One Question for Erika Andersen

Erika Andersen, my sister-in-law, is the founding partner of Proteus, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBCUniversal and Union Square Hospitality Group. Andersen is the author of Leading So People Will Follow (Jossey-Bass, October 2012), Being Strategic: Plan for Success; Outthink Your Competitors; Stay Ahead of Change (St. Martin’s Press, May 2009), and Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers (Portfolio, 2006), and the author and host of Being Strategic with Erika Andersen on Public Television.  You can keep up with Erika on her blog and at Forbes.

Q: What’s the most significant risk you’ve taken professionally?

Erika:   Without a doubt, starting my own business 22 years ago. At the time my kids were 6 and not quite 2, and I was the primary breadwinner in our family.  I had what seemed to my friends and colleagues like a very good position, managing the instructional design group for a management training company in upstate New York – job security, a reasonable salary, and interesting work.  In fact, one night on the phone when I told a long-distance friend I was planning on leaving my job (and moving half-way across the country) to start a consulting company with a partner, there was a long silence on the other end of the line, and then she burst out, “My god, Erika, are you sure? – What if it doesn’t work?”

The odd thing is, I was completely sure that it would work. Looking back, I don’t know if that was hubris, or far-sightedness, or some combination of the two – but I could see so clearly how my new company, Proteus, would be able to support clients in a unique way, offering a kind of clarifying support that other consulting companies didn’t provide.

Fortunately for me and my family, it turned out to be true, and it’s been a great ride for the past couple of decades (and I hope into the next couple of decades, as well).

The main thing I’ve learned from this whole experience of being an entrepreneur is the importance, if you’re going to take a big risk, of having a clear vision grounded in reality, and then being passionate and courageous in moving toward it.  A lot of people simply avoid taking professional risks, because it seems too…well, risky!  And some people take big risks, but they do it in a high-risk way: metaphorically jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

I believe there’s a middle path: you need to start with a clear and accurate sense of what you have going for you and against you, and to then create a really clear idea of what success would look like.  Then you can mentally build a path to get there (staying as objective as possible about whether you really have what it takes to do what you’re envisioning).

Once you’ve done that, you have to be kind of relentless: to be consistent and resilient in moving toward your dream.  Every day you need to make decisions, take responsibility for your mistakes, and keep going. That’s what I mean by passionate and courageous.

And I have to add that this biggest risk has had the biggest payoff – I have absolutely loved having and growing this business; it’s provided challenges and rewards on so many levels. I’ve come to believe that stepping outside of comfortable is one of key paths to having a life you love.

Lonely at Work

Dear Anne,

I've been working at an office for a year now, and haven't made any close connections with my coworkers. It feels a little bit like I've passed the point of no return -- how do I reopen the possibility of friendship?

Best,

Margaret

Dear Margaret:

Your question resonates deeply with me.   It is so hard to charge into a new working environment and establish relationships with people who may have worked in the company for a long time.  Particularly if you’re younger than many of the other workers who may have families to which they dash home every day.  And now that you’ve been at your company for a while, any effort you make to reach out to your colleagues may feel awkward and forced.  And if you’re shy, it’s a double-whammy.

But there are a few things you could try.  First, as painful as it may feel, I’d ask the person or two you feel closest to join you for a drink one night.  Generally people relax more when they’re away from work.  Find someplace near the office that’s doing something fun – mixing new cocktails, having a poetry reading or trivia game, anything that gives you a pretext for the invitation.  And if they say no the first time, try a second time.

If you’re a cook, you might try baking cookies to bring in some day – don’t make it seem like you did it just for the office, so as not to feel too goody-goody, maybe say you something had a pot-luck dinner party the night before and had some leftovers that were terrific and you thought your colleagues might like them.  Or you could notice a fellow worker likes a particular kind of clothing and note a nearby sale and suggest that you could stop by together.

There’s also the possibility that you give off the kind of laid-back, don’t-need-anything kind of vibe that has communicated to your fellow workers that you don’t really want friendships.  And given that you’ve felt a bit isolated you might have reinforced that perception in a stiff-upper-lip way.  If you think that might be the case, try and loosen up a bit and seem a bit more outgoing.

And if all else fails, and the cultural norm of the company is unfriendly and if you really like friendly environments, begin looking for a new place to work.

