Myself as a Science Experiment: Television vs. Being Human

My life-span matches up quite well with the history of television technology, Aside from the dates (late 1950's to present), my Mother claims that television was one of the few ways she could get me to sit still for more than six minutes. I apparently mastered that posture throughout my childhood and into my adult life, which spanned the invention of commercially-sponsored network programs, through the innovation of Public Television, BetaMax and VHS, the creation of cable system technology, ESPN, MTV, the Fall, Rise, and now Dearth of TV News Reporting, even the marriage of TV to modern cultural events such as Assasinations, Wars, and the struggle for Racial, Gender, and other Equality on Live Broadcasts in your own Home.

So unplugging my television feed on December 1, 2010 (exactly one year ago) was an interesting science experiment for someone with my proclivity for television as a way of interacting with the world around me. I had toyed with this idea for years, and raising children in a home with TV as a central place of gathering was not completely comfortable. Other factors included an occurrance of unemployment ,matched with the monthly cost of Direct TV....hey, what a great time to unplug and find out what life is like without television as a centerpiece in the table of my life?

I must admit that waiting until 2010 for this experiment is not as informative as it may have been in the '70's or '80's. Like myself, Television Technology is on the downward side of it's long and interesting lifespan, competing with various forms of on-line and hand-held communications and entertainment that no one in the late '50's and '60's could imagine in their wildest dreams. And trust me, I had some wild dreams in 1967.

So, one year without a television connection and what did we learn?

First of all, I had Plenty of TV to Watch Whenever I Wanted It
You-Tube, Hulu, Network and Cable Sites, NetFlix, embedded e-mails and a myriad of other platforms make your television connection one of many ways to watch. We downloaded the News, SNL, Movies, and Cable Shows, including some of the very popular dark drama/comedies of the past year. I got plenty of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Brian Williams, True Blood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and "....did you see that guy with the (fill in the blank)....?" videos. The difference  is my ability to control and manage when I wasted time on this (as with your DVR). Instead of the time required wasting my schedule or other commitments.

Yes, It's a Wasteland
Being able to step slightly off the normal human behavior track, my observation is what I hear from many people. Television is not that good. People constantly complained about shows, news, events, and special programs that I had missed. When actually, I had missed very little. They seemed to be "required" to watch somehow, and it was liberating to tell my friends, "...oh, I didn't see that because I don't have a TV connection at home....".  A new show with lots of buzz would create some large scale interest, and then, not long after hitting the ratings numbers, people start complaining bitterly about being let down (see: "Lost").

I still have X-Y Chromosomes
Sports for male humans in our culture changed from a participatory effort to a spectator experience in the early 20th Century. With Television, the spectator experience changed to a Family Room (now "Man Cave") experience with the only limitation being the size and number of flat screen displays and the speed of your remote control software. Interestingly, I missed some of the worst sports events of the new century- the lowest level performance for an NCAA Finals Game in history; a forgetable World Series, the Meltdown of both Tiger Woods and some of my previously favorite NBA Franchises (Los Angeles, Cleveland, Portland, and Golden State). I saw the Superbowl at the Presidential Suite of the Excaibur Hotel Casino in Las Vegas (my Team won), and I'm more than able to get to a Sports Bar or betting establishment if needed to catch my UCLA Bruins losing in different seasonal sports. I do miss some of those multi-million dollar highly produced humorous commercials. But I catch up on them when I do see a game somewhere.....and I don't have to see each of them 163 times during a specific sports season as a way of paying for my pleasure with pain.

I'm Way More Connected
Television may be happening for people while they are on their laptop computer doing something else. That's how my wife watches some DVD's (while on Farmville). For me, it's been a year of Facebook, then Twitter, then Google+ and it's been very entertaining. I'm not even mentioning my work (which is LinkedIn). I fully expect this next year to have five different social media, news, and blogging sites that will call my name very loudly. Spotify took over for Pandora which came back with my new smart phone, but now it's Google Music. Television doesn't even play music any more. Still waiting for the new Bevis and Butthead season to be available on-line.

