As a career management advocate turned Entrepreneur Evangelist, I recently had an epiphany that clarified some of the change I’ve experienced over the past two years, as I’ve moved from my old life to my new one.

I’ve been lacking an effective metaphor to describe both the process and my present (and potentially future) state.  This has been tremendously frustrating (for both me and my husband), because my state of mind on this journey radically colors the choices that I am (or am not) comfortable making.

I think I finally figured out how to define it more effectively  We often talk about a “career path.” I think this is inaccurate. I think the right phrase is a “career highway.”

Right Lane = Stability-Motivated Employee

• One career and as few employers as possible.
• Stability reigns supreme.
• Even calculated risks are uncomfortable.
• Large enterprises and government positions often appeal most to this category.
• A single employer career with a stable retirment plan and reliable benefits is the Holy Grail, and boredom is acceptable at work in exchange for stability.
• Any necessary excitement can be sought outside of work when needed.
• “Progress” is most frequently measured in proximity to retirement, more than rungs climbed up a career ladder.

Second Lane = Migratory Employee

• The modern normal.
• An employee who will have 2-4 careers in a lifetime, and an average of 12-15 different jobs.
• Stability is important, but not above all else.
• Calculated career risks are worthwhile, if not occassionally exciting.
• Jumping to a new job is always a possibility if a more appealing opportunity presents itself.
• This employee is often heavily motivated by autonomy and new challenge, secondarily by money.

Center Lane = Freelancer

• The newest class of employee, often placing a premium on freedom and flexibility above stability.
• Often easily bored, and prefering variety with risk to stability with stagnation.
• Commonly enjoys being a solo entity, and is disinclined towards growing a business that requires taking on the responsibilities of having employees.
• Collaboration with other freelancers is often a successful and preferential model.
• “Dollars for hours” is the most common financial model, which can cause business development challenges.

Fourth Lane = Self-Employed

• Small businesses, often family or small-team owned/managed.
• Frequently limited in scalability.
• Often heavily reliant on founder(s) for success.
• Lifestyle businesses and brick-and-mortar neighborhood businesses often fall into this category.
• Not uncommon for an owner to discover that they ‘own a job’ rather than ‘own a business.’
• Freedom and wealth-building often started out as core priorities; over time, the realities of business limitations can undermine those objectives if this was not the intended final growth state of the business.

Left Lane = Business Owner

• Scalable businesses of all sizes.
• Owner/founder has decentralized systems, processes and critical knowledge enough to allow for empowerment and delegation among staff.
• Vacations and sick days for the founder are possible and cause little in the way of organizational chaos.
• This business is a strong candidate for potential sale, since success is not wholly dependent on the original founder for success.
• Owners/founders who build this type of business can/do often build more than one over the course of their lifetime.

Obviously this isn’t an entirely clean mapping, and different combinations can blend a bit to create a bit of a hybrid. But I think that the most meaningful part of the highway metaphor is the idea that people can change lanes over time. Different life factors can influence which lane someone chooses.

• I have seen dozens of female Second Laners have children, and then suddenly switch into either Right or Center Laners (depending on both their personality and their skillset).
• I have watched numerous Second Laners get laid off and decide to take on an entrepreneurial opportunity by moving immediately to the Center Lane, sometimes working their way farther over as time goes by.

This has been my path. I was an obsessive, workaholic Second Laner who was finding a ton of meaning and fun in the career that served me well, paid me nicely, stroked my ego constantly and took me on great professional adventures for a decade. When I hopped off the highway to move to a new town, I (arrogantly) assumed that I’d be able to just hop onto the new road in my new town without any trouble, and slide right back into the Second Lane again.

Unfortunately, my timing sucked. We left New York for Texas the week that Lehman Brothers decided to implode under the weight of their reckless decisions, and all of my pre-move job interview work collapsed with it. While not technically laid off, I found myself in the same position as many people who were: I was suddenly at loose ends with an inability to find a company that would let me do what I knew how to do. So, I shifted to the Center Lane.

The reality, though, is that at the time we started our business, I used the language that I knew my husband wanted to hear: and it was all Left Lane language. That’s what he wanted, that’s what he was going for, and that’s how we discussed it. The problem, of course, was that — like many new Center Laners — my hope was to bide my time until I could jump back into the Second Lane.

After a rough few months, I was finally given that chance. And, as luck would have it, it was on a trial basis. My new employer wanted the chance to check me out, and I certainly wanted the chance to check them out. As it turned out, that was the best thing that could have happened to my Career Highway Navigation. Going from the Center Lane back to the Second Lane suddenly felt painfully confining. Stifling, even. I was miserable within a week. I never saw that coming, and was a bit shocked to finally get what I’d wanted only to discover that I didn’t want it anymore.

So, after informing my employer that I didn’t foresee being able to sufficiently fill their needs, I stayed around to help them hire my replacement and then ultimately left. Back in the Center Lane again, I was at loose ends once more, but this time with a purpose. I just had to figure out how to make it work.

During this time, my husband began working on his startup. Everything about my husband is Left Lane. The idea of any other kind of business simply doesn’t make sense. And as a deeply collaborative person, he recognizes that he’ll need help to build a business that fits the bill.

Yet when it comes to me, in my professional life, I’m still in the Center Lane. I know that I don’t want to be in the Fourth Lane. But I’m honestly not sure that I want to be in the Left Lane, either. There are variations of the Center Lane model that are more lucrative and more sustainable than a strictly ‘dollars for hours’ model (which I also don’t want), but I’m not at all convinced that I can’t attain the degree of freedom I am looking for, accomplish the wealth-building I seek and manage to stay in the Center Lane.

But then, that’s part of the point: my A-#1 priority is freedom, above all else. I am not risk adverse (obviously), and I enjoy primarily being an individual contributor who occassionally collaborates on larger projects with others; I also don’t want to go back to managing people, projects, processes or products (been there, done that)… but I also don’t want to go back to working for anyone else. Given that, I don’t really see a solution other than the Center Lane for me.

My husband’s priority is to change the world, build a team of empowered collaborators and inspire the people who come into contact with his business to find creative solutions to large-scale problems. This is a goal he could never accomplish from the Center Lane. To do this on the scale that he wants, he needs to be in the Left Lane.

I always like the way the Left Lane looks. But I am increasingly less convinced that I’ll ever necessarily make my way all the way over there. But I’m also increasingly less convinced that I necessarily need to. With some proper planning and organizing, I could find that the Center Lane is the place that I’m happiest. Only time will tell. I just hope that next time I find myself switching lanes, I’m aware of it in time to turn on my blinker.

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In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the November round of layoffs at several big companies. Of course, part of what brought these to my attention is that a dear friend of mine got caught in the pre-holidays cut-backs at Adobe.

