business book review – Business Book Spoilers

Should you stay or should you go? (review of Julia Keller’s Quitting: A Life Strategy)

Good things come to those who wait. Quitters also get their share of good things. I’m proof of that.

I’ve quit four jobs in my career. Started with a nonprofit and then moved on to a hospital, steelmaker, college and university. Worked with hundreds of colleagues and dozens of senior leaders. And got immersed in different workplace cultures although the similarities were always greater than the differences, despite how unique some employers billed themselves.

As an added bonus, I work in PR which comes with an all-access backstage pass and ringside seat. I’ve seen a lot, learned a lot and done a lot of cool things. I haven’t regretted a single quit.

I always knew when it was time to move on. My curiosity went from piqued to peaked. The learning curve flattened. Instead of taking the job and running with it, I started sauntering and standing still. My employer wasn’t getting me at my best. I was denying someone else the opportunity to have a go. I was cheating myself and testing my family’s patience.

“Quitting is an act of love,” says Quitting: A Life Strategy author Julia Keller.

It’s also “an escape hatch, a long shot, a shortcut, a leap of imagination, a fist raised in resistance, a saving grace, and a potential disaster – because it may backfire in spectacular ways, sabotaging careers and blowing up relationships. It can ruin your life. And it can save it too. All in all, though, it’s a gesture of generosity toward yourself and your future, a roundabout why of saying ‘not this. Not now. But later…something else.”

Keller says we’re conditioned to persevere. We value grit over quit. Winners never quit and quitters never win. “Quitting is presented as an extremity. A last resort. A point of no return. The disconnect between quitting’s benefits and its bad reputation can be jarring. Quitting may feel right, but it looks wrong.

“It some ways, we overthink the issue of giving up, searching for complex reasons for what can, after all, be boiled down to a simple binary choice: Quit or keep going?

“In other ways, we seriously underthink it. Because quitting is something we do, yes, but it’s also an idea – an idea about the world and what shapes it, and about our responsibilities to ourselves and to others. And about how to be happy.”

If you’re wrestling with whether to stay or go, Keller recommends asking yourself three questions. “Are you making your choice based on what you believe will work for you or on the fear of being labelled a quitter? Are you choosing what you truly want or what somebody else thinks is best for you? And if were labelled a quitter, what’s the harm?”

Quitting doesn’t have to be a sudden and dramatic clean break. “It can be thoughtful and deliberate and meditative,” says Keller. “It can be subtle, a thing of nuance and delicacy. It can be the result of a slow-dawning realization and a gradual shift, a graceful accommodation and a canny pivot.

“If we begin to see quitting in a different light and stop automatically equating it with failure, its potential may emerge – its promise as a life strategy. It might even sound like a compliment.”

So if you’re wondering whether to quit, you already know the answer. Take the leap or at least a subtle and thoughtful first step to something else. Life is short.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Bricks versus clicks (review of Jason Del Rey’s Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart and the Battle for our Wallets)

From Bentonville, Arkansas and weighing in with revenues of $661 billion, it’s the 61-year-old champion of everyday low prices with more than 10,500 brick and mortar stores, Walmart.

And from Seattle, Washington with $514 billion in revenue, it’s the 29-year-old online retailer and e-commerce champion of one-click convenience, Amazon.

In this clash of the retail titans, we can’t afford to have a winner.

“A world where one winner sells all is a world where everyone loses,” says veteran business journalist Jason Del Rey. The world’s largest retailers are locked in what Del Rey calls “no-holds-barred power struggle for dominance” with billions of dollars and millions of jobs at stake.

“In an ideal world, the continued competition between these two rivals will pressure both to evolve in ways that provide more societal good than harm – whether in the form of lower prices for cash-strapped consumers, convenience for those whose busy lives or physical limitations require it, more humane working conditions for everyday people, or maybe, someday, positive changes to health care if we’re lucky.”

Yet, as Del Rey acknowledges in his new book Winner Sells All, we’re not living in an ideal world. Both companies have had their turn in the barrel as Public Enemy Number One. “Admittedly, that’s a lot of hope and optimism laid before two mega-corporations whose actions haven’t always inspired those feelings. So outside forces – whether they be regulators, new startups, or labor groups – will still be necessary to apply pressure where the rivalry alone is not producing the best outcomes, and not only for citizens in their lives as consumers but as workers and community members too.”

