Career Zen Chapter Nine

C a r e e r   Z e n
by Larry Daly, 'The JOB DOC'

Chapter 9.   Team Management; Research, and Writing

Managing Your Team
Just putting some people together and calling them a team does not work. Telling them, "Just shut up and do what I tell you" will not create dedication, no matter how well you pay them. No matter how long or loud you demand, shout, intimidate, or browbeat them, it will not automatically make them a real or effective team, or you at all successful.
A team is defined as any organized group of people dedicated to a certain purpose, in which each member has specific duties and tasks as well as co-operating with the others. The sharing of the work enables them to do faster or better or more of what each can do individually, and very often, do what individuals can not accomplish alone.
The key word here is 'dedicated', and that means 'voluntary'; dedication can never come into existence by simple command, any more than can love, devotion, intelligence, etc.
This dedication of each person to the common goal, the sharing and unity of the team, the apparent altruism, so all benefit, is not automatic, and not the result of force or coercion. What makes them a team is the voluntary dedication and true commitment and personal motivation of each person involved.

How do you get this voluntary dedication?
For some people it is enough to be assigned to a team, and to belong, to motivate them. Others need to earn money, or keep a job. For a few, it is the competition of their team with another team, the race to be first or best at what they do, or the challenge of a difficult assignment, be it physical or emotional or intellectual, that drives them. Others may seek material reward or personal attention, or fame, the roaring adulation of thousands of cheering fans, or prestige, or love, or pride, or anything else.
For each person that motivation is different, and it may change over time, or suddenly, in a day or an hour.
The leader who does not know what motivates each member of his team, right now, and does not use that motivation pro-actively, and constantly, will not produce winning results for very long, and probably will not be able to hold his team together for very long. In this country, you can go and get another job tomorrow - and probably a better one - so you don't have to stay here and accept abuse.
In your personal Support Team, you must study each of your helpers, and re-motivate each of them every day, every hour if necessary, and never take for granted one minute of their effort in your behalf. Dedication does not come cheap. Voluntary involvement is not automatic, and can evaporate, or even turn a former good team mate to an enemy in a moment, by an accidental insult or disrespect or other error on your part, or from another team member, or anyone else in the company, or outside. You have to work for this voluntary dedication, and earn it, every day, every hour, on an on-going basis. It can all vanish instantly, never to be recovered, if you do something wrong and stupid and uncaring, such as claiming the credit yourself, without rewarding each of them fairly, as they each see it, and each in his own preferred coin. (To one emphasize the money he is making, and to another play up the fame he seeks or challenge that he most enjoys, etc.)   To lose your humility or respect for them, or become arrogant or conceited, or play favorites, can lose it all. Be very careful. You can not be, or have, or do, without others. Always remember that you need them more than they need you.