Even worse, however, was the fact that my friend loved working at Adobe. It was the first time she’d worked for a large company, so some of the perks that big company people take for granted — training, resources, perks, etc. — were all relatively new to her, and she was taking advantage of as many of them as possible.

While it’s probably unlikely that my friend is going to go off and start her own business at this point, I got to thinking about the hundreds of people who got the ax: what that meant to their holidays, their lives, their plans and their next steps.

Since a great many of the layoffs were in my beloved Bay Area, it’s unfortunate to realize that the already over-whelming glut of talent on the market is now going to be competing with an even larger pool of newly “free” talent for an extremely small number of jobs. Especially as we head into the end of the year, where many places are in a holding pattern until the beginning of Q1 (though, admittedly, many of those who do not intend to bring anyone on until after the first of the year, will be looking and identifying their new hires now).

I wonder how many entrepreneurs have just been unleashed. Maybe they are people who have wanted to start their own business for a while, but who weren’t ready to walk away from a steady paycheck to make it happen. Or how many are like me: reluctant entrepreneurs responding to circumstances first and foremost.

I look back on this past year, realizing that my journey has landed me somewhere I never imagined: happily self-employed. I certainly didn’t start out that way. I fought it, kicking and screaming, making my husband crazy, making myself miserable, worrying my friends and family, and generally resisting being knocked out of my comfort zone.

And now I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I don’t want to work for anyone else, and I can’t think of anything less appealing.

My holiday wish for the people who found themselves on the receiving end of some holiday uncheer is that they find the courage to take advantage of the opportunity. The era of big business is over. Now is the time to either start your own business or join someone else’s startup. And if you can do it while you’re still getting a severance, then even better: let your former employer help pay you to get a new business off the ground!

Self-employment isn’t for everyone. But I do believe that, for those of us with a strong inclination to take charge (and/or a strong aversion to following directions from others), eventually the opportunity will present itself and, given the right circumstances, it’ll prove a far more enjoyable road than the same-old-same-old.

Besides, we’re in the Information Age now. The same-old-same-old is dead. Thank gods.

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Job hunting is rough for oh-so-many reasons. One of the things that is hardest about it, though, is managing your own attitude and spirits. If there is one thing that is liable to get you into trouble during a job hunt, it is unmanaged anxiety.

I’ve written before about some of the things that I discovered were helpful during a job hunt, but in talking to other people, some more questions have come up that I want to offer suggestions about.

Time is Like Money: You Can Only Spend it Once
This is one of those things that is really obvious, but that most of us need the occassional reminder about. Time is precious, and you have to consider when you are spending it wisely, versus when you are just blowing through it on the temperal equivelant of Twinkies.

A really, really great thing to do while you’re hunting for a job is finding local organizations to get involved with. It might be a non-profit, it might be a Meetup group, it might be an internship at a local company. Whatever it is, consider that volunteering your time gives you the following:

• you are (theoretically) doing something that can go on your resume to help fill in an employment gap
• you are networking with people you wouldn’t normally have access to
• you showcasing your skills to a new assortment of people who might have entirely different ideas that might be helpful for you
• you are working on things that can give you a sense of accomplishment and pride, which come across in your attitude when speaking to prospective recruiters/employers

The first thing that people say when you talk about volunteering their time during a job hunt is to counter with the ultra-important point: but I need to make money. Of course you do. No one is disputing that. But the point is that you cannot spend every possible second of the day job hunting. Aside from your mental health requiring a break, look at volunteering your time as time spent networking. If necessary, do it instead of something else (like watching TV).

You Are What You Eat
This one is hard, because when you are looking for a job, it’s often more comfortable to socialize with people who are either in the same boat or with people we know and with whom we feel safe. But there is no more important time to work on expanding your social networking than when you are job hunting. And, even more importantly, it’ll help keep you sharp.

Just like the food we consume helps determine our physical help, the information — including the attitudes, personalities, data and social cues — we consume will determine our mental health. People look like their friends and associates more often than not. If your friends and regular social circle are not providing you with the support and motivation you need, then start expanding your horizons to include some new influences.

Is your mother a downer who depresses you for days every time you talk? Then pick up a couple of cards at the dollar store so that you can write her quick “Thinking of You” cards for a while instead of calling her and letting her bring you down.

Is your best friend miserable in their life and only ever want to complain over drinks about how lousy a day they’ve had? Then shake things up a bit. Use being unemployed as an excuse to avoid going out for drinks (too expensive!), and drag them out to do something else instead. A game of bowling often costs the same as a single drink and lasts longer. It’s also a physical activity that will get you both moving a bit, provide some good people watching, and give you other things to talk about.

There is no need to “dump” the people you care about. Just don’t let them bring you down. And if some of the most important people in your life are not being helpful when it comes to keeping your spirits up, then it’s also fair game to tell them that you need their support and help in staying positive. Most people don’t realize when they start becoming a downer to be around. Often times, just pointing out that you are counting on them to keep your spirits up is enough to help them become more aware of their own habits.

I had some other valuable tips I learned that you may want to check out, too. But the keys I’ve found are not slipping into old habits, because no matter how comfortable they may be, they are often the embodiment of that old saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you need a new outcome, don’t rely on doing the same old same old to get there.

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This is something I’ve been thinking about more and more recently. The fact that we started off as a services company is what allowed us to get started and to avoid having to rely on outside funding. But it was transitioning to a product company that allowed us to grow and scale, and to ultimately attract funding. However, the transition from one to the other was brutal. And looking back, I can see a thousand opportunities where we could have done a better job.

When the bubble burst back in 2000 it was because speculation had driven realistic performance expectations, sanity and reason out the window (keep throwing endless piles of money at most people, and eventually most of us will get stupid). The industry itself, as well as those watching and investing in it, had bought into its own hype, and then it was crushed under the weight of it’s own hubris and lunacy. (Not unlike what is currently happening to the financial services industry.) Critical lesson: watch the hype and don’t drink the KoolAid. (A caution I would also issue to the current level of hysteria going on in the social media space.)

What this meant, of course, was that companies that had not yet become profitable or did not yet have a self-sustaining business model were S.O.L. VC money evaporated over night. Gone were the massages and catered lunches and lavish holiday parties. Suddenly we were awash in pay cuts, layoffs and absorbing the workloads of people who’d left because we couldn’t afford to replace them.

We were lucky. At that point, we were still a services company (though we were working on our product; it just wasn’t done yet), and that bought us a little bit of time. Not a lot, but — as it turned out — enough. And we sold our asses off. Everything we did for clients was billable. Everything was custom. Everything was a one-off.

Naturally, this presented problems in the scheme of things, because while this was providing us with live-saving revenue, this was not at all scalable. And our leadership knew it. So we continued to push forward with our plans to transition into being a product-based business that offered additional, ancillary services.