Best,
Anne

Please send your questions to askanne@annekreamer.com.

Reading Now

"The Myth Of Male Decline" - The New York Times

"No Breakfast Hurts Girls' Focus Most" - The Wall Street Journal

"Inside The Mind Of Worry" - The New York Times

The Perils of Working with Family

Candice Rainey's New York Times profile of couples who quit traditional 9 - 5 jobs to partner in the start-up of  passion-driven retail stores provides great insight into the all-in challenges of reinvention as a couple venture.

And the Boutique Makes Three

Robert Wright for The New York Times

Melissa Murphy and Chris Rafano at Sweet Melissa Patisserie in Park Slope.

By CANDICE RAINEY

GILLETTE AND ZAK WING vividly remember the day in 2009 when they were walking down Atlantic Avenue on the cusp of Brooklyn Heights, peering into an abandoned store front and casually fantasizing about opening an antiques business. A local real estate agent was walking by and noticed the couple. “He basically said, ‘You want it? It’s yours.’ ” Mrs. Wing said.

Three years and two babies later, they are now the proprietors of Holler & Squall, a meticulously edited furniture and oddities shop capitalizing on the neighborhood’s old-is-cutting-edge aesthetic (the store’s name is from a Jimmy Martin bluegrass song).

Mr. and Mrs. Wing are part of a new generation of mom and pops that has thrived in regentrified Brooklyn, doling out attainable indulgences (freshly baked vegan cookies, American-made chinos, really good cheese) to customers who prefer to know their proprietors by name. On the surface, these “co-preneurials” seem to be living a new American dream.

But not so fast. Behind these perfectly imperfect facades, there is often mold on the cheese, wrinkles in the chinos.

“Merchandising is probably where it gets the hardest because it’s more sensitive,” Mrs. Wing said. “It’s one thing to tell the other person they did the accounting wrong. But taste is a little bit different. I don’t think either of us is very delicate about telling each other we think something looks like ...” Well, let’s not stir up any more trouble.

“We’re both the bosses and we butt heads a little,” said Adele Berne, 32, who with her husband, Michael Kuhle, 35, owns a Smith Street clothing boutique, Epaulet, and a second store in Manhattan. “I’m like: ‘We should be happy. We’re working together!’ ”

In 2005 Dawn Casale, a former buyer at Barneys New York and founder of One Girl Cookies, decided to open a cozy bakery in Cobble Hill with Dave Crofton, a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. The two had met and married in a whirl of flour worthy of a Nancy Meyers movie.

But what Ms. Casale dubbed an “urban Mayberry” in the company cookbook soon became a thoroughly exhausting endeavor.

“We actually had a really great lifestyle before the shop opened,” said Ms. Casale, 41. “Because it was Monday through Friday. Then the brick and mortar happened and we were working like animals. We were a slave to the business.”

Mr. Crofton, 42, said it took the couple five years before they could take a three-day vacation.

“All we know is spending every day together, and

(to keep reading)

Mindy Kaling on Chronicling the American Workplace

Mindy Kaling is a funny, fabulous actor, but she's also an important chronicler of the 21st century American workplace. As a writer of 24 episodes of The Office — the equivalent of more than an entire season — she tapped into the unspoken truths that lurk in the underbelly of office culture, and she spun those insights into sitcom gold. The Office is arguably one of the most incisive sitcoms about work life ever created. Now, as the creator, producer, writer and star of a new Fox series called The Mindy Project, the fictional workplace she's invented and inhabits has gone from a realm in which she had no first-hand exposure (paper manufacturing?) to something a little closer to home. Her character, Mindy Lahiri, struggles (as we all do) to craft some kind of work/life balance, all while building her career as an OB/GYN — a premise based in part on observing her (real) OB/GYN mother's juggling act. In a recent phone conversation, I asked her what she'd learned about real work from inventing fictional workplaces. Here's what she had to say:

On Work/Life Balance

Nothing makes people preemptively yawn more than hearing a show about 'balancing professional and personal life'. Also, so many shows that tell women-centric stories sacrifice edginess and comedy for softness, and viewers get bored of that. But there is a reason why these stories keep getting told — because they are relatable. My strategy for a fresh take is simple: write honest and original observations about something that I am going through.

