Living in More Than One World

I’ve been a big sports fan since childhood, and I watched many times on TV during high school and college as John Wooden coached UCLA to college basketball glory. He is one of the most successful coaches in any sport, of all time. And at age 98, he has done quite well writing books, and in public speaking. Michel Hiltzik’s column, John Wooden’s still Coach, even in the investment game, in the Los Angeles Times is a highly interesting interview with Wooden about his investing principles. Hiltzik points out that Wooden coached in an era (the 1940s through the mid-1970s) when coaches weren’t paid particularly well. A big takeaway from this column, besides Wooden’s thoughts on investing, is how he dealt with uncertainty in life after retiring from UCLA at 65. Besides seeking prudent professional advice for getting his finances and estate in order, he transitioned into what became a lucrative career writing and speaking about not only his coaching principles, but more importantly, his principles for leadership and living a successful, meaningful life. In 1975, it was much less prevalent for people to reinvent themselves after retirement. Wooden is still going strong, 34 years later. And he didn’t dwell on how he possibly could have had more money when he retired from coaching (partly because of a decision revealed in the lead of the column). “But if you always think things will be better with more money,” he tells Hiltzik, “your life’s not going to be that good.” Regarding the concept of initiative, one of the 15 building blocks of his “Pyramid of Success,” Wooden gives a great quote that can be applied well beyond the world of investing: “Don’t be afraid to fail. We’re all imperfect. We’re going to fail at times. If you’re worried about temporary reversals, you’ll be afraid to make a decision.”

What first drew me to Sam Allis’ major Boston Globe profile of architect William Rawn, Starting slow, finishing fast, was the emphasis on Rawn’s  listening skills. Rawn says architects aren’t trained in this skill, yet he spends considerable time at it, especially at the beginning of a project. William Rawn Associates was named the top architectural firm in the country by Architect magazine in its May 2009 edition. Beyond the idea of success-through-listening, the profile is a fascinating portrait of a professional at the top of his game. He is 66 and took a non-traditional path into the profession. Rawn says that architects reach their peak in their 50s, 60s, or even older.  He graduated from Yale and Harvard Law School, and then practiced law in Washington for a couple of years. He spent four years he spent as assistant to the president and then assistant chancellor for physical planning at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The UMass experiences honed his listening skills and convinced him to become an architect, enrolling at the MIT School of Architecture + Planning. He started as a solo, growing to a 32 person firm that does high profile work for universities, arts centers, libraries and religious institutions. The photo portfolios on the company’s site and the photo gallery that accompanies the article are stunning. Although I didn’t know at the time that he was the architect, I was highly impressed by a visit last year to one of Rawn’s buildings, the Glavin Family Chapel at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., before I gave a presentation elsewhere on campus. It’s a nondenominational space that I wandered into and had to myself for half an hour. The combination of wood and 30 foot high floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto the adjacent wooded area makes for a powerful spiritual experience. I made a mental note at the time that I’d like to return to speak there in the future. That’s an affirmation of a building’s power that I think Rawn would like to hear.

Planning for the Rest of Your Life, a concise essay in the Chicago Tribune by Jim Sollisch, an executive with a Cleveland-based advertising and public relations agency, provides food for thought as we enter the holiday weekend. He reflects on the question “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” He finds that it is relevant not only for his 23-year old son with a BA in Political Science who is working odd jobs as he determines a career path; and his daughter who is about to begin college; but for himself, at 51. He points out that despite a presumably high-powered job, he tells new college graduates looking for internships that he still struggles with how to define himself. He explains that he got both a BA and MA in English, followed by teaching and writing two novels. That life was traded for work in advertising, while still writing short essays for various publications. He has an intriguing warning for young people: you can get stuck in life not just by financial and family obligations, but by success. You can get so efficient at what you do that you make fewer false starts, which “are the fuel of art. They lead to dead-ends and to cliffs that force you to jump. Which requires you to imagine how to land.” His personal and professional strategy that brought career success keeps him from getting up early to write another novel, in his estimation. His message to all of us, at almost any age, is that exploration and what you do and learn when you get lost are important in life. And asking yourself what you want to do when you grow up is really a lifelong question.

If personal reinvention is something you’re considering, or would just like to learn more about, take a few moments to read a brief, interesting first-person account, Reinventing Myself: My Journey Back to Music, by Steven Tjernagel, on the extensive jazz site allaboutjazz.com. In eight short sections with subheads such as “A Reevaluation Of Priorities” and “The Crisis,” through “A Good Plan Never Dies” and finally “The Light at the End of the Tunnel,” Tjernagel details how and why he began his reinvention as a jazz guitarist after years of a well-paid job that he did not find satisfying. He reignited his longtime love of playing music and determined that he wanted to enter a one year jazz studies masters program, finally settling on The University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia.  It cost a lot of money, and involved a difficult audition, but he finally made it on the second try. (He was accepted the first time, but his financing fell through and he had to wait two more years until everything fell into place.) This piece shows that simply having an idea for personal reinvention is only the first step. Many difficulties and roadblocks will probably lie ahead, and it’s all too easy to give up. Yet reading about how he made his decision and overcame some of those roadblocks is inspirational. Becoming successful in music is tough. Tjernagel is to be commended for getting this far, as he notes that he did well in his first semester and is starting his second. “I’m extremely optimistic for the future as I continue to reinvent myself once again,” he writes. His words and experience should resonate for all of us traveling on the road to reinvention.