Oh, yeah, That Family Thing
I'm still married and for me that's not because of my television experience. If you are one of those people who expected me to have much more meaningful and deeper relationships with my wife and kids, I can affirm some of that. I can also affirm that relationships are very hard, and without the comfort and brain-recess that television allows, you discover where you have some very broken and damaged communications paths as well as some new and open pipelines. Televsion takes you away from truly connecting with family and friends, and it also hides the fact that you are not as connected as you think you are. Coincidental changes in my family schedule included my daughter living with us for a year (that was great!), my wife working a late night shift for a year (wow, that was tough), and my son being an eighteen year old (yikes, very scary some times). Not talking to someone while the television is blaring is good. But like driving with someone, you get some interesting conversations and insights when your attention is focused straght ahead, and not on the person you need to talk too.

So now what? My wife is determined to get back into a television-based home experience. While my daughter (who has moved to her own house without a television) and I talk longingly of the day when Google or Steve Job's successors can deliver on the promise of an internet television with a full window looking out on both the broadcast and internet worlds. I'm very happy to have had this year of a post-television world and it may have prepared me for something we will all see soon: the end of television as we know it.

Discovery comes from your ability to step away from the norm, and explore new space. It's not a question of television or not, it's another data-set on which you can build something better. I appreciate the television technology, business, and culture that I grew up in. And I hope you recognize it for what it is. Artificial life that's fun, frustrating, and enlightening.

The New Nature of ....."McJobs"?

Not in my wildest dreams could I devise a news release that better reflects the changing nature of what we call "work" than this one:


http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-04-04-mcdonalds-hiring.htm

May we now pause and reflect:

• A lot more here than "hiring" (simply based on the huge PR machine behind this announcement). It's about politics, stock value, economic forecasting and a whole lot of company image stuff that I can comment on but it's not my area of expertise.

• 50,000 jobs (if you can call them jobs in a general sense) sounds big. Remember 13 Million unemployed? How about the "test run" they did for this campaign in the Western Region last year: 13,000 hires from 60,000 applicants. Trust me, it's not going to change the value of your monthly employment figures. Not that we should trust those numbers in the first place.

• On the other hand....remember the company which is now the number one employer in the United States? If you said General Motors, you're dating yourself. It's Wal Mart. Another tremendous American business success story just like McDonalds. Living wages? Benefits? Career pathing? Uh, not so much. Maybe based solely on the volume of the employee base and nature of that workforce (transitionary, turnover, youthful, transient).

• What does this say about American business? Why did McDonalds wait until April 19th, 2011? Is this a plot by the software company behind ResumeBuilder? Who's going to be cooking your #11 Combo Meal (Medium Size) on Tuesday if everyone is interviewing 230,750 applicants (required to fill 50,000 positions based on the test run).

I am so totally interested in your ideas and feedback on this. Please take a minute and let me know what you think.

"It's About Money"......and is that Bad?

I've seen many individuals comment on the changing work landscape over the past several years. It's important to guage this in light of a consistent "white noise" behind all business and lifestyle changes- people don't like change. Particularly when they (or their friends and family) are impacted by change in terms of their work, compensation, or career options.

Still, the "buzz" around changes at work is a bit more strident and maybe it's driven by the fact that fundamental changes are currently underway. Check out this article (full disclosure: featuring comments from a friend and former employer of mine).:

http://www.ajc.com/business/non-employee-labor-a-848635.html

When a professor tells a reporter, “It’s about money. Companies want more flexibility and less risk moving forward. They want to hire talent as they need it and not be burdened with full-time employment costs. It’s cheaper to hire contingent workers” , I can see a lot of my networking contacts cringing. My compatriots in HR especially since they are focused on "engagement" and "teambuilding" and other such current flavors of workforce development.

But when you use the phrase "Human Capital" to bring your HR work closer to the core of your company's mission and vision, is it wrong to talk about this like other investments? Is the return on "regular employees" worthy of a capital investment? Or are they more productive ways to invest in project teams, functional collaborations, contingency plans and flexible workforce programs?

Don't get hung up on terms used in this article. "Temps" are not necessarily low-end, low-paid, low-educated entry level people who can't find real jobs. In the new work paradigm, we're all "project people" trying very hard to deliver a critical result for the company that hires us for that project.