The troubles here were strategy, communications, education and execution. For those of us who were living on the services side, we had a culture that was services-centric — not product-centric, and there is a huge difference. In a services-centric culture, your answer to clients is always “yes.” And clients expect your answer to always be “yes.” It never occurs to either of you that the answer could or should be anything else. There is a culture of expectation that must be transitioned, and it must be done thoughtfully and carefully in order to avoid alienating the very people who are keeping you in business.

Now, to be sure, you aren’t going to have a business if you get in the habit of saying “no” to your customers, but there is a big difference between being an order-taking organization whose response to “Jump!” is always, “How high?” and an organization that provides expertise and consultation to customers, as suppliments to a core product offering. The culture, the relationship, the value brought to the table are all very different. And shifting from one to the other is a significant change that needs to be managed carefully in order to keep both your staff and your clients onboard.

Furthermore, our problem was compounded by the fact that the product team was very insulated from the rest of the business. That include socially. They literally sat in a different building. The two groups barely knew each other, so not only did both sides feel misunderstood and taken for granted, but we did not have the opportunity to really find any solid common ground. The services teams thought the product teams were snobs; and the product teams thought the services teams were cowboys. And we were probably all at least a little bit right. But what we weren’t seeing is that each group had a different mission, and that we were each very much in-line with what we needed to be doing at that time.

What we didn’t do was actively execute against a long-term strategy to bring both teams in-line with each other. To whatever degree that did ultimately happen, it was more by brute force of circumstance than by much in the way of active planning or cultivation. Looking back now, so many of the conflicts, headaches, and missteps are painfully clear. And, since hindsight is 20/20, I see so many opportunities that were missed, that would have made all the difference — both when it came to the internal culture, as well as in our relationships with clients.

Of course, looking back, I also now realize that this was one of the early seeds that sparked my interest in change management. This was a big change that had do-or-die implications for the business. The sense of urgency and relevance needed to be truly understood by the services team to get their buy-in, and it simply wasn’t. Without that comprehension, managing client expectations was an endless series of bungled missteps that were constantly needing to be corrected. The services teams needed a roadmap; and we didn’t even have a compass.

Another reason that I love startups is that, given enough time, I know that I’ll have the opportunity to tackle this type of problem again, and be able to apply some of the hard-won lessons from last time to doing it better.

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People who did not meet me until at or around my 25th birthday would never believe it, but in school, I was the Queen of Slackers. Truly. School was too easy, too routine and I spent too long doing it to be able to breath new life into the experience. I could dodge classes, do my homework at the last minute (assuming I did it at all), skip out on reading assignments and skate through tests in my sleep. As a result, I got very, very lazy. I couldn’t see the point of exerting effort on something, if by doing almost nothing I had nearly as good a result.

And then I got a job — that ultimately turned into a career — at a start-up. Pay dirt!

The transformation that sparked in me is still an endless source of amusement among my friends. It took me a while to realize why, but eventually it was clear: the problem with school is that there was an upper limit on what I was capable of achieving. It was an artificial cap on how well I could be scored. I found that inherently disincentivizing. In business, however, there is no upper limit. You can take something as far or as high as you can push it (given the right environment, of course).

And, even better, in a scrappy, entrepreneurial, risk-taking startup (especially one trying to survive an economic downturn) someone who is hungry, talented, teachable and willing to dive into the deep end of the pool head first has tremendous opportunity for growth. The first three years of my career were the most educational, exciting and energizing time of my life — all of my years of school combined couldn’t compare to those three years. Everything was new, everything was interesting and I never once had the slightest bit of doubt that I could conquer anything that came my way.

Ah, the hubris of youth!

Of course, there were downsides. Like many young people, I didn’t know my limits and was constantly pushing the envelope in ways that I probably shouldn’t have (and in ways that I’ve since learned not to do). Whereas many 26-year-olds may be more inclined to do that with parties, I did it with work. I ended up missing a lot of important events in the lives of friends and family because of that.

I was also still extremely idealistic about a great many things. Instead of The Pragmatic Contextualist, an appropriate blog title would have been something along the lines of The Snarky Idealist or Bring it On and Get Out of the Way! (Which, ironically, is still how some people tend to view me, though I have toned down considerably with age.)

But that idealism was invaluable to me, because it made me fearless: if anything is possible and I’m extremely capable, then what do I have to be afraid of? I don’t tend to be very risk-adverse in general, but I have become more cautious with age (though, not quite enough for either my husband or father’s tastes). Back then, though, it would never occur to me that I wouldn’t figure out a way to succeed at whatever I did — which meant I was a hopeless volunteer junkie.

My biggest rush came from fixing problems, and in a post-bubble burst start-up, there were plenty of things to be fixed. So I had an endless supply of opportunity, and endless confidence in my own success. Happily, I also had bosses who went from having nothing to lose by letting me try, to truly believing in my ability to make a positive difference.

As was inevitable, a few kicks in the teeth later, and I stopped being quite so cocky. The pragmatist in me was ultimately born of those experiences, and the eternal idealist retreated to the back, only to come out for the occasional political event.

One of the biggest, most valuable lessons I learned was how to deal with chaos. More recently in my career, I had a bizarre moment when a senior IT Director — who was easily 25 years older than me — groused that we were working in “the most chaotic environment” he’d ever experienced in his life.

I wanted to laugh and call him a weenie (I restrained myself — though barely). The environment we were working in at the time was easily the least chaotic environment I’d ever experienced, and his inability to roll with the punches made him a particularly weak and frustrating leader in my opinion, because he got frazzled very easily, whined constantly and was tremendously rigid. It never occurred to me until that moment that my ability to handle chaos was all that unique.

Naturally, one of the dangers of getting a bit too used to high volumes of chaos is that you can become a drama junkie. This did happen to me, and it took me a while (and outside circumstances) to curb it. But what I have seen of most drama junkies (and trust me, I wasn’t the only one I knew) is that, the older we get, the less tolerance we have for that same constant fever-pitch of insanity.

This is another reason that I have often recommended aimless twentysomethings seeking career advice to explore startups: because by the time people are settled in their career, married or have kids, startups can be a bit too rough on the lifestyle. So if you’re going to do them, best give them a shot while you’re young, energetic, single and have as few external obligations as possible.

But when I look back on that time now, I am profoundly grateful. I was drinking from a fire hose, and it never occurred to me there was any other way to work. I got to sample a spectrum of potential opportunities and figure out which ones held some appeal, and which ones didn’t. If I had found myself in a more stable, structured environment back then, I can’t imagine where I’d be now, because the lessons I learned there, and the all-you-can-eat-buffet of opportunities that I had available to me at the time are how I found my way into a career.

In the scheme of things, I look back on the most pivotal, impactful decisions of my life and the day I left the famed O’Reilly Publishing — which is where I thought I’d wanted to work for years — and went to MarketLive (at the time it was still called MultimediaLive) was one of them. And since then, I have found myself encouraging twentysomethings who do not know what they want out of a career to look at startups, because as long as they can develop a bit of tolerance for chaos (which I firmly believe everyone should do), they’ll usually find opportunities they never knew existed.

