Not Soulless, It’s Life

I was having a conversation with a friend of friend the other day and he was asking me about my MBA. It was basically the question “so why an MBA?” As if the MBA is the height of disgust. (This was implied, not explicit.) My answer to him was simple. Because what you learn in business school are lessons that can be applied to the rest of your life. What is business but an institutionalized version of things that we do everyday? The give-and-take, the working together, the borrowing and saving. (i.e. economics, but in a more social context.)
Sure, b-school graduates get a bad rep because they go into finance and build a giant house of cards that collapses to destabilize the economy, then still take their big bonuses.  Yeah, I think we can all agree that those people aren’t heroes.
But understanding business helps you to gain perspective on the decisions you make and the decisions that get made for you. Although b-school trains you to think in dollars and cents about even human lives, more importantly, it teaches you to think about it.  It teaches you how to dissect and evaluate the problem and think about all the parts that go into it.
The analysis may be soulless, but its the person applying it to life that makes it interesting.

Auf Wiedersehen Fjordian

As a thank you for my time at Fjord, I’ve put together a collection of my special “moves” that have been the secret to my success.

A shout out to ze frank for the inspiration.

This Guy is Smart (and also a good talker)

This guy talks about what I guess I knew intuitively when I was younger.  You can’t have a great job and a great career (and marry the person of your dreams) just anywhere.  You have to go to the right place where the right opportunities are available.

I left Hamilton and went to Toronto and didn’t look back. I knew that I was more likely to meet people I would like and have career opportunities I would excel in in a big city.  Steel town was never going to do it for me.

I think of my friends who are still in Hamilton and I know, to some extent, their lives and careers are shaped by being there.

Immigration has been driven by this forever, but for some reason moving and “leaving home” still has a stigma for many.  Sometimes you get called opportunistic or ungrateful.  I think that every person is different and has to go where they will get to be the person they want to be.

Productivity Project

I’ve been kind of consumed with maximizing productivity.  To me, the word means “getting as much done with your limited time as possible.”  When I first started focusing on it, it was a way to get out of the office and get home. Now, it’s more like an arms race.  I end up putting in the same amount of time, but I try to get ahead so that when the next unexpected problem erupts, I don’t fall behind.

I’ve found it’s difficult to be extremely productive in both home and work life, and doubly hard for me to be productive in both home, work and school.  I thought they would reinforce each other, but at the frontier of effectiveness, there can only be one top priority.

So, the new project is thus.  A bi-daily rotation of priorities.  2 days of home productivity (one of which should straddle the weekend), 2 days of work productivity (which naturally must happen during the work week), and 2 days of school productivity.  I also get a day off in there too.

Maybe I need a chore wheel or something?

We are All in the Same Industry

Cliche: We are all in sales. No matter what you’re doing you’re always trying to sell something, whether it be your idea, your product or yourself.

I’m thinking that’s sorta true, but sorta not true. I actually think we’re all in the service industry and here’s why.

Something that a professor said in my “managing people” class was that great speakers are charismatic because they give the audience exactly what they need. There is no magic bullet because every audience is different. More over, every person is different. Thus, in order to treat everyone equally, we have to treat everyone differently.

I realized today that as a PM my strength is in figuring out what each individual needs from me. Rather than having one process I usually have a slightly tweaked process for each person to make sure they’re properly informed.

I think that if we’re all trying to get people to do things for us (which, unless you’re the lowest person in the organization, you most definitely are) then you’re ultimately meeting the needs of everyone around you.

So basically, if we’re all doing our jobs, we’re all here to serve.

I’m embracing this and trying to translate it into a certain humility. I’m going to stop thinking in terms of what I need the other person to give me and start thinking in terms of what I need to give the other person in order to get what I need. Small difference maybe, but I think it is a big difference when applied.

Observations From the Field

It’s really quiet here.  People talk, but the general noise level is a lot lower. I have my computer’s volume down way low, and I have headphones and my music is on low but it still feels like it’s blaring.