It’s been a tougher fight for Walmart, judging by what Del Rey reports in his book. He conducted more than than 150 on and off-the-record interviews with current and former executives at both companies. Walmart was slow to see Amazon as an existential threat. And the cost-conscious leaders running Walmart’s brick and mortar stores had issues with the e-commerce executives who were playing the long game by putting growth ahead of profits.

“By around 2005, Amazon leaders believed they had matched or beaten Walmart on both product prices and on merchandise selection, but still potentially trailed Walmart in convenience because of Walmart’s sprawling network of stores and how those physical outposts could be used as pickup locations or delivery points for speedy online orders,” says Del Rey. “But over time, Amazon executives watched in disbelief as Walmart failed to focus on one of its key advantages.”

Walmart’s since snapped out of its digital slumber. The construction cranes in downtown Bentonville remind Del Rey of what Seattle went through when Amazon turned a neighbourhood of warehouses and shipyards into its headquarters. To pull even with Amazon in the war for top tech talent, Walmart’s building a campus on 350 acres that’ll include a Marriott hotel, corporate health and wellness centre and a childcare centre.

Both companies are still trying to figure out how to make money delivering groceries to our front doors. And health care, delivered in-store, online and in our homes, is the grand prize. More than 40 per cent of customers surveyed by Walmart said cost was their biggest impediment to getting health care and 80 per cent of U.S. stores are located in medically underserved communities. Delivering lower cost and more convenient health care could prove to be the knock-out punch in this decade-long clash of retail titans.

Could another company like Spotify or Instacart win out over Amazon and Walmart? “By the last quarter of 2022, many of the upstarts that might one day threaten Amazon and Walmart found themselves on shaky ground,” says Del Rey.

And how about TikTok, with its promise to create a new and improved e-commerce experience for its one billion users? “Any large fulfillment network would take many, many years to pull off, even if things went smoothly.”

So for now, this clash of the titans continues with billions of dollars and millions of jobs on the line. Let’s hope they go the distance and push each other to do better.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Show don’t tell your employees that you care (review of Never Lose an Employee Again by Joey Coleman)

Don’t confuse one-off new employee orientation (here are the rules – do this, don’t do that, go here, not there) with the warm welcome of year-long onboarding.

The wunderkind you just hired is quitting. At least she gave you two weeks notice. Another promising new hire left during lunch and never returned. The employees who’ve stuck around are mailing it in after nearly a year on the job, still making rookie mistakes and frustrating you to no end.

Why don’t employees care as much about the business as you?

Here’s an uncomfortable answer.

Your employees don’t care because they believe you care more about the business than you care about them.

You might tell them that you care. And you might even think it. But employees aren’t seeing, feeling or believing it.

“You can say you care about your employees and you can even tell them that you care but when was the last time they witnessed you do something that showed you care?” asks Joey Coleman, author of Never Lose an Employee Again.

When it comes to new hires, Coleman says you have 100 days to show how much you care or you’ll pay a steep price.

Lots of organizations squander those 100 days by confusing orientation with onboarding.

Orientation is about working through a checklist. It’s filling out paperwork with a Human Resources rep, sitting through mandatory training, going on a whirlwind tour and being introduced to anyone and everyone you meet along the way. No one who sits alone in a cubicle completing a WHMIS quiz on their first day on the job thinks “wow, this is the organization for me”.

But they can think that if you use onboarding to warmly welcome new hires and set them up for success.

“Onboarding is a more robust, comprehensive approach for bringing a new employee into the organization,” says Coleman. “Onboarding assists and supports the new employee over time so they can develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes they need to be successful in their role.”

There’s definite room for improvement. A Gallup survey found that just 12 per cent of employees believe their company did a great job of onboarding. “For those of you who don’t want to do the math, that means that 88 per cent of employees find their company’s onboarding to be lackluster.”

Think of onboarding as a journey with eight phases for new hires to move through within that crucial 100 days.

