Living in More Than One World

As the year winds down, some useful best-of-business-book posts have been published recently, particularly Todd Sattersten’s The Top 10 Business Books of 2010. I saw Todd do terrific presentations at the 2009 and 2010 BK authors marketing workshops, and last year he was the first person to review Living in More Than One World, when he was with 800ceoread. Todd and Jack Covert, the Founder and President of 800ceoread, are the co-authors of a great book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. Todd’s new post also includes links to podcast interviews he did with some of the authors on his 10 best list, including Daniel Pink, Seth Godin, Chip Heath and William Poundstone.  Another author on the list, Steven Johnson, was interviewed recently on the 800ceoread blog. In 2008, I interviewed Daniel Pink and reviewed his book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, for USA TODAY. In 2003, I reviewed Poundstone’s How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft’s Cult of the Puzzle; How the World’s Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers, for USAT. Miami Herald columnist Richard Pachter has Pachter’s Picks: The best business books of 2010. It includes three that also made Sattersten’s list: Pink’s Drive, Godin’s Linchpin and Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Switch. Bloomberg.com’s best-of article is James Pressley’s Paulson Plays Chicken, Rich Get Richer in Best Business Books. Also on his list is Poundstone’s Priceless and Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, and such titles as Crash of the Titans, by my former USAT colleague Greg Farrell, now of the Financial Times. Finally, McCombs Today, the blog of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, has The Best Business Books of 2010, including The Big Short and, in agreement with Pachter, The Great Reset by Richard Florida; and in common with Bloomberg, Fault Lines by Raghuram G. Rajan and Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, by Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, n+1 and Keith Gessen. We will soon start seeing how the best business books of 2011 will unfold. Happy New Year!

300 Words With is a new, semi-regular feature on my blog, in which I interview people I admire, especially those who exemplify the spirit of living in more than one world. Their responses are (in the range of) 300 words. Today’s interviewee is the artist/writer/musician/NPR radio commentator David Greenberger, who also has done innovative work with the elderly. I knew David back in my music writing/selling days in the late seventies and early eighties, and then lost touch with him until becoming reconnected earlier this year on Facebook.

1. Can you briefly describe your life’s professional journey so far, including Duplex Planet and your art?

Duplex Planet is my art, or one aspect of it. I won’t take up the limited word space here to describe it, but will say that I started out as a painter – art school, showings, the whole thing – and after I created the earliest issues of the periodical in 1979, I purposefully set aside painting a year or so later so that I could truly allow this other medium to become my voice. That said, for the past half decade, I’ve returned to visual art as well (though there are also visual components in The Duplex Planet) and it picks up around where I left off thirty years ago. For the past 15 years I’ve been most interested in the creation of monologues with music, further abstracting the underlying source material to make for a more universal, less documentary-specific focus.

2. Has music been a running thread through your personal and professional life, and if so, in what ways?

Music has been a constant since I was ten or eleven years old. I’ve always been nourished by hearing something new, as well as finding new in the familiar. I played bass guitar in bands in my hometown of Erie, PA, through high school and into college. I returned to performing when I lived in Boston and formed a band called Men & Volts. We did five albums and numerous other releases over the course of the eighties. Putting together an issue of The Duplex Planet has always been like assembling an album: the rhythmic flow, the juxtapositions, the slow reveal. My recordings and performances now – monologues with music – I liken to a band with a guy (me) talking.

