Author Archives: Ken Goldstein

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A Civil Right and a Civil Responsibility

From Newsweek — March 21, 2011:

“How Dumb Are We?” by Andrew Romano

Tina Brown of New Yorker and Daily Beast editorial fame is now making her provocative imprint felt on the “new” Newsweek, evidenced here by summary findings in asking our fellow citizens no more than what we ask aspiring citizens.  Since my wife helps prepare many of these aspiring citizens for the same test where the stakes are slightly higher, I have some modest insight into the scope and depth of empathy here.  In the Newsweek test given to 1000 already-Americans, apparently 38% failed.

Click through and take a look at the test before you jump to the conclusion that it is just a dose of unimportant trivial pursuit.  We have to take a basic written test to get a driver’s license, but our sacred one-person one-vote widely evangelized model for democracy comes with only an age restriction.  If you can buy a six-pack of beer at the corner grocery store, even if you can’t calculate the tax in your head, you can vote.

Does this matter?  Methinks it does.  Putting aside the issue of education’s role in bettering newly arrived and long-term citizen’s quality of life as it can apply to the job force, what about the quality of the dialogue (and yes, argument) we need to share with each other to assign executive, legislative, and judicial power to individuals to collectively make the decisions on our behalf that position our nation for solving its current problems, preventing its future conflicts, and making us proud on the world stage.  How can we possibly do our civic duty of discussion and debate if we don’t have any sort of level playing field of knowledge?  We all have to somehow evidence we know the rules of the road to shift out of reverse, at least most of them, but we don’t have to evidence anything to have an opinion on public policy, it shall remain in perpetuity by our Constitution an inalienable right.

So why one set of rules for those already in the club and one for those who so desperately want to join the club?  Are we perhaps asking too much of the newbies, is the test somehow a set of trick questions meant to create a litmus test of seriousness of intent or a number controlling hurdle?  Is it perfunctory?  Or is there wisdom in making people proud of achieving a shared platform of understanding before we welcome them to the permanent pride of  this fragile experiment we call democracy?

If the conclusion one draws from my commentary here is that already-Americans should have to pass the same test to vote, that would hardly be my thinking, that is settled law.  Equally I would not want to eliminate the test for new citizens, because I have personally observed their joy in passing this test and their newfound hope and faith in a future that begins with the reward.

What I am suggesting is that if we don’t start demanding broad, honest, serious, fact-based and critical thinking models of education for every single human being as an absolute, then we’ll get what we’ll get.  We’ll keep fighting with each other, we’ll let Congress keep fighting with each other (the wrestlers change costumes but the steel cage death match remains Groundhog Day), and we’ll keep making mistakes until one day we make one that is just too serious, and our relevancy on the planet will be reversed.

We need to get very, very pissed off.  Each of our votes is one, it counts the same.  We have to have faith that everyone around us has some shared basis of decision-making or our own contribution no longer works.  One generation ago our public education was the envy of the world, we were #1 because we made it a national priority.  Today depending on you who you ask, we are #17.  Is that okay for a nation that by decree gives all power to the people?

Education is not a luxury item, it is not an option, it comes with the territory of democracy.  Without education, we will destroy the environment, the whole landscape be it cash green or forest green, literally and spiritually, and there won’t be a subsequent generation with the resources to fix it.

If we can afford doctors and lawyers and bankers and movie stars, we can afford teachers and schools and educational tools provided in a setting of peace and safety.  If we don’t think that’s important and want to leave anecdotes about ignorance to the late night comedians and midday pundits, we get what we get.  I just can’t believe on a scale of goals and priorities that an uneducated populous is what any already educated individual would find acceptable and sustainable.

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For Love or Money or Necessity

From The Wall Street Journal: April 23, 2008:

“Must I Bank” by Jonathan Knee

I’ve been thinking a good deal about my Engineering vs. Liberal Arts post earlier this week, and couldn’t help but remember this great column by Jonathan Knee from just about three years ago.  Harken back to 2008 and you will remember the first rumblings of approaching economic challenges, and the first waves of impact in the financial sector where life as it had been known was about to lose a lot of luster.  Careers were changing, some were ending.

The passage that leapt out at me, and why I committed Knee’s article to memory, is a cogent but quietly profound quote from the existentialist Rainer Maria Rilke which he cites.  In “Letters to a Young Poet” Rilke writes:

“This most of all: ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?”

In Knee’s analysis that followed, he framed the business context with poignant clarity: “Rilke warned of the hardships of his chosen craft, arguing that if the poet could even imagine living without writing, he would be better off doing so.”

I remember this same discussion growing up time and again with musicians, comedians, authors, dancers, and actors.  Why did they do what they did, why would they choose a life where hardship was the norm?  The answer in every circumstance was quite clear, they did not choose the hardship at all, who would purposely be such a maniacal masochist?  They did what they did because they could not imagine doing anything else.  They did not choose their path, except in acknowledging that the discipline chose them.  If you could do any other thing for a living than follow the path of the gift and be happy, why wouldn’t you?  You would.

Knee applies this same rigor to the discussion of career choice, in this instance, the path of the investment banker.  Yet Knee’s thought pattern travels well beyond that of the investment banker, beyond financial services, to career at large.  Must You Do what it is you are doing?  If not, then can you make a choice that is a better or closer fit to what it is you are supposed to be doing or could be doing.  Knee is not impractical in what he suggests, he knows we all have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet, he simply asks us to consider the extreme case to make sure that we are thinking actively instead of passively, and at least considering if that which we are doing is by selection, momentum, or the well placed secret traps of the pigeon-hole.