“The eight phases track the employee journey from the time someone first considers working with the organization to the time when the employee refers potential new hires and sees the employer as an indispensable part of their life. Every employee has the potential to travel through all eight phases, but not all employees will. Some employees will leave mid-journey. Others will stall out along the way.”

A key phase overlooked by many organizations is the time between new employees accepting the job and their first day at work. They can be wrestling with an acute case of hire’s remorse, wondering and worrying if they made the right decision. You need to affirm their choice.

Another important phase is when your new hire achieves their first big goal. “Acknowledge the significance of an employee reaching their desired results and celebrate this milestone achievement,” says Coleman.

In every phase, Coleman says you can pick and choose from six ways of communicating with your new hires and showing that you care. There are in-person conversations, email, mail, phone calls, videos and gifts.

“Each of these communication formats creates a different level of emotional connection and experience,” says Coleman.

Here’s one final piece of advice for organizations looking to retain great talent. “Do unto your employees as you would have your employees do unto you. Forgive me for paraphrasing the Golden Rule, but it’s that important.

“If it would irritate you to have an employee cancel a one-on-one status update or briefing with you the morning of the meeting, don’t do it to them. Don’t cancel one-on-one meetings with your employees. Show them how valuable they are by treating meetings with them as sacrosanct.”

When it comes to caring about your employees, showing trumps telling and what you show them just might get them caring as much about the business as you.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager with McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books since 1999.

The business of disinformation in an industry built on woo-woo (review of Conspirtuality by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker)

Did you hear the one about your neighbourhood yoga studio that’s actually a griftshop and QAnon recruitment centre?

Too bad it’s not just another off-the-wall conspiracy theory.

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker warn about the toxic marriage of New Age spiritualism with QAnon-infused fever dreams in their book Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.

“Anti-vax sentiments and kooky ideas about hot yoga increasing one’s immunity to a virus were not new, and the fact they were exploding during a pandemic was on-brand for an industry built on woo-woo,” say the authors who are veterans of wellness and yoga practices.

“But was it really possible that former friends and colleagues could cross the Rubicon into believing that Democrats were harvesting the blood of children in satanic rituals? That they could be pulled across the threshold between green smoothie social media into the cesspools of anonymous message boards?

“Well, yes, it was. And worse than that, for some influencers that threshold became a chalk line in a game of hopscotch. How, with all their talk about healing and oneness, had they fallen into a rabbit hole of right-wing paranoia scented with New Age candles?”

Follow the money. The fear of losing it and the promise of making a ton of it can lead the best of us astray. Yogaworld’s not immune, according to the authors who’ve all worked in it. It’s a precarious business at the best of times and the pandemic was among the worst of times for studio owners with soaring rents and instructors living paycheque to paycheque.

“The modern urban yoga studio has always been on the bleeding edge of rising real estate prices, especially in areas where the working class is driven out and yuppies flood in with income to burn on boutique wellness.

“Studios, which functioned as a hub for gig-working teachers, would always make some money for a while but the margins would tighten as rents went up. What saved the bacon of most urban yoga studios was the high ticket price of the yoga teacher training program. As studios raced to keep ahead of their rents, and yoga teachers searched for pathways toward influencer-dom, the entry-level training became a pipeline for 500, 750 and 1,000-hour upgrades.”

Along with pricey and endless training, the authors say entrepreneurial teachers and studio owners with big bills to pay veered off into the world of pseudoscience by selling everything from supplements and essential oils to crystal therapy, cacao ceremonies, meditation circles and transformational breathing.

“In tragic cases, a yoga school could try to boost its income by going further than organizing a pyramid of self-feeding trainings,” say the authors. “They could buy into a multi-level marketing scheme. The MLM machine carries an added sting when it exploits the New Age, yoga and wellness worlds. When yoga teachers are recruited into an essential oil scheme, the constant pressure can turn every interaction with a client or student into a recruitment pitch. A yoga studio owner can easily cross-market high-priced teacher trainings with the promises of MLM participation using the same language of self-development and financial autonomy.”

The authors say the global pandemic that shuttered studios and forced everyone online put already anxious New Age spiritualists at risk of being an even easier mark for conspiracy theorists. Both went into the pandemic already harboring a mutual mistrust of Big Pharma and Big Government.

