered through online classes means that anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can further his academic and vocational skills, and consequently his professional destiny, one course at a time. This is yet another demonstration of how the benefits of the slow movement can pay off.

Studying on Company Time

One of the projects my company has undertaken and continued with over the years has to do with getting permission for staff members to take courses during company time. All the Internet access in the world won’t help if the prevailing attitude from management is “Don’t let it interfere with your duties.” I’ve worked with nurses, advertising people, accountants, and assistants, all of whom say, “I can’t focus on my studies when I’m being called away all the time.”

So I stand firm on the following three points:

• People do their best studying during the day.

• The future of many a professional’s career and the future of the company that employs her, both rest on the employee’s ability to upgrade her skills and knowledge on a regular basis.

• Employee retention is not based on financial incentives alone. Job satisfaction, the opportunity to further oneself, and acknowledgement from superiors all play major roles in deciding whether to stay with an employer or to move on.

How many hours per week are required for an employee to take a course? I suggest three hours a week of focused reading time or online lab time. Is it possible for three hours to be squeezed out of a busy 40-or 50-hour workweek? The answer is “yes,” based on the principles of Parkinson’s Law outlined in Chapter 1. The very nature of humans at work means that distractions, false urgencies, and the general sense of busy-ness already described tend to fill the time available. Finally, three hours can successfully be found and carved out of a workweek, if both the employee and her manager can agree that:

• Time spent studying on company time does not waste company time: It is an investment in developing the company’s internal talents and abilities as well as those of a loyal employee.

• Employees who are given undisturbed time to study (perhaps one hour at a time) will emerge from their studies refreshed and energetic. Even though the course material might be challenging, by virtue of being different from the regular workload, it still amounts to a change in routine, which energizes and refocuses the brain.

• The time for studying can be found, if together you look hard enough.

This last point integrates the principles of slow described throughout this book. If the employee were to try by herself to find the time to study, she would be beset with interruptions, resistance, and guilt. But together, as manager and employee, schedules and tasks can be reviewed, and permission can be granted. Twenty emails that up until now might have taken an hour to respond to, might just as easily and completely be dealt with in half-an-hour, when the motivation and permission are in place.

That’s the type of thing that slow can do. It finds space where there seemingly was none before. How? Not by working faster, but by taking the time to think, communicate, plan, and refine. By perceiving and then avoiding the pull of Parkinson’s Law, you can ensure time is put aside for study during the day—on company time where it belongs.

THE FUTURE OF YOUR PAST: WHAT DID I DO?

Let me tell you another story. As part of my own mentoring involvement, I had lunch with a young law student. She was preparing to graduate and wished to develop her good work habits early as an inoculation against the heavy workloads she knew would be facing her as a junior lawyer. True to my views on the mutual benefits derived from mentoring, during lunch she told me a wonderful story. She had just dined recently with a prominent criminal lawyer, someone well known on the national legal stage as a figurehead who fought precedent-setting cases in which plenty of media exposure was assured. He was nearing 65 and was successful both professionally and financially. When the young student asked him for advice, however, he simply said, “I can teach you nothing.” When she asked him to elaborate, he admitted that although his practice was a success, it had come at the cost of not knowing his family, his children, and grandchildren; of missing ball games, recitals, graduations, even anniversaries because of his consistently heavy case load and a desire to work all-out, all the time. Though he had enjoyed a great legal career, he had not had a life.

This story reminded me of a similar tale told by Steven Covey, in his book, First Things First, in which he describes a successful business executive who builds a multigenerational home to house his kids and his grandkids in a desperate attempt to buy back the family time he had used up while preoccupied with building his business.⁸ I know of many other parents, too many, who, out of fear of not putting in enough face time, or due to the myth that busy-ness equals business, lose contact with their kids and their other loved ones.