What do you think? Are startups a good or bad place to start out your career?

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It’s been years since the evangelism for Agile development started truly gaining momentum. Super sexy buzzphrases phrases like “reduce time to market,” “improved ROI,” and “lower development costs” have all been invoked to support the case for adopting an Agile methodology over the old-school Waterfall approach.

The fact is, most experienced professionals have lived through enough project pain that they don’t typically need a huge amount of convincing that Waterfall is often inefficient — particularly for longer, larger, more complicated projects. In a fast-moving world, the risk of constantly changing requriements is ubiquitous, and a Waterfall project does very little to insure against that danger while still delivering a valuable product to users.

However, the problem with the “Agile Development” argument is that, in order to work properly, Agile can’t just be for software development. In fact, Agile can’t even just be for your project teams. Your entire business needs to be ready to adopt an Agile methodology.

The trouble is, this conflicts with standard business-model thinking. In his book “Maverick,” Ricardo Semler outlines the critical success criterial for modern business: “To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise…” He goes on to discuss the more ‘agile’ approach at his company, Semco, and why: “[W]e take an operation view of six months, because we found that in a conventional one-year plan people will invariably believe that conditions will improve just enough to compensate for the problems they know they’ll have in the first half of the year.”

How many of us have seem Semler’s point in action? In annual budget processes? In project planning? Somehow, some way we convince ourselves that whatever conditions that exist today will be “resolved” and we’ll be able to make up lost ground later. And so our plans are based on figuring that we’ve got a brief rough patch to get past, but once we do that, we’ll have 100% clear sailing. How often does that actually happen?

Of course, just looking out six months isn’t sufficient, either. At Semco, Semler and team have two plans: one with a five-year view to keep an eye on strategic planning, will the six-month view focuses on tactical execution. But isn’t this what we have come to recognize as the definition of “Agile Development”? A long-range goal that we approach in short bursts, one piece at a time.

But if we change “Agile Development” to “Agile Leadership” it not only allows us to approach application development with flexibility and agility, but also the way we look at the bigger picture. Development efforts — whether they are for back office systems, B2C web sites or client engagements — are a means to an end, not an end themselves. We recognize that changes to business conditions are a big part of the reason we get value out of Agile Development, but then we continue to approach management of our actual business as though it were static.

I was recently approached about a “four-year project.” Horrifyingly (yet predictably) enough, this was a Waterfall technical project (for a government agency). In technology terms four years is an eternity. The idea that any team (or group of teams) would be spending four years and tens of millions of dollars on developing and implementing a technical solution for anything is insane, because no matter how good your requirements are this year, by the time the project is complete (assuming it is actually complete in four years) the entire world will have changed. Four years is an ice age when it comes to technology, and it’s at least a lifetime when it comes to business.

So what would need to change if we applied “Agile” methodology to an entire business, intead of just the development teams? Consider this:

• Evaluate the business from end-to-end and examine how much is truly “operational” and how much is “project-based.” Your operating models, staffing, budgetary and expectations are all different for the different sides of the organization. And, in many cases, most people should have a mix of both to keep business moving while also getting new work done and keeping employee engagement as high as possible. But we need to truly stop and look at this, because without first understanding how much time people have to dedicate to project work, we never build realistic project schedules. How many project plans assume each team member spends 8 hours per day on the project? Does that ever really happen?

• All projects would be time-boxed to ensure that, even at their longest, nothing dragged on for more than six months. This could be done by breaking large-scale projects into multiple smaller projects all organized as a program, or by breaking a single long project down into phases. But no matter what, no one phase should ever last too long. And at the end of every phase, a re-evaluation is done before proceeding to the next. How often have we worked on a project only to realize half way through that the work was really no longer necessary? Aside from being an irresponsible financial sink hole, this is also extremely bad for team morale.

• Consciously examine the value of ‘domain expertise’ versus ‘fresh blood.’ As a career project professional, I can tell you that most leadership underestimates the value of giving a project team a new project — even if it’s the second or third phase of someone else’s project. The assumption that it is better to keep the “experts” in place rather than to get fresh blood looking at a problem is often assumed instead of explored. And while there can be some value, is the value found simply because the original team didn’t do a good job of documenting their work? Or is it just a simpler resource model. In my decade of project management experience, I’ve seen keeping the same team on a project for a long time do more harm than good. And I’ve seen very little formal evaluation done to ensure the decision was actually being made instead of merely assumed.

• Strategic initiatives like new product development make an agile approach particularly valuable. Market conditions change rapidly and outside factors can move a low-priority, nice-to-have product from the bottom of the list to the top of the list over-night. If you’re planning too far out in too much detail and with too much rigidity, then you are not leaving your team the ability to react quickly enough to stay ahead of the curve. In fact, even worse, if your planning goes out too far, you end up inadvertently discouraging your people from staying abreast of the latest trends and changes, because they get into a ‘heads-down’ mentality, focusing on the long list of things they know are going to be occupying their time for the next year plus. This is one of the ways that companies lose their edge entirely.

Budgetting may be the biggest one of all, because we have been conditioned by most modern business practices to think in terms of quarters and years. Quarter-by-quarter planning is often too frequent to be efficient, but year-by-year is often too far out to be realistic. And, worse yet, it’s not far enough out to be strategic. It’s a combination of timelines that often work at cross purposes: we scramble like crazy for end-of-quarter numbers, and then we speculate wildly when building out year-long budgets. And in the end, neither is usually very valuable to getting things done.

How many organizations with large expenditures on gasoline and/or natural gas of some kind had to stop what they were doing in the middle of 2008 and completely level-set their budget for the year, because the unprecidented cost of oil had made all of the year’s original numbers (no matter how conservatively planned) entirely meaningless? Trucking companies, airlines, agribusiness, shipping companies, etc. All of them, because at the end of 2007 when planning the 2008 budget, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone who would have predicted that gasoline would top out near $150/barrel. (Hell, most people thought they were being generous if they budgeted for $100/barrel.)

I have seen two common outcomes to this process: either everyone spends weeks creating their budget for the next year based on wild speculation and generally accepted (often inacurate) assumptions, and then they are held to it kicking and screaming, missing one opportunity for market adaptation after another; or the organization stamps the budget as “FILED,” puts it in a drawer and never looks at it again, rendering the entire exercise valueless.

And while the 2008 oil roller coaster is an extreme example, this type of thing happens on smaller scales all the time. And so we plan optimistically and then make exceptions for all the things our plan didn’t account for. Josh Ross has an interview (ironically, shot the day after the mother of all recent unplanned disasters: the collapse of Lehman Brothers) called We Design For Possibility and Retrofit for Risk. And although he is specifically talking about Web 2.0 and information security, in reality that title applies to business in general.