On Speaking Your Mind at Work

My character is impulsive, opinionated, and outspoken. She gets to do and say things on the show that I wish I could, but don't have the nerve to do. (I think smartly-executed wish-fulfillment is a great form of entertainment.) That comes from a kind of innate confidence that gets her into trouble, but is also very admirable. I hope people watching envy Mindy's confidence.

On Her Character's Busy Professional Life:

I chose to make my character an OB/GYN because I grew up with a mother who was an OB/GYN, which was essentially 33 years of research on the ins and outs of the lifestyle of an incredibly busy professional. Workplaces are a great thing to write about because even with our high unemployment rate, a whopping majority of people go to work everyday and have funny stories to tell about it.

On Her Own Busy Professional Life:

You wouldn't think that being an OB/GYN has much in common with being a network show-runner, but there are plenty of similarities between my work life and my character's work life. For instance, while my mother and I had very different jobs, our professional lifestyles have been very similar. I could call her from L.A. at 11 PM PST and she would be at the hospital in Boston waiting for a patient to give birth at 2 AM EST. Both jobs paid well and didn't give either of us very much free time, but we loved them. Neither is the kind of job you can do unless you really, really love it.

On Doing Her Market Research

Twitter is helpful, not so much for people sharing stories about their jobs, but for feedback — both positive and negative — about story lines they love. People use Twitter to quote lines they love, so it's the single easiest way to identify the funniest lines of a show.

On Being a Boss

At the risk of sounding like Michael Scott, I think I am a pretty damn good boss. I was a little worried about it at the beginning, because my inclination is to want everyone to like me. That always seems to get me into trouble, because I make promises I can't keep just to please everyone. But now there is simply no time for any of that. Because I am doing so much more on this show than at The Office, I have learned a cheerfully direct way of talking. I'm incredibly impatient, and while that's been a detriment in the past, it's an advantage as a boss, because it keeps things moving quickly. I recommend it to any leader: be impatient. By quickly and nicely shutting down lines of argument, and being decisive, I save the entire production hours and hours of work and money.

On Being a Female Boss

One thing I have noticed — and this is really the first time I've noticed how being a woman has affected my job — is that sometimes, after I've made a decision about something, there's a level of discussion that people think I am willing to entertain that probably wouldn't happen if I were a man. I have learned that when I make a decision, sometimes I just need to leave the room.

Follow the conversation at Harvard Business Review.

Follow the Frog to Save the Rainforest

The Rainforest Alliance created the video below for Follow the Frog Week, their annual social media campaign designed to raise awareness of the organization and to encourage people to look for the seal when they shop. By choosing products that feature the seal, consumers can support a healthy environment and help improve conditions for workers, their families and communities.  Please share with your friends.

Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities And Stack Them Sideways

This NPR piece by Robert Krulwich made me think about cities in a whole new way.

----------------------------

"I don't know if it's fair to do this to a city, but let's start with Berlin. Here's Berlin as you'd see it from above.

Berlin from above.

Here it is again, after an autopsy. The city has been dismembered, dissected block by block, the blocks then categorized, sorted and stacked by shape. Berlin, of course, contains mainly rectangles. It also has trapezoids, triangles and, down in that last row, weirdly shaped squiggles that represent actual city spaces. So, if you are walking through Berlin, the cityscape isn't going to repeat endlessly. There will be surprises. There are some totally irregular nooks and crannies there.

Berlin in parts.

(to keep reading)

To Swear or Not to Swear?

Anne's comments on Swearing

Henry Alford and I discuss swearing in the workplace in a segment that was piloted for a new women's radio program.

The Rise of Coworking Office Spaces

"Coworking" office spaces, leasable by the day or month (think RocketSpace in San Francisco or The Hive in Denver) are multiplying in cities all over the country. Demand is predicted to expand by as much as 40% in 2013. And for good reason. It's no secret that the efficiency-driven modern office is a joyless and at best neutral venue in most people's lives. (Think: boxy cubicles that don't enable privacy or community, lack of natural light, incoherent design, etc.) And experiments to improve office spaces are nothing new. From the "college campus" envisioned by legendary adman Jay Chiat, where employees came to the office to gather information and then work wherever they wanted within the building, to Steve Jobs' Pixar campus, fluid, open plans have been touted as environments that lead to greater collegiality and productivity. But the 21st century workforce, increasingly telecommuting and/or bouncing from job to job and city to city, is making those "modern" late-20th-century office concepts feel quaint.

