Month: August 2012

RERUN–Ambition and Opportunism

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Originally posted 3/4/2004

There’s always a steady steam of books and articles offering advice to people who are beginning, or about to begin, their business careers. In the current crop of such publications, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on “taking care of yourself’–negotiating hard about starting salary, being insistent about raises and promotions, making sure you get full credit for the things you accomplish, etc etc. This general theme seems particularly pronounced right now in advice directed at women.

Within limits, it’s common sense. If you don’t stand up for yourself, you’re going to get run over. And, in an era of (at least perceived) insecurity, it’s natural that people would be increasingly focused on career self-protection.

But. Note the qualifier, “within limits.”

Readers of the afforementioned publications need to also read a little article that appeared in Investor’s Business Daily (2/23), under the title “Opportunists are Trouble.” Opportunists:

..avoid assignments that carry high risk of failure–even when such situations also present a great opportunity for success. They shirk responsibility for the actions of their subordinates…And while opportunists might seem highly intelligent, it’s often not the case…They master the art of appearance, but have very little depth.

The article quotes the author of “Staying There,” Thomas Schweich:

If you are going to be an executive with staying power, you must value ambition, destroy opportunism and be adept at telling the diference between the two…(Wise) executives search for small, tangible signs in those they are evaluating.

Earl Graves, founder & publisher of the magazine Black Enterprise, offers some advice as to how to detect an opportunist. One clue is an excessive preoccupation with perks–company credit cards, tickets to sports events, etc–and particularly, a focus on perks during the first few days on the job. And Mike Sears, previously CFO at Boeing, advises executives to look out for the “spotlight” mentality. People with this personality trait will “be charming when the spotlight is on, but turn irritable and condescending when they think “no one of importance” is watching.”

Another clue to an opportunist–and this one should be obvious–is excessive use of the words “I” and “me” when discussing positive outcomes. And then there’s the “should be” flag. Let’s say you ask your subordinate about the status of an assignment, and his response is that “it should be done.”

“(It) says that you think I am too stupid to figure out that you do not know the answer,” (said a senior Justice Department official). (And it) “says you are ready to blame someone else if the job hasn’t been done. You are pre-distancing yourself from the failure.”

It seems to me that many of the current practices in our educational system–grade inflation, excessive focus on unearned self-esteem–contribute to the development of the personality pattern referenced here under the name “opportunism.” And the problem with the kind of business advice that I mentioned at the beginning is that it tends to reinforce these tendencies, rather than causing the individual to reflect on them and balance them out. I worry that some of this advice could cause people who could have been successful to adopt behavior patterns that will destroy or limit their careers. Some, of course, will succeed despite their behavior (or even because of it, in unhealthy organizations), and they can then do damage that is sometimes on a very large scale.

A worthwhile article, and Schweich’s book sounds very interesting.

8/24/2012: I was reminded of this post by Bill Waddell’s post here.

“Gawande’s Kitchen”

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An insightful critique:

But there is a much more important question being ignored by Gawande — How well does The Cheesecake Factory analogy really apply to health care? We can see how similar the kitchen is to an operating room — lots of busy people rushing about in a sterile environment, each concentrated on a task. But what about the rest of the “system?”
 
At The Cheesecake Factory, the customer is the diner. That’s who orders the service, pays the bill, and comes back again if he is happy. That is who all of the efficient, standardized food preparation is designed to please.
 
In Gawande’s ideal health care model, however, the customer isn’t the patient, but the third-party payer, be it an insurer or government. Let’s call that entity the TPP. The TPP never enters the kitchen. The TTP has no idea what happens in there, and doesn’t really care as long as the steak is cooked to his satisfaction and the tab is affordable.
 
In this model, the patient is actually the steak. It is the steak who is processed in the kitchen. It is the steak that is cut and cooked and placed on a platter. The steak doesn’t get a vote. Nobody cares if the steak is happy. The steak doesn’t pay the bill. The steak isn’t coming back again.
 
So here we are in Dr. Gawande’s kitchen, where you and I are slabs of meat and Chef Gawande will cook us to the specifications of his TPP customers — satisfaction guaranteed.

Worth reading in full.

(Via The Right Coast.)

We’re Barely Capitalists (Part II)

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Recently I wrote a post titled “We’re Barely Capitalists” talking about the “crony capitalism” that lies in our midst. Since I live in the city of Chicago examples abound as far as the eye can see.

Let’s say, for example that you want to open up a bar in the City of Chicago. You find an architecturally interesting building in a “hot” location in River North, for instance, such as an antique store. Then you just turn it into a gigantic Wal-Mart sized bar, right?

The City of Chicago officially has been limiting the number of liquor licenses and tavern licenses that are allowed, particularly in residential areas. Per this article in USA Today:

Opening or buying a tavern in Chicago can be complicated, says Mike Costanzo, a real estate broker with Jameson Commercial. Aldermen can seek liquor license moratoriums in areas as small as two blocks, and buyers are required to purchase the corporate entity that owns an existing tavern and license, he says. “Getting a new tavern license issued in a residential neighborhood is brutal,” Costanzo says. “It’s virtually impossible.”