“Conspirituality and QAnon came along to provide a way for political angst and aggression to be disguised in the language of spiritual righteousness and transformation.”

Is there a way out? The authors end their book with cautionary stories of people who lost, or became estranged from, loved ones who fell prey to conspirituality.

“They have figured out something that a lot of us will have to learn in the post-QAnon, post-pandemic world. How to live in one world while caring for someone in another in a way that keeps the door open. We believe this is a position that more and more of us will have to confront.”

So if you wander into a grift shop disguised as a yoga studio, don’t sign up for training programs, treatments, supplements, pills, circles and ceremonies. Walk out the door and keep searching until you find a studio that’ll sell you nothing but conspiracy-free yoga classes.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Beware of dream jobs (review of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff)

I got three things right with my career.

I avoided soul-crushing commutes by always working and living in the same city. My current commute is the best yet – a stress-free 20-minute walk through a park and a neighbourhood.

I worked for big employers – a hospital, steelmaker, college and university – full of good people doing important work. I’ve enjoyed never being the smartest person in any room.

And I never bothered to find my calling, pursue my passion and land my dream job. I opted instead for jobs that were good enough. I cared about the work but only liked, and never madly, truly or deeply loved, what I did for a living.

Simone Stolzoff would agree that was a smart choice.

“The notion that we should always love our jobs creates outsized expectations for what a job can deliver,” says Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job. “It ignores the tedium that exists in every line of work, blinds us to the flaws a dream job may have, and creates conditions in which workers are willing to accept less than they deserve.”

Dream jobs can turn into nightmares. You work long hours for little or no money (hello, unpaid internships) on the vague promise of a permanent position or promotion once you’ve paid your dues, proven your worth and separated yourself from the pack.

You’re constantly reminded of the hordes of people who’d do anything for the opportunity you’ve been given. You’re told that you’re blessed to be part of a family, even though your real family will be the only ones who remember all the nights, weekends and holidays you worked.

Taking the sting out of your sacrifices will be perks that initially make your dream job seem even dreamier. Don’t be fooled by the late night meals delivered to your desk, the car service that takes you home, the 24/7 on-site gym, basketball court and the fully stocked kitchenette, says Stolzoff. Your employer isn’t offering these freebies out of the goodness of their heart – they want to keep you working without distractions or a care in the world for as long as inhumanely possible.

“The office doesn’t need to be your car or your gym or your go-to dinner spot – and not because cocktails or office gyms or catered dinners are inherently bad. It’s because work should be a means to an end. And in the end, we should go home.”

Some of us choose not to go home because the line between what we do for a living and who we are gets blurry. Our jobs become the primary or sole source for our sense of identity, self-worth, community and happiness. That’s a big problem when we get laid off, let go or burn ourselves out.

“I don’t believe a more transactional approach to work needs to come at the expense of caring about your job and doing great work,” says Stolzoff. “There is nothing wrong with aligning your work with your interests or working hard to refine your craft. Rather, I’m advocating for a collective reorientation of our expectations. Much as it is unrealistic to expect a spouse to fulfill our every social, emotional and intellectual need, it is unrealistic to expect a job to be our sole method of self-actualization. That’s a burden our jobs are not designed to bear.”

Stolzoff interviewed hundreds of people for his book. “I found that those with the healthiest relationships to their work had one thing in common: they all had a strong sense of who they were when they weren’t working.

“Developing a healthier relationship with work starts with defining what you want that relationship to be. If not, your employer will happily define the relationship for you.”

Stolzoff ends his book with a simple suggestion. When making small talk, don’t ask strangers what they do. Ask instead what they like to do. It’s a question worth asking yourself as well if you’re looking to reclaim life from work.

“Maybe you like to read fiction. Maybe you like to cook Mediterranean food. Maybe you like to watercolour or to write. Maybe you do those things for work. Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s good enough.”

Photo by Krill_makes_pics on Pixabay.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Facing a catastrophe without a playbook or a rainy day fund (review of Liz Hoffman’s Crash Landing)

The good times were still rolling when the masters of the universe gathered for their annual capitalist cheerfest in Davos, Switzerland.