Although it was written for a journalism-related readership, I think any knowledge worker can gain valuable insights from a guest column I wrote this week for the website 21st News, Lessons Learned from Peter Drucker: A Guide For the Future. It’s partly a personal look at how I have been living and applying some of the principles in my forthcoming book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, before and after my layoff last December from USA TODAY. But it is mainly a short guide to how people can apply some of the principles in their own lives, based around five areas: teaching, continuous learning, mentoring, volunteering and reflecting. I pointed out Drucker’s stellar journalism credentials: besides his many books, he contributed for many years to such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Forbes, Harvard Business Review and many others. He embodied high-minded achievement, delivered with integrity. He was the kind of role model that knowledge workers can emulate if they are working or not working, looking for a new job or thinking of changing professions. 21st News describes itself as  “a comprehensive Web site about the future of journalism and the news business.” The guest column was for Grant’s Angle, the blog by the site’s founder and editor, Grant Perry. Judging from his bio, he is a great example of being multidimensional and living in more than one world. I’m grateful for the opportunity he provided me to contribute to his site.

The highlight of my time Monday at the 100th annual conference of the Special Libraries Association/SLA, in Washington, D.C.  – besides meeting many interesting new people and reconnecting with friends and former students – was the 14th Special Libraries Symposium. I produce this event every year for the course I teach at the Catholic University School of Library and Information Science, The Special Library/Information Center. I bring together a group of librarians, who are generous with their time in giving back to the profession, to meet with my students to talk about their career journeys and the state-of-the-art in their work. Yesterday we had a large, talented and highly experienced group that shared their knowledge, experience and advice. Some of the common themes are applicable beyond the world of librarianship to the wider world of knowledge work: continuous learning (with formal classes, new degrees or otherwise), continually upgrading your technology skills and experience, marketing your services, being entrepreneurial, trying different areas of the profession before you find the one that’s right for you, being visible in your organization and developing your managerial and leadership talents, whether or not manager is your title. A number of the librarians had more than one graduate degree, including one with an MBA. Many came to the profession as a second career. Some are working, or have worked, for software vendors. All proved to be wonderful role models to the students and to other librarians and knowledge workers. Thanks to all who participated in this memorable event!

Current, former or prospective students – and students of life in general — can learn a lot from A cheaper, smarter road to college, and career, a triple book review by novelist Caroline Leavitt, who writes about self-help for The Boston Globe. The piece focuses on three intriguing-sounding books that aim to help people travel down unconventional roads to learning and self-development: The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education (by Maya Frost, founder of Education Design Institute), You Majored in What?: Mapping your Path from Chaos to Career (by Katharine Brooks, director of career services for the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, and Psychology Today blogger) and How to Love (by psychiatrist Gordon Livingston, also a Psychology Today blogger).  Since so many people are looking for new ways of thinking about life,  these titles seem timely and provocative. Leavitt favorably compares How to Love to Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. Frost’s book is partially based on the decidedly unconventional higher education experience of her four daughters, which involved traveling far beyond their comfort zone to go to college. I was particularly drawn to Leavitt’s description of the “wise wandering” approach in Brooks’ book, “a system of positive psychology, chaos theory, and visual mapping techniques to help students – and anyone – figure out what skills they have, what personal values matter most to them, and how to channel it all into a career they’ll love.”

Ira Jackson, the dean of Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at the Claremont Graduate University, has written The View From Drucker: Drucker Apps, in the May 23 Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, about an innovative regular feature on the Drucker Institute website. Twice a month, since January 29 of this year, the Institute takes a topic and includes information on various facets from Peter Drucker, in the form of excerpts from relevant passages of his books, material from the voluminous online Drucker Archives and videos or audio files featuring Drucker or outside experts. There is also the full text related to the topic from The Drucker Difference columns on BusinessWeek.com by Rick Wartzman, the director of the Drucker Institute. You can subscribe, or access Drucker Apps from the website. “Each bi-weekly App,” Jackson writes, “is designed to be timely and play off something in the recent news.”  He describes the May 9 feature on volunteering, which has eight different features, including a short Drucker video, and the text of a speech Drucker gave to the Economic Club of Washington in 1991. The Drucker Apps for May 23 is about finding and keeping jobs. The ten features — one section is intriguingly headed “Help Wanted” (if you help yourself first)” – include the full text of a 1957 speech Drucker gave to the Eleventh International Management Congress in Paris, “The Problems of Maintaining Continuous and Full Employment.” There is also a video and book excerpt from William Cohen, president of the Institute of Leader Arts, and a former PhD student of Peter Drucker.  A final note: there is a Q&A with Rick Wartzman about The Drucker Institute and The Drucker Societies in my forthcoming book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life.

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.”