Yo Street!

My expectations about what to expect from an employer have shifted over the past several decades- much as has the “female” role model. We went from Beaver Cleaver’s mother, to Mary Tyler Moore, to Ms. Partridge and Mrs. Brady, to Pheobe, Rachel, and Monica on “Friends,” and then to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda on “Sex and the City.”

And, on the employment front, we’ve gone from gold watches and pensions and the 1950s era of William Whyte's The Organization Man to downsizing, reengineering, a fading of unions, Enron, an erosion of health care and retirement benefits, and a general restructuring of the contract between employer and employee, perhaps best summed up by Cliff Hakim in We Are All Self-Employed or by Daniel Pink in Free Agent Nation.

Unlike Ward Cleaver, whose work life was so stable that he seemed to come home at the same time each evening, in today’s free-agent world, today’s career seems to have evolved into a series of mutually informed contracts between those with talent and those with opportunities for work.

People seem to be serving their work ideals and personal needs, rather than a specific company. And companies keep you on as long as they can use your work and buy it for a fair price.

In this world, you manage your own career!!!

So Ivory...

I’ve been thinking about, and (off-line), we’ve been talking about the employer/employee contract.

As a willing worker what do you owe your employer and what does your employer owe you?

A day’s pay for a day’s work, is there more of a commitment from either party required/desired than that?

I’m not suggesting that the work world has turned into “a slam, bam, thank you man” type of deal, but there’s no mention of a gold watch, no whisper of “until retirement do us part” anymore. And quite frankly, if you stay in one place too long you start to smell like some nasty form of mold, one that your employer will only tolerate because he’s gotten used to the smell and one that the company down the street doesn’t want to let in through its doors.

I’m being dramatic, of course.... but there’s such a disparity between what the baby boomers thought their working lives would be like and what’s actually come to pass.

The idea of a single employer for a lifetime isn’t even on a GenZr’s radar. I was talking to a twenty-something Princeton student at Café Eclectic the other day and he said, “A single employer for a lifetime? Why would anyone even want that? It’s like you’re only going to eat in one restaurant or listen to one band for the rest of your life.”

“You could work in different departments, divisions, locations,” I said. I was arguing for the sake of debate. “It might be cool, like going to Starbucks’ in different parts of the world.”

“You’d do that,” he said. “Not me. And if I did, it would be to grab a Frap, see who’s around and head out. There’s always something or someone more interesting around the next corner.”

“And that’s how it is with jobs?” I said.

“Cool travels,” he said.I must have made a face because he changed his tone, “It does. Even when you wish it didn’t.”

So Ivory, do our feet keep moving because the economy keeps shifting or is the other way around?

Ivory says,

Sure Street, that sounds like fun!

I've always been proud of you for your passion and perseverance to run a successful business through doing right by your clients! And, by running your business on a shoestring, you've evolved one of the lowest-cost/highest quality operations I've seen . . . in any industry . . . just look at your referral rate!

And, if that were not enough, you must be one of the fittest people on the planet . . . another sign of perseverance and passion.

Bring it on!

This should be interesting . . . you from the practical side and me from the big picture side . . . you from the action-oriented, runner's eye view and me from the well-studied, couch potato point of view.

What's first up?

Street Feet Introduces Ivory Towers

What does Ivory know?

They say you shouldn’t show anyone the earliest parts of a blog. Okay, I say, so no one will see this, except for Ivory Towers. The gal’s got a Ph.D. in Strategy from Columbia, more than twenty years of experience working with and thinking about how people create and add value to a workplace, AND she almost never calls anyone stupid. So why wouldn’t I show it to her?

She’s a chic who devours books, discerns between the great and not so great thoughts of big thinkers, and delivers the thick, nutritious stuff most of us don’t have the attention span (or won’t take the time) to trudge through in a delightfully digestible form.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I’m starting a blog about work and since Ivory is one of the smartest people I know (and I do know a lot of people) I’m inviting her to be my co-conspirator.My hope is that the two of us will host a conversation about what Ivory will probably call work/thinking and I will probably call jobs.

She’ll usually be the patient, big-picture thinker who carefully considers the future implications of every action that can be taken/not taken (unless the impact is insignificant). Me, I’ll usually be the Just Do It/ Don’t Do It girl, the one who will jump on any ship whose captain she likes and trusts as long as he’s steering toward a desirable destination.

What I expect is that we’ll fight duals and sing duets and invite friends and strangers to provide fuel for discourse. And what will we give our readers? Entertainment, hopefully even some laughter, questions to ponder while pounding the pavement, and information and insight on what the road beneath your feet and the road ahead of you might look like.

So Ivory, do you want to share a blog with me?