We plan aggressively, assuming all will go acording to plan, and then we try to put out fires that errupt en route to our goals. Instead of sprinting in shorter bursts that allow less time for disaster to erupt, we take a marathon mentality that gives the world around us time to throw obstacles in our path over and over again.

Like so many other normal, mundane facts of our daily lives, the way we approach business is still largely rooted in Industrial Age thinking — it’s a model for which the Waterfall method makes sense. The time and cost to build something new is so high that you better make damn sure you know what you’re doing before you start. But as we transition from, as Chris Anderson puts it, the ‘economy of atoms to the economy of bytes‘ we trade in more and more investment cost for higher and higher opportunity cost. If we don’t start pushing ourselves to thinking, planning and acting like products of an Information Age, we will continue to pay the price for a lack of innovation and agility. And the more time goes by, the more of our competitors will make the change around us, the more we have to lose by burying our heads in the rubble of the Industrial Age.

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Not working is easily ten times more stressful than working — unless, of course, money is not a concern in your life. Unemployment or underemployment is difficult to manage on multiple levels, because — just to name a few examples — it has such a huge impact across all spectrums of your life:

• Financial stability

• Self-esteem
• Relationships
• Plans/Expectations
• Routine Daily Habits

For workaholics with a track record of success, the ego hit is often the most difficult — particularly once the pressures of the new financial reality start impacting everything from eating and entertaining habits (thanks to cost) to feelings of isolation (not being in an office every day) to canceling plans that you would not ordinarily consider canceling because they are no longer affordable. It fast becomes clear that we are used to taking a certain income level for granted — and it is hard not to chaffe under the restrictions of a radically cut-back lifestyle.

And, of course, all of that strains relationships: spouses fight about lights left on and what is a realistic grocery budget; friends and family inquiring about ‘how the hunt is going’ is inadvertant salt in the wound and so it becomes easier to avoid them than to rehash the agony; social and professional networks are inundated with pleas for help from talented, unemployed people who are a loss for options.

And those who were laid off have an advantage, because they can collect Unemployment Insurance. If you’re unemployed because your business plans have fallen apart, or because a job you had lined up fell through after you quit your last one, then (depending on what state you live in) you could well be completely S.O.L.

So what are the tricks for surviving unhappy unemployment that don’t result in death, divorce or a seat in an AA meeting? Obviously those depend on how you handle acute stress personally, but I’ve discovered that some of my great work qualities make managing my own stress particularly difficult, so this is the list of nine things that I’ve learned to do to manage my unemployment-related anxiety.

Stress Eating – Find an Alternative

I’m a stress eater. Bad stress eater. I can go through insane volumes of food without ever realizing it. And, worse yet, thanks to my gastric by-pass back in 2003, over-eating makes me sicker much more quickly than most normal people. (To say nothing of re-gaining the weight I was supposed to have lost permanently.) Stress eating is a huge problem for me.

My “alternative”? Ice. Annoying to others and bad for my teeth, yes. But I swear, it’s actually a huge help when it comes to consuming hollow calories or large volumes of food that end up making me ill. Be careful about chewing on it if it’s too hard, but if you have an oral fixation and a compulsive eating habit, finding something to fill the void is key. For me, ice works. Even if it drives my husband up the wall.

Email Stalking – Move Away From the Computer

This is a hard one for information workers who are used to spending all day in front of a computer. Checking your email every 30 seconds is not going to make a job offer show up any faster. And you’ll just drive yourself nuts while you wait. Even worse, over time, the tone of your emails will start sounding more and more hysterical and desperate — and that’s not going to help you at all. Find other things to work on, and stop hovering over your email. Even if you are still working on your computer, close your email client/browser and only allow yourself to check it on a schedule. Nothing says “desperate” like when you respond to a recruiter within 15 seconds of them hitting the “Send” button.

Physical Impacts the Psychological – Get Up and Move

Tony Robbins has this one down: physical movement absolutely impacts your state of mind. And while it is good practice to get up and move around even when you are working in an office like you are used to, it is even more important if you’re concerned with your mental stamina and keeping an upbeat attitude.

Other impacts to your physical space that can help: I replaced my hard, uncomfortable dining room chair with a very inexpensive yoga ball (Note: the size you’d need to use as a chair is much bigger than what you’d need to use for actual yoga — go for the largest size as a chair, even if you’re a shorty like me). This makes a huge difference on the posture and physical awareness (balance) that helps prevent getting sucked into a digital abyss without realizing it. (And, for as goofy as it sounds, there is something very playful and light-hearted about sitting on a yoga ball; both my husband and I have found it causes us random moments of amusement, which help keep both of our moods elevated.)

My husband often finds that going for a walk is helpful. Because I don’t enjoy walking all that much in the first place, this doesn’t typically help me and, in fact, I find that the warm weather in Austin usually makes a mid-day walk very draining; though a walk in the evening after things have cooled down can sometimes help. On the other hand, happily, our apartment complex has both a gym and a swimming pool. Both of these things do make me feel better. So find something that works, and then do it.

And in the bizarre and inexplicable category: there is a yoga pose that, for some strange reason, has been making me feel better recently (‘bizarre and inexplicable’ because I am not a yoga person; I think I’ve attended one yoga class in my entire life). I go into the bedroom, where it is semi-dark and cool, and I get in the Cat Flow pose on the bed for a few minutes. This elongates my spine and stretches out the tense muscles in my neck and shoulders tremendously. And doing it in a cool, dark room also helps me insulate myself a bit to breath deeply and regroup. I have no earthly idea why that particular pose makes me feel better when there are plenty of others that could also do the trick, but it does, so I go with it.

Don’t Just Network – Socialize

Yes, networking is always important — never moreso than when job hunting — but online networking like Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, JobFox, Naymz and Facebook are only going to do you so much good. If you are like us, and new in town, go to Meetup.com and find an actual physical, social event and go. Talk to people. Interact. Pick up a new (cheap!) hobby. Just get out of the house before you can’t stand the sight of it anymore, and interact with people. Go to one or two for business-related topics and go to one or two for personal enjoyment. Shop around until you find one with people you like, and then make a habit of going.

My husband and I attended several before we found one that we ended up really liking: we watch totally over-the-top, campy, cheesy sci fi movies with a bunch of other people and laugh hysterically all night. No matter how beaten up we have ever felt clear up until we walked in the door at the Meetup, by the end of the night it has never once failed to be the highlight of our week. Who knows? If you aren’t careful, you might even make some new friends.

Even better, go find something you care about and volunteer some time. It doesn’t have to be a lot, just mix it up a bit. And doing something worth feeling good about is always the best way to counter-act feeling bad about how life is going. On top of which, it helps fill in gaps on your resume and do some networking with people you wouldn’t necessarily have thought to tap before. You never know how valuable that can be.

Iron Out Your Personal Support Network – Talk to Them!

