We across the corporate world have read Pamela Slim’s open letter to CxOs. In her letter she is telling those of us in the executive wings how we SHOULD treat our employees. She gives us a good whipping – even calling us oppressive. Yes, we have read it. After our initial anger with her tone and accusations we decided to craft a more reasoned response.

We would like to note right up front that Pamela is not quite fair. Some of us are stellar performers –  leaders people want to follow. But lets go ahead and admit, most of us are gutless figureheads without any desire to really lead. We know it! We get it!

But since you have listened to her letter (and yes – we heard the cheer)  you owe it to us to listen to our side of the story.

First remember that some time ago, we were where you are now. We were frustrated with upper management and the decisions they made. We felt like one day when we ran things we would be different. We would listen to the people. We would make wise decisions based on something beyond this years profits. We would really take excellent care of our customers. We would reward performers. We would, in fact, be different!

The reality has set in. Now that we are at the top we realize we still do not have all that control we thought we would have. Now, instead of being dominated by the boss making stupid decisions, we now seem to have way too many bosses. We really thought we would be THE BOSS and be in control. We really did. Now we struggle daily to dance between the demands of the lawyers, the board, the customers, the stockholders, and even governments.

Our new fears. Just like you, we fear losing it all. Everyday we wake up and look in the mirror and know today is the day we will be found out. People will realize we are incompetent. We will become not only unemployed – but publicly shamed. When one of you lose your job, you are a number. When we lose our job, publications list out all our mistakes. We are shamed. When you lose your job, you pretty much know you can find another – but not us. Will anyone let us lead again? Will anyone trust us again? We confidently and proudly proclaim that we can find other meaningful teams to lead, but underneath it all we are scared to death. As bizarre as it may seem to you, we too fear living in a van down by the river.

We do not mean to proclaim that we are a bunch of imbeciles. We are not. We are highly intelligent people with lots of experience – just like you. Could you do our job? Probably many of you could. Would you be in the same situation after a few years? We bet our fat salaries on it!

Suffice it to say we could answer Pamela’s letter point by point. But, you need to understand the overall issue. Do we want to see the employee as assets – building them up and listening to them? Yes – many of us really do.  When we were where you are now, we dreamed of such. But, when our investors are demanding short-term growth and profits we forget the people and even common sense at times. When the customer is demanding service we demand it be met – even if you are on vacation. We have bought into the idea that the customer comes first. When the competition seems to be getting the edge on us we get crazy and change plans overnight telling all of you that we are leading the industry – but in fact we are just responding and following.

Are we gutless leaders? I am afraid often we are.  We have set aside the desire of being great leaders so we can be pragmatic.

The battles are too many to fight. Were we prepared for this job? No – not really.  Most of us have few leadership skills. We were never taught that. In school, college, and MBA programs we too were taught to follow. To follow the leaders and to follow the processes.

But now that you have blasted us and applauded our faults – let us turn it back to you by addressing SOME of Pamela’s points.

1. Why do we need to change the culture? Because we are told by consultants that is the thing to do! Do we think it sounds silly? Yes. But we also recognize there is a problem. The larger the organization is, the more culture is lost–and so often are results. So what are we after? We want to hire consultants who come in and promise us they can turn our angry mob into a machine where everyone is motivated and everyone performs to the top. We are all free to make it happen – and we as the leaders get to smile down from the top of the mountain. Sounds egotistical? Sure – but have you not dreamed the same thing? Do you want the same out of your teams you lead? I know you do. Pamela suggest the culture starts with our actions. But what actions? We really have lost control. We need someone to tell us what actions to take!
2. The Godfather – Yes, we do get angry when you leave for new opportunities. We know it is shortsighted. We really do want the best for our people – but remember the fear. When you go, what will be revealed? And, quite frankly, often we are jealous. We know, we have already made it in your eyes – but we are strapped with serious golden handcuffs. We wish we could take the risk and run for the new opportunities, but we are stuck here trying to make this deal work.
3. Walk around and talk to you. This is on our to-do list daily. That is the kind of leader we want to be. Some of us are just introverts and this is way out of our comfort zone. We do not hate you. We just prefer to be with people we know well. For the rest of us, we would love to be among the little people (whoops – did we let that slip?). But we have bigger things to do. Our bosses are demanding a ton from us. And when they are not – well we want to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Again – you would be no different.
4. Want us to teach you to be rich? Forget it. We are not sure how we got here anyway. Look at the stats – a small percentage of people get rich doing what we do – but MOST get rich in business for themselves. Study how to do this and you will prosper – that is all we have to offer you. Think you are a better leader? Do it NOW.

