It’s the FAST that Eat the Slow!

Those who follow this blog have heard Amitai Givertiz's name before, and given what he writes about and as importantly how he writes about it, it is a name that is likely to show up again.

Amitai writes on a blog site called Bells and Whistles and as I was scrolling through it today I noted a post in which he was telling his readers about a free workshop on May 29th featuring Laurence Haughton.

While Amitai had only recently met Laurence, I instantly recognized his name since he had done a FastTrack webinar for us last year on another of his books entitled The Art of Execution. He has much to say and is a fascinating speaker.

The May 29th session is based on Haughton's first book It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business (You have to love the title!)

If you are one of those senior level executives who has precious little time to spend on professional development and you have not been exposed to Haughton, I think you would find this program time well spent.

California: Always on the Bleeding Edge

So I get this email from my brother who knows we follow trends in the senior executive job search and career management space after he came across a piece in his local paper about a consulting gig commissioned by the Preident of the University of California.

Seems that UC President Dynes is shelling out $7,000,000 for a one year study regarding the efficiency in the 1500 person Office of the President. You have to love it.

If you are thinking of consulting as something to explore as part of a career change, numbers like this might be a tipping point for you.

Here's one way to look at how it might break down:

Seven million dolllars is more than $4,600 to study the efficiency of each and every one of the 1,500 employees in the Office of the President. (1,500 x $4,600 = $6,900,000). There is even $100,000 leftover for working lunches during the interviews.

Seven million is enough to hire 28 consultants to work full-time for a year at $250,000 per consultant per year.

Of course, as with most studies like these, the consultants will not talk with every employee, they would more likely talk with about one in every ten, so it might look something like: 150 total, for an average of one hour per employee, so their $7,000,000 consulting fee amounts to about $46,000 per interview-hour.

Even if all the interviews weren't the most sintilating conversations in the world, not bad duty!

Only in America, and only in California!

Senior Executive Job Market

As time has passed since ExecuNet was founded nearly 20 years ago we have become pretty accustomed to people coming to us with questions about what's cooking in the senior executive market place. The subjects cover the waterfront from wanting to know about the advent of social networks like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, etc. to age discrimination. Often it is the media, but obviously it is a subject of even more intense interest to our members.

While we spent a good deal of time throughout the year trying to respond to the inquiries, it became pretty clear pretty fast that it would be a good idea to at least establish some sort of a more comprehensive data source from which we could track market changes year to year. For the past 15 years that effort has turned into an annual publication which we call The Executive Job Market Intelligence Report.

As it has grown over the years, we continue to get more calls asking for copies or at least wanting to know more about it. Since it is a member benefit, naturally it goes to our members first in hard copy as well as being available to them online. Once that is done, however, we also try to be as responsive as we can within reason and cost to respond to the requests for more information.

It is with that in mind that I thought for those who might have an interest, I could at least make readers aware that in addition to an executive summary of the report which is available online at no cost, that Peter Clayton, executive producer at Total Picture Radio also recently spent some time talking with our President Mark Anderson and myself about both the report and the market in general. It was a fun discussion (Peter always makes it easy) so if it is a subject of interest, it can be heard here, and even if this is not a subject of interest, if you are not familiar with Total Picture Radio, but are interested in pro active career management in general, it is a URL well worth book marking.

Visiting Day Leadership

So I sit down to breakfast, and on page one above the fold is the headline

Narcotic Maker Guilty of Deceit Over Marketing ~ Producer of OxyContin to Pay $600 Million.

The story went on to report that three of Purdue Pharma's current or former execs had plead guilty to criminal charges of misleading doctors and patients, and I'm thinking that my only option is to go back to herbs and witch doctors except I'd be worried about pesticides in the herbs and Medicare rejecting the witch doctors.

About the only positive thing I got from the story was that the nausea it caused helped to curb my appetite which is always a good thing.

It also made me think about an ExecuNet FastTrack Webinar that world class consultant and author Judith Glaser presented for our members in April. It was based on her award-winning books Creating We and The DNA of Leadership. Fascinating stuff!

Anyway, in discussing cultures with the audience, Judith took them through a couple of polls, one of which asked them to select the attribute or quality that they felt was most important in a relationship. There were ten from which to choose, such as caring, honesty, candor, etc., but the winner by far was "trust." Surprise, surprise.

I know it is an over-simplification, but in our seemingly never-ending quest to identify the qualities of leadership, I still believe that it all starts with trust, and the more I think about, also ends with trust.

Bells and Whistles

Ami Givertz is someone I have never met or even spoken with on the phone, but he is, in my opinion and those of many others who read his posts, an extraordinarily gifted writer.

Ami is currently the SVP of Business Development for RCI Recruitment Solutions so I can only assume that he is a gifted marketing person as well. Certainly would follow given his skill in putting words together that somehow tranform themselves from simple narrative to an extraordinary intellect that seems to flow effortlessly from his keyboard.

Ami used to blog far more than he does now, so when he pressed the pause button on his former blog it was a big void in my day, but when I recently discovered him once again as one of the bloggers on Bells and Whistles (the blog site of RCI) and found that his voice had not been lost entirely, it definately brightened my day.

If you have not had the chance to check out both his observations on the staffing space and those who roam the recruiting blogosphere, you would do yourself a service to save Ami posts as one of your favorites.

Things To Think About On The Way Home

It is with some trepidation that I go forward with this post thinking that it might subject me to a series of comments or emails from those who would be saying things like "C'mon Dave, get off the Power of Positive Thinking bit and get back in the real world with the rest of us."

For someone like me whose sense of humor has been described on occasion as more like Don Rickles than Mary Poppins there are those who when they see this will wonder if I have stopped taking my meds. Well, I haven't I just stumbled across this one day and liked it a lot and couldn't get it out of my head.

We all have come across or read affirmations like this all the time. What struck me about this, however, was the vast amount that has been written over time about the subject matter that is covered in a mere 40 words! Indeed, when I first read it, and realized just how much ground it covered in so few words, it reminded me of the old Mark Twain (?) quote that went something like "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter"

Taken in that context, at least to me, it makes the thoughts expressed by Cooper even more impressive.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Truth, if it becomes a weapon against persons.
Beauty, if it becomes vanity.
Love, if it becomes possessive.
Loyalty, if it becomes blind, careless trust.
Tolerance, if it becomes indifference.
Self-confidence, if it becomes arrogance.
Faith, if it becomes self-righteous.

Ashley Cooper, American columnist

Anybody have some "thoughts" that they particularly like?