MY BLOG ADDRESS HAS CHANGED!

Many thanks to Google, for facilitating my introduction to blogging.
I can now be found at:

HTTP://WWW.ACCORDADVISORYGROUP.COM

See you there!
Best,

Ian

What Banks Know

Some years ago, before Depression panic gripped the world, I had the opportunity to consult with several members of the banking industry. Each was involved in an obscure area of work, destined to become headline news within a few years. And whether discussing complex derivative trades or the structuring of collateralized debt obligation tranches, each reflected an industry-wide secret. It was known to individuals, but because it fell outside of the industry’s normative culture, it resided within the personal anxieties of industry players, so that the merry-go round could continue to turn.

Opposing knowledge were the final days of 21st Century Weimar: thousand dollar bottles of champagne at over-priced exclusive clubs for the finance teams that had worked feverishly to bring in the deals; private plane chartered to international soccer matches; hob nobbing with C-Suite bankers in the Colorado snow; wind surfing off the most perfect secret spot in an undisclosed South American country.

The secret was that bad debt was spreading virally throughout the world, as bankers and investors gobbled up its dubiously rated super secure ratings. The speed with which merger and acquisitions had to be consummated in that final year, meant little sleep. And the terrific profit margins for lenders that had typified the growing generation of risky debt, began to diminish rapidly. Yet the players could not withdraw because their organizational roles required that they continue to play. If one bank refused a deal, then another would take it; and reputation was at stake. Standards loosened. Yet, while personal reflection of participants within the context of psychological business consultation was focused right on target, nothing of this was permitted in the workplace because the goal-determined purpose of the work required a uniformity of belief in corporate alignment. And this was affirmed in industry alignment.

Slowly, the clients I knew, began to revise their career plans. They were paid well to leave, either to pass the baton or to close up shop. Remarkably, the knowledge underlying their individual anxieties became lost to their work organizations. So that when the larger societal world caught up with the dilemma, the organization could truly claim ignorance: not only had knowledge been off-limits, but also those who knew and couldn’t say, were no longer around. Incentives to stay demanded the ignorance of the group; and incentives to leave made sure the group’s ignorance could be validated

Mister Market

Mr Market, goes the common wisdom, suffers from bipolar disorder. We join him in his enthusiasms—momentarily gratifying our greed and desire as we attempt to amplify wealth; and then our stomachs tighten and grip as his mood swing plummets to strip our dreams. We say the losses are on “paper”; but bitterly remember that the paper was once meaningful--- available for redemption and use.

We believe in Mr Market, as we believe in bankers and advisors who guide us and entice us, because, despite our education and the availability of information, it remains exquisitely hard to know what to do to grow our savings and so insure our financial stability. So we declare ourselves adherents of the long term or the short term, the day trade or of buy-and-hold, of value, of growth, of dividend and price-to-earnings. We advocate shareholder rights although we have no idea of the secrets that the balance sheet contains. And now, our harrowing experiences of mark-to-market have been traumatic: a condition which shuts down thinking instead of generating a tolerable loss from which to develop understanding.

So our crisis is larger than the S&P and the Dow: it is a dawning recognition that our lives are balanced on belief, warranted and unwarranted, in systems and the performances of individuals playing roles in systemic drama.

We must save and don’t know what that means, really, as the value of currency erodes and prices increase. We seek counsel to guide and to soothe. And our counselor looks to his colleague to affirm that he’s doing it correctly; and their company looks to the practices of similar organizations to affirm that they are doing it correctly. And because we are focused on our own fragility, we hardly notice that we are, ourselves, playing an input role within a system for processing wealth from broker to firm to industry.

We disconnect our wealth from our anxiety as we plan prudent action. And we disconnect our prudent acts from their uniformity with others’ similarly rational acts as we place our trust in those advisors we believe know more. And we chose not to see the pressures under which our advisors work, to affirm to ourselves that they are better than the rest --- which means, that they must participate in a common culture of commerce: but of course, do it much better than others, because we are choosing them and we demand the best. Our first condition is not understanding, but thin belief, based not upon conviction, but upon our own exaggerated illusions of understanding.

Most of us take aspects of the cultures that are lived by us for granted. And under the current shock of economic reality, we are in a place of panic rather than reflection. Yet the underlying dynamics of the situation which took us here--- us and not the bankers and brokers--- requires consideration. We have relied on shortcuts to knowing about personal finance---as we’ve assured ourselves that the sales assurances of our vendors have been objective. Mostly, though, we have ignored how bound within our economic and commercial systems we have been as our self preservative instincts have sought false security. We have traded careful thought in managing risk in relation to our own needs for the temporary illusion of having made the same wise investment decisions as everyone else.

Too Loose in Place of Too Tight

Attending a recent networking meeting of C-level executives, I was struck by an unaddressed cultural disconnect between presenters’ assumptions and the worlds from which attendees had come.

Addressing “how to” aspects of job search, the recruitment and career advisement professionals uniformly advocated the use of social networking. Future jobs, they said, would come not from recruiters, but from distant connections of workplace colleagues and their friends. Opportunity lay in multiple resources just outside the scope of anyone’s knowledge. It lay within the resources of unknown people, known by someone known to someone you knew.

The idealized picture was ripe with multiplicity just beyond reach;
and LinkedIn was the prototype. Though individuals scratched their heads at the utility of “working” such a system: everyone had hundreds of connections online and no one knew what to do with them. The message was, “only connect”, yet how, for what, and how much to say?

The problem, as I saw it, was neither capability nor desire, but cultural orientation. The executives I spoke with hailed from lifetimes within corporate structures. However streamlined their organizations had been, routines and tasks been typified by a clarity of boundaries and rules. Protocols had existed both within organizations and between organizations for initiation and sustenance of contact. Recruiters and career consultants mediated the conversion process of movement from one occupational placement to another. And now this : the necessity of activating one’s own, self-constructed skein of contacts. The recruiters were telling the recruits to puzzle it out for themselves.

The problem was that where clarity and tight linkages once existed, a risky sense of looseness now seemed normative. Yes, it was necessary to maintain pristine clarity as one negotiated the job search, step-by-step, because a misstep or misstatement might derail a finely wrought, but delicate process; but the larger necessity of defining what was “out there”--- the possibilities inhering in the environment: these were murky. So, while a loosely connected world of possibility has become the norm, where a clarity of boundaries had once prevailed, the same formal precision of goal attainment still holds: a very difficult tightrope to walk.

While the message remained upbeat, what remained unsaid was the subtext: comfort within a loosely coupled world would define the occupational survivor, once securely held within the tight interconnections of corporate structure.

A Circle of Happiness

Tolstoy was right. In a sense . All happy families are similar. But a brilliant study, just out in the BMJ, drawn from 20 years of epidemiological research in the Framingham Heart Study, illustrates how. Authors JH Fowler and NA Christakis trace the workings of social networks and the “contagion” of happiness among nearby friends and neighbors.

They show the enormous power of having happy friends. But first, it is helpful to have been happy if you are going to be happy. In fact, future happiness is 300% more likely for people who have been happy than for unhappy people. However we become happy, we have an enormous competitive advantage in the work of happiness maintenance, relative to those who don't. And that's just the beginning.

Next, comes association with happy people: significantly, these are the people with whom we identify--- the guy next door, and nearby friends who feel friendly to us, too. As they become happy, we become happy.

The effect is awesome: happy people have the main court advantage. Because happiness affects all kinds of personal functioning, and because its effects are multiplicative, personal wellbeing among the happy skyrockets past its levels for unhappy people; and yields benefits.

Happiness, this study reflects, develops under the radar, through effective social interaction. It does not evolve in workplace networks. Perhaps our happiness at work is more internal: what it means to us. Back in the 1950’s, motivational research reflected that many of work’s incentives did not so much make us happy, but rather, relieved a sense of dissatisfaction. Withdraw the incentives and the dissatisfactions of daily life return.

But happiness exists on another level: it is actually attainable, in part, through social networks, through genuine associations with people who become mutually important to one another.

This is an important finding, applicable to us all: it is not just the mining of social networks that is critical to our well-being, but the active and positive contribution to others ---- those efforts that evoke pleasure and the joys of gratitude in receiving---- that themselves redouble upon us!

Concretely, it might begin with passing on a job lead to an associate you know might qualify. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. What might she feel? Relief, pleasure, care…. Happiness. Regardless of how it ultimately turns out, her view of you has shifted a bit: you have contributed to her happiness. And what goes around, comes around. Mutuality, collaboration—the positive acts that make others happy, ultimately make us happy as well.

Embracing the Slash

I woke this morning to the radio’s discussion by a chipper 20-something about her “slashes”. It took a few moments to figure out what she was saying, which was shorthand for freelance projects. She began each with her profession, followed by a “slash”, and then a description of a task. She’d just been fired from her job as a journalist-slash-blogger, and was talking about how unwise she’d been in dedicating 60% of her time to her last client. She wouldn’t make that mistake again—too many eggs in a single basket! Briefly, I wondered about the time percentages necessary for a personal sense of cohesion. And then, I realized: her cohesion was “up-front”, separated from the work she was doing by a graphic boundary: the slash.

As psychologist-slash- blogger, I recognized that the slash was protective: it insured coherence, as if to declare, in my case, I am a psychologist. I am currently operating in the capacity of blogger. But then, I became concerned by the word “slash” itself. Its definition has something to do with a sharp instrument’s sweeping cut. Yes, I’m aware that it is also a diacritical mark, a “stroke”. But what is its effect as a gash, or cut? The form of the construction seems both to preserve identity and radically sever the person from the thing he does. The journalist’s example was autoworker-slash-dogwalker. That is, an autoworker, currently in the business of walking dogs.

Useful: But when does the autoworker-slash-dogwalker morph into dogwalker?

I realized that the “slash” construction preserves a transitional state. In the journalist’s case, it was a semi-permanent transition: her profession always remains segregated from what followed. She was a journalist but could "do" all these other, useful things: she had capacities to build on. However, in the autoworker’s case, the slash construction would allow the person to “try on” something new. The choice to “become” a dogwalker or to remain an autoworker-slash-dogwalker would remain his.

Matthew Bud, who is the Chair of The Financial Executives’ Networking Group has clearly staked out the professional’s midlife landscape this way: “Job search for those of us over the age of 40 is a PERMANENT activity in your life….. All jobs are temporary. Even when you are working, you are only between searches.” This is a game plan.

And the slash construction, in this regard, is an enormously useful tool: I am a professional-slash-job seeker. It preserves the “who” of identity, while softening the work of transition. It allows the individual to maintain the essential anchor point of one’s
professional value, while allowing for new set-points of possibility and opportunity.

The radical slash separating professional training from current task has a double function. It is both protective of self-interest and personal coherence while at the same time opening up possibility for the creative use of one’s talents. It may, however, take a bit of getting used to.

Clarifying an “adrenaline withdrawl”

A senior financial executive, between projects, wondered whether his changed behavior--- reflected in difficulty staying motivated in searching for new projects, social withdrawl, and too much time spent sleeping--- might be the result of adrenaline withdrawl. Prior to downsizing, he’d always gravitated to challenging and active corporate situations. A brief chat with a consulting psychologist resulted in the hypothesis that he might be going through “adrenaline withdrawl” following dismissal from his last position. The consultant’s recommendation effectively covered the bases by citing what seemed like physical exhaustion followed by mood problems. The recommended course of action was to begin with a complete physical exam related to energy level, sleep, and over-all wellbeing.

The explanatory value of “adrenaline withdrawl” in this situation seems to have been narrative rather than physical. The executive had not actively sought environmental stressors on the job to boost his levels of epinephrine- a hormone central in stress reactions. While the position had kept him active, the precursor to his current difficulties was a radical downshifting in activity level. My hunch is that the executive’s withdrawl was compounded from a complex array of meaningful activities:
1) an income producing position that
2) provided daily structure in a meaningful work week
3) including the provision of multiple, goal-related tasks that
4) required continued interaction and negotiation with fellow professionals
5) who “knew” the executive’s capabilities and valued his strengths and
6) all of this contributed to a robust sense of fullness --- at times too much fullness--- in a very meaningful professional life.

While “burnout” might have been a possibility for this executive, his desire for re-engagement argued against it. Rather, the multiple losses of: income, daily routine; meaningful and rewarded work; valuable social interaction; and a continued sense of being known, seem to have taken their toll. Consultation with his primary care physician was a great first step in assessing his physical condition. A significant question to be asked is whether the symptoms suggested to the consultant were profound enough to warrant treatment for depression.

Next, re-engagement with meaningful activities and friends is cardinal. These must begin even before a significant new project is located. And not to glumly hang out, but to relish whatever enjoyment may be taken at any given moment. This may seem trivial to the executive, remembering the challenges so recently before him; but the optimizing of the good in one’s life --- even in something as simple as delighting in the weather --- is a necessary condition for positive self-esteem and presentation. The work of generating work, when it is not immediately given through the tasks of a formal job, is exhausting. The lack of gratification may be felt as enervating. And it is necessary to do whatever is possible to maintain one’s strength and endurance. The finding of work when “between jobs” may itself be much more stressful than the work projects that develop in time.