We will not bore you with answering every point. We are already way too tempted to put this into a PowerPoint and call town meetings.

Now our advice to YOU.

1. Think you are a better leader? Do it NOW. How would you deal with the points Pamela brings up? You cannot change us – we can promise you that. So now you take the mantle. How do you lead from where you are?
2. Do not waste your life! Do something meaningful. Early on many of us were driven by passion and desire. It has landed us in nice places. Some of us continue to be led by the desire to have real meaning. The rest of us have succumbed to the life of luxury. That is our problem – but what about you? If you do not find working for us meaningful then do something that is.
3. Do not let fear control you. Listen to Pamela. We do have some concerns that many of you will get over your fears and look opportunity straight in the eye and go for it on your own. But in reality we know it will be very few of you. So develop a solid plan and go for it. Fear will always exist. Remember, fear controls even us. You can still overcome! Do it now!

We often reflect on the slavery issue our country has struggled to get past. We have books, movies, and even days to remember the struggles. But, as I look around and meet with people I see new forms of slavery in the most prosperous country in the world.

1. Debt – The debt crisis has overtaken us – and many have become totally enslaved to serving their debt. Their solution to get out is often a more creative slavery relationship through refinancing or “debt-consolidation.” While I do not consider myself to be a financial counselor – I have had to dive into this area of slavery many times. Debt causes people to give up on their dreams since they can never break free from what is holding them back.
2. Corporate America – No… I am not bashing the corporate machine in this country. But lets face it – the Dilbert syndrome has crushed many of our desires and forced many of us into another slavery trap. We now worry about what changes are going to take place in our companies in the coming months – worrying what benefits we may loose, what jobs may go away. Like refinancing deals – we sometimes find a glimmer of hope by changing employers – at least until the reality of the new slave relationship we have just gotten into hits home.
3. Entitlements – Our government (which is “we the people”) in our goodness to take care of our own, have in fact created slaves. I meet with people every week who have the mindset that getting free money from the government – from food stamps to free housing or free tuition – is the way to live. Yet, they are stuck. Again – one law change crushes them – or gives them hope.

Of course you see the problem – neither debt, corporations, nor government programs are the real slave masters – we are. Something has happened in our country that has taken all the spirit away. People in NASA will often say they do not know if they can get back to the moon. The technology is better – but the spirit is missing. Could we ever prosper as a nation if we found times of struggle again? Have we become so soft? In all three cases of modern American slavery we have given up our freedom, hope, and future by taking the easy way out.

Not to be a pessimist though – we can take back control. As I look at my own life and those around me – I think we have lost personal discipline and at the same time we have become to self-centered in society. But who can change that in our culture? I do not think anyone can – but I can change me, and you can change you. No more being a slave because it is the easy thing to do.

Tonight E. Scott Aronow will air his radio interview with me on Career Catalyst Online Radio. Since it is an online station the broadcast will be available from now until Scott takes it down.

I really enjoyed talking to Scott during and after this show. Usually these shows give you a script of questions, and you go over them one by one trying to make it sound like a conversation between friends. But not with Scott. We were off script within minutes! Partly due to Scotts professionalism. But there is also something about talking to someone who has a similar passion.

Scott and I do share a similar passion – helping get from where they are to where they want to be. Scott and I have both coached hundreds of people back to taking control of their earning power. The result is a greater sense of Freedom in their lives! (More on that later)

Here are some things Scott and I discuss on the show.

• Why resumes are worthless.
• How can individuals who feel trapped by their current jobs find real and meaningful work?
• How to think like and operate like an owner instead of an employee.
• How to develop and strengthen your confidence.
• YOUR brand, and how to take control of it.

What? turn DOWN $100,000 a day?? Who would do that? Well, Tim Taylor, that’s who. Now before you think I’m crazy–or that he is–let me explain. When I think of guys who do exactly what they want to be doing for a living, and they do it every day, Tim comes to the top of my list of people. Because he really does do his dream job, every day. Earlier this week I had lunch with Tim and he shared with me some his ideas on what it means to pursue your passion, and just where the money-factor needs to placed on your list of priorities. Tim told me that when he was asked to go back to NASA – he knew what that life was like. Moving, and working all day on a base. He knew he did not want it. Yet – space was in his blood. He even wrote a book on entrepreneurship that had a shuttle on the launchpad on the front cover and the book was named “Launch Fever” Everyone knew what he loved.