To better understand what's going on, I spent time at Grind in New York City, an invitation-only co-working space. For $35 a day or $500 a month, 60 to 120 people populate Grind's 7,500 square feet at any given time. Benjamin Dyett, one of Grind's three founders, describes their members as "free radicals," or people who "network endlessly and collaborate constantly. They choose when and how they do what they do, on their own terms. They don't want job security, they want career fluidity."

It's a setup that clearly seems to be working for a growing number of people, and represents a cultural shift that is a corollary to (but extends beyond) the out-sourcing and employee churn of a top-down flexible labor force. Like cousins of the Chiat or Jobs workspaces, where full-time employees devote themselves to a single cult-like institution in groovy architecture that encourages playful collaboration, the new co-working spaces thrive on a constantly changing cast of characters — all with different skills, experience and business goals, where members are creating and running many different kinds of enterprises.

What makes these co-working spaces so attractive? (And what, in turn, can more traditional offices learn from them?)

1. They offer collaborative networks, built-in resources, and a dynamic ecosystem

While getting out of the house to work for free in the quasi-community of a coffee shop might feel like a no-strings, easily-accessible kind of co-working environment, don't be fooled. Free wifi places are fine as social gathering spots, but the random non-working others who share that space surely won't help you find new colleagues or generate development leads. Spanish-born Roberto Alcazar, who started his branded content agency EOIntegration.com at Grind at the end of 2011, told me one of the things he likes about Grind, "is that you get to interact whether you want to or not. There are lots of people with different backgrounds and disciplines and it keeps you up to speed and up to date. A five-minute chat with that investor or that start-up guy can prove to be invaluable." Former banker Hans Reichstetter, who runs three very different businesses in various stages of development out of Grind, sparkled when describing the huge diversity of people doing all sorts of things: freelancers, creatives, lawyers, entrepreneurs, accountants, coders — you see it all. "I needed an industrial designer who knew CAD and there was a guy here who knew it really well." And the fact that one's workplace neighbors are not official colleagues can have an upside in the lack of competitive game-playing and back-stabbing.

2. They foster innovation.

By attracting a variety of members from myriad backgrounds and industries, the looser connections of these constantly churning spaces also appear to have innovation advantages. Martin Ruef, a sociologist at Princeton who's studied entrepreneurs, found that those who broadened their universe of contacts from small groups of familiar acquaintances to larger, more loosely-connected networks of people were far more innovative. As another of Grind's founders, Stuart Warshaw, says, "Grind is a case study in collaboration across many disciplines and among established professionals."

3. They make starting a business simpler.

Former CNN.com sports executive Leora Blumberg, who is part of a Grind-based start-up called Personalized Media, says that the company found its way to Grind because they work on projects on an ad hoc basis with people in Europe and Washington, and they required the flexibility of operating from a place suited to a highly variable daily head count. Tom Chernaik, a lawyer running CMP.ly, a company that offers a transparent way to disclose legal terms within the social media context, thought his time at Grind was going to be temporary, but he sees no reason yet to give up the benefits of ultra-flexibility and low overhead. "With seven employees, we're at the tipping point," he says, "where it might be cheaper to get dedicated office space, but even if we do, I'll keep a daily membership here so we have access to the community."

What to Know Before You Go:

If you're interested in working from a collaborative workspace, explore the various options in your city. Visit a few on day passes to see which has the best vibe and infrastructure for you. The pricing varies from place to place — ranging from $150/month to $600/month and $15/day to $50/day. There are also a whole range of sector-specific spaces, specialized for tech, creative, food, or educational professionals. It's just one of the many ways that companies are capitalizing on flexible workspaces for a flexible workforce — a trend we can all expect to see more of in the future.

Follow the conversation at Harvard Business Review.

UPDATE: 9.24.12 Below is a clip of my appearance on CNBC

Appearing on CNBC's Squawk on the Street, Anne Kreamer, Harvard Business Review contributor, says the demand for co-working spaces are on the rise and reinventing the way small businesses lease space. -Sept. 24, 2012

Reading Now

Articles:

"Is It Really The End Of Men" - Time.com

"Is Self-Control A Limited Resource" - PsychCentral.com

Books: