Security, Resilience, and the Road to your Future

Posted by random olio

A few months ago I read: “The Start-Up of You” by Reid Hoffman (Co-founder and Chairman of LinkedIn). The context of the book is that your life is always in start-up mode, and to put the same amount of focus in your life, job, and future as you would in a start-up company. He talks often about how start-ups have to constantly refocus and realign their efforts to make sure they are going in the right direction. He explains that individuals, just the same as start-ups, have to refocus and realign our efforts to make sure the choices we are making in life are going in the right direction. One idea that resonated with me was about resilience:

“…compare a staff editor at a prestigious magazine to a freelance writer. The staff editor at a magazine enjoys a dependable income stream, regular work, and built-in network. The freelance writer has to hustle every day for gigs, and some months are better than others. The staff editor is always well fed; the freelance writer is hungry on some days. Then the day comes when print finally dies, the magazine industry collapses, and the staff editor gets laid off. Having built up no resilience, he will starve. He’s less equipped to bounce to the next thing, whereas the freelance writer has been bouncing around her whole life–she’ll be fine. So which type of career is riskier in the long run, in the age of the unthinkable?” page. 189

Are you the staff editor or the freelance writer? Have you developed the strength you may need if you are the staff editor? It made me think about the different jobs I have had, the choices I have made in my life, and whether or not I would be resilient or not. So often I think we stay in jobs for too long because of the security they bring us, but sometimes that might be a false sense of security. If we could have a window into our future, and know that if we take that risk, and put ourselves out there that everything will work out and be okay. If we had that option, the world might have more risk takers. Yet, we can do that without seeing into the future. We can have a Plan B, we can prepare ourselves to be agile, and in turn develop the resilience of the freelancer. We would bounce back with any changes that get thrown our way, think quickly, and move on to our backup plan.

Which direction will you go? Are you stuck in the security of life? Or, do you treat your life and future like a start-up, constantly changing directions as needed?

Random Olio Snippets: 2

Posted by random olio

Amber Alert – There was an Amber Alert in Portland this week. The good news is the child was found within a few hours. While doing some research to learn what happened, I learned a few things. There is a new national initiative for alerting folks about Amber Alerts. I also admit that I did not know that “Amber Alert” was named after a girl named Amber that was abducted. I had always thought it was just an acronym, which it also is: America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. There are times when I am in awe of technology. This is one of those times. Read on:

“Unlike Wireless AMBER Alerts, the WEA AMBER Alerts use the latest technology to send messages to wireless customers with WEA-capable devices in the area where a child has been abducted, even if the wireless customer isn’t from the area. For example, if a Chicago resident was visiting Boston and a WEA AMBER Alert was issued in Boston, the subscriber would receive the alert. At the same time, if an alert was issued in Chicago, the subscriber would not receive it while in Boston.”

Lawmakers salaries go into escrow if they miss the April 15 deadline – This article from CNN Money explains what is happening with the debt ceiling. The gist of it is that the House will be voting on a bill regarding whether or not to raise the debt ceiling. If they vote to raise it, that means the government can continue to borrow money against the $16 trillion dollars that the country already has in debt. The fun part? If lawmakers do not agree to a budget resolution by April 15: “Their salaries would be held in escrow and paid out at some point later.” Fun. I wonder how much they will make in interest! In any case, it is a novel idea to get different sides to work together and come to a resolution or their pay will be frozen. Sort of like having your allowance held until you can stop bickering with your sister. Sound familiar?

Eating Ourselves to Death – I want to see this episode of Our America on OWN. The episode is called: “Generation XXL” and airs January 29, at 10/9 pm Central time. I am passionate about health for youth. Growing up I did not have access to excellent, flavorful health foods. I hated vegetables. You could not pay me to eat them. I was active as a kid, but not as much as I could have been if I had encouragement from my family, especially my parents. Obesity, especially with children, needs our attention. If you have a chance to watch this episode, let me know what you think. I will be setting the DVR.

NFC Tags – I am fascinated by these NFC tags. I had never heard of them before I read this Fast Company article. Have you heard of them? If not click the link to read the article. I cannot even begin to try to explain. Just to give you a bit of interest:

“An NFC tag placed at your desk can tell your phone to open Evernote, tether your phone’s 4G to your laptop, mute your ringer, and remind you in 30 minutes to get off Twitter. But the issue both companies have discovered with tags is that they’re, ultimately, too capable.”

That is it for my Random Snippets from this week. Happy Friday!

You have to look at the crap

Posted by random olio

I just finished reading Brene Brown’s book: “The Gift of Imperfection.” After reading her book: “Daring Greatly” I was curious about her other books and wanted to see how they compared, and what I might learn in the process. “The Gift of Imperfection” does not at all compare to Daring Greatly (which I loved) but I still found some helpful ideas and inspiration. Brown has definitely evolved as a writer with each book.