Launch Fever

Tim Taylor. iUniverse 2003, Paperback, 230 pages, $16.57

Limiting Thoughts

Yet – Tim, said he had limiting beliefs. He thought there was only one way to live his dream – the old way of being a NASA worker and living outside of the Cape and being on base from 8- 5. He had a family and liked his freedom – so he was torn. Yet – on prodding from friends – he looked into his options. In the interview for a consulting firm for the NASA/DOD team- Tim said “I am not moving, I am not working 8-5, so there is no reason for me to interview.” The answer he got back over the line shocked him. The voice said “fine – we need to set up the interview and put you to work.” Tim did not realize there were OTHER ways of living his dream. He had lived it before – so saw no other option. How often do we do this to ourselves. We see only one way to live our dream – so we put on  blinders and either walk away from the dream, or walk into self –induced misery.

It’s hard not to enjoy what I am doing now these days.  Sometimes I am working inside the cockpit of the shuttle, sometimes at the launch pad, sometimes in a remote control room in the desert, in Mission Control during a launch or landing or most of the time in my living room on a laptop computer.  You couldn’t pay me $100,000 a day to go back to Corporate America doing something I didn’t truly enjoy. ~ Tim Taylor, 2010

Tim’s rule of success – “Find your passion and get as close to it as
possible – but on YOUR own terms as best possible. “

Recently, Get Rich Slowly posted this article about deciding when to quit your day job. (Click to read it in full)

In the article Sierra Black writes a lot of good thoughts, but based on the feedback the article gets, the article leaves many people asking the question “what if I don’t have a plan B?” It is a fun thing to head off into the sunset and think you might actually reach your dream. Yet, when reality hits home you find the fear thinking you may be living without an income! This is the fear Pamela Slim calls the fear of  ”living in a van down by the river” in her book Escape from Cubicle Nation. Pamela’s book is the ONLY on I know that deals head on with the fear in a realistic way.

Plan B

Well, to try and answer the questions about plan B, I think I need to say first: based on my clients, I have noticed that it is best to GROW INTO A BUSINESS instead of GO INTO A BUSINESS. I think this agrees with the spirit of Sierra’s post. I know many people who are making a ton of money on the side jobs – but they still have the “security” of a day job. One friend of mine quit his day job 6 months ago after seeing his part time business pull in over 4 times his “job” income for years. Not many of us want to risk it all like the high flying adventurer we hear about who put it all on the line – including family. In fact, I would suggest that while a few of those who risk it all actually win – and many win in a hollow victory having lost what is really most important.

What if it does NOT work?

Second, the question of “what if it does not work” is one with a lot of assumptions. You assume that after giving it a go you will be the same person. You assume that you will not have uncovered other opportunities. One client of mine went for it in a VC funded business. It did not work, but the connections he made have given him a great deal of work in other areas. He is not the same person as he was when he decided to go for it. He has never gone back to his plan B (which was to return to his old job) since he keeps finding new paths. And by the way – he often gets offers to take his old job back.

Many years ago I took a corporate buyout and did the same. It was a leap of faith – well – almost. I was financially stable in the move – so the risk to family was minimal. But, it was a leap of faith since I did not really know what was out there. But, I have never looked back – and I am where I am now because of the journey I took!

A friend of mine and I were talking the other day and they were telling me about how their brother had recently lost a job. Not only that, but the job he had just applied for that he thought was a shoe-in, had fallen through. So now this guy was telling me about the hard-luck story that his brother was having trying to pay bills.

Now, obviously, the story is tough. But honestly, my reaction was “How free he is now!” This guy just lost his job, he doesn’t have income. That’s the bottom. It can only go up–he can finally CHOOSE what he wants to do.

But what was he doing? He was putting in applications at every local shop in town and sitting back, waiting on a job to waltz across his threshold.

I was shocked.

“Doesn’t this guy have a degree in mass communications?”, I asked.

“Yeh” my friend replied.

“Then why isn’t he contacting some people in mass communications or searching out internships in that field, or even starting his own business doing something he likes? He doesn’t have anyone to answer to anymore. He’s free. He can go for his dreams now. Why isn’t he?”

My friend was at a loss for words.

When you are out of a job, you have two choices: you can find a job, or you can make a job. Odds are that if you make for yourself a career that you WANT, you’ll be much happier, much more fulfilled, and most likely, you’ll make more money.

So if you’re in this boat, where you need a job, then MAKE ONE. Go out today, right now, and MAKE YOUR DREAM JOB HAPPEN.  The alternative is to to be sitting at home waiting to hear back from applications. So why not give it a try? there’s no better time than now.

