The recent attempted terrorist bombing of flight 243 from Amsterdam has once again demonstrated that we cannot really prevent a terrorist from smuggling explosives, lighters, weapons, and other assorted threats aboard an aircraft.  In this case, it was not U.S. airport security (the TSA) that failed to detect the crotch bomber, but Dutch airport security.  Nonetheless, the TSA has once again implemented ridiculous and symbolic security measures so as to demonstrate that they are not asleep at the switch.  Their “just let them try that here” approach, has done nothing to make U.S. domestic flights more secure.  It has simply delayed passengers at security and wasted billions of dollars.  I guess it looks good.

Their 80-20 approach – 80% show and 20% go, is like putting security cameras in a retail store without anyone actually looking at video monitors.  Its great if you want to look at what’s already happened, but will do nothing to prevent anything from happening.  The only real way to detect potential terrorists is to profile the people who are currently guilty of trying to terrorize, and they are not red headed, freckle faced, 16 year old girls. 

For those of you in retail that read my blog, ask your current Loss Prevention Director if he profiles shop lifters.  Ask him if he spots suspicious “actors”, does he decide to pay more attention to them.  And, ask him how often he is right. 

If you are in law enforcement, ask yourself if you spot someone who just doesn’t belong in a certain situation if you don’t pay more attention to that person.  If you see a white college kid in the ghetto, do you think drug buy?  If you see a car slow down and a young woman approach the passenger window, do you think hooker?  If you see a group of black kids at 2 a.m. in an a predominantly white neighborhood, do you watch that car more closely?  Yes.  You do.

The solution is easy, but is unspoken because it may inflame some.  But, if this was 9/12/2001, we would be less concerned about inflaming the faction of Islam that already hates us, and circle the wagons and call a spade a spade.  We don’t need every person in line to remove their shoes and put their liquids in 3 oz bottles.  We need to use the same methods that the LP guy and local street cop use to figure out who is the most likely person in line to want to blow up the plane.

You can email me at michael_e_anderson@yahoo.com if you would like.

There is nothing in high school, college, or any form of training that will teach how to make career progress. There are expensive coaches that will ask psychoanalytical questions in an effort to get to your inner child, but your inner child has absolutely nothing to do with why your career is stagnant. There are motivational speakers that will pump you up for a few days, but that won’t last long. There are behavior modification programs that will do some good, but that is not the answer either. No, the reasons are ridiculously simple.

As you read this book, you will learn what it takes to be successful in all aspects of life, but I will focus on your career. You will be able to apply these principles to work, marriage, parenting and any other part of life you wish to have more success. These are simple rules to living a successful life that are no different than the laws of nature. The reactions you get will be predictable, and the success will be relatively quick, but they take a great deal of practice.

I have had many personal and professional set-backs in my life. Every single one of those set-backs was self-inflicted. I seemed to be the cause of every single thing that happened to me, or at least I had a significant role in it. Realizing that, was the greatest breakthrough I had ever made in taking charge of my career, and later my life. The good news is that because you are reading this book, and if you employ the strategies in it, you will never have to experience those self-inflicted set-backs again…ever.

Another huge break was my self-realization that there were no “they’s” in my world, as in “they just don’t care”. No, I take full responsibility for every success and failure I have had in my life. I am not and will not ever be a victim of circumstance or anything else. The main difference today compared to how I used to think is that I have to come to learn a great deal more from my and other’s failures than from my successes, and in fact I have come to believe that failure is the only true way to learn at all. But, you can learn from other’s failures as well, which minimizes your pain. For example, you only need to see someone burn their hand on a hot stove to know that their failure or negative outcome is sufficient for you not to try it. So, suffice it to say you don’t need to touch the stove to benefit from all the hot stoves someone has touched on your behalf.

Many times in my career, I wanted to ask successful people “how did you do it? Are their any secrets you can share? What can I do to achieve the success you’ve had?” But, that is not a question that can really be asked anymore. The art of mentoring has been lost among the new way business is done today. There are no more gold watches, and I trust that many of you reading this don’t even know what that phrase means, so I will explain.

