Your Executive Life Blog

I serve on an advisory board of a small company and the president of this company asked me to attend her inauguration as a member of the second cohort class for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses in Chicago.  This is an initiative driven by Goldman Sachs and its local partner, City Colleges of Chicago, to generate economic growth and job creation through small businesses by facilitating their access to business education, financial capital, and business support services.

Age Is Just A Number

As I watched the recently graduated first cohort members speak about their exceptional experiences in the program and the second cohort members speak about their dreams, aspirations, and ambitions, I was struck by the ages of these eager beaver entrepreneurs.  Yes there were a few twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, but a large number of them were middle and advanced middle age.  Some had been in business for 35 years and some even had MBAs.

Judge George Leighton

What did this plurality of older entrepreneurs show me?  It shows me that enthusiasm, energy, motivation, and achievement cannot be limited by age.  It reminds me that when you stop growing and learning, then you are in decline.  You are done. Asian and African cultures put a premium on age and wisdom.   In the U.S., we have become defined and intimidated by a youth-obsessed culture.

Continuous Learning

The fact is that you do not really hit your stride until middle age in terms of competence, confidence and knowledge.  Middle age and older are the stages in life when you begin to reap the dividends of your experience and skill sets.  Most importantly, though, is to continue to broaden your experience and expand your skill sets.  You must always be in a learning mode.

My mother exemplifies the learning mindset in that she went back to college in her late fifties and she is always intellectually and socially curious.  I also saw this energetic mindset when I recently attended the dedication of a courthouse in honor of retired federal Judge George Leighton, who practiced law until he was 98, and will turn 100 in October of this year.  Judge Leighton still plays chess every day.

Maturity As An Asset

There is so much human capital in older executives, entrepreneurs and professionals that can and needs to be continuously exploited.  Our nation cannot afford not to use this older human capital to leverage and grow our economy.  I am comforted to see that older hands are helping to drive the entrepreneurial spirit in our small businesses.  I will be as delighted to see when more older, experienced hands remain in the executive and professional suites using their talents to push our economy forward.  I am glad my own law firm embraces and practices utilizing older talent – that philosophy has helped our firm thrive.

No matter how old we are, as long as we can do it, we should be in “the hunt” for business and professional development, success and achievement.

In the first few days of last year (2011), I wrote a post titled “Resilience.” The post was inspired by the life story of a masseuse at a spa that my wife and I visited. In short, the terrible challenges which she had overcome and her upbeat, “can do” perspective on life was a clarion call to me that despite the economic pain and suffering the country had endured since 2008, the trait of resilience was essential to a person’s recovery and success.

In this new year, my wife and I went to another spa and my young masseur’s story of his work trajectory revealed his reinvention and adaptability. He was from the Detroit area and had never finished college. He had picked up some IT skills and got a job working for Accenture in Chicago doing automated payroll process consulting. He felt Chicago offered cosmopolitan excitement and economic opportunity that Detroit could not. He worked crazy hours and made good money. He was a very young twenty-something who did not like the work stress and office politics. When his department functions were being moved to San Antonio, he decided not to move, took a severance package, and trained to be a massage therapist. Although he likes his job and his less pressured life style, he intends eventually to go to school to become a physical therapist. It will take him five years to get a master’s degree. He knows there is job growth in healthcare. His father, a railroad retiree, does not understand his desire to change careers every few years.

This kid represents the realities of the new economy and alternative career paths. He knows instinctively that he has to keep reinventing himself and be mobile. He does not resent this fact and this is all he has ever known in his short career.

He is not an executive or highly educated professional, but his situation is instructive. We must all reinvent ourselves and become adaptable in order to continue to be useful and relevant in the marketplace. If a person remains static, he will eventually be out of a job or lose his business.

I am glad that twenty years ago, as the result of my part-time appointment as an Illinois Human Rights Commissioner, I became involved in employment legal matters even though I had been a business, real estate and construction attorney. So as the real estate and construction industries cratered in the last recession, my long ago diversification into executive employment contracts has benefited my law practice. This “reinvention” and my longtime receptivity and relatively early adaptability to technology like laptops, the internet, and social media have kept me relevant and in the game over the years. This all, to be sure, is the result of a combination of serendipity and purposefulness.

My take away from the kid is that reinvention is constant and seems to be accelerating.This whole phenomenon reminds me of one of my father’s favorite admonitions: “Don’t rest on your laurels.”

Where Do We Go From 2011?

2011 has been a mixed year with the economy technically growing but the employment rate stubbornly ranging from eight to twelve percent depending where one lives in our great country.  We now have terms like “Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Chicago, and Occupy Oakland” that now have more to do with notions of income inequality, unemployment, and financial industries’ excesses and bailouts than with any physical possession of geography.   Sovereign debt defaults keep looming making for nervous financial markets and for doomsday scenarios by pundits.  Americans are also war weary.