This one is one of the hardest for me, because both my husband and I are home all day now. Even if we are both working on something in different rooms, we are both still around. As someone who needs a lot of space, this is something that is often likely to make me irrationally cranky. And the couple of times that I have come close-but-no-cigar to a job or landing a client and I felt acute despair, the most important thing to do is to get it off my chest.

Sometimes when I start to unravel, I’ll do it to my husband. But since we’re in the same boat, and since he likes to ‘fix’ things (which I can’t stand, even when things are going well: I need to vent so that I can fix my own mess, not have him tell me what I need to do), and since there are times when I need some space from him, I have to rely on other people. Fortunately I have some wonderful friends. Unfortunately, as someone who created this situation herself, I often feel so distressed (and stupid) for having been responsible for putting us in this situation, that I don’t feel like I have a right to whine or vent. And maybe I don’t, but there are two things to remember:

1. Trying to keep that feeling bottled up doesn’t work. And if I don’t get it off my chest, it will bleed into my attempts at productive conversations with recruiters and prospective employers/clients.

2. They are my friends and they love me. And while I am sure the thought, “I told you so!” runs through each of their heads on a regular basis, the fact is that when they realize that I’m truly upset, they are all gracious enough to avoid saying it. (They’ll wait a year and say it over drinks or dinner, which is fine with me!)

Just watch it: whining hysterianics are trying even for the best sports. Don’t abuse your friends by flipping out and expecting them to help put Humpty Dumpty back together over and over again. Carry your own water, just reach out to your friends when the load is extra heavy and you need a bit of a boost.

Stay in Control of Your Time – Live by a Schedule

This is a hard one in our house, because I am a morning person and my husband is a night person. And if I’m not careful, I’ll find myself sucked into the gravitational force of his schedule. Next thing I know, I’m up until 4:00 a.m. and sleeping away the day. Bad, bad, bad. You can’t interact with your network (online or otherwise), you can’t make follow-up calls, and you can’t be available for impromtu appointments if you are sleeping during the day and awake all night. That is how you miss opportunities. Unless you are trying to compensate for a time zone differential, beware of this.

The other thing that is really hard about being at home all day is the whole get-up-and-get-ready-for-the-day routine. It is far too easy to sleep a little bit late, roll out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and just get online. Beware this trap. Just like getting up and moving helps your state of mind, so does getting dressed. Mary Kay Cosmetics teaches their sales force to never get on the phone with a client until they are dressed and ready to face the day. While this may sound trivial, there is plenty of supporting evidence to validate their point: when you look professional, you feel professional, you sound professional and people are more likely to think of you as professional.

And all of that is even before we get into the whole area of video conferencing, surprise visitors, impromptu meetings or urgent errands. Get up and get ready for your day like you would if you were going to work. It’ll make the transition back to a normal schedule easier when it happens. And it’ll help your state of mind from wandering too far.

Another reason to get up and get dressed: it helps avoid weight gain. Studies have shown that people who get in the habit of wearing loose, baggy, comfortable clothes will put on weight quickly and without realizing it, specifically because they are not getting any reminders about their size from how well their clothes do or don’t fit. You don’t need to sit around your house in a suit, but if you are wearing sweats or your bathrobe all day, you are in danger of packing on weight without realizing it. But if you’re putting on work pants and shirts every day, you’ll discover pretty quickly if your waistline is expanding. And the last thing you need is to try to get dressed for an interview one day, only to discover that you can’t fit into your work clothes.

Don’t Limit Your Options – Re-evaluate Your Priorities and Goals

When I was in California in late March, I had dinner with a wonderful friend I hadn’t seen in ages. Last summer she was laid off, and she was having no luck on the job hunt. The stress was mounting, because even with unemployment, she and her husband were having to tap into their savings at about $1k/month in order to cover the most basic living expenses. Taking out a second mortgage on their house was the only way to keep them afloat for a while longer, though the impending expiration of both her Unemployment Insurance and COBRA loomed large.

This is a woman with whom I worked for years. We actually co-managed a massive project together once upon a time. We’d stay at the office until 11:00 p.m. working like maniacs, go home exhausted and come back the next morning to start over again. She is a ridiculously hard worker who, like me, always found herself being tossed into the deep end of the pool to forge a new role, to fix something that was broken, or to tackle a problem whose resolution was a total mystery.

And if she hadn’t been laid off, that would still be her habit. However, now that she has been laid off, she’s realized something important: her children are about to enter middle school. All of a sudden they are busier, need more time and attention, and have more activities in which she would like to participate. So suddenly what was unthinkable a few years ago — that she could want a “job” instead of a “career position” — is now, in fact, entirely true.

My transition is not entirely different. Over the past few years, my shift has been more and more on business process improvement and change management. But my default job hunting focus is always as a technical project manager. That’s my “safe job.” Aside from the fact that I can do it in my sleep, it’s also something that I do so well that it’s an ego boost (which is especially appealing after my ego has taken a beating from being unemployed). But is that my automatic first choice for a job? Probably not.

Personal branding is hard work if you are trying to change direction. My friend is often viewed skeptically when she applies for positions as an office manager for a small company or some other role that is better able to leave her family life intact. People assume that she’s only looking for something short-term and that she’ll leave as soon as she finds something better. She actually has to strip down her resume so that her work history doesn’t look as impressive or robust, so that it doesn’t scare off prospective employers.

My old friend and co-worker, the brilliantly talented Josh Ross, recently asked me what it is that I want to be doing. I told him that part of my problem is in marketing myself, because I’ve been angling for a change. The trouble is, I’ve still got an attraction to what I’ve always done in the past and I’ve had a great deal of difficulty forging a new personal marketing strategy that walks the line between both without making me sound desperate and scattered.

One of the reasons that I so thoroughly love startups is because I can do both: a little of what I know and a little of what I have to learn. But either way, no matter how stressful a time unemployment is, think about what you want. (Penelope Trunk discusses this a lot, too.) It may be that the first job back has to be what you’ve always done, but if you approach it with a plan to get where you want to be, it’ll give you focus and motivation that you probably didn’t have before.

Brush Up on the Basics – Read, Write and, well, Web

The one advantage you have when not working that most of us never seem to have while we are is time. Time to read, time to write, time to pick up a new skill. If I were a developer, I’d be taking this time to learn Ruby on Rails, because it’s a very hot, in-demand development language and could make a huge difference in my employability. As a project manager, in January I started studying to take my PMP Exam (though, unfortunately, the exam is too expensive to actually take until I get a job).

Beyond that, spend some time reading — whether it’s business books that you’ve always wanted to read, online magazines that cater to your industry or blogs of people who are doing interesting work. Whatever it is, read it. Consider it your between-jobs-homework to absorb as much information as possible. And then, if you can, write about it. Not everyone is up for the work involved in having their own blog, but if you have something to say, odds are you can find someone who has a blog (or, better yet, different someones) and would be happy to have you guest blog on their site. (This, by the way, is also helpful for personal branding.)