Prior to about 1980, people used to go to work for one company for their entire lives. They would show up everyday to the same place for thirty years, and at the end of their career, they would receive a retirement party, a pension, and a gold watch as a token of their service. I can assure you, sales of gold watches since 1984 have had a dramatic decline as employees, switch jobs, companies are sold or moved overseas, or have simply gone out of business. No, things have changed greatly since I started working.

If given the opportunity, what would ask your mentor? I am not talking about Donald Trump, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett. No, I am talking about C-level executives that I’d worked for that had this incredible success and a career that most of us would love to have had. When I did have the chance to ask them, most answered humbly, almost inaudibly about hard work, education, and good fortune. I was shocked to hear these people tell me that blood, sweat, tears and luck were secrets of their success. Did they really not know how they did it? Or, were they just unable to articulate it? Or, did they really believe that it was just dumb luck? Maybe some were protective of the secret to their success.
Well, it isn’t dumb luck, hard work or humility. There are patterns, methods, and secrets to manage your career and to become wildly successful, and I am going to teach how to do it whether you are a 22 year old recent college graduate, or a 60 year old frustrated manager trying to make Vice President. Because you see, we aren’t different at all, whatever age, gender, race or religion. If you want to succeed, you will if you follow my directions. Now let’s get started.

I have always held that there are two parts of  the university environment.  There is the education part, the one we all understand whereby college professors teach classes, do research, and publish papers.  This is the part where crochity old people who don’t work essentially inculcate young heads of mush with the important facts they will need to succeed in the real world.

Then, there is the business side.  The side that heats the buildings, markets the university, pays the professors, and ensures that you take a philosphy class, even though you are an engineering major to make sure that the philosophy majors (both of them) have a funded program.  It is also the unit that will not allow you to matriculate credits, or transfer credits from another university until and unless you complete 60 of their, much better credits!!!  Why?  Because there is no GED of college degrees, so they can.  And by doing so, they can force you to pay for 60 more credits even if you already have 90 from Yale!   Their job?  To generate revenue….lots of revenue.

So, what is the half life of a college degree?  I mean, is it true that four after you’ve graduated, you forget or don’t use half of what you learned while there?  I would suggest it is much worse.  The kids I interview for jobs will use almost none of it.  Zero.  The math, the English, the history they use on the job they already learned in high school.  Yes, high school.  They do not polish their writing or math skills in college.  They do polish their partying skills, while draining family bank accounts.  They do not learn more about computers while there.  Even their freshly minted MBA is all but useless in the real world.  It might worth something if they work on Wall St, but not on Main St. 

So, I ask you?  Why can a plumber learn plumbing in a trade school in two years or less without electives?  How can a computer repair tech repair computers without first mastering Chinese History?  Why is it that a CPA must first have a four year degree which includes 12 hours of French?  Because there are French majors, Chinese history majors, and other majors along with their professors and other support personnel that need work.  And, university faculty and administrators are arrogant.

I am sure this will all change someday when universities price themselves out of the middle class, which is very soon.  But until then, picture your worst professor with a stranglehold on education, because until he lets go, we are all studying Poetry.

If you have any doubts about attending a university without a career plan, check into plumbing.

Let me know what you think.  Send emails to michael_e_anderson@yahoo.com

The characters are generally exaggerated caricatures of bad representations of Italian/American youth.  They refer to themselves and each other as Guidos and Guidettes, a term of self-mockery in their world, but generally a pejorative term when I grew up at the real Jersey Shore.

I need to say, I am not Italian/American, so this show does not touch a personal nerve  at all.  And, having grown up at the real Jersey Shore, we had our fair share of people like these fools, but the vast majority of “Benny’s” that came down were well behaved, and not the rude, boorish, muscle heads these people are.  Oh, a Benny is someone from the North Jersey cities of Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark and New York.  That equals B-E-N-NY, or Benny.

So, how does this apply to career management?  I will tell you.

