thoughtsignals

Well, big news to me, at least. I’ve changed jobs. I left The Business Journal a couple of weeks ago and joined RLF Communications as a senior account executive. I just finished up my first week on the job.

In the newspaper world a shift like this, going from journalism to public relations, is usually called “moving to the dark side.” In fact, as a going-away gift, my Business Journal colleagues got me a little Darth Vader figure.

If you’re wondering, though, I left what was a pretty good job as a newspaper reporter because RLF, and this position, will provide me with new challenges. I’ll have more opportunities to put what I’m learning in business school to use and more opportunities to more deeply explore online media.

Speaking of online media, I’ll be at ConvergeSouth today. Come over and say ‘Hi’ if you see me.

This is like something straight out of a William Gibson novel:

Yes, I blog from a sailboat and cruise the azure waters of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Mexico. “Call me Slogger,” to borrow from the opening line of that saga of the sea, Moby Dick.

But whales are not my game. I chase lesser creatures. Specifically the men, women and issues involved in the $3 billion California state stem-cell agency — the world’s largest single source of funding for human embryonic-stem-cell research.

David Jensen, a former newspaper reporter and editor and political PR guy blogs from his sailboat off the coast of Mexico. This Wired first-person piece is mostly about the struggle to find Internet access while living on a sailboat. But the fact that he writes mostly about stem cell research and policy makes it all the more remarkable. Ten years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible.

How the world is changing.

BusinessWeek has a piece on how to have your dream job (sort of) and still make a decent living:

When it comes to your life’s work, you can take one of two paths: You could be sure you’re doing what you love and deal with the risks and low pay that could accompany it. Or you can work a day job that’s tolerable and frees you up—and pays—enough to allow you to do what you want after work. Following your passion can mean taking a chance, but for purists, unfulfilling day jobs aren’t an option. What counts for them is practicing their craft, whether it’s acting, basketball, singing, or designing.

Link.

The New York Times has the second in its series of articles on how religious organizations, including, potentially, hospitals and universities, are exempt from employment laws that govern secular groups. That means, basically, they can stop unionization drives, fire employees whose health care bills may prove expensive or force out people who campaign against discrimination.

But judges also have applied the exception to dismiss cases filed by
the press secretary at a Roman Catholic church, a writer for The
Christian Science Monitor, administrators at religious colleges, the
disgruntled beneficiaries of a Lutheran pension fund, the overseer of
the kosher kitchen at a Jewish nursing home and a co-founder of Focus
on the Family, run by the conservative religious leader James C.
Dobson. Court files show that some of these people were surprised to
learn that their work had been considered a “core expression of
religious belief” by their employer.

Link.

(See my post from yesterday on this subject here.)

Creating Passionate Users has an incisive post on the differences between what kind of employees CEOs say they want and what kind of employees most managers actually want (and get). Does this sound like any place you’ve ever worked?

So yes, I’m thinking Mr. CEO of Very Large Company would say that their company should take the upstart whatever-it-takes person over the ever-compromising team player. “If that person shakes us up, gets us to rethink, creates a little tension, well that’s a Good Thing”, the CEO says. riiiiiiiiiight. While I believe most CEOs do think this way, wow, that attitude reverses itself quite dramatically the futher you reach down the org chart. There’s a canyon-sized gap between what company heads say they want (brave, bold, innovative) and what their own middle management seems to prefer (yes-men, worker bees, team players).”

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that more people are working at “third places,” like coffee shops. A big part of the attraction seems to be the ability to get away from the distractions of the office (not to mention not having to sit in a cubicle). Whether this is really a sustainable trend, or not, remains to be seen.

But some question the permanence of such work. “It remains to be seen if this is a cultural breakthrough or a generational artifact,” says Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

“The obstacles remain those bosses who insist on face time and bean counters who equate being outside the office with wasted time,” he says. But the reality is “most businesses run on 24-hour work cycles that follow the sun around the globe. That means it’s not where you are that matters, but what you’re doing.”

And the current issue of the Economist has several stories on the escalating “battle for brainpower.” One article says workers, especially talented, workers are gaining the upper hand over employers.

THE world headquarters of what its proprietor jokingly calls “Pink Inc” is in the attic of a redbrick house in north-west Washington, DC. Children’s pictures decorate the walls; highbrow novels are jumbled up with business books. Daniel Pink spent much of the 1990s working for the Clinton administration, ending up as chief speechwriter for Al Gore. But in the late 1990s he decided to branch out on his own. He now makes his living as what he calls a “free agent”—doing a bit of consulting, giving speeches, writing articles (he is a contributing editor to “Wired”) and books, including, in 2001, a book about people like himself, “Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers are Transforming the Way We Live”. Mr Pink has no doubts about the changing balance of power in the corporate world: “Talented people need organisations less than organisations need talented people.”

he Economist piece mentions blogger, by the way, as one class of folks who need organizations less than organizations need them (link; you can watch a short ad to get one-day access to the Economist’s premium content if you’re not a subscriber).

What does all this mean? If you’re an individual cultivate your talent (and your visibility and your network, without which all the talent in the world is pretty useless). If you’re a company, improve your working conditions and make sure the office reality matches your rhetoric.