One of the worst casualties of a high-speed life is the tunnel vision it generates. It is easy to justify staying late to get caught up or to empty the in-box. It may even seem like there is no other choice. But after 20 or 30 years, even the wealthiest magnate realizes there is one thing that can never be bought back, and that, of course, is time. Choosing to adopt cool principles is a life decision. As you seek to figure out whether you are willing to do this, I would ask you to consider the following question: Is the personal price you’re paying for your success really worth it? In other words, what is the cost of your money?

You have true power over your career. Take some time and assess its pros and the cons. Write these things down. Above all, don’t let it get lost in the blur.

KEY POINTS TO TAKE AWAY

• The Bowie Theory identified that music is going to become ubiquitous like running water or electricity, which points to the fact that the human element, live concerts in the case of music, will make the difference in the future.

• Networking internally means taking the time to hook up with contacts that can save you time and keep you in touch.

• Mentors are an essential component of career furtherance.

• Being a mentor allows for simultaneous teaching and learning.

• Managing up is about solidifying a relationship of communication and understanding between you and your manager. The onus may be upon you to start this and to maintain it as a regular habit.

• Careers are dynamic. As such, it’s prudent to invest time in preparing for your next few years in case the axe falls sometime soon.

• Networking is best done through active listening, giving “face” to business cards, and actively following up.

• Memorable closes are essential because they leverage the psychological law of recency.

• Lifelong learning is an essential part of every professional’s career and should be pursued during productive workday hours rather than late at night.

• We can learn from those who have gone before us and have become successful at the cost of their personal or family life.

• Use some slow time to ensure access to lifelong learning, and therefore lifelong employability.

• Slow isn’t just about the quality of work. It’s also about the quality of your life, health, and experience.

**HOW TO COOL DOWN**

• Make a wish list. What do you see yourself doing in five years? 10? 20?

• What activities do you want your working life to entail?

• How about your non-working life (home, friends, family)?

• Could you use this written wish list when next talking to your manager about your career path or annual review?

• How strong is your current network? How often do you contact people just to network?

• Have you identified the “important” people in your contact list?

• Respecting the bounds of your current employers’ confidentiality, are you able to keep a separate list of the key people and contacts you have met and who may be personally valuable to you over the years? Are you able to keep that list offsite?

• Does every “important” person in this list have a “tickler”? That is to say, a reminder to keep in touch? Not everyone should be contacted every week, of course. Some people could do with a call every six months or so, others perhaps once a year.

• Have you ever had a conversation with a manager or mentor in which the discussion seemed to be “deeper” than just immediate projects? How would you react to and follow up on possible “between-the-lines” messages? What mentors do you have lined up who could coach you in this vital skill?

• What mentors do you have in general? How do you (or might you) schedule time once a week to talk with one of them?

• Who can you be a mentor to? How might you go about publicizing this? What benefits would you expect from a mentoring relationship?

• How much time can you make in your week or month to manage up? What kind of manager do you work for? How best might she be approached e.g., scheduled meeting or ad hoc?

• Who can you have lunch with this week?

• What formal networking events willl you attend this month?

• What plans do you have for additional learning, e.g., college courses of professional vocational courses? What would be the best time of day for you to study? How will you approach your manager with your plan for lifelong learning?

Pareles, Jon. 2002. “David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur.” The New York Times (June 9): 30., quoted in Krueger, Alan B., The Economics of Real Superstars: The Market for Rock Concerts in the Material World, Princeton University (April 2004) http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/484.pdf

Reardon, Kathleen Kelley, PhD., The Secret Handshake: Mastering the Politics of the Business Inner Circle. Currency Books, 2001, pp. 87-88.

Ibid.

Bing, Stanley, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up. Collins, 2003.

Reardon, p. 88.

Ferrazzi, Keith, Never Eat Alone, and Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time. Currency (February 22, 2005).

De Geus, Airie, The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment. Harvard Business School Press; 1st edition (June 4, 2002).

Covey, Steven, Merrill, Roger, and Merrill, Rebecca, First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy. Free Press, 1996.

THE LOSS OF MY JOB,
THE LOSS OF ALL THAT I AM?
A NEW DOOR OPENS.