3. What non-work activities do you find particularly meaningful in your life?

As an artist, I find very little divide between my daily endeavors and the notion of work. They are the same; they are who I am and what I do. That said, stepping away from the various processes is necessary for the growth and integrity of the art. So there are friends, the aesthetic pleasures of food, film, literature and every other medium, to baffle, amuse, delight and enrich.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the sudden, untimely death at forty-five of Richard Carlson, the psychologist/author of the best-selling Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series of self-help books.  I devoted nearly a page and a half of my book, in a section on leaving your legacy, to Carlson’s example. I wrote that I twice interviewed and wrote about him for USA TODAY. In our telephone conversations, he seemed very in line with his image: a genuinely nice guy, who had important things to say, and who was adept at getting his ideas across in reader/listener friendly ways. (I happened to come across his phone number in an old address book the other day; a somewhat eerie experience, considering how close it was to the anniversary of his death.) At this time of year especially, it would benefit many of us to consider two things about his legacy: 1. The importance – despite the difficulty – of heeding his message about not getting too stressed out about little things (even if they don’t seem little at the time). His books conveyed the related message that many of our problems can be dealt with by stopping to consider options before leaping to negative conclusions. 2. He put a lot of care and devotion into his work each day, and part of the result was many books, web materials and articles that will continue to nourish people for years. His life example helps prove that it is what we do daily that contributes to our legacy for the future. Carlson also wrote about the fact that not all problems are small: his 2002 book What About the Big Stuff? Finding Strength and Moving Forward When the Stakes Are High deals with tough topics in ways that are ultimately positive, optimistic and life-affirming. His work has been extended and expanded upon by his widow, Kristine Carlson, who is a prolific author and media presence in her own right.

Even though it is graced with a photo of Keith Richards and a nod to his new autobiography, Life; Kerry Hannon’s Forbes.com post 10 Great Books for Career Changers, Give The Gift of Possibility has to-the-point thumbnails on self-help, career-changing and personal finance books to aid people in transition.  She mentions job hunters and retirees as potential recipients of the books, but the list should hold appeal for people in various types and stages of transition, which is pretty much everyone. Our transitions take place at different paces and in varying levels of awareness. So reading thoughtful books can often be valuable companions for our journeys. Kerry is a former colleague of mine at USA TODAY, and she now has a super-active career as a writer and editor, including as contributing editor and retirement correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. #7 on her list is her latest book, WHAT’S NEXT? Follow Your Passion and Find Your Dream Job. (She admits it is a “shameless” choice, but that her inspirational message is too important not to include in the list out of modesty.) #1 is Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the followup to Made to Stick. She intentionally chose some earlier titles, including 2008’s Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, by Marc Freedman, and The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, published a decade ago by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. In 2001, I saw the Zanders give a highly inspirational presentation. And they are profiled in Eric Liu’s 2006 book Guiding Lights – How to Mentor and Find Life’s Purpose. Many people in transition are or will be involved in teaching, learning and mentoring, so I would add Eric’s book as the unofficial #11 on the list. Happy reading!

After my Peter Drucker-related presentations in Claremont earlier this month, I went to New York last week for three speaking engagements: for SLA NYC (held at METRO headquarters), at Baruch College and for the London Business School Club of New York. I was honored to be associated with all these organizations, if only for a short period of time. I met many interesting people at all three events: students, professors, librarians and business people. Baruch College was a particular revelation: a super-vibrant school with highly diverse students. I did not previously know a lot about Bernard Baruch, the alum whom the school was named for. I discovered that he was somewhat Drucker-like, and not just because a school of higher education was named after him. Although they were in different professions, both lived intentional lives of purpose. And both thought about how their work had ramifications beyond themselves, to the world at large. In particular, I was struck by Baruch’s advice – similar to Drucker’s — to take time for self-reflection and contemplation, no matter how busy you are. The London Business School event was on November 11; the fifth anniversary of Drucker’s death. And it was appropriate to go from Claremont, where Drucker lived from 1971 until his death in 2005; to New York, where he lived for many years prior. He taught at New York University, and wrote many of his most important books during those years. The city is also home to the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management), and the Drucker Society of New York City. Last year I did a “fireside chat” with Leader to Leader President and Chief Executive Officer Frances Hesselbein (who wrote the foreword to my book Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life), for the Drucker Society, my only New York event until last week. I left in an energized state of mind, looking forward to more presentations there in 2011.

