This past week I had the opportunity to speak to about 70 parents at a private college prep high school.  The anxiety level in the room was moderately high because these parents were there to hear answers about how to get their students to take seriously the process of finding a career path and choosing a college to attend.

Earlier this fall, I wrote an entry on anxiety – understanding it and strategies for managing it, so I won’t repeat those principles here.  But I had a number of parents comment afterwards that limiting the amount of future they think about was a helpful concept to them.

I continue to “preach” the concept that a student’s career path is the combination of understanding themselves (their abilities, interests, personality style, etc.) and knowledge about the world of work. And I fully believe that we continually overemphasize the individual aspect of the equation. In fact, (although it is a bit of an over-statement) I have come to believe that it really doesn’t matter what a student wants to do.  Ask anyone one of the tens of thousands of individuals who have been laid off, furloughed or who can’t find work.

The issue isn’t “what do I want to do” but “what goods or services are needed that people are willing to pay for“?   As a culture, we have forgotten that the primary purpose of a career is to provide financially for ourselves and our family.  This is accomplished by providing a service (either customers or an employer) that someone needs and is willing to pay for — and obviously, that we are qualified to provide.

There are thousands of people who right now aren’t working in their primary career field.  They aren’t doing what they went to college to study.  But they have their current job because “it pays the bills”.  This is a reality that many young people don’t fully understand  (or haven’t until recently).

So, the point is:  young people today need to focus more on learning about the world of work, and less on what they are interested in doing.  (Hopefully, they will find a career path that meets this desire, but it is the secondary issue.)  They need to find out “what is out there” — what jobs and careers exist, what do you really do in them, and what the current and future needs are.

To press the point further, it isn’t that helpful to know that you are good with numbers, like animals, are introverted, and have the resources to go to college if you don’t know what career paths match these characteristics, what course of study is needed, and what the needs are for the future.

So how does a student learn about the world of work? Being blunt — by working.  Not by taking “Introduction to [Psychology, Veterinary Science, Computer Science, Elementary Education, insert your area of interest here]”.  Not by going to a lot of fun camps.  Not by playing sports all summer, every summer from junior high through high school.   I have written previously on the importance of work experience for college graduates seeking employment.  And after my presentation this past week, I had a large number of business owners and managers approach me, saying, “That part about students needing to work — I couldn’t agree with you more.  Keep saying it.”

There are lots of opportunities for students to learn about the world of work:  part-time jobs, summer jobs, shadowing, interviewing professionals, talking to college professors in your area of interest, talking to older friends (say, friends of your older sibling) about their experiences, and volunteering.

Generally speaking, I think parents should focus less on SAT & ACT prep courses (although they can make a big difference in scholarship awards) and more on their students getting some work experience.  Getting into the college of your choice doesn’t matter much if you don’t have a clue what you are going to study.  After all, we do know what academic success predicts, don’t we?  Academic success at the next level.  Academic success, in itself, has little predictive validity for career success. (There are a lot of successful students who don’t learn the skills necessary to succeed in the world of work — a topic for another entry sometime.)

Why am I “hammering” this issue of work so hard?  Because I am seeing lots and lots of young adults who were great kids and teens, who did well in school, had fun in high school (and college), who didn’t work much — and who are virtually lost in their career direction because they don’t know what is “out there” in the world of work, and they don’t know how to find out.

Hopefully, my message will help you and your student avoid this unpleasant pathway.  If I can be of help, let me know.  I am doing more and more career coaching for young adults to help them find out what is “out there” and develop a plan to figure out their career path (many of these are long distance, by telephone or video conference.)

Have a good week!

Given that I have the opportunity to interact and observe with businesses across the country, it gives me the potential to learn from those whom I serve and interact. In preparing for a presentation to a chamber of commerce luncheon, I decided to share some of the observations I have gathered over the past months. I have seen businesses who are doing relatively well and those who are not (or who have closed their doors). And these are the patterns I have seen.

Businesses who do well in difficult financial times:

Are able and willing to make and implement tough decisions. Some companies who were not able to make tough business decisions quickly are no longer around. Those who hesitated and waited before making cuts have suffered and made the path more difficult for themselves. It is important to note that family-owned businesses often struggle in this area — either because they do not have the processes and decision-making mechanisms in place to make authoritative decisions, or because the “difficult” decision may be to let family members go.

Realize that marketing is a way of life. I am using the term “marketing” to essentially mean: a) letting people know what you do; and b) being easy to find by potential customers. Those companies who were doing well, had a large back-log for their services or products, and who had fallen asleep in their marketing, often had difficulties “gearing up” their marketing plan when tough times hit. However, those companies who had continued to actively market were in place to adjust their plan and keep going.

Combine focus with diversity. Although I firmly believe in Jim Collins’ “hedge hog concept” (knowing what you do well and using that product/service to drive your business, I also believe there can be focus with diversity. Many of the companies who are now doing well in this tough economy had some diversity built into their business plan — either a variety of markets to which they applied their product/service, or they had a secondary line of products that they could “ramp up” in response to a need that arose. A number of companies who have only one primary service or product line are struggling to survive and/or develop a new product or service in times where there is not a lot of available capital to do so.

Understand that the focus of “networking” is not primarily about finding potential customers but looking for opportunities to serve others. Given that I was at a networking event, this was an important topic to address. All too often (almost always, in fact) business representatives go to networking events (luncheons, educational seminars, receptions) with the primary focus in mind to meet potential customers, give them your thirty second “elevator speech”, and press your business card into their hand. And with what do most of us walk away from these events? A blurred memory of who we met and a stack of business cards. Consider the following scenario. How much would you remember the person who actively sought to hear about any needs or challenges you are experiencing and was able either to connect you with a resource that could help or introduce you to someone who may have the service you need? Now that is impactful.

Actively encourage their employees. I have been working on a project of applying the Five Love Languages (a book used in personal relationships) to work-oriented relationships.

Initially, when Dr. Chapman and I started the project, the economy was good and one of our primary applications was in “how to keep valuable team members”. For many companies now, the issue is how to keep your employees from becoming discouraged and burned out — they have more work to do and increased responsibilities with the same (or maybe less) pay and resources.

We have developed the Managing By Appreciation Inventory to help managers and business owners how to communicate encouragement and appreciation to their employees through non-financial means, and how to do so in a way that is significant and meaningful to the employee. Whatever tool or method you use, it is critical to find ways to encourage and show appreciation to your employees in these difficult times. Briefly think of what a discouraged employee looks like in day to day life, and quickly calculate the costs to your organization of having a discouraged team — loss of productivity, poor customer satisfaction, negative attitudes, increased mistakes.

So, if your business is still alive and kicking, take a minute and see if you can take any of these factors and apply them to your organization — and hopefully increase the probability of your survival!

This past weekend I had the privilege of helping facilitate a board meeting for a family foundation. One of the goals of the meeting was to begin to more fully integrate the next generation (currently twentysomethings) into the foundation’s activities and financial giving over the coming years.

Part of the process included looking at philanthropy through the lens of daily life, rather than conceptualizing it as just large financial gifts given to non-profit organizations. Here are a few thoughts from that process.

A reminder that philanthropy comes from the Greek words phileo (practical love) and anthropos (meaning man or mankind). So essentially philanthropy is the act of demonstrating practical love to others.

So, at a very basic foundational level, if we think about philanthropy in daily life, it is really embodied in kindness and treating others as you would like to be treated.

We then can take practical love toward others to the level of our lifestyle decisions and how our daily decisions impact our local and global communities. Here is a list of practical areas of daily life with some brief notes of issues to consider in each area.