One idea that really resonated with me was about looking at all the crap in our lives. So often we want to look at everything with sunshine and rainbows and the reality of life is that it is not always happy, perfect, and straightforward. We often have to take a trowel and dig into the past, or rake through the distractions that are blocking us from seeing our true purpose in life. When I read this quote from Brown the other day, I realized how right she is:

“We don’t change, we don’t grow, and we don’t move forward without the work. If we really wanted to live a joyful, connected, and meaningful life, we must talk about things that get in the way.” Page 35

We want the easy way out. We like to cut corners, get there faster, check the box off the list. That is not the way it works though. We have to do the work. We have to look at our dark places, what makes us angry, and what makes us react. All the different nuances and challenges in our life that rub us the wrong way, make us feel injustice, or just get in the way of who we are on the good days. If we use the trowel and rake, maybe, just maybe, it will mean that more of our days are happy and on purpose.

With poise, zeal, and excitement together we can look at the dark stuff in our life, our fears, questions, and all the crap that we push under our beds, into our closets, or the trunk of our car. The stuff we avoid to look at because we are scared of what it will tell us. Afraid of what we will learn about ourselves. Open the door, the trunk, and get under the bed and pull out the dust bunnies, and stinky socks, and let’s look at our dark places, talk about them, and see where it takes us.

I am excited to start talking about the things that are getting in my way. Maybe, I will share a few here. You will have to come back and see.

Oh, Behave…

Posted by random olio

Can you change my feelings and sway me? Seth Godin says: “The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings.” I believe him, well almost. I think it should be a part of customer service. We each have a right to be treated as humans, connect with individuals, and enjoy our customer experience. Yet, so often, our experience has little to no human contact, no personal connection, and feels robotic. Where did I find this quote from Godin? I came across this blog post from back in October while thinking about the idea of “service.” The full quote says:

“The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings. Not the facts, but the way your customer feels. The facts might be the price, or a return, or how long someone had to wait for service. Sometimes changing the facts is a shortcut to changing feelings, but not always, and changing the facts alone is not always sufficient anyway.”

Imagine if every individual that worked in some type of service environment made it their mission to impact, change the mind of, or shift the thought of at least one customer a day. In the grand scheme of things that would not be that hard, and maybe that is already happening in every company in the world. But, what if those interactions were shared, and we saw the ripple effect? What if we did know of the impact we had each day, or that we changed how an individual felt? Would we do more to ensure that our behavior happened more often? If we had positive reinforcement of our behavior would that start a domino effect?

There are businesses out there that are changing the nature of customer service. Their impact could mean we eventually have a better customer experience, but I shudder as I think about the impact of technology on service. On the one side you might have a more efficient, yet robotic process, allowing the customer to track down their own answer. In many cases, this works. When a customer does not find their own answer, then it is often a dead-end. When the situation needs a personal touch, a ruffled edge smoothed, or when the issue needs live problem solving that only a human can answer, where is that service? Many companies would say it is too costly to provide that kind of service, yet what does that say about the true value of their customer?

What would it truly take to bring back the human interaction and accountability of service? Is customer service heading in the direction of Wall-E?

Less money in your paycheck?

Posted by random olio

Unless you make buttloads of cash, you might have been scratching your head and wondering why your paycheck was considerably smaller this week. I am not complaining, as it is what it is. Politics aside we could be in a worse situation where we are out of even more money. Let’s face it, our country is in major debt and that is not going away anytime soon.

In case you do not know the specifics, the Social Security payroll tax rate is currently 12.4%. Employers pay 6.2%, and for the past two years employees have paid a reduced rate of 4.2%. With the recent fiscal cliff changes, that reduction will now go back to the normal 6.2% which means that employees will now pay 2% more Social Security tax (as we did in 2010). This is also true for those who are self-employed (if you make more than $433). According to Kiplinger: “Originally a one-year break, the holiday was extended at the last minute to cover 2012. Extending it again to cover 2013 would have cost about $100 billion…”

As an example: if you make $50,000 a year, you will now take home $1000 less a year, or about $38 a paycheck (about $80 less a month). If you are a dual income family, the amount is much higher of what will be lost in your take home pay.

A question: If I am paying more tax now in 2013, does that mean I will have a higher refund in 2014 due to paying more taxes now? The answer: Yes. Depending on your allowances. Since I am not the expert, here is Kiplinger’s answer: “By eliminating overwithholding of income tax, the average taxpayer who normally gets a refund can both defeat the paycheck-shrinking impact of higher payroll taxes and add a couple thousand dollars to 2013 take-home pay. (Yes, you’ll be giving up a fat refund in 2014, but wouldn’t you rather get your money when you earn it?)” Complete answer, full article, and their calculators.

What I find odd is that the Social Security website has not been updated with the 2013 rates and details. Kind of sad considering my company was able to make changes in their system to ensure that the Federal government received the extra 2% out of the first paychecks of the 2013 calendar year. Yet, the government still has not updated their website about the changes. Seriously?

Another interesting fact I found: “…many workers do not know that any annual wages above $106,800 are not taxed by Social Security. In other words, a worker who makes twice the Social Security wage cap – $213,600 per year – pays Social Security tax on only half of his or her earnings, and one who makes just over a million dollars per year pays the tax on only about a tenth.”

In case you are wondering: These are the 13 tax changes going into effect in 2013.