In one episode, Angelina is expected to report to work at a boardwalk Tee Shirt Store.  She is expected to work in return for being allowed to stay free of charge in the owners beautiful beach house.  Throughout the show, she tries to find ways to ditch work.  She has the same entitlement mentality that so many people do in America.  She feels she deserves the house and need not work for anything she gets.  I know so many people like that.

Well, one evening she breaks up with her boyfriend and gets drunk to drown her sorrows.  The next morning she wakes up sick (read that hungover) and decides to report to work late.  After a short confrontation with the store manager, an unsympathetic figure, she decides to not work at all and goes back to the house.

Well, the manager calls the owner of the store (and the house) to report the problem with her.  The owner then shows up at his house and wants an explanation from Angelina.  Angelina decides to run upstairs to the bathroom when she sees him arriving, and tries to talk to him from behind the bathroom door.  The owner tries inititally, soon realizes he is being disrespected and leaves, but not before firing her.

He did the right thing.

We all have co-workers and employees that are not pulling their weight.  We often let these people hang on way too long, especially after they have been counseled about  their poor performance.

What I am telling you is that you must set the bar of your performance high, and clearly.  Whatever role you play in your company you can either lead by example, or by dictate.  Tell people what is expected of them and definitely show them.  But if you have an Angelina on your team, send her packing.  If you are an employee, do not be pulled down to Angelina’s level and do not support her attitude.  Tell her she is wrong, but minimally do not condone it.

Let me know what you think.  Email me at michael_e_anderson@yahoo.com.

There is one exception to that postulate, and that one exception is a bad boss. Yes, the dictatorial, unfair, idea stealing, bad breathed, body odored, unpleasant boss will generally run people off in droves. Sometimes employees will just leave the bad department, but most times they leave the company. Why? Because there is way too much risk in trying report this behavior (other than some sort harassment issue), and it is impossible to tell your boss to use mouthwash. It is more prudent to move on.

Years ago I had that boss. He was ill-tempered, foul mouthed, short fused, smelled bad and demeaned everyone he spoke to. It was a nightmare to have meetings with him because you knew he was going to attack someone, so before the meeting you’d say a short novena it wasn’t you!

One day after a particularly brutal meeting, I started to notice that he reacted to different personalities around the table differently. He seemed to have a different level of respect for one or two of the people present, but what I noticed more so, was that he reacted differently to the way those people treated him. After noticing it, I paid more attention and realized I was absolutely right. The more this terrible boss criticized someone and the more they defended themselves, the more and worse he continued that criticism. It seemed that what fueled his fire was defensiveness, or later what I found out was rebelliousness.

The second thing I noticed was that if he criticized someone and they just covered up, not fighting back, he was unrelenting, like a shark who just got a whiff of blood in the water and would go into a feeding frenzy. He would demean that person, and say horrible things until he got his fill of them. And the more that person assumed the personality of a small, defenseless child, hunched over in a fetal position, the more he yelled. Brutal.

Both circumstances were difficult to watch. But I began to notice that he treated people who stood their ground, answered his questions factually without any defensiveness, and nearly devoid of emotion, with a modicum of respect. He would try to criticize them, but they would ignore the criticism and only react to the actual question. It was an amazing sight to behold.
So I decided to do some research on the matter to see what I could find. That research led me to a blended hypothesis. I found that there were six personality types – three positive and three negative. And, ironically any of us can adopt any of those personalities if we choose to. These are not my inventions, but are credited to a number of psychologists who are experts in this field.
The first three negative personalities are:

Critical parent – this is the boss that criticizes everything you do no matter what, and even if you prove them wrong, they will simply move off that point and find something else to criticize.
Rebellious teen – this is exactly what it sounds like. It is the defensive, angry, rebellious personality that fights with critical parent.

Withdrawn child – this is the poor soul that just covers up and waits for the beatings to stop.
The second three positive personalities are:

Parent – this is a healthy, teaching personality that is adopted when leading, teaching, or mentoring

Adult – the healthy, collegial personality that we strive to be in most of the time

Child – another healthy personality that is teachable and the personalty most normally talking to parent.

Here is the most important point. Negative personalities can only communicate with other negative personalities. Critical parent can only talk to Rebellious teen and Withdrawn child. He cannot talk to Adult. If he wants to communicate with Adult, the personality we should strive to be in all the time, then he must slip out of Critical parent and into Adult. It is Adult to Adult.
And the kicker is that on the healthy side, we slip in an out of Adult, Parent and Child all day long, and that is a good thing.

For example, if I were talking to you right now, explaining this in person, I would be in Parent mode and you, Child. But later, you may have to teach me something and I would adopt Child mode and you, Parent. And later yet, while talking about Sunday’s NFL game or the new dress you bought, you would be in Adult mode talking to other Adults communicating your story. It is truly amazing. Confused? Hang in there.

So, I decided I would test this theory on my bad boss. I knew the day would soon come when I would get a call to go see the boss to be dressed down for some problem. I was determined not to lose my composure and to test this hypothesis. And finally, the day came.

My phone rang about 9 in the morning. It was the boss. He said “Mikey” (I hated that name he gave me), “come see me.” And hung up. My heart started pounding and my face became flush as I recognized the tone of his voice. It was my turn in the hopper, for something. I suspected I knew what this was about. I was in charge of the computer systems and we had some unexpected downtime that morning that one of my colleagues used as an excuse for missing a deadline. You see, the culture was so hostile, people would throw each other under the bus with some degree of frequency.

So I gained my composure and started down the long hallway to the boss’s office. To add some true drama, the hall was very poorly lit and you felt some sense of going to the gallows as you went down that hallway. Coming out of the hallway was Chris, my Judas. He barely acknowledged me as he slithered pass, the snake. I knocked on the boss’s door and he yelled angrily “come in!!”. And I did.

“Morning Jim.” I said to him.

“Good morning? Bull! Jensen just told me because the system was down he needs two more days to finish the budgets. Can’t you keep that computer up? Don’t I pay you enough? Boy, this would be a great place to start an IT Department if I had anyone with half a brain that could run it.”

The sentence was full of expletives and it went on like that for five minutes before he stopped. He never really asked me a question and finally motioned with his hand that he wanted me to say something.

I took a deep breath, looked him in the eye and said firmly “Jim, we had a disk failure this morning at 6:10 a.m. We were down for 45 minutes while we re-configured the disk array. After checking the system logs and data integrity, we were back up by 7:30. Chris arrived about 7:30 and heard the system was down and never checked to see if it had come back up before talking to you.” And I stood there waiting for round two.

He looked at me for what felt like an hour, but finally started screaming again, but this time he was screaming in a different way. He never asked any questions. He just cussed, and screamed about Jensen. He went on and on. And, I just stood there.

Once again he motioned for me to say something. I told him what corrective action we took, and what we intended to do to prevent it next time. I never acted defensively or rebellious and never piled on Chris, the snake. Again, I just stood there.

This time, he started talking to me like an Adult. He had completely left Critical Parent mode. After he was done talking, I said “Will there be anything else?” He just looked at me and smiled, well it could have been gas, but it might have been a smile, and said no and I left. The relationship changed that day and never went back.

I opened his door to leave and when I heard it swing shut, I felt this incredible relief and pumped my fist in the air. As I walked to my office I passed Chris who was walking toward Jim’s office. He must have called him in for round two. I felt just a little bad for the snake….not too bad though.

The bottom line is that you cannot change anyone’s behavior, but you can change your own and people will react to it. It takes a great deal of practice and energy, but you can lead by example and maintain your dignity under the most difficult of situations and come out on top. And remember, negative personality types can only talk to other negative personalties so be positive.

Hope this helps!

Email me at michael_e_anderson@yahoo.com   I will answer every question.

Well, I would like bring that phrase back with a slightly different definition.