*Groceries (packaging, buying in bulk, local producers)
*Transportation (utilizing public, automobile choices, flying)
*Clothing, Personal Items (used, consignment, self-made)
*Gifts (consider not giving objects, self-made, Third world, charitable donations)
*Electronics (recycling computers, cell phones, TV’s / screens, energy efficiency)
*Housing (green, energy efficiency, remodeling)
*Banking (utilizing community-based, socially-involved
*Services (using global professionals from accounting, web design)
*Physical health (healthy lifestyle, exercise, equipment)
*Medical treatment (natural, preventative, high tech, insurance)
*Recycling (paper, plastic, glass, metal, in general)
*Recreation / Entertainment (low cost, low impact, big business)
*Financial investments (socially responsible, mission and program related investments)

We then also discussed ways to incorporate charitable giving in one’s daily life context (versus just thinking about annual financial gifts). These included:

*Looking for needs in your local, daily community.
*Observing organizations that intersect with your life.
*Volunteering your time, service and expertise.
*Giving financially from your monthly income.
*Attending charitable events and fundraisers of organizations you want to support.

No major earthshaking revelations here, but possibly some helpful reminders in how we can think about others through our daily life decisions.

Recently, there has been an “outrage” expressed in the media and in some communities about the continued increase in violence in our country. About two weeks ago an honor student was beaten to death by peers in Chicago — and the violence was captured by cell phones.
In response to this incident a number of community leaders have called for “action” — and from their perspective this means more government programs, more community-based interventions — with the accompanying government funding. This is an example of another misguided understanding of what creates behavior and what is needed to help people make better choices.

So let’s look at the issues that together create a violent response.

Anger. Anger is one of the responses that comes from one’s expectations not being met. People get anger when “X shouldn’t have happened” or when “You should have done Y” and you didn’t. So a key aspect to understanding anger (and violence) is the mismatch between people’s expectations and their experience of reality.

I believe a key contributing factor to the increase of violence in our society is a growing lack of realistic expectations people have. You may insert your own beliefs of what unrealistic expectations are but mine include: the right to have money even if you don’t work, the right to have (health care, housing, insert almost anything) at the same level as anyone else who lives in the U.S. I think we need to take a serious look at the expectations we are creating for our society — they are not logically consistent nor realistically sustainable. As a result, unrealistic expectations + not matching our daily experience leads to increasing anger.

Constant Violent Images. I continue to be amazed at our society. Why are we surprised that violent acts are increasing when we are flooded with violent images? When a majority of our TV shows (CSI, Law & Order, etc.) every night of the week are based on someone getting killed or raped, when our children and teens come home and spend hours every week playing video games which simulate stealing, shooting, and beating up others, and when our music idolizes sexual violence — how else should we expect young adults to act?

Poor impulse control. As a culture we do not really value nor teach impulse control. Impulse control is the ability to stop and think before you act. It includes the ability to delay gratification — just because I want it, doesn’t mean I get it right now. Our “enjoy the moment”, “buy now, pay later”, and “I have the right to . . .” culture undermines the development of children’s and adolescents learning to “do the right thing” even if it doesn’t feel right. Our culture’s focus on pleasure is a distorted view of “happiness”. Happiness doesn’t come from getting every desire met immediately — true happiness comes from living life in a way that helps you live in harmonious relationships with others and achieving goals and accomplishments that enhance the quality of your life over time. [Think about eating healthily and exercising vs. eating sweets all the time and laying around the house playing video games.]

Societal acceptance. When a community loses its ability to communicate acceptance or judgment of unacceptable behavior, the unacceptable behavior will continue to grow in frequency. The moral relativity we have accepted in our culture has lead us to be reluctant to call anything “wrong” — but then we don’t understand when individuals go ahead do “wrong” things [e.g. Bernie Madoff and taking advantage of others financially). Peer pressure works — both positively and negatively. People still want to be accepted, not be shunned or embarrassed — and group pressure from a person’s community can impact their choices. But we have largely given up the power of this type of influence.

So what do we do? First, understand that violence is a personal choice, not primarily a societal problem to be solved by governmental intervention. Second, start to attack the issues that create the propensity for violence. Individually, I think we should refuse to watch violent TV shows (and write the networks or advertisers) and not purchase violent video games. Third, teach our children and families both realistic expectations for life, and the ability to control their impulses. And lastly (although it may not be politically correct) communicate concern and disappointment when those around you make poor choices — if you don’t, then they will come to believe that lying, cheating, stealing, and treating others poorly is acceptable.