Control is an Illusion – Show Humility and Gratitude

Finally, as a die hard control freak, the hardest thing for me is when I feel entirely out of control. And while, intellectually, I recognize that control really is an illusion in most ways, that illusion has always been my security blanket. Being in a situation I didn’t predict and that I can’t fix immediately or entirely by myself is one great big, honkin’ ass lesson in humility. Truth be told, I needed that and it’s not lost on me.

Beyond that, though, it is also clear that I have plenty to be grateful for: the afore mentioned friends and family, the unconditional adoration of the cutest pooch in the world, and a husband who — despite having plenty of reasons to say it — has never once said “I told you so” either. Each of them has put up with the crashing and burning of my hubris (which isn’t always graceful), and they have all resisted the temptation to point out that it was only a matter of time before I made a risky gamble and lost my shirt to the house.

And, if that isn’t enough, then I console myself with knowing that I live in a beautiful city that spends most of the winter hovering around 80 degrees, where the people are friendly, and where our savings has lasted three to four times longer than it would have if we’d stayed in New York City — where I didn’t want to live anymore, anyway. (And where my old job was being shipped off to Orlando, where I would have found myself in an even bigger employment vacuum and trapped with even fewer options than I have now.)

The last thing I am is a Polyanna. But the fact is that I do have plenty to be grateful for, and even if I don’t say it regularly, I am still aware of it.

So, that’s it. My Nine Unemployment Survival Tips. What have you found that works for you?

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After writing my post last week, Winners and Windmills, I asked my friend, the lovely and talented Tiffany Miley-Parks if she would be willing to write a follow-up piece that addresses what happens when “passion and skill” are not longer aligned with the “opportunity and circumstance” that make a work environment exciting. She graciously complied (and much faster than I ever imagined) with this post.

– Alora

It truly is important to know when that unique blend of “passion and skill with opportunity and circumstance” is souring and becoming toxic for both the individual and the organization.

I would agree that most accomplishment-oriented people have difficulty separating from the very environment that is fueling their dissatisfaction. Young professionals are programmed early in our careers to exhibit patience, long-suffering, flexibility, optimism and a can-do attitude. These are the building block traits for the Change Managers of the 21st century. As the saying goes, “Our greatest strengths can also be our greatest weaknesses.”

So when is the right time to move on? Does the realization happen gradually or suddenly in an “ah-ha” moment? I believe, as with so many other learning opportunities in life, recognizing the signs comes with experience.

I have witnessed colleagues burn themselves out trying to change an environment that is changing outside their sphere of influence. I have observed extremely talented, productive, results-oriented individuals drained of their fire and enthusiasm – feebly attempting to force themselves to engage in meetings, focus on work or even answer the Blackberry.

It’s almost tortuous to watch a fellow employee in that career “death spiral”. Drop by drop, the puddle grows and hopefully we realize we are sinking before the water is over our heads. Once the realization occurs that one is no longer able/empowered to make a significant contribution – either through their own disillusionment or as a result of a changing organizational culture – it is time to search out other opportunities to feed those results-oriented, accomplishment-fueled highs, either through special projects or in another organization. Unfortunately, most of the time it is within another organization.

Personally, I am going to have to put my career ambitions on simmer for a while due to the challenging economic conditions. I realize my puddle is currently about waist-deep at this point and on the rise. Staying nimble, and seeking small opportunities to feed my achievement addiction will keep my head above water at this point, but will not suffice long-term. Treading water drains energy and doesn’t get you anywhere.

However, with rising water levels, I have to remind myself to keep on the lookout for the boat that will take me to my ultimate destination, not merely the closest life raft.

Tiffany Miley-Parks is an MBA and a Sr. IT Project/Program Manager in Salt Lake City, who has spent her career helping improve technology and operations in Contact Center/Customer Service environments. In addition to being a strong leader with an amazing attitude, Tiffany is one of the best, most nurturing and disciplined managers I’ve ever met. So, if you’re in SLC and are interested…

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Well, things have been crazy as I’ve been learning the ropes for my new roles: Principal & Co-Founder of The Indigo Heron Group, Inc. and Managing Editor of Social Computing Magazine.

Lots to learn and lots to do, much of which has taken it’s toll on my blogging efforts. I’m working on some new time management techniques to help handle this a little better, since I am constantly struck with great ideas I want to blog about, but then get frustrated at not being in control of my schedule enough to make it happen.

So, to that end, I’ve had a few interesting things happen lately, that impact both my new business ventures and this blog:

• I’ve been learning a ton about the Enterprise 2.0 space. Much to my surprise and delight, I realized that just about every job I’ve had in my career was in the field (in one form or another) — I just hadn’t thought about it that way. Aside from making me feel much more confident in my ability to tackle my new role, it also made certain pre-existing relationships very valuable and cast them in a whole new light.
• I had coffee with Susan Scrupski of ITSinsider, and in talking about a very exciting new project she is tackling, I had another realization. While everyone in this space has different underlying interests when it comes to 2.0 capabilities within business, what my main interest is in how SaaS and Cloud Computing have revolutionized small business — and not just by creating a ton of tech startups (though, that is a particular love), but how these new tools have changed the time to market and the reach of organizations that have previously been unattainable.

  What I love most is that something like QuickBase or NetBooks make it possible to help someone like my father run his small business without an unrealistic up-front investment; and that something like Twitter, YouTube or WordPress can allow him the opportunity to access the viral marketing capabilities that did not exist during all the years when I was growing up and my family was running other businesses.

• I have found some interesting opportunities, and have been making plans to do one of my favorite things: attend professional conferences. In addition to helping out with and attending Interactive Austin, I am also scheduled to be at South by Southwest here in Austin in March, and then make a trip home to attend Web 2.0 Expo (which is a triple bonus, since not only does it mean getting a visit home for the first time in a year, but it also puts me at precisely the right time to celebrate the birthdays of two of my dearest friends). And with any luck, I’ll also be able to attend the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston in June. (I knew I’d miss working for an airline, but at the moment, I miss it more than I even imagined!)

So, in addition to working on all kinds of fun and exciting new endeavors (some of which I’m not entirely ready to announce yet), I’ve also decided that I’m going to write a series for Social Computing Magazine on (mostly small) business for whom “agile” is more than merely a development methodology. It is an operating philosophy for their entire business. And, as such, how does this influence the technology tools they use. Often times, we see this is a huge driver in the adoption of SaaS and cloud computing solutions, and so this is something I am interested in exploring.

If you have, work for or know of a business that has good examples of this — either as a consumer or as a provider — please shoot me an email letting me know. I’d love an introduction, because I’d like to speak to some different people who have found business value in this arena and who would like to discuss it so that I can write about it.

