Meet newly minted university graduate, Karen. She’s an honours student from a fine business school whose second major was sociology. She wants a career path in marketing and she volunteers at the local women’s shelter. All in all, a fine job candidate. Let’s sit in on the interview.

“How many hours do you expect me to work a week?” she asks, as soon as the pleasantries are exchanged and before the interviewer can get a question in.

“The standard work week here is 35 hours a week, although we expect our employees to work the hours necessary to get their deliverables completed,” the interviewer stammers, a little put off.

“Hmm, doesn’t sound like a great work/life balance. And what’s your environmental policy? Has that effluent spill in South Asia been cleaned up to the satisfaction of the UN monitoring agency? And closer to home, do you offset your company’s carbon footprint created by your shipping and packaging policies, corporate travel and the lack of transit accessibility here at your headquarters, where I see pretty well everyone drives?”

“Well, it’s free parking…”

“Hmm. And does the company sponsor any social programs either locally or internationally?”

“We have a United Way drive every year. Casual Friday, you get to wear jeans and donate a $1…”

“You mean there’s a dress code?”

“Well, not a strict one, just no jeans, no sandals, no piercings except for earrings…”

It’s not going well. Karen doesn’t look like she’s interested.

Wait: she isn’t interested? Isn’t it the employer who makes the decisions?

That was then, this is now. Get ready for the generation revolution. Half of Boomers now working are set to exit the workforce by 2015, leaving Gen Xers to move up the ranks as Gen Y enters the workforce.

The trouble is, there just aren’t enough of the best and brightest to go around, a Conference Board of Canada warned in a recently updated report: “By 2015, there will not be enough qualified people in Canada to fill the jobs available,” the original report stated. “Employers will become locked in a war for employees as they struggle to hire and retain qualified workers.” In a February update the board said the recession has delayed the inevitable but underlined its previous position: “If organizations fail to adequately plan for tightening labour markets, they could lose out on employees with the required skills, which could dampen their future growth prospects.”

It's going to be a whole new world out there - so what are you doing about it?

I am working with a team that are starting a conversation across Canada to find out your answers. Our focus will be the small and medium sized organization - we don't have much hope for the big ones

Watch this space - we start in Charlottetown!

Habit builds up energy over time. The repetition of any action–good or evil–generates power. Energy concentrates and accumulates. Bad habits become harder to break. But good habits do too.

If we think about collective endeavors, like team sports or military drills, the process of “training” is primarily the inculcation of habit. Our basketball coach makes us go to practice every day. He’ll bench us if we’re late or miss entirely. Why? Because he knows how powerful habit is, for good or ill. In the army we run Immediate Action Drills in case we’re ambushed or come under fire. Why? So we don’t have to think when trouble strikes. Habit will take over and save our lives.

In sports or the military (or any communal endeavor), discipline and habit are imposed on us from the outside. Some VP or senior staffer makes us do it. In the world or the arts and entrepreneurship, it’s different. We’re on our own there. We have to teach ourselves the right habits. Our discipline as artists must be self-discipline. We ourselves have to make ourselves show up, run those lay-up drills, do those wind sprints. We need to reward ourselves when we do well, and take ourselves to the woodshed when we drop the ball.

Steven Pressfield is one of my favorite writers. He writes also about being a writer. His main theme is overcoming resistance - the blocks that put in our own way. But this self sabotage seems to be widespread in more areas of our lives than writing.

I have taken this idea of habits to heart.

I am changing how I eat - creating new food habits

I am changing how I work - cutting out the extraneous - creating a new focus

I am changing how I work - I put in 3 hours of hard writing every day - the book is emerging for real now

Great advice!

About 10 years ago I was having my annual holiday party, and my niece had come with her newly minted M.B.A. boyfriend. As he looked around the room, he noted that my employees seemed happy. I told him that I thought they were.

Then, figuring I would take his new degree for a test drive, I asked him how he thought I did that. “I’m sure you treat them well,” he replied.

“That’s half of it,” I said. “Do you know what the other half is?”

 

He didn’t have the answer, and neither have the many other people that I have told this story. So what is the answer? I fired the unhappy people. People usually laugh at this point. I wish I were kidding.

I’m not. I have learned the long, hard and frustrating way that as a manager you cannot make everyone happy. You can try, you can listen, you can solve some problems, you can try some more. Good management requires training, counseling and patience, but there comes a point when you are robbing the business of precious time and energy.

Don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t happen a lot. There’s no joy in the act of firing someone. And it’s not always the employee’s fault — there are many bad bosses out there. Bad management can make a good employee dysfunctional. On the other hand, good management will not always make a dysfunctional employee good. And sometimes people who would be great employees somewhere else just don’t fit your company, whether it is the type of business or the company culture.

In the worst cases, the problem of a bad fit can have a bigger impact than just one employee’s performance. Being in charge does not necessarily mean you are in control, and being in control does not necessarily mean being in charge. Have you ever seen a company or department paralyzed by someone who is unhappy and wants to take hostages? It is remarkable how much damage one person can do. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you watch “The Caine Mutiny.” Basically, one guy takes apart the ship. He was unhappy. It only takes one.

HT Josh Biggley - So true - some people are like Dark Matter - always critical, cynical - they exude negativity. They cannot be placated. The influence many others.

The day after they are gone, light shines.

But if you keep them the cancer spreads.

Some of your friends are doing it. People who do it are in the front pages and web almost every day. Even President Obama is talking about it. So should you do it? Should you join the millions of people every year who take the plunge and start their first ventures? I've learned in my own years as an entrepreneur — and now an entrepreneurship professor — that there is a gut level "fit" for people who are potential entrepreneurs. There are strong internal drivers that compel people to create their own business. I've developed a 2–minute Isenberg Entrepreneur Test, below, to help you find out. Just answer yes or no. Be honest with yourself — remember from my last post: the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

Try it and see. HT Jane Boyd

Daniel ends with 2 important points that ring bells with me - about Risk and Money

"I like to take risks" is not on the list. People don't choose to be entrepreneurs by opting for a riskier lifestyle. What they do, instead, is reframe the salary vs. entrepreneur choice as between two different sets of risk: the things they don't like about having a steady job — such as the risk of boredom, working for a bad boss, lack of autonomy, lack of control over your fate, and getting laid off — and the things they fear about being an entrepreneur — possible failure, financial uncertainty, shame or embarrassment, and lost investment. In the end, people who are meant to be entrepreneurs believe that their own abilities (e.g. leadership, resourcefulness, pluck, hard work) or assets (e.g. money, intellectual property, information, access to customers) significantly mitigate the risks of entrepreneurship. Risk is ultimately a personal assessment: what is risky for me is not risky for you.

"I want to get rich" is not on the list either. All else being equal (and all else is rarely equal in the real world), on the average, people who set up their own businesses don't make more money, although a few do succeed in grabbing the brass ring. But the "psychic benefits" — the challenge, autonomy, recognition, excitement, and creativity — make it all worthwhile.