And if it's all about money, then you know what you need to focus on. In your job search, interview, personality test, orientation, training and daily work, remind yourself (and your direct Supervisor) what specifically you are going to do to deliver better financial results for your employer.

Project or not, that focus will keep you "employed".

Myths Of the Temp Worker World- My primary challenge

Business development in workforce management and project employment is not difficult. Identifying decision makers, calling hiring managers to offer a solution to their current and future challenges, mapping out the barriers to customer company success, presenting customized proposals, executing those plans. Maybe I'm jaded since this is not my first rodeo.

My biggest challenge is the "cubby-hole" people try to put me in when I make that first call. "Oh, you're a temp agency...". Or when I speak with qualified applicants about a new project assignment and I can see their body language and facial expression turn sour. Just before they say, "...you know I'm really looking for a permanent job....".

News bulletin: there's no such thing. If you're reading this on a computer (home or work) I'm afraid I have to tell you that your current job is not permanent. If you're unemployed right now, that's also not permanent. The chair you are sitting on is not "permanent" (as it will someday be sold in a garage sale and after that probably recycled or land-filled). Your car, your golf swing, your favorite restaurant, even your educational acheivement is not a "forever" proposition. The degree may go next to your name, but the value of that over time changes.

Likewise for employers. When someone tells me they want to hire someone with "long term potential", what I hear them say is "...we need someone adaptive to change, flexible, entrepreurial, and low maintenance to be able to be proactive in changing their approach to work...". You can develop humans all you want, but you have to know where that development project is going. In the 21st Century, it's frankly a moving target. So make sure your people can "move" with the times.

Here's a sample of what I deal with all the time. A self-serving white paper by one of my peers in the industry.  Debunkng that "Temp" Designation

Welcome your thoughts and ideas on how this is wrong, dated, appropriate, or confusing. Your experience and knowledge is maybe even better than mine.

Just let me know.

Five Unemployed for Every Opening- Credit Suisse Economist: "Something's Wrong Here"

Trying to explain employment trends in 2011 utilizing statistical models and metrics from the previous century can humble even the smartest economic minds. Todays New York Times, my favorite vehicle for explaining things in plain English, devotes an "Economix" article to the fact that trends in economic recovery are not matching up with traditional models.

Is something different about the employment world we all live in?

The gist of this story is the fact that the number of unemployed people per job opening should start trending down as the recovery takes hold. Unfortunately (if you believe numbers gathered by Bureau of Labor Statistics) the ratio of unemployed to job openings peaked at 6.3 in Q4 '10 and remains close to 4.7. Not a reflection of positive changes we hear about in the news.

What's the issue? Are we looking at the wrong numbers? Is the BLS using old methodology to try to gather new information? Last months crazy gap between the unemployment rate decrease and the low job creation figures was an obvious reminder that you can't compare two indicators when they come from two different survey targets: households (survey claimed over 600,000 new jobs were created) and businesses (who were responsible for the number used by our government in measuring job creation- only 36,000 last month).

My favorite part of this "Explaining the Science of Everyday Life" article comes at the end when VP of Economics for your run-of-the-mill international banking giant, Henry Mo, tries to explain why we're not seeing the trends we would expect to see when things start improving:

There are concerns that the widening gap may reflect rising structural unemployment due to skills mismatch, lower labor mobility resulting from the housing slump, and etc. Aside from these elements, we view the widening gap more of a result of employers’ reduced hiring intensity – employers seem to take advantage of the tough labor market and take time to fill the jobs that they advertised.
Or is it the fact that job creation is simply a different kind of function than it was in 1958? What does someone mean when they refer to "employers hiring intensity"? Or maybe, as Mr. Mo suggests, are employers sitting back, drinking Starbucks, throwing frisbees in parking lots, and waiting to make hiring decisions when they are forced into doing actual work?

The entire concept of "work" is changing now in real time. Traditional employment is morphing into "project work", independent consulting, "just-in-time" talent and a myriad of other new and still formulating models for business to get things designed, developed, produced and delivered. If you don't believe me, maybe you believe the VP for Economics from Credit Suisse. He says it's just an anomoly.