According to Nick Swinmurn, a 30 year old billionaire  the key to success is to “be scrappy”. In an interview for the BBC news blog, he talks about how it is the guys who don’t give up that succeed the most. It doesn’t matter, he says, if you don’t know how you’re going to do it. It only matters that you DO something. Fight against the odds, go against the grain and “try everything and just fight and claw and keep adapting, keep trying things.”

Don’t let yourself get distracted with side-ideas. While you’re working if you come up with something else that might be awesome–great. But make a list. Finish one thing well, then move on to the next. Don’t chase 4 million rabbit trails. If you spent only one dollar on each of those rabbit trails, you’ll be broke instead of 4 million dollars richer. Or $800 million dollars richer in the case of Nick. He just sold his latest company, Zappos, (a shoe selling company) to amazon.

Watch his video here. And while you do, ask yourself: Why aren’t you making shoes again? (or whatever it is that you haven’t tried because it is “too simple” or “wouldn’t work”) Yeh, maybe you should take a second look at that “crazy idea”.

Catrina Callahan wrote something on Facebook today and it is just brilliant. So here I have copied it. You need to read it :

Someone once asked me “Is there a place left on this earth where I can have a chance to be what I want to be? Because it sure ain’t America.” Honestly, that is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. This country was built as, and still is, the ONLY place on earth where you are allowed to be creative, inquisitive, self-sustaining, and have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. But just what does that really mean?

What is this ‘opportunity’ they speak of? Does that mean at every corner of whatever avenue you choose, the streets will be lined with lush Opportunity trees where you can pluck different opportunities off like apples? Sadly, most people think so. They think that “The Land of Opportunity” means that they will have options and prime, plump, choices lined out for them on a silver platter where all they have to do is pick between them as they stroll along on a paved road to success and happiness.

Well, isn’t that idea just dripping with sugar and gumdrops? Indeed, that would be nice! Surely that is what “Opportunity” means right? Or is it? Let’s looks closer.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language states the definition of Opportunity as this:

op•por•tu•ni•ty: A chance for progress or advancement.

A chance. Not a fresh fruit platter with a chocolate fountain in the middle. Look alive people! Try having a shot for a decent life in Cuba, Russia, China, Sweden or Germany. Yeah sure, people around the world aren’t always living in third-world conditions. A lot of them are ‘happy,’ good, people just living their lives. But where is it they all flocked to back in the 20’s and 30’s….? America, that’s where! Why did they come? Because we could give them a chance. And unless you are pure blooded Native American, then your ancestors came here before you looking for what they couldn’t get elsewhere. A shot at making for themselves what no one else would let them achieve. They could be here what they couldn’t be elsewhere. Dreamers, goal seekers, and success finders.

It takes work though. When they said your great great grandpappy came to this country with five dollars in his pocket and died a millionaire it wasn’t because he walked off the boat and they handed it to him in a big sack. He worked for it. Worked hard, worked against the grain, worked against all odds, till his fingers bled, through rain, sleet, snow, and hail; but in the end he got it. Others countries have nothing but pain as a reward for that kind of labor. You are what you were born as, and you can’t change it.

What America offers is not assured success and happiness. It does not promise grandeur or greatness. It simply lays before you a chance. A chance to dream and the opportunity to accomplish it if you have the guts to get off your sleepy keister and run after it.

If you want opportunities, as is a plural sense, well you are going to have to make them through the definition of hard work your forefathers used, rather than our diluted definition of work that we use today. But if you want the chance to even go after your dreams at all, the chance to make those opportunities? If all you want is the single “opportunity” to try to succeed in your life, then America is the only place you’ll find that.

So go get em.

To see Catrina’s article in its’ original form, as well as the comments being made on it. Click Here.

I recently watched the video of Steve Jobs 2005 commencement address to Stanford. (There is a bit of irony about a man speaking at a college that would likely have rejected his application.) As I listened to him I wondered how many of those graduates he was talking to would go on to live a life with little meaning, believing in nothing, chasing only the almighty dollar, and working without passion. Not if they listened and took what Steve said to heart. He talked of following your passion as the KEY ingredient in life and in success.

These are just some of the ideas Dale Callahan  talks about in his new book “Company of One”, due out this Fall.

Here is an excerpt from the text of the talk where Steve Jobs talks about being fired from Apple. You can find the whole speech at the Stanford News Service website.

…I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.²

These are just some of the ideas Dale Callahan  talks about in his new book “Company of One”, due out this Fall.