In the meantime, I’ll post more as soon as I have a few more things lined up. But for now, there is never a dull moment here in Austin!

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As the debate about the best approach to an economic stimulus package rages, I am reminded time and again of the conversations I’ve had throughout my career with non-IT executives when it comes to IT work. Coming from an IT background, of course, I have often found the conversations frustrating, unrealistic and short-sighted, which is much the same reaction I find myself having to the current economic debate. This has led me to seeing some surprisingly strong parallels between the two vastly different worlds.

“I don’t really care about it, as long as it works.”

The IT Version: “We don’t need more help desk staff. Make do with one person per shift.” The first time someone with a “C” in their title has to spend 45 minutes on hold to have their network password problem resolved, suddenly the importance of support desk headcount takes on new significance. Or (another favorite) what about the exec who thinks the top-of-the-line SLA package is “too expensive” — until a mid-day outage doesn’t get resolved “fast enough?”

The Government Version: “Tax cuts! Tax cuts! Tax cuts!” And then after standing in line at the DMV for two hours in the middle of the week, all you hear from the frustrated people watching their day slip by is, “How long does this have to take?” And, “I can’t believe they only have two people on shift when there is a line out the door!”

The problem: The things in life that we take for granted are often the ones we most resent paying for — and then we get mad when we are inconvenienced because of it. How many people surf on their neighbors’ wireless and then get upset when it goes down and they suddenly have no internet access? Ditto with pirated cable, or free coffee at the office that suddenly goes away when times are tight. We develop a sense of entitlement that makes us react very emotionally to change.

“It’s a bottomless pit with no ROI.”

The IT Version: Email Servers and Corporate Network integrity are the “plumbing” items in an organization that people often forget need constant care and feeding to stay healthy. But organizations rarely have a good way of calculating the cost to the business if either one of things fail. People have become so used to taking them for granted, that they stop thinking about them as systems with risks that need to be managed. Even worse, when times are tight we get in the habit of cutting back as a “temporary” measure, and end up neglecting routine maintenance. And then when things eventually blow up, we have a much bigger bill than anyone was expecting.

The Government Version: Public works are the government version of “plumbing” that people just expect to be there, but never seem to be ok having to help pay for. We all want smooth roads that don’t mess up our car’s alignment, we want to turn on a light switch and have the electricity work as we expect and we all want to know that when we turn on the faucet that the water coming out of it isn’t going to give us cancer. And the idea that we should continue to waste billions of dollars per year in electrical outages due to an over-taxed, patch-worked national electrical grid that we’ve outgrown instead of building a modern, more efficient one that more closely meets our needs is somehow a “dangerous” sign of “big government run amok.”

The problem:Infrastructure is not a one-time cost. It’s a big up-front cost followed by on-going maintenance costs. And after a while, it’ll take another big up-front cost, because whatever solution you put in place will eventually be so out-dated or so far beyond repair, that there will be no choice but to replace it. Duct tape and bailing wire are short-term band aids, not permanent solutions. We often make penny wise, pound foolish decisions as a result of procrastinating tackling big problems — and then get upset at the cost. (“Who needs to pay $40 every three months for an oil change? What a rip-off!” Until, of course, you’re stranded on the side of the road in a blizzard waiting for AAA to haul your car to a garage where you find out that your warranty is void because you haven’t had an oil change in a year.)

“It’s too expensive. Why can’t you do it for less?”

The IT Version: Hardware is expensive. Software is expensive. Trained staff is expensive. So we cut back. We outsource. We consolidate roles to hire fewer people. We buy off the shelf instead of customizing. We learn to work around inefficiencies in order to ‘make do’ without stopping to calculate the cost to the business of each employee wasting X hours per week on something that could be automated for $Y. We focus on tactical, short-term need instead of strategic, long-term value.

The Government Version: Programs are expensive. Staff is expensive. Systems are expensive. Taxes are unpopular and tax cuts are always popular. So we cut trim programs to cut taxes. And then we get upset when, after standing in line for two hours at the DMV, the frazzled clerk behind the counter has to fight with a 15 year old dot matrix printer feed jam and we can’t just be on our way. Even worse for all of us is the fact that, when it’s time for an organization to hire new employees, most of the best candidates are going to look around and decide to take the job or not at least based in part by the environment. And environments where they are going to have their hands tied by ten year old technology or are being told that they can’t get to Google to look things up as part of network security procedures is something that drives the best candidates away.

The problem: For the first time in history, people have better technology available to them at home than they have at work — and part of the reason for that is cost. The ‘personal use’ versions of technology solutions are often small enough that we gradually get used to incorporating them into our regular budgets (think cable TV or cell phones: once upon a time, no one would have thought paying for either would be “normal” for the average person). However, the enterprise versions for solutions are often very, very pricey and many times organizational leaders (in private industry and government) never quite recover from the sticker shock.

“What do you mean we need to implement something new? That current solution is only ten years old!”

The IT Version: “We paid $10 million for that solution back in 2002 specifically so that we wouldn’t have to replace it until at least 2012. Why are you asking for money to replace it now?” This may be the hardest ones for non-technical leaders to understand, but we do not live in a mainframe world anymore, where you can make a single investment like that and then expect to nurse it until you’re old and gray. IT investment now, though in many instances much smaller on an individual basis, is more constant, because disruptive technology (to say nothing of an entire wired workforce) forces adaptation at a rate previously unknown.

The Government Version: Government has a double-whammy in this regard, because in addition to facing this argument when it comes to traditional government services (i.e. rising health care costs for agency employees and Veterans) that are blowing out previously committed budgets, but they also have the IT problem within government itself: citizens are used to being “customers” who have access to a certain degree of services (many of which are technology driven), and then get frustrated when they walk into a government agency and have to fill out a form by hand, in triplicate, so that someone can crawl around a storage room for two hours to find a box that has the record we are looking for, and them make us a low quality photo copy for us to take home.

The problem: The budgeting process, in both government agencies and most corporations, is reflective of a long-dead set of business and technology models that no longer apply to how organizations work — largely because of end user expectations. Yet anyone who has been in either a large company or a government agency is all too familiar with the painful process that demands a lot more creative writing than actual concrete predictions, and usually for too far out. Sure, we can predict roughly how many Windows licenses are reasonable to expect for the next year or two, but saying that we are going to redesign the website this year with the expectation of not needing to touch it again for five years is ridiculous.

I’m sure that many of these parallels can be applied to other industries, as well, but as a political junkie and a technology professional, these are the ones that are most readily visible to me. And, as with most things, what this often leaves me with is a sense of resigned frustration at the predictability of the human animal — because these issues, at their core, are about attitudes, resistance to change, and sticking to doing things the way they’ve always been done, regardless of any real track record of success. And those are always the biggest management hurdles, no matter what your industry.

Agree? Disagree? Did I miss any other parallels? Leave a comment to let me know!

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