Explaining fiat money to your 8-year old

Dave

50 guilder front50 guilder back

Conrad and I were on the bus Saturday, naming compound words. I saw a bank out the window and said, “banknote.” He said that wasn’t a word, so I explained to him that paper money was originally created as a sort of IOU, so that you didn’t have to carry your gold around with you.

I told him the U.S. dollar had been backed by an equivalent amount of gold held in Ft. Knox, and that in 1971 President Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, at which point the value of those green pieces of paper was backed only by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

At that point I started to get confused and worried and I let him change the subject.

He’s due for some disappointment at 13

Dave

Conrad asked me about the Greek letters on the houses we passed on our way home from camp. I told him about fraternities, and why some people liked them and some people didn’t. I tried to describe what a raucous fraternity party was like “without saying “orgy””. But “frat party” is pretty much the best simile for an out-of-control party. So I told him that, and he joined me in trying to come up with a different one.

His suggestion: “An out-of-control bar mitzvah.”

Sometimes early is as bad as late

Dave

I missed my bus this morning because it was early “as near as the six of us waiting for the next one could figure”. That got me thinking about times when being early is bad “aside from babies”.

I’ve learned not to show up too early for meetings, and especially job interviews. I know how I feel If I’m interviewing someone at 2:00 p.m. and he shows up at 1:45. I don’t think, “This guy gets the worm.” I think, “Now I can’t do that thing I needed to do in the 15-minute window before my next meeting.”

If it’s a morning meeting, that thing might be coffee. Double plus ungood.

Yes, I could leave the candidate marinating in the lobby. But that can be hard in a small office, or if someone brings the candidate to you. “Your two o’clock is here! You deal with him.”

If I’m early, I make sure I’m in the right place, then wait until five minutes before the meeting time to approach the receptionist or knock on the door.

The converse or possibly obverse is also true. If you’re in the relative position of power, you send signals about what you’re like to work with. If you’re late, that could mean you’re disorganized, or don’t respect other people’s time, or your company is the kind of place where meetings never start on time and always run long. Those are never good signs, no matter who you’re meeting.

Presumably there is a mutual benefit to your meeting, regardless of who’s buying and who’s selling. “Not that I haven’t been to pointless meetings that benefit no one, but that’s another blog post.”

If you’re an overworked manager hiring for an essential role in a strong market, you may well be the one with the most to lose from making a bad impression. I heard a story from a candidate being wooed by several Bay Area companies. The second time he got stood up by a senior exec at his first choice company, he left and took them off his list.

In a perfect world it would look like a stock photo: the interviewee striding purposefully toward the waiting interviewer, hands reaching out in anticipation of a firm, dry and mutually-pleasurable handshake. And everyone would be smiling.

Except that one guy in his cube who can’t make heads or tails of all those darn spreadsheets and is holding his head in frustration.

I think his name is Kevin.

Never complain, never explain.

Dave


I’ve heard that quote, most often attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, for many years. But it’s only in the last few that I have understood its value in a business context.

I’ve seen it explained as an exemplar of the upper-class Victorian attitude of power. With rank and privilege, you can demand what you want. But it has another meaning for me as both a leader and employee.

Your boss doesn’t want to hear excuses; your boss wants you to identify problems and create solutions. If you were up all night working on a client presentation, that means you either didn’t plan well or you don’t know how to delegate. There are very few times when you can complain about your workload or use it as an excuse for poor performance. You must do it carefully and sparingly.

If you find yourself complaining about a co-worker or explaining that your failures are caused by him, you’re telling your boss you can’t overcome obstacles. There’s a reason so many interviewers ask you about a seemingly insurmountable conflict and how you solved it.

Your colleagues and the people on your team don’t want to hear you justify your decisions or complain no one is listening to you. They want you to set a clear direction and act on it. When you explain, they hear it as lack of confidence. When you complain, they immediately compare your troubles to their own. And very few people think other people’s challenges are bigger.

The most successful people in any organization are the ones who meet their objectives without fuss. They focus on what’s important and make sure people see the value they provide without shouting about it. But there’s probably another maxim that covers that.

I got my job because of LinkedIn

Dave

I left Salesforce at the end of June 2015. I started at Leadspace at the end of August. I interviewed “without stopping to count” eight companies. I only actually applied for one of those jobs. The other seven opportunities “and the one that turned into this job” came because of a blog post “Pulse post, whatever — not just a status update” that I made on LinkedIn titled, “I’m ready for my next challenge. And by ‘challenge,’ I mean ‘job.‘”

Dozens of people reached out to me with ideas, thoughts, words of encouragement and contacts. Around a dozen people reached out to me and said, “You should come work with us.” Those weren’t all job offers; some were people I’d worked with before introducing me to colleagues or CMO. Of those interactions, seven turned into interviews, and one turned into the job I have now, as senior director of inbound marketing at Leadspace. And it’s great.

What I did “mostly” that worked:

  1. Be there. I’m by no means the first person to say this, but build your networks before you need them. Connect with current and former colleagues. Connect with your friends. Do it. Do it now.
  2. Be helpful. Don’t think of LinkedIn just as a job search tool. Think of it as a place you can help people and share interesting information. Because, just as in all social media, when you need something from your network, they will think positively of you.
  3. Be generous. Write recommendations for others: former colleagues, former bosses, former direct reports. Many of them will return the favor, and that looks good to a future employer.
  4. Be consistent. Think of LinkedIn as your persistent, realtime résumé. The days of updating a paper CV the night before an interview are over. Update your LinkedIn profile whenever something significant happens in your career.
  5. Be persuasive. Lots of professionals, myself included, dashed off their original LinkedIn summaries and listed bullet points for their job responsibilities, if that. Write a compelling summary that tells people who you are and why you do what you do, and make them want to work with you.
  6. Be specific. Did you create a new demand generation process in your company, or did you create a new demand generation process that increased qualified leads by 28% over the previous year?

Even if you spend all your social time on Facebook and think of LinkedIn as its boring business cousin, start devoting some of the time you spend liking cat videos on your LinkedIn profile. It may well be where your next job comes from.

Sometimes it’s just about the ritual

Dave

At some point in her early puppyhood, Tilda got hold of an ice cube, and thought it was pretty great. We gave her one whenever we opened the freezer, and now she comes running whenever she hears us open the door. I toss the cube in the air and she leaps for it with the same glee and abandon shown by cartoon dogs who have stolen a length of sausage links from the butcher. Then she takes it into the living room and leaves it to melt on the carpet.