River North today is heavily populated with condos and apartments; there are thousands of residents packed in an area that is overrun with bars, taverns and restaurants that serve lots of booze (I realize that the city differentiates but walking around late at night they are all virtually the same). So if you or I just went over and tried to use one of the supposedly diminishing liquor licenses on an antique store, we’d be laughed right out of the room. And yet that didn’t slow down this company (which also owns bars in Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville) from getting clearance…

And how do you get something like that cleared up with the city? By employing someone like the guy whose license plate on his Mercedes says it all – “CLOUT”. These sorts of connections are like property rights, and you have to partner or utilize contacts from someone in order to get anything done. I find it amazingly brazen that someone would get out of a Mercedes with plates like this and do business, but hey, this is Chicago.

The use of formal and informal intermediaries to accomplish business goals through a bureaucratic maze is the essence of “crony capitalism”, on display before our eyes.

Cross posted at LITGM

The Pussy Riots Seen from Texas by an ROCOR Priest’s Wife

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Ginny, a colleague of mine, invited me to read the posts related to Pussy Riot and contribute to the discussion from my perspective as a non-Russian, ROCOR priest’s wife. I’ve learned a lot from what I’ve read, and do not in any way consider myself an expert on Russia or on Orthodoxy (after 15 years, I’m still working at praying with my heart and mind at the same time), but thought I might be able to provide some useful clarification and/or complication to the ongoing discussion.

RE: the position of the young women during their protest, and whether or not this constitutes “prayer.”

There’s been quite a bit posted about this already; the women are standing immediately in front of the royal gates of the central iconostasis of the church—a place generally reserved for clergy. Lay people only approach this part of the church when they are about to receive communion or be ordained, married, or buried. Thus, their very location in the church is provocative. Adding to this is the fact that they are facing the “wrong” direction (their making prostrations facing the people rather than the altar has been called “idolatry” by some.) Lay people (all of the time) and clergy (the majority of the time) face East—looking at the iconostasis which separates the “high place” (where the altar—which typically contains relics of saints—and the reserved sacrament are located). Even when the Epistle is being read, the reader faces East—away from the people. The exceptions to this are the reading of the Gospel by the priest (or deacon) which is done facing the people, and the dismissal blessings given by the priest. (Obviously, the priest also faces the people when communing them.) Thus, by their very position and the direction they were facing, these women violated the use of that space in significant ways. If they were not intending to “offend” Orthodox Christians, they chose an odd way to show it.

Audible, public prayer in an Orthodox service is formal and “set.” After all, the liturgy most often used is St. John Chrysostom’s—from the 4th century. This is not to say that there is no place for extemporaneous prayer in church—but private prayers are inaudible—prayed silently. Worship is communal work; it is not about expressing oneself. Whether or not one wants to consider the actual text of the song a prayer, within the context of an Orthodox church—whether or not a formal service was being offered at that time—it would be asking a great deal to expect an Orthodox Christian to consider their action a prayer.

RE: Orthodox prayers for political leaders

I am neither qualified nor desirous of judging the appropriateness of Patriarch Kirill’s relationship with Putin. I do think that when a church appears to publicly endorse a political regime, it risks becoming a legitimate site of political protest (and I wouldn’t have had a problem if PR had protested in front of the cathedral rather than in front of the iconostas). The only point I’d like to clarify here is that prayer for a political leader does not equal endorsement of his or her policies. It is standard in the litanies of Orthodox services to pray for both the leaders and military of the country to which the church belongs. This (I think) is more rightly understood as a prayer requesting God to act as He will regarding the political and military regimes of a country—or that they act in a way which God CAN bless—rather than a prayer demanding some kind of divine stamp of approval.

RE: Context

Without entering the debate about the degree to which Russia is an Orthodox nation, I should simply like to remind readers that hundreds of thousands of clergy and monastics, and tens of millions of Orthodox Christians were killed in Russia in the 20th century, including one elderly woman who was shot after having been seen crossing herself as a funeral procession went by. Given this fact and its relative historical nearness, God only knows what kind of trauma was experienced by those Orthodox Christians who were present when PR stormed into their place of worship. Their freedom to worship in peace was violated. (I wonder whether those who champion PR’s “rights” to protest Putin’s policies in this context would also champion the Wellsboro Baptists “rights” to protest American policies at veteran’s funerals.)

RE: ROC & ROCOR

Finally, as the wife of an unpaid priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, I would entreat readers not to confuse ROCOR with the Russian Orthodox Church. Communion has been restored between ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate, but their material circumstances are vastly different. You are unlikely to find any ROCOR bishops wearing expensive gold watches, and the vast majority of Russian Orthodox Churches in America are ROCOR. And since most ROCOR clergy are unpaid, and so must support themselves with secular jobs in addition to fulfilling their duties as priests, please do not be too surprised if they simply haven’t had the time to follow coverage of the PR controversy or participate in the conversation about it.