Next observation, drinking is encouraged, but dressing well is apparently important (exact opposite of Much). I’ve got some shopping to do.

More to come.

I’m a FanGirl who Loves Anger

So, like, I posted on the MuchMusic.com blog.

http://blog.muchmusic.com/archives/2007/01/fan_girls_love.php 

Yay!

Blame the CRTC

After my experience with having this blog quickly picked up by google and sending out an alert to someone who was named in the blog, I decided to google alert “MuchMusic” just to see if any forums or bloggers say anything about it or the work that comes out of there.

My findings are interesting.  It seems to me that not a lot of people blog about MuchMusic, but many use the word “MuchMusic” as a quick indicator of all things pop in Canada, and often in the past tense.

This isn’t totally troubling, since the kind of people who blog often are not the people who watch MuchMusic.  The Much audience is a little more passive – they want help finding and sorting through music, while I think active bloggers are probably also the kind of people who will go out and search on their own for new music.

But I wonder why MuchMusic can’t have something for both?  And that’s where I think the CRTC comes in.  On-air they’re limited by a license that says they have to be all music all the time, however, they have a legacy of being a youth brand.  But in an environment where the youth market is fragmenting, in order to still be about Music AND Youth, Much has to become the anti-niche channel.  All this while the internet becomes highly niche skewed.

Seems like a rock and a hard place to me.  The easiest way to reach youth?  Online.  The easiest way to attract people online?  Being niche. (at least, that’s the received wisdom).

Let’s see if they can’t give people online something to talk about.

Give Me Something To Believe In

So I’m reading “How To Lose Friends and Alienate People” which is alternately hilariously frustrating and a very well written bio-critique of someone addicted to celebrity culture. When describing the staff at Vanity Fair, from where he has just been fired, Toby Young says “They’re like a corrupt priesthood: The fact that they abuse their authority doesn’t mean they’ve lost their faith” and it hits me. That’s what’s missing for me at my job – something to devote myself to, something to strive for above what image will appear on the home page next week. Whether corrupted or not, just something to care about.

Apparently the staff at Vanity Fair (as seen through Toby’s eyes) enjoy the fashionista culture and think there is something meaningful in charting the next fashion trend. (Incidentally, he seems to be indicting them for this, which to me rings false. The only reason he’s there is to bow at the feet of celebrity, and everyone around him seems a lot cooler about celebrity than he is. What I really think is happening here is that those around him have embraced their subservience, while Toby is somewhat embarassed by it so he has to go out of his way to mock it – thus alienating him from his colleagues. Obviously he doesn’t see it that way.) Anyway, I do somewhat envy that certainty.

I often find myself just not caring. So what if we miss a deadline? What the fuck do I care? . . .Except I do care, but not about the product, it’s just the career that I care about. My success is the only religion I believe in, but it’s not enough. There’s got to be something else at my job to keep me there in order to make my goal of success more. . desirable.

I’m willing to work hard. And a certain part of me wants to. I stay late sometimes because I haven’t gotten what I wanted out of the work day. But I need to do it about something I care about. I just don’t know what that is since I’m pretty sure the only thing I care about is myself.

Someday I Will Become a Pixel

Today I emptied my work computer trash.  You see, I let the trash get HOOOGE because I never want to delete something I might need later.  It’s the same with my email.  I have tons of category folders and I save all my sent messages, despite the incredibly restrictive size of 50M we have on our work email.  Anal, no.  Organized, yes.

Anyway, we’re winding down a bunch of projects and I felt pretty comfortable doing the big purge.  After I did it, I sighed and felt pretty good and un-cluttered.  Then it hit me.  I haven’t taken out the garbage or recycling in my apartment in a while.   It’s starting to smell.   But that?  That ain’t bothering me so much.

Just call me 7 of 9, in reverse.