The World Economic Forum was in full swing in late January 2020 even as Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China, was on lockdown.

“Corporate executives, hedge fund titans and government officials disembarked from helicopters and black cars to spend five days doling out management advice to the developing world and patting themselves on the back for it,” says Liz Hoffman, journalist and author of Crash Landing.

Solving global warning was the hot topic. The coronavirus was a non-issue and alarm bells had yet to go off. “Nobody makes friends at Davos by being a bummer,” says Hoffman.

No one was ready for what was just weeks away.

While the economy was on an 11-year boom, corporate debt was ballooning as companies borrowed to finance acquisitions and buy back their own stock.

“Companies doled out nearly all of their profits to shareholders in a bid to keep their stock prices climbing. Those that kept large cash reserves were ridiculed as fat and lazy, relics of a sleepier age of American business when rainy-day funds were common. It was all part of the broader push to efficiency that was a hallmark of twenty-first century corporate management. Bloat was out. Thin was in.”

Household debt was also soaring. Wages had stagnated and millions of workers were forced out of stable union and corporate jobs and into the gig economy. Like corporations, they had no savings to fall back on and were one missed paycheque away from disaster.

“The global economy was teetering on a precipice, but everyone was simply admiring the view.”

And then everything everywhere fell apart with a swift and total global economic shutdown.

“For the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies, March 11 was a day of unprecedented decisions made on the fly. Their stocks were tanking. Their employees were terrified. For the lucky ones, their business was merely suffering; for others, their business seemed to no longer make sense.”

Hoffman reports on how senior executives at Hilton, Ford, Airbnb, Delta Airlines and Morgan Stanley kept their companies going through the pandemic.

So how did some of the world’s biggest companies survive? They were the beneficiaries of trillions of dollars to be repaid by future generations of taxpayers in what Hoffman calls the mother of all government stimulus efforts.

“The prospect of such a giant pot of money had set off a rush in corporate American to get in line at the fiscal trough. Some industries could rightly argue they would be toast without help. Others saw a chance to secure special breaks in a moment when the spigots seemed open.”

CEOs faced new challenges at the back end of the pandemic as the economy recovered as quickly as it had tanked. “Supply and demand are the two basic forces at work in an economy,” says Hoffman. “The pandemic upended that balance twice, and nearly all the economic pain it brought – and will continue to bring for years to come – can be explained by that act of disruption.

“In the early days of the pandemic, supply outstripped demand for nearly everything – flights, hotel bookings, cars, concert tickets, restaurant tables, even labor. On the way out of the pandemic, those forces reversed. That exploding demand ran headlong into massive supply shortages.”

While CEOs wrestled with the Great Resignation and a less than enthusiastic return to the office, the rest of us were stunned at our grocery bills and higher costs across the board on pretty much everything.

“What is clear is that the economy that emerges from the pandemic is not the same one that crashed headlong into it,” says Hoffman. “Soaring inflation has consumers doubting the dollars in their wallets for the first time in four decades. The labour market will take years to find an equilibrium, and that period will test whether America’s debt to essential workers is repaid financially in the form of better pay and more investment.”

Repaying that debt is a question worth asking on this side of the border as well.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Illustration by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash.

The best way to get a job? Don’t ask for one. (review of Designing Your New Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans)

I meet with public relations students every year to warn them against making the same mistake I made as a freshly minted grad.

I left university with a pair of degrees back in 1992. I’d made it on the Dean’s Honour List for three of my four years as an undergrad thanks to electives in creative writing and film studies. I got some real-world experience with a month-long internship during my masters degree. And I drew a cartoon strip for the student paper.

I assumed the world would beat a path to my door. That didn’t happen. Hundreds of resumes went out. About a dozen rejection letters came back. I wore the suit my parents bought me as a graduation gift to just one job interview. It was a long and brutal year of wandering through the wilderness.

But then I started doing what Bill Burnett and Dave Evans recommend in their book.

“The best way to get a job is not to ask for a job, it’s to ask for the story,” say Burnett and Evans, authors of Designing Your New Work Life.

