Living in More Than One World

If your current personal or professional situation is making you discouraged, read the Warren Bennis May 18 essay in BusinessWeek, Only the Optimists Survive. Bennis is one of the world’s top leadership experts; a successful author, consultant and professor. Although he writes here for a business-oriented audience, his message of tough-minded optimism, of seeing beyond your current situation and doing what’s necessary for a better future, is applicable to anyone. And his examples go beyond the business world. Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with the terrible shape the country was in when he was elected President, as well as his own paralysis. Pete Carroll was dismissed twice as an NFL football coach, yet adapted and developed his abilities to become a highly successful college coach at USC. Bennis provides other examples, as well as the following “blueprint for survival” at the conclusion: “Good organizations and good leaders, especially in our tense and uncertain moment in history, have the capacity to bounce back; to adapt as necessary; to persevere with an expectation of success; and to engage others in a shared sense of purpose; and to win a reputation for integrity through these other qualities.” A final note: Bennis was a longtime friend of (and perceptive writer about) Peter Drucker, and is one of the endorsers of my forthcoming book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life.

Kathy M. Kristof’s Personal Finance column in the May 17 Los Angeles Times, Charlie Munger’s got a billion words of wisdom, is well worth reading, beyond whatever you take away about investing. Munger is vice-chairman of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Buffett’s right-hand man and, as Kristof puts it, “one of the world’s savviest investors.” Munger, who is 85 and a Harvard Law graduate, is also chairman of Wesco Financial, and an example of a person who trains his powerful intellect on a variety of areas. He, like Buffett, remains vital and relevant long past traditional retirement years. I first heard of Munger in 2002, when interviewing the late Jim Michaels, the legendary former editor of Forbes, for my forthcoming book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Michaels was Drucker’s longtime friend and also his editor when Drucker wrote for Forbes. He drew my attention to the intellectual similarities between Munger and Drucker, and told me of a lengthy lunch the three had together and the brilliant conversation between the pair, whom Michaels said were meeting for the first time. I think many of us would have liked to have been at the table that day!

Last week The Globe and Mail Open House Festival was held at the University of Toronto, with readings and panel discussions featuring primarily authors associated in some way with Random House or its imprints. The Globe and Mail now has a page of audio from a number of the authors speaking at the festival, including Jay McInerney, Calvin Trillin, Zoe Heller, Anne Michaels, David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle) and Joseph O’Neill, who recently won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Netherland. There are thirteen authors on the page now, with two more to be added.  You can listen directly from the page to each of the authors, or download the podcasts to listen later. To learn more about the festival, see The Globe and Mail article Random House launches inaugural festival: Publisher hints at including competitors next year, but competitors are wary.

Michael Kane’s article in The New York Post, CHANGE COURSE: SLUGGISH ECONOMY GOT YOU DOWN? NOW’S THE PERFECT TIME FOR A COLLEGE TEST-RUN ON A NEW CAREER, has an intriguing take on career change. It advocates taking summer classes at local universities for inspiration about new directions available to you. The idea is to take a course in an area that interests you, with an eye towards career change and/or going back to school to get a new degree. But it’s a lot easier to take a course or two to get a sense of whether that career might be right for you. Although the article includes only New York area universities (Columbia, Fordham, NYU and The New School), the same concept can apply for local schools where you live.  Kane quotes Ron Jacobson, Fordham’s dean of summer sessions: “Taking a summer class lets you learn about a new business, or even revisit a field that maybe you once considered — because industries are always changing.”

David Whyte has for many years been a great example of living in more than one world. He is a successful poet, author, speaker and business consultant. Check out Colleen Smith’s insightful profile/interview, David Whyte’s nonprosaic world, in the Denver Post. She was writing in advance of his appearance at a bookstore in Boulder, Col., promoting his latest book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self & Relationship. You can read selections from his poetry on his site, which has quite a bit of interesting material. Whyte’s quote ending the Denver Post story is instructive, as it contrasts the hard times we are living in, with the value provided by poets: “I often think of poets as makers of identity, so these are good times for poets, who speak not only for the individual, but for society and for the future at the horizon about to appear.”