We may choose to study liberal arts or engineering, and we may choose the path of a profession.  The choice to change is always present, but really, it is not much of a choice if we force ourselves to be honest and think about the concept of Must.

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Can You Study Want You Want and Still Have a Career in Tech?

 From TechCrunch — March 21, 2011:

“Engineering vs. Liberal Arts” by Vivek Wadhaw

So I ask myself, does it really have to be versus?

Increasingly the notion of the value of a liberal education comes under attack, particularly in a tough job market with economic pressure everywhere you look.  Many of our nation’s greatest universities still hold fast to the notion that they are not pre-professional academies, and that their job is to teach undergraduates “how to learn — how to learn.”  That might sound a bit abstract for the aspiring unemployed with bachelors degrees in art history, creative writing, or sociology — especially with a bag of student loans as a lovely parting gift — but consider the following:

1) It’s your life, you only get one, and no matter how healthy you are, it is going to be relatively short.  Why are you here?

2) What you do with that life cannot solely be guided by decisions around income, your earnings will only be one part of the greater picture known as potential fulfillment.

3) The four years (plus or minus) you spend in college is by definition impractical, unless you are pre-med or something similar, the NPV of four years spending without earning is going to be a tough pill to digest unless you Think Different.

4) If you have made the choice to go impractical and invest in a college degree, how can it not be in a subject you love?

5) If you learn to learn, and learn it well, you can probably teach yourself almost anything (ok, maybe not brain surgery).  The point is to love learning, sharpen your critical thinking skills, and pursue your passion.  Passionate people have a much better chance — though no guarantee — at happiness (see #2 above).

So I’m with Steve, follow your muse, study what matters to you.  You can always pick up the focus in graduate school or on the job training, and who knows, the insight you gain in the study of almost anything could just Change The World.  But remember, science and math are a subset of the liberal arts, a classical education includes broad exposure and experimentation, so if already love poetry, perhaps you can also learn to like physics, even if just a little bit — it’s good to stretch beyond your comfort zone and you always need to do that.  And as Steve says, when it comes time to innovate, it does take all disciplines working together at the table, so the more you know and appreciate what your neighbor knows, the more you can help each other win together as a team.

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Character, Competency, Compatibility

The Three Cs of a Gig That Fits

Experience has taught me there are largely three things that matter in getting to yes on a hire. Anything less and both sides are settling. Settling is a precursor to the inevitable. Get all three, or don’t make/take the offer.

Character in my mind is a priori. If someone is not of solid character, nothing else matters because the first time something goes wrong—likely less than fifteen minutes after they fill out the forms in HR—they will be faced with a decision: cop to the wrong and seek help in righting it, or bury it deep in the corporate sewer. I read once where a smart boss told a new hire, “If you blow it and you tell me, we have a problem; if you blow it and don’t tell me, you have a problem.” If both human beings are of sound Character, a visible shared problem is always better than a hidden solo problem. Character is honesty, integrity, the whole shooting match. Fail that test, don’t turn the page.

Competency closely follows Character, a good deal less ethereal but equally measurable. Do you have the experience and learning to at least approach the tasks you will need to handle? If the job involves math, you must know what an equation is. If the job requires sales in a language other than your own, you probably should speak that language (unless you are specifically advised otherwise, in which case you probably should speak it anyway to rise above the pack). If someone asks you how you did this or that in your last job, you must be able to tell them, with specifics. A forensic accountant is not a nuclear engineer—you just can’t fake either one of those. Don’t try.

Compatibility (sometimes known as Chemistry) is the human connection. This is the one you can’t measure, validate or pre-sell. It’s a gut check. You know it usually within seconds of meeting the person on the other side of the desk. At the highest levels, it is a bridge of trust, where two people decide on a first impression that they possibly can work together, and then in subsequent meetings commit to the notion that they probably can work together. There is mutual respect at the levels of Character and Competency which allows Compatibility to be possible, and it most often expresses itself in easy conversation, unforced give and take, and with some luck a common sense of humor. Compatibility is the bond that lasts through the greatest of hardships, pulling leadership teams together in hard times and allowing the grandest of celebrations in good times.

Let’s presume at almost any late stage of hiring you are going to be out of the running if you haven’t met the Character and Competency hurdles. How important is Compatibility? It’s everything.

You simply aren’t likely to get anywhere near a final decision without Character and Competency, and in the final rounds, presume that this has become a level playing field, because it probably has. All final candidates are likely good candidates. Now the hirer and candidate both have to decide if a finalist is going to fly. That decision in almost all circumstances will be based on Compatibility.

Why do I share this? Because increasingly I am sourced as a reference for senior level candidates, but I can only help a recruiter or hiring manager and the candidate with the first two items, Character and Competency. Honestly, by the time they get to me, everyone involved has pretty much figured that out. References checks are not entirely perfunctory, but they aren’t far off. Sure, if you lied a reference can serve you up, but then you shouldn’t be a final candidate anyway. The real challenge is Compatibility, and that is entirely up to you. Don’t downplay it, don’t dismiss it as vapid politics. Acknowledge that human beings want to put themselves in the best of all possible situations knowing that the worst of all possible situations will emerge on a moment’s notice. If you have to fight a war, you want the people on your side to be on your side. The interview process is where you find out if that is possible. Be aware of it, accept it, prepare for conversation that addresses it. Compatibility is the determining factor in a hire; that is something you just can’t fake, certainly not in the long run. You want pain, try being in any hierarchy without compatibility.

Remember, most people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. Get this right at the hiring stage and everyone will be a lot happier and more productive, creating opportunities that are Built To Last.