“Ask for (lots and lots of) stories and you’ll find a job. The most effective way we know of to pursue and land new job opportunities starts with prototype conversations, rooted in sincere curiosity, with professionals in your area of career interest.”

It’s advice that worked for me. I quit looking for a job and starting having conversations. I met with pretty much everyone in town who worked in public relations. They told their stories. I told mine. I never asked if they were hiring or left my resume as a parting gift.

One of those PR pros posted a job a few months after we met. My curiosity and initiative made an impression. I got the job and the rest is history.

Burnett and Evans also have sound advice for those of us who are close to becoming freshly minted retirees.

It’s tempting to look back on our careers and dwell on what could’ve been, compare ourselves to colleagues who climbed further and faster and fool ourselves into thinking we’ve yet to pass our career peak and should take one last big swing at the plate.

Replace all those second thoughts with this one truth – whatever you’re doing right now is good enough for now.

“Isn’t that a relief? Good enough for now is one of the big reframes of this book,” say Burnett and Evans.

“In our society, the message from the media, from our culture and from all around us is that enough is never enough. That nagging voice in your head, the one that compares you to everybody else, is saying that everyone else has more and I’d be happier if I had more, too. You’re pretty sure that everyone else already has more than you and you’re missing out. You know the voice we’re talking about. It plays in an endless loop in your head.

“This idea of always needing or wanting ‘more’ can make us profoundly unhappy and a little crazy too. You can use this never-enough, wanting-more, not-good-enough mindset to ruin just about anything in life.

“The real question isn’t: how much money, time, power, impact, meaning, status, retirement savings, (fill in the blank with your favourite thing to want more of) do you have?

“The real question is: how’s it going, right now?”

Chances are it’s going great on the career front. You likely already have more than enough and all you really need. There’s nothing left to prove and you’re not missing out on anything that truly matters.

Think back to your wilderness-wandering days as a freshly minted grad. If you’d been told this is how your career would play out – the places you’d go and the people you’d meet – you likely would’ve been relieved, a little dumbfounded and so very grateful. Your future would’ve have seemed far more than just good enough.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager with McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Getting and staying ahead by leaving others behind (review of Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, By America)

Do you really need a tax break if you can afford to spend the equivalent of a mortgage payment or a month’s rent on a two-night stay at a resort?

Probably not. But that didn’t stop me from claiming the new staycation tax credit while filing my taxes.

That decision drove home the key message in Matthew Desmond’s latest book Poverty, By America and made for some uncomfortable reading.

“Books about poverty tend to be books about the poor,” writes Desmond, a Princeton University sociology professor and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted.

“These kinds of books help us understand the nature of poverty. But they do not – and in fact cannot – answer the most fundamental question, which is why? To understand the causes of poverty, we must look beyond the poor. Those of us living lives of privilege and plenty must examine ourselves. Are we – we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college educated, the protected, the lucky – connected to all these needless suffering?”

We’re not just connected – we’re beneficiaries, says Desmond. He shows how we’re getting and staying ahead by leaving others behind.

We’re all for poverty reduction until it could potentially hurt our property values, investment portfolios, tax bills and our kids’ schools.

We say reducing poverty’s a priority but we don’t spend like it. As Desmond points out, we take pride in buying local and organic fruits and vegetables. “But we don’t ask what the farmworkers made picking them.” The same holds true for the gig workers who deliver the whole world to our front doors.

“We reward companies that run antiracism marketing campaigns without recognizing how these campaigns can distract from those companies’ abysmal labor practices, as if shortchanging workers isn’t often itself a kind of racism.”

We love no-fee banking yet don’t question our banks over the overdraft charges slapped on people who don’t have a steady paycheque to cover their bills.

And when the poor speak up and tell us they’re hungry, we convene expert panels, task forces and roundtables, says Desmond. “Complexity is the refuge of the powerful. Most social problems are complicated, of course, but a retreat into complexity is more often a reflection of our social standing than evidence of critical intelligence.”

We’ve also fallen for what Desmond calls the scarcity diversion. “Here’s the playbook. First, allow elites to hoard a resource like money or land. Second, pretend that arrangement is natural, unavoidable – or better yet, ignore it altogether. Third, attempt to address social problems caused by the resource hoarding only with the scare resources left over. So instead of making the rich pay all their taxes, for instance, design a welfare state around the paltry budget you are left with when they don’t. Fourth, fail. Fail to drive down the poverty rate. Fail to build more affordable housing. Fifth, claim this is the best you can do. Preface your comments by saying “in a world of scare resources…”. Blame government programs. Blame capitalism. Blame the other political party. Blame immigrants. Blame anyone you can except those who most deserve it. ‘Gaslighting’ is not too strong a phrase to describe such pretense.”

Desmond argues we’re blessed with more than enough abundance to eliminate poverty. Having the have-lots pay their fair and full share in taxes is a good start. “Lift the floor by rebalancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reining in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation.”

The costs are too high to do nothing or convene yet another expert panel. “Poverty is the dream killer, the capability destroyer, the great waster of human potential,” says Desmond. “Every person, every company, every institution that has a role in perpetuating poverty also has a role in ameliorating it. The end of poverty is something to stand for, to march for, to sacrifice for. We don’t need to outsmart this problem. We need to outhate it.”

Photo by Max Bohme on Unsplash.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has written business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

The right way to reboot your career (review of Joanne Lipman’s Next: The Power of Reinvention in Life & Work)

Here are five things to know before rebooting your career.

It’ll take longer than you think. It’ll be harder than you can imagine. Never go it alone. Don’t jump into the complete unknown. And while it won’t be easy, it’ll be way better than sticking with a career that’s burning you out, boring you out of your mind or bumming you out because it’s all paycheque and no purpose.

“Many of us are looking for meaningful change, seeking what’s next, and yet we aren’t always sure how to get there,” says Joanne Lipman, journalist and author of Next: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. “There are ways to navigate these transitions with less stress and more agency.”

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and academic research, Lipman’s found a way. Her four-step reinvention roadmap starts with searching for what’s next, followed by struggle and a stop and then finally a solution.

“The process isn’t carved in stone,” says Lipman. “A particular stage may last hours or it may linger for years. You may go through the steps in a different order, or more than once. In some cases, the struggle is the catalyst rather than the search. You may breeze through one stage only to be thrown back to repeat another one.”

Too many of us focus on the first and last steps and ignore the messy middle, hoping that career reinventions can happen overnight. “That middle step is actually the most important: the struggle. It’s a slog. The struggle can be agonizing and almost unbearably frustrating. Nobody wants to go through it. Who wouldn’t rather glide smoothly from one path to the next?

“Too bad. The struggle isn’t just necessary; in virtually every arena of transformation, it’s the key to finding a solution.”

Lipman recommends recruiting expert companions. Connect with someone who’s an expert at what you hope to do next. And stay connected with someone who’s an expert at knowing you, your strengths, blind spots and passions.

“Sometimes to get beyond the struggle and power through to the solution, we need help. We can’t quite make the leap on our own. Sometimes we’re just stuck in our own heads, endlessly thinking and cogitating and daydreaming but unable to figure out if we are making the correct decision. That’s where an expert companion can make the difference.”

Here’s another key piece of advice from Lipman. Move before you move. Take small steps rather than a giant leap of faith. Ease into your reboot. “Most people begin edging toward a major transformation, often unknowingly, before they embrace it wholeheartedly. Giant leaps made without preparation are rare and likely to fail. Instead, those who are successful at making big changes take early steps during the search phase, often before they are aware of what they’re doing.”

Early in her career with the Wall Street Journal, Lipman interviewed the advertising executive who had dreamed up “I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid” and Kodak’s “Picture a Brand New World”. The executive wrote novels on the side. “Like so many of us, he harbored fantasies about another kind of life. Sure, he was a successful professional, admired in his field. He had already invested decades of his life in his advertising career. He was well into middle age.

“Yet he had an itch that wasn’t scratched by his job. He wanted to create novels, not ad copy.”

Despite brutal reviews for his early novels, James Patterson kept at it. He’s now written or co-authored more than 250 books that have sold over 400 million copies, making him the wealthiest author in America.

Patterson kept working in advertising even after he’d written 10 books. He decided to quit advertising one Sunday afternoon stuck in traffic on his drive back to the office. “He was always a novelist, just one who earned a living for a few decades doing something else,” says Lipman.

If you’ve spent a few years or decades doing something else, Lipman can help you figure out how to become what you were always meant to be.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager at McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

How mutts at pounds became rescue dogs at shelters (review of Chuck Thompson’s The Status Revolution: The Improbable Story of How the Lowbrow Became the Highbrow)

How do you know if someone’s adopted a rescue dog?

They can’t wait to tell you.

And how do you know if someone’s bought a dog from a breeder?

They don’t want to tell you or they apologize.

Not so long ago, buying a pricey pup was a status marker for the have-lots.

The have-nots went to the pound and bought themselves cheap mutts.

But then a California shelter overrun with abandoned pets rebranded strays as rescue dogs and launched a global revolution. Rescue dogs became the new status symbol available to everyone.

The top reasons to adopt a dog according to the American Humane Society? You’ll save a life and bragging rights.

Owning a rescue dog became a badge of honour, says Chuck Thompson, author of The Status Revolution. “A badge that said I am a good person, I care about living creatures, I am virtuous. I am better than other pet owners. It conveyed status, but a new kind of status, one disconnected from wealth, talent, intelligence, success, religious or professional standing.”

That disconnect isn’t limited to just your neighborhood dog park. Thompson says a rebellion’s underway against pretty much all traditional measures and markers of status, prestige, luxury and privilege. “It’s taken hold at all levels of society. It’s swamping the status industry, from the academics who track and analyze it to the philosophers who explain it, the companies that manufacture it, the marketers that promote it, the retailers that sell it, the media that popularize it and the consumers who buy it.

“Like topped statues of Confederate generals and Founding Fathers, it’s possible that within a generation or two, traditional totems of status will have been rendered obsolete, and new ones erected in their places.”

Philanthropy’s traditional totems of status are also changing thanks to one of the world’s richest women.

Mackenzie Scott has pledged to give away her entire $60 billion fortune. She’s already donated more than $14 billion to around 1,600 non-profits. Many of those organizations had no idea Scott’s cheques were in the mail.

“The amount of Scott’s giveaway was shocking,”says Thompson. “What make it transformative, what ‘upended’ the philanthropy establishment, was the way in which donations were made. Many were sent to organizations that hadn’t even applied for grants, that didn’t even know they were on Scott’s radar.”

It’s an approach that lets non-profits stay focused on delivering programs and services and not spend time or money applying for grants.

What’s more, Scott doesn’t dictate how her donations should be spent, trusting that non-profits know best how to invest the money for maximum impact. There are no follow-up reporting requirements and Scott shuns recognition. You won’t find Scott’s name on buildings or see pictures of her holding giant cheques or cutting ribbons with giant scissors.

“Scott’s out-of-the-blue commitment to ‘trust-based philanthropy’ shocked just about everyone,” says Thompson. “Understood by everyone in the philanthropy trade, ‘full trust and no strings attached’ were code words that scared traditional foundations whose habit of sitting on millions and billions of assets, while annually parsing out the legal minimum five per cent of their endowments to pet projects with more strings than a marionette, was suddenly cast into an unwelcome spotlight,” says Thompson.

Following Scott’s lead, San Franciso-based Whitman Institute joined a growing number of ‘spend-down foundations’.

“This is another newish operating model that dictates a foundation should spend down or ‘spend out’ all of its capital reserves within a designated period of time, and then, once all the money is gone, simply cease to exist,” says Thompson. “The give-it-all-away rationale is that if a foundation’s true goal is to help alleviate a particular social ill, it should damn the torpedoes and throw everything it has available at the problem.”

Status is in chaos and Thompson does a masterful job of explaining why and previewing what’s next. “For the first time in history, social status is becoming available to the masses. Status, luxury, even prestige are now commodities within everyone’s grasp. Status is no longer for the gilded elect. It’s for everyone. The curtain is drawn. Everyone gets backstage. Everyone’s a VIP.”

Photo by Connor Home on Unsplash.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager at McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.