I’ve just returned from several days in Claremont, Ca., based around the activities for Drucker Centennial Day, which marked the end of a two-year period honoring the life and legacy of Peter Drucker. November 19 is the 101st anniversary of his birth, and he died five years ago this coming November 11. The events were produced by the Drucker Institute at the Claremont Graduate University, home of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. The alternately rousing and introspective keynote on Saturday morning was delivered by Tom Peters. I helped coordinate the Drucker Authors Festival segment, and was on the panel “Lessons From Drucker’s Life,” with Jack Beatty and William Cohen. “What Would Drucker Do Now?” had  Jorge Vasconcellos e Sá, Winfried Weber and Gladius Kulothungan; and “Drucker in Historical Context” had Joe Maciariello, Jack Bergstrand and Mike Wood. Although I did not see Kenneth Hopper’s presentation “Turning the World Upside Down,” I was fortunate to have seen the presentation he did with his brother Will Hopper last Thursday, for the Drucker School students, based on their book The Puritan Gift. Other than Cohen, Weber and Maciariello, I had not met the other Drucker-related authors in person before, and getting to know them, and the Hoppers, was a highlight. I also did my own presentation, Designing Your Total Life the Peter Drucker Way, at the Drucker School on Friday morning. It was great to meet new friends who attended, as well as to reconnect with friends from my previous times in Claremont. We had a stimulating impromptu discussion afterwards. The centennial may be over, but the Drucker Institute has a number of promising things in the pipeline, including several more books. The Drucker School is growing and gaining more attention. Both institutions continue to not only honor, but to extend and deepen Peter Drucker’s legacy.

Sally Blount, Dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, recently wrote about the benefits of going on a retreat. Hers was silent, a focused time to contemplate, especially useful for major changes in life. This fit her situation well as the new dean of the school. I’ve been on somewhat similar retreats and found them valuable, but last week I attended a different type of retreat, of the Berrett-Koehler Authors Cooperative. It was my second, and both were remarkable experiences. Here are four reasons why I think it’s a great idea for knowledge workers to make time for retreats: 1. Meeting new people and renewing friendships. Although some of the attendees at the BK retreat were people I met in 2009, I also made new friends. Some were Facebook friends that I had not yet met in person. There were three communal meals a day that provided added opportunities for getting to know people better. 2.  Education. I learned a lot from the writing/marketing/publishing sessions run by my fellow BK authors, or members of the BK management team. 3. Personal renewal. There are major benefits to getting out of your routine for a few days. Many retreats, as this one did, have built-in time that can be used for contemplation, reading and being in nature. In the mornings before breakfast, if you chose, there was also time for group yoga and meditation. 4. New Activities. The BK retreat had a nonjudgmental atmosphere of acceptance. Some of this came from structured activities of trust, sharing and bonding. One night there was a campfire, and another night a talent show. Before the latter, we had a brief art therapy session. Although I went into it mentally kicking-and-screaming, I really enjoyed it and found commonalities with writing and editing. This is an intentionally short list. I’m interested in hearing about other benefits from retreats you’ve taken.

“300 Words With…” is a new, semi-regular feature on my blog, in which I interview people I admire, especially those who exemplify the spirit of living in more than one world. The featured person today is Tim Wendel, who is the author of eight books, writes for a number of great publications and teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins University. I’ve known Tim since our days as colleagues at USA TODAY.

1. You have quite a varied career; writing and teaching both fiction and nonfiction. Do these activities require different mindsets and mental/emotional adjustments?

The line is much finer than some would think. The key to any quality narrative, fiction or nonfiction, often hinges upon characters, setting, plot, etc. Certainly nonfiction pieces require more attention to detail and truth. That’s why I always fact-check those stories. Still, Joseph Conrad was once asked what the key was to quality writing. His reply? “If I can make you see.” In essence, the scenes or people I have in my mind I offer to you through my writing. When it works we’re dreaming the same dream, in a way. That’s when the writing becomes so enthralling that you miss your subway stop or you stay up past your bedtime, still reading away. That only happens with great characters and memorable situations, regardless of what form we’re working in.