Right!


.

Is the Temp Boom "Temporary"? Are Temps "Permanent"?

It's difficult with the noise of bad economic news to hear about the fastest growing industry in the United States. Since October of 2009, this growing business sector has added 495,000  new jobs. While December of 2010 was a slow down in recovery for most, this sector was up slightly month-to-month and still 19% higher than the same month last year in total employment.

This business is Staffing. The professional services sector most people know as "temp agencies". Full disclosure, I do work for a staffing company and have learned first-hand that American business is utilizing this resource in a different way than they used to.

Staffing has traditionally been a bell-weather for recovery in the minds (and charts) of economists and government analysts. Most experts will tell you that a six-month lag between the return of Staffing industry growth and the return of "regular" employment in business has been a common trend in the modern era.

Yet the turn-around in Staffing was Q4 '09. Now that we're sitting in Q1 '11 you would be excused if you expressed some urgent concern about the fact that jobs have not yet appeared to be moving up the trend charts in any respect. Experts forecast a "jobless recovery" and a possible 18-month, 2-year or even longer period before employment starts moving into "normal" territory.

The reasons are consistently being tied to housing starts, construction, and Corporate spending which are all traditional leading indicators of recovery. Today, that's simply not the case. Housing surplus numbers,  mortgage loans and the population of individuals who can quality are scary numbers. Corporations are sitting on huge piles of cash yet they continue to "rent" people from Staffing companies instead of hiring new employees.

Is this trend temporary? Or has something fundamentally changed in the idea that regular employees are required to design, develop, produce and distribute your product or service?

I tell my current applicants and client contacts the same thing: There is no such thing as "permanent" work. You can apply that same matra to most things that surround you as you read this.....your computer is not permanent, your chair is not permanent, your job, your house, your lifestyle and many of your personal relationship will indeed change in the next few years.

Likewise for the service product I deliver in my job. I don't like the work "temps" because it devalues the important work they are given to complete: learn this role/function quickly, ask some smart questions, stop talking, get the work done, do it very well and please leave my building when it's finished.

All work is project work. All companies are trying to create, fix or avoid something very specific. And when that's done, there's a new project at hand.

Maybe the nature of work itself  is changing. Your ideas on that are welcome.

Like I was saying......

The Economic Policy Institute may be a great organization with really smart people but it's hard to tell from where I'm sitting. I don't have the time to do research on this non-profit think tank. I'll break my Personal Rule Number 8 and suggest that because they are featured on Yahoo! News that they are a legitimate organization.

This article comes from the AP (Pallavi Gogi, Business Reporter) and features a familiar diatribe about US jobs going overseas:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_overseas_hiring;_ylt=ArBZlCbNRoAECtBQ1QZCK2.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNpNTNzb3M0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAxMjI4L3VzX292ZXJzZWFzX2hpcmluZwRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzcEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA3doZXJlYXJldGhlag--
What's different here is the comparison between sending jobs overseas and the perceived market value of the company that does business like that. In short, investors like it when companies get rid of "regular jobs" here in the USA.

Robert Scott, the Senior International Economist from the Economic Policy Institute puts this very clearly: "There's a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.

What is good for American Companies may not be good for America, but what about you? Is this good for your job prospects? Career opportunity? Your economic outlook?

I'm not a protectionist or a nationalist in any way. I agree that in the international market for work, Americans have out-priced and underperformed themselves out for the market. Is that bad?

Could that be good? What if you understood this reality and worked within that new world market to better yourself and your economic outlook by changing your ideas on what work really means?

Good or bad is not the issue. Change is the issue. Work is changing because of this and many other critical factors in the business equation of the 21st century.

It's not a 1900's job market here in America, and certainly not in India, China, Brazil or the Russian Republic. Think about how the job market has changed in those places. Think about those people and their expectations for the kind of work you have always known as "work".

You would be naive to think that the jobs we send overseas are always a boon to the lifestyle, financial health, culture and environmental outlook of the people who's lives are different doing this new work. Again, I'm not saying it's good.

It's a dynamic and fundamental change in the way we think about work. It's one of the reasons your life will not be the same.

Very soon.