For too many Americans, Reality TV personalities, Dancing with the Stars winners, and American Idol contestants have more street cred than poets, philosophers, physicists, farmers or clergy, let alone business people and economists.

Congress seems incapable of reasoned compromises.  The president said, “What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.”  No, President Obama did not say that.  That quote was from President Jimmy Carter from his infamous “malaise” speech of July 15, 1979.  Sounds eerily contemporary does it not?

What Else Is New About America?

Tough times, no doubt.  Is America new to tough times? Of course not.  We endured the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights struggles and more.  Will prosperity return?  Yes, of course.

Reinvention, Re-imagination, Re-whatever

But our recovery will be uneven and America must reimagine its economic and social structures to accommodate those segments of the population that cannot be meaningfully employed as low skilled, un-automated jobs continue to disappear.   New kinds of jobs that we have not even thought of and that require unheard of skills will continue to emerge to both create and fill the demands of the marketplace.

Atypical and Exceptionalism

What does all this have to do with the typical executive, professional, or entrepreneur?   It has nothing to do with the “typical” and everything to do with the “exceptional” executive, professional, or entrepreneur.  Let’s call them the exceptional ones.  Superheroes of sorts.  I saw the movie Captain America last night.  In that fantasy story, a superhero was created with new technology to overcome the heretofore unimagined challenges of World War II.  After the movie, my little son ran upstairs, donned his Captain America costume and came back down to vanquish America’s imaginary foes, in this case his villainous stand-in was his dad.

In adversity, there is often opportunity.  The resourceful, inventive, relentless and curious executives, professionals and entrepreneurs can lead the way.  The exceptional ones must learn new skills, expand or change their networks, be comfortable with rapid and continuous change and alter their ways of thinking.  Apple entrepreneur Steve Jobs personified what we must become.  The iPod changed the way we consume music as the iPhone changed the way we communicate and access information.  What changes will the exceptional ones birth and implement?

It Is About Business and More

These superheroes must also be compassionate and inclusive.  The one per centers should not be penalized for performance or their good fortune.  Neither should the 99 per centers be penalized for macro-economic forces beyond their control or for their misfortune.  The trick for the exceptional ones is to expand opportunities for the middle again so we do not have such extreme disparities in wealth.

Extraordinary executives, professionals, or entrepreneurs are not solely limited to their efforts in private enterprise, but also can serve the enterprises of government and not-for-profits.  All sectors can benefit from the know-how and grit of these kinds of executives, professionals and entrepreneurs.  Our country needs their energy, discipline and imagination to propel us through the second decade of this millennium.  We can view them not so much as captains of industry but as real captains of a reinvigorated America.

Go forth superheroes.

I finally sent my holiday cards last week.  Despite my law firm’s new sophisticated contact system, ContactEase, my getting my holiday cards out has only gotten slightly easier and a little less time consuming.

Every year I face the same questions: Who should get a card? Does it matter?  Will my card even be noticed in the flood of holiday mail?  Is the time spent justified?  Is the cost justified?  Am I forgetting somebody? Am I killing a tree or two to create the paper greeting cards and envelopes?  Should I use electronic greeting cards?

I still come down on the side that the time and expense of sending cards are worth it.  It is, indeed, a pain in the neck keeping addresses current. I would guess that every year there is a 15% change in addresses arising from job changes, residential moves, and, sadly, from death.  Invariably, I will forget to include someone who should be on my list.  I am sure most of my cards get buried in the crush of holiday mail, but I do get a couple of people who will mention they got my card or will email me that they did and that they appreciate the recognition. I appreciate their acknowledgement and it makes my efforts feel worthwhile.

My main purpose for sending out cards on my business mailing list is to let people know that I am thinking of them and to stay in touch, even if it is just once a year.  A physical card is a more concrete, satisfying way to reach out to someone rather than a global broadcast of an update on Facebook or LinkedIn or an email blast.

I do not mind receiving electronic holiday cards as some of them can be quite clever and artistic.  I might even start sending them myself one day.

Ideally, I would love to be able to write a note to everyone on my list, but the time spent doing it would take me to next Christmas, and so I have to be content with just signing my cards.

Is it mandatory for an executive or professional to send out holiday cards?  It is a nice touch, but not necessary.  People will certainly remember if and how well you did something for them more than the fact that you sent them a holiday card.  A card is neither the cake nor the icing, but a nice sprinkle on the icing.

If you did not receive a holiday card from me this year and you thought you should, please pardon me and accept this post as my heartfelt holiday greeting to you and yours.