2. Since the earliest days when you added being an author to your work in journalism, how has your life changed, in a day-to-day sense and otherwise?

I used to write much more at night. I think raising two kids drove that out of me. Now I’m older and I find my best time to write is in the morning. I’ll have a quick bite to eat and then start working. When you’re working on a longer work, you need to focus on it a little bit each day. If not, the characters or concerns don’t rattle around in your head enough. At least not for me. Finding the time can be a concern. I wrote my first novel, Castro’s Curveball, on the D.C. Metro [subway]. That’s all the time I had back then, but it all adds up if you stay with it.

3. What non-work/non-writing activities do you find particularly meaningful in your life?

Now that I’m in my 50s, I realize how important it is to stay in shape. I run with a local group most Friday mornings. I also do other classes, as much for the friendship as the fitness. Writing can be a lonely occupation, so we need to find people we can talk things out with. I’ve been meditating and I’ve read a lot of spiritual texts, everything from Gnostic Gospels to Joseph Campbell. And, finally, family is important to me. I never expected to learn as much from raising my two kids as I have. It made me vulnerable and open in a way that I didn’t expect. Which made me a better writer and perhaps a person more receptive to the world in general.

Warren Bennis, whom I wrote about last year, is one of the world’s top authorities on leadership. He’s also a great example of someone who remains relevant, in-demand and active in his mid-80s. I think a worthy goal for knowledge workers to aim for is what Bennis has accomplished: deep into what many would term as advanced years, people still want to know what he thinks, and many will pay for the privilege. His book with Burt Nanus, Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, has sold more than a half  million copies, and has a front cover endorsement from Peter Drucker. (Last year, I saw Bennis give a thought-provoking presentation at one of the Drucker Centennial events in Los Angeles.) Now, at 85, Bennis has his first website. And at the same time, he’s published his account of a fulfilling, meaningful life, Still Surprised, A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (written with Patricia Ward Biederman, with whom he has collaborated previously). The website has lots of interesting material. He has published 30 books and countless articles, and there has been lots of positive coverage of the new book. You can also get a good sense of Bennis as a person from the photo page of the website. And if you want a short, tough, clear-eyed view of the responsibilities of the leader of today, read Diane Brady’s September 23rd Q&A in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Speed Dial: Warren Bennis. The art of brevity is celebrated in this quote: “Sound bites are important. A leader has to talk to people’s hearts. Sound bites give specificity, but they have to be relevant and meaningful and resonant.”

This is the first of an occasional series I’ll be writing on the Peter Drucker book The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society and Economy,published earlier this year. Many of the ideas and concepts will be familiar to his longtime readers. But these talks, from 1943 to 2003, two years before his death at 95, have not been published before. Each of the seven parts represents a decade, from the 1940s to the 2000s. In 1989, there are five knowledge lectures. Five years later, he returns for “The Knowledge Worker and the Knowledge Society.” In 2003, there is the four-part “The Future of the Corporation.” The collection was edited and has an introduction by Rick Wartzman, the Executive Director of The Drucker Institute, who writes a column, The Drucker Difference, for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Rick also answered questions for a 2 ½ page Q&A in my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Although many of the lectures were given at The Claremont Graduate University, Drucker’s home base for the last 34 years of his life, the settings for some of the others are impressively varied. For instance, “What We Already Know About American Education Tomorrow,” was given as the William T. Beadles Lecture for the American College of Life Underwriters, in 1971. “Management in the Big Organizations” is from a 1967 lecture at a workshop for YMCA managers, in Estes Park, Colorado. “On Health Care” comes from a 1996 speech at the Harvard Medical School. Drucker’s voice rings true, and that’s good news, no matter what subject he tackles, or where the words were spoken.