Making effective presentations that really engage audiences and classrooms is an ongoing challenge. As people have more access to great presentations both in person and online, the bar keeps getting set higher. Garr Reynolds has an excellent post on his Presentation Zen blog, Making presentations in the TED style, about learning from the best presentations at the famed TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. It includes tips and links to video presentations from the likes of Al Gore, Seth Godin, Isabel Allende and others. Reynolds notes that TED has strict rules of eighteen minute time limits, with some presentations limited to three or six minute slots. You can also find many other videos of presentations at TED on their site, as well as more information about their worldwide conferences. I also enjoyed Reynolds’ 2008 book presentationzen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, which has a foreword by Guy Kawasaki.

Although it wasn’t a well-known aspect of his long and highly successful career, Peter Drucker published two novels: The Last of All Possible Worlds (1982) and The Temptation to Do Good (1984). The latter is the subject of an unexpected, and fascinating, Inside Higher Ed essay by higher education consultant Melanie Ho, Business and the Relevance of Liberal Arts. I think he would be pleased at the carefully thought-out, sympathetic portrayal of the book, and how its ideas and central questions have relevance for today’s academic world, twenty five years later. When I interviewed Drucker at his home in Claremont, California six years ago for my forthcoming book, I wanted to get his thoughts on the novels, because I knew that he had long wanted to write fiction as well as nonfiction, yet the fiction writing ultimately didn’t work out as well as he would have liked. I wanted to know if he would decide to try this genre again. His reply was both poignant and realistic: “It decided; I had no idea. I lived with the characters of those two novels for many years before I wrote the novels. I don’t live with any characters [now].” Perhaps Melanie Ho’s perceptive essay will help spark interest in Drucker’s fiction for a new generation of readers that wasn’t alive when his novels were published.

Tony Dobrowolski of The Berkshire Eagle reports in his article Workshop addresses job-loss stress on an intriguing three day program in June at the Kripalu center for yoga & health, in Stockbridge, Mass. It’s called Transformation: From Surviving Job Loss to Thriving, and will be focused on the kinds of thinking and mind-body awareness skills that are crucial to dealing properly with the loss of a job. These skills are also important for the transition into the unknown territory of deciding what to do with the rest of your life. And of course the latter represents only one step, as big and important as it is, as this decision will have to be balanced against reality. It will be interesting to see if the blend of yoga, meditation, life coaching and other techniques can be a model for others who are on, or will soon be on, this difficult life journey.

There can be fascinating results when two seemingly disparate worlds combine in the same person. A case in point is Kate Linthicum’s feature story in the Los Angeles Times, In the stillness, space for a rebellious spirit, about Noah Levine, who teaches Buddhist meditation infused with punk rock values. He’s the leader of the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, and author of the 2003 book Dharma Punx. The latter is the name of the Society’s members, and there are meditation groups across the USA and Canada. Levine appears to be an intriguing embodiment of living in more than one world, as a psychologist (which, according to the article, is how he earns his living), teacher, organization leader, author and family man. But it took him a long time of  suffering and searching to get to his current place in life, all detailed well by Linthicum.  Levine’s father is the poet and author Stephen Levine.

Cindy Leise’s neat human interest story Toni Morrison’s first-grade teacher recalls past century, in Ohio’s The Chronicle-Telegram, is the kind of article at which local newspapers excel. Leise interviews 98-year old Esther Hunt, who taught the Pulitzer Prize-winning Morrison in 1937, in Lorain, Ohio.  The peg for the story was Morrison’s local appearance at Oberlin College’s Convocation Series, which unfortunately Hunt could not attend because of a family event in another state. According to the article, she taught in Lorain City Schools for 45 years, until her retirement in 1974. Morrison’s latest novel is A Mercy, which was published last year.
While newspapers remain under threat partly due to the upheavals caused by the online world, it is also true that readers beyond Lorain County Ohio would never have had the opportunity to read this charming story had it not been made available free online by The Chronicle-Telegram.