Yesterday, I had the unfortunate opportunity to visit my local United States Postal Service office.  The USPS, or the post office, as it is still affectionately called today, was filled with business people and every day customers with their arms full of packages, letters, and other assorted post office business.  The line was out the door.

I got in line and waited for my turn.  At first, I couldn’t see inside the actual customer service area as I was standing outside.  I was impressed that the post office was so busy, and expected the line to move at a steady pace.  But I would be wrong.  The line moved at a snail’s pace, but it did move.

When I got inside where I could see the customer service area, I finally found out why the line moved so slowly.  There two postal workers serving all of those customers, and a third working the “business only” line.  The workers, a scowl on their faces, barely moved.  In the most emotionless way imaginable, they listened to the customer’s request and then started to handle it, so to speak.  They went through some mechanical motions, filled the need, and the walked away from the desk and took a 15 second break.  I was stunned.  I have been in business for 30 years and never saw such inefficiency – wait, yes I have.  I’ve seen at the DMV.

As I waited for my turn, I thought to myself  “what is  happening here?”.  I was truly perplexed until  a very cheery woman whispered to me “if I worked like them, I would be fired.”  Yes, that was it.  These people had no business motivation.  They were civil servant employees, making a very good wage, with no fear of termination – the ultimate motivator.

These employees had “gone postal”, as in, they have lost their motivation to serve their customer.   Going postal now means that employees do not care to serve their customer.  Why?  Because they are not afraid of what happens if they do not serve their, or your, customers.

In my opinion, you should never allow yourself, or your employees, to go postal.

What do you think?

Leave me a comment or email me at michael_e_anderson@yahoo.com

Mike

by StyleCaster, on Thu Nov 26, 2009 8:36am PST

 

Contrary to Legally Blonde, dyeing your resume pink and bathing it in Chanel No. 5 will not get you into Harvard, nor will it get you a job. In case you take career advice from Elle Woods, below you will find the worst resume mistakes in the history of resume mistakes, followed by why these little errors are the reason why you’re not even granted a pity interview. Spell check doesn’t catch everything, and no one cares how active you were in Girl Scouts, unless you traveled to India to empower girls to sell Thin Mints. Which, in that case, we’ll take two boxes.

7 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Student Debt!

 

The header

The idea of a resume is to fit the most pertinent information into a small space. (On that note, a resume should NEVER, under any circumstances, be more than one page long.) Your name and contact information should not be size 40 font, and you should include multiple ways of contacting you; phone, address, and email are sufficient.

The Secret to Making Your New Year’s Resolutions Stick

 

The objective

This should be no more than 5 or 6 words, and should state exactly what you are looking for. Keep in mind your wording could give them an impression of how experienced, or inexperienced you are. If it says “Seeking an entry-level position,” guess what? That’s the salary you’ll be offered.

The 15 Chick Flicks Guys Secretly Love

 

Your experiences

Think of a resume like an upside-down pyramid. The most important information should be on the top, and the farther down the page you go, the less important the information is. Your potential employers know how to skim resumes, and if they don’t see something impressive in the beginning, they will move on. Make sure your experiences are first–recognizable names and companies are more impressive than what school you went to.

Are You Dressing Appropriately for the Office?

Things not to include

Reasons why you were fired or left a job, how you won a spelling bee in high school, and your high school GPA and SAT scores. Also, do not include typos. Have ten people read your resume over after you, so that they might catch any grammatical errors that you may not have caught. Also, do not include your Myspace or Facebook page link. Chances are, if you’re being considered for the job…they’ll see it soon enough, anyway. Also, do not link to your personal blog unless it is somewhat successful or extremely relevant to the job you’re applying for. Lastly, do not rhyme. (Saying you have a passion for fashion is more than not okay.)

Inexpensive Gift Ideas That You Can Make At Home!

The worst thing you could do

And finally. Never appear at an interview without a copy of your resume. Can’t find a printer in time? Reschedule the interview. Unless you won the Nobel Peace Prize, showing up sans resume is what Liz Lemon calls a dealbreaker, people.