Living in More Than One World » work

Chuck Leavell: From Sea Level to Tree Level

bruce — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:24:50 +0000

One of the best examples of a multidimensional person living in more than one world is Chuck Leavell. He is probably best known as a top-level pianist who has played with The Rolling Stones for nearly 30 years and was with the Allman Brothers Band before that. He has also led his own band, Sea Level, and his discography is jaw-dropping. But as his recent bylined piece, A Rock ‘n’ Roll Tour de Forest, in The Wall Street Journal shows, he also operates on many other important levels: operator (with his wife, Rose Lane) of a tree farm in Georgia, conservationist, environmental/sustainable development advocate, author and tech entrepreneur.
His recent TedXAtlanta video about balance in life and balance in development demonstrates the personal characteristics that have made him a success: he comes across as passionate, articulate, genial and informed. Although I never met him during my music world days, I’ve known about him since the beginning of his music career in the early 1970s. I’m sure he meets and interacts with a fascinating diversity of people in each of his roles, and that his involvement in so many worlds feeds an intense intellectual curiosity.
It’s encouraging that he has attracted so much attention. His most recent book, Growing a Better America, was published earlier this year. In recent weeks, besides the WSJ piece, there has been a New York Times college football-themed blog post interview with him, Postcard From Alabama: Playing for the Stones, Rooting for the Tide; and Chuck Leavell On Piano Jazz, a recent piece on NPR.org that includes his enjoyable and informative 2003 interview/music appearance on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. We should all be grateful that Leavell is truly living in more than one world.

Drucker and Claremont, 2011: Learning, Friendship and Networking

bruce — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:38:13 +0000

Last year, I spent the early days of November in Claremont, Ca., doing a presentation at the Drucker School and being on a panel of authors at Drucker Day 2010, the culmination of a year’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Peter Drucker.
This year I was also in Claremont at the beginning of November, but for slightly different reasons: two days of intensive research in the Drucker Archives at the Drucker Institute, followed by Drucker Day 2011, the annual Drucker School event gathering together alumni, current students, faculty, staff and others.
Although there is a tremendous amount of free material that the archives maintain online, in cooperation with the Honnold/Mudd Library (the Claremont Colleges Library), there is still a lot of material that you can only access by being there. It’s truly a magical place.
The morning speaker for Drucker Day was Vivek Ranadivé, chairman and CEO of TIBCO; a pioneer of real-time computing technology and the author (with my former USA TODAY colleague Kevin Maney) of The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future–Just Enough. Ranadivé was a captivating presenter, weaving together business ideas with his compelling personal story, which began in India. He also recounted his adventures coaching his daughter’s basketball team. At first, he knew little about basketball, but the team’s eventual success was chronicled by Malcolm Gladwell in the 2009 New Yorker article How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules. Ranadivé is now co-owner and Vice Chairman of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
The afternoon session was a dialogue on job creation in California, with Michael Rossi, the newly appointed Senior Advisor for Jobs and Business Development in the Office of the Governor, being interviewed by Matthew DeBord of KPCC radio. Rossi has his own compelling personal story, growing up in a modest household, and rising to the heights of the banking world. His affection for his alma mater, University of California, Berkeley, was touching. He is adamant that no matter how important college is to job creation, even more crucial is the need for improvement in K-12 education.
Drucker Day was not only educational for me, but also a networking paradise, as I saw old friends and met new ones. It has been nearly six years since Drucker’s death, but his spirit permeated the entire day.

Gratitude and Guest Posts

bruce — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:13:01 +0000

Today’s post has two aims: to point towards my two recent guest posts, and to thank the people who provided me the opportunities to write them. The more recent is An Appreciation of the Life of My Father, Paul Rosenstein (1916-2011), on Santo (Sandy) Costa’s Humanity at Work blog. My dad died at 95 on August 5th, and I think Sandy’s blog is the perfect forum for me to celebrate the life of a man whose work ethic meant that he did not retire until he was 92. Sandy has written a terrific book, also called Humanity at Work, which shows him to be a wonderful example of the Living in More Than One World principle.
In that same category is his colleague Dianne Legro, whom I got to work with during the planning for publication on the blog. She exemplifies emotional intelligence in action.
During the summer, my post Building a Framework to Embrace the New and Expand Your Horizons ran on the SLA Future Ready 365 blog. However, it started life as an entry in 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries, the excellent publication produced and edited by Marie Kaddell of LexisNexis. Marie was also the person who chose to include it as a group of guest posts for SLA. She has provided me with writing opportunities before, including guest posts on her Government Info Pro blog, and also an entry in 2010 Best Practices for Government Libraries. And she also provided me with the opportunity to do one of my favorite author presentations, giving the keynote for a government librarians event last year at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C., The New Face of Value: Creating and Sustaining Value in Your Professional and Personal Life.
So I am happy to begin my work week with a big thank you and shout out to the generosity of Sandy Costa, Dianne Legro and Marie Kaddell!

Back to Blogging After a Whirlwind Summer

bruce — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:59:17 +0000

Living in more than one world can be demanding. One of the Peter Drucker-related life lessons I’ve applied is to revise my schedule of activities when new realities demand it. That’s why I am resuming writing my blog, after not blogging since late June.

It’s been a whirlwind summer. Shortly after my presentation at the SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia came an intensive, six-week teaching semester for the course The Special Library/Information Center, at the Catholic University School of Library and Information Science. The students completed two major papers: a site visit at a Washington, D.C.-area special library, as well as a Virtual SLA project, in which they followed online, after the fact, and reported on the SLA Annual Conference. In one part of the paper, each student had to interview two librarians who had been at the conference, but whom they did not know previously. A major highlight of the course was the 16th Special Libraries Symposium, where a panel of local librarians met with the class and special guests to discuss their career journeys and the state-of-the-art in the profession.

While teaching I was also working on my first complete issue (the forthcoming Winter 2012, which will be out in mid-December) as Managing Editor of Leader to Leader. I’m learning a lot every day and interacting with a whole new set of people within and related to the leadership world. There are many deadlines involved, but I have always prided myself on making them in a timely fashion. In this I agree with Drucker, who once told me that “deadlines are sacred.”

Sadly, the summer also saw the illness, and eventual death, of my 95 year old father, Paul Rosenstein. His funeral, in Scranton, Pa., where I was born and raised, was a deeply moving experience. I will write more in the future about his great, long life.

Now blog writing beckons again. If anyone else had a similar experience of adapting to new schedules, demands and routines this summer, I’d love to hear about it!

Pick a Conference, Any Conference

bruce — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:08:36 +0000

It’s been nearly two weeks since I attended the one-day annual conference of American Independent Writers. And it has been more than a week since I’ve returned from presenting at the 2011 SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia. The ALA Annual Conference is beginning in New Orleans, but I won’t be there this year. I attended last year and in 2009, when I did the first book signing for Living in More Than One World. Professional conferences are great experiences, on many levels. They are a valuable way to learn a lot about a particular discipline in a relatively short period of time. In that spirit, last year I gave a thought exercise to my students at the Catholic University School of Library and Information Science. If you could attend any conference, anywhere, that was outside your professional discipline, but in an area of interest, what would you choose? The trick here is not to get sidetracked by location. Just because a conference happens to be in a city you’d like to visit isn’t a reason for choosing it. Rather, what professional discipline outside of your field would you like to learn more about, enough that you would spend three or four days immersed in it? I think this is a worthy thought process for any knowledge worker. It allows you to consider subjects you are curious about, and gives you the opportunity for checking online to see how those disciplines present their conferences. A quick source of ideas, for academic conferences, is Conference Alerts. Ideally, you are picking a field that is a stretch in terms of your current knowledge and experience. It’s true that this is all speculative, and in reality you are not going to be transported there. But just reading through the conference information online gives you worthwhile information about topics and people important to that subject. And who knows, maybe next year you’ll take a leap of faith and attend the conference on your own?

The End of SLA 2011: The Future Starts Now

bruce — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:18:39 +0000

The SLA 2011 Annual Conference in Philadelphia has been over for two days. Now, for all of us who attended and participated, the hard work starts. The theme was “Future Ready,” and if you made the most of your time, you are better placed to face the future than you were a week ago. My contribution was Creating Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, a Wednesday morning “Spotlight Session.” There was a sense of coming full circle: a number of people raised their hand when I asked how many had attended Drucker’s keynote at the SLA Annual Conference in Los Angeles in 2002. Although I had to miss this year’s closing keynote speaker, James Kane, I found Sunday’s opening keynote by Thomas Friedman to be highly interesting and relevant for information professionals. I drew a combination of information and inspiration from Friedman and many of the other presenters, including Larry Prusak, Guy St. Clair, James Matarazzo/Toby Pearlstein and Joe Murphy/Scott Brown, whose “60 Apps in 60 Minutes” was a supercharged look at apps that can inform and enrich our personal and professional lives. There was not time to do everything (for instance, I missed the presentation by the always-interesting Stephen Abram) or to talk to everyone. But I still became friends with many interesting people and renewed friendships with others. For the second straight year, people could “virtually” participate. And I assign the students in The Special Library/Information Center, the class I teach at The Catholic University School of Library Information Science, to monitor the conference online, after the fact, and to interview two people who attended, for one of their major papers. Whether you participate in person or online, or during or after the conference itself, the big takeaways for me are that the future can be bright for information professionals who find the proper mix of the technological and the personal, and who can apply the human touch (including Prusak’s admonition about using good judgment) while taking advantage of relevant tools. All of this is hard work that demands creativity and perseverance. SLA members and other knowledge workers have the important, ongoing task of creating the future, beginning with the actions we take today.

Creating Your Future the Peter Drucker Way: A Sneak Preview

bruce — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:00:35 +0000

If you are attending the SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia next week, I hope you’ll consider participating in the session I’ll be presenting on June 15th, from 10:00-11:30 AM, Creating Your Future the Peter Drucker Way. On this post, I’ll provide a sneak preview, and why I think it is important for information professionals to hear this message. I recently wrote a guest post for the Government Info Pro blog, 25 Years of Drucker, discussing Drucker’s role in helping to create my future when I was a library school student in 1986, leading to my 2009 book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Chapter 3 is “Creating Your Future,” which begins with the following Drucker quote, from Management: Revised Edition, which I reviewed for USA TODAY in 2008: “The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.” He also advised to identify and take advantage of “the future that has already happened.” What are the current trends that affect your professional and personal life, and what are the implications for the future? What can you start doing right now to remain relevant in your workplace and in the profession? Many people are getting close to retirement, or could be downsized, or have their library closed down. You may decide to reinvent your life and career by tapping into your willingness to change, and learning from your existing networks and new ones you can create. Giving this presentation, which will also include my 21 minute video interview with Drucker, conducted seven months to the day before he died, at 95, in 2005, has another special meaning for me. Drucker gave one of the keynotes at the SLA Annual Conference in Los Angeles in 2002, and I interviewed him for a feature story in USA TODAY the night before his address. I’d like to think that he would be pleased that things have come full circle, and that his future-oriented ideas will have another opportunity to influence the lives of SLA members.

Last Lectures and Guest Lectures

bruce — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:38:44 +0000

The poignant and powerful example of the late Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch brought considerable attention to the concept of the last lecture. However, relatively few knowledge workers will have the opportunity to make a final, summing up address to a class or audience, let alone one that also turns into a bestselling book. But many of us can deliver a guest lecture at the college or grad school level. It is an activity that has the potential to benefit many people at the same time: the guest lecturer, the regular teacher in the class and the students. It is a great way to share knowledge, and to test-drive a possible career in teaching, either as a full-time professor or as an adjunct. I got my start in the latter at the Catholic University School of Library and Information Science partly as a result of giving a guest lecture in 1995. I’ve taught there once a year since 1996, and as you can see from the syllabus for the course that starts later this month, The Special Library/Information Center, I have a number of guest lecturers scheduled to speak to my class, something I have been doing for many years. All are library and information professionals in the Washington, D.C. area, and a few are even my former students. These lecturers can bring to the class up-to-the-minute knowledge about their area of the profession. They have invariably been generous not only with their time, knowledge and expertise, but also with their willingness to network with students during and after the semester. If you are already teaching, adding guest lecturers broadens what you share with your students, and can provide a valuable opportunity and outlet for local professionals. If you want to do a guest lecture, think about what you’d like to speak about, and how you can add value to a class. Talk to someone who is teaching a subject that would be a good fit. If they are open to having you as a guest lecturer, find out the requirements, and prepare for what could be a life-changing experience.

Drucker as His Own Successor

bruce — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:32:53 +0000

Recently I was interviewed, via email and in English, by the Brazilian publication Administradores, for a major feature (in Portuguese only) on Peter Drucker. The Portuguese translation of my book, O Legado De Peter Drucker, was published last year in Brazil by Campus Elsevier. The premise of the article was who, if anyone, could be considered to be a successor to Peter Drucker. An idea that came to mind as I thought of my responses was “Drucker as His Own Successor.” I don’t mean that in a flippant way. In the five and a half years since his death at age 95, there has been an explosion of Drucker-related research and writing. We understand so much more about his work, given the many books and articles that have been published since then. We have greater access to his work, with the increased ability to buy even his more obscure book titles online. And of course many of his books are available in digital format, which was, for the most part, not the case during his lifetime. The same goes for online videos. This increased access to his ideas, and ideas inspired by or about him, means that we have more and better ways to apply those ideas in our own life and work.

The Drucker Institute (including the extensive online Drucker Archives) has been the go-to point for Drucker material, and now includes a new monthly radio show, “Drucker on the Dial.” The Drucker-Ito School at Claremont Graduate University remains a vital source of Drucker-related knowledge, and Bernard Jaworski was recently appointed as the Peter F. Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts. There have also been several issues of professional journals devoted to Drucker-related information, including a robust website from Emerald Insight. The current era cries out for the fundamental first principles in which Drucker excelled. I believe Drucker himself would be proud and pleased at the intense interest in him, and might give at least a small smile and nod to the concept of “Drucker as His Own Successor.”

Paul Arden and the Art of Opposite Thinking

bruce — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:28:30 +0000

In these destabilizing times, we need constant help to think in different, more creative ways. The advertising world has long excelled at delivering concise, catchy information in multiple formats. Paul Arden, the longtime executive creative director of the British agency Saatchi & Saatchi, was a master of the art. I was saddened to discover recently that he died in 2008. I reviewed one of his books, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be: The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden, for USA TODAY in 2003. After the review ran, I received a gracious handwritten note in the mail from him, thanking me for what I had written. That book and its 2006 follow-up Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite are both stimulating sources of disruptive thinking that can help us get unstuck inside and outside the workplace. They are especially relevant if you are working in or aspire to work in fields that require daily creativity. Both are small-format paperbacks, beautifully designed and reminiscent both in word and image of some of Marshall McLuhan’s classic work. You really have to see the layout and typography to get the full effect, but here are some Arden-isms to consider… From It’s Not How Good: “Don’t Look for the Next Opportunity. The One You Have in Hand is the Opportunity.” “If You Get Stuck, Draw With a Different Pen.” “When It Can’t Be Done, Do It. If You Don’t Do It, It Doesn’t Exist.” From Whatever You Think: “It’s Not Always Good to Have Ideas.” “Mum! I’ve Failed My Exams. Disaster? It’s An Achievement.” A particularly relevant example of opposite thinking appears on pages 10-11. People told Allen Lane, who founded Penguin Books (the publisher of Whatever You Think) in the mid-1930s, that a high-quality, low-priced paperback publishing venture would not work. Arden says that practically the whole world of publishing and retailing was against Lane and his idea, yet he prevailed and Penguin became a huge, trendsetting success. In that spirit, carve out some time this weekend for opposite thinking, and follow where it leads.