Interpersonal Dynamics Within the Team
Just as three may move a huge refrigerator that one cannot budge by himself, those in the S-Team can, by organizing, pacing, etc., do more, better, faster, cheaper, together than separately. By contributing and sharing areas of individual general knowledge and experience and specialized information, they can achieve more intellectually, and prepare more effectively for career success.
There is a reciprocal motivation, a psychological support not only when difficulties arise but in the daily run of things. Man is a gregarious animal, most content and effective when in groups, teams, hunting packs, etc. By keeping energies and attention directed outward, they lower or prevent self-doubt, pity, and other inward-directed self-destructive problems that many of even the best individuals working alone may suffer in moments of difficulty or stress or weakness or simple tiredness. Pride in the team or group is a very motivating and strengthening sort of tribal magic. Use it. A uniform or insignia or other sign of unity and brotherhood and specialness is only one way to do it. What are some others?
The common direction and group objectives prevent distraction, concentrate energies that would otherwise be dissipated by details, wasting time and effort, etc., but only because of one factor - the team size. Again, no more than five, and no less than three, is best for the career research team.. Merely by organizing actions to be done together, the several become one, the team becoming a larger and more effective and more powerful single organism.
The individuals in the group learn from each other on a daily interactive basis, and by trying and testing a wider variety of ways and ideas each can become more intellectually and psychologically flexible, gain knowledge and experience from each other, growing individually as well as aiding the group. We often observe that kids who have trouble with math in the classroom context can quickly pick up how to do ball club statistics from street peers. The problem is not in the unteachable student but in the teaching system. Peer-teaching is obviously better in some things than the formal teacher-class and teach-and-test context.
Those forming their own Career Support Team should be careful to try to find others matched in speed, range, and depth as closely as possible, so waiting for the slowest is minimized, making the group more efficient. The smaller the group, in any context, the faster it can move, make decisions, react to the unexpected. Three to five; no more, no less.
There are many kinds of people, and each behaves differently in different circumstances, but for the most part the common goals of those in your Career Support Team will keep all members largely in agreement and similarity and unity in most contexts. The intellectual and communication ability level and fields of interest required for acceptance into the team will reduce the possibility of most problems found in random groupings of people. Thus there is the high probability that each member will have little or no difficulty in quickly fitting into the team and having little or no interpersonal difficulty. However . . .
Certain personality types are always a consideration. [See discussion of Myers-Briggs Types, above.] Frequently one member will quickly become the most dominant and another the most submissive. In most teams there is bound to be some communication difficulty sooner or later, or a loss of tolerance or patience or lapse of consideration. You cannot have life without such occasional events. But in most cases they will quickly be smoothed out by the demand of the rest of the group to make progress, complete the work, get on with the program of study, unite against common enemies, the world out there, and their own inexperience and lack of knowledge, which they are working together to defeat. If common purpose is kept in mind at all times and all else kept subservient to that, and good will remains the social lubricant in small groups as it does in large ones, they will win over themselves. (These group dynamics provide a field of study possibility for those interested in such things, as most intelligent people are, so in my program each team and team member is to submit observations on this, and on his and others' experiences, as an on-going self-assignment.)

Candidate Selection
In selecting people for your own Career Support Team, you must listen closely to each candidate. Their word selection may tell you their basic psychology. This is no great art, or needing high credentials, but common sense. Just ask some good open-ended questions* that get the person to talk at length, and then listen for the obvious clues:
The person who frequently says "I can't..." may be lazy or weak or a dependent leaner type. One who says, "The rules say...", or, "You can't do that," or makes claims to authority, is often the follower type, insecure without rigid structure to protect him against the rough world of change. The types of people who use certain other expressions betray themselves: "I've always...", or "it's always been..."; "let's not try this..."; "It won't work..."; "Should we..?"; "I have to do it myself..."; "The best (safest, fastest, cheapest...) way to do it is..."; and so forth, all tell you the speaker is a physiological needer, a security needer, an esteem needer, a belonging needer, a self-actualization needer, and so on.
Any of these clues may be good or bad, depending upon what you need from that person at that time, in that context, so you must know how to see them for what they are, so you can get the type you want, and decline those you don't want. And, knowing their needs, you can manage them better. (*You may be able to pattern your questions on my SASS Discipline entry survey, which uses a range of questions and problems from the conventional to the most extreme, to virtually open up the mind of the candidate for an in-depth examination.)
You must study each person according to his needs, response to logic prompts and emotional cues, to the needs of others, to innovation and change, and as many other factors as possible, for you will seldom have as good an opportunity in life. They will be studying you, also. In my SASS Discipline, each team member submits an analysis on you just as you must submit one on each of them.
Later, on the job, in your career, because of this practice and experience, you will be better able to recognize clues and assign tasks and avoid problems according to people types, if you now study such things in your own personal verbal and body language micro-lab. Learn how to match people for most effectiveness, a leader with a follower rather than two leader types who may waste valuable time jockeying for top dog slot instead of producing results, or rather than two follower types who accomplish very little without adequate leadership, direction, and motivation push and pull. Learn about concept types v theory types v detail types, and abstract v action types; you will probably have opportunity to closely study all of them. And, more importantly than each, to study and learn to use the relationships between different kinds for your benefit in your career and life.
Conflicts are bound to occur in any groupings of people. You must study the causes of these, how slights are taken and grudges held, how discontent breeds, escalation occurs, and how these can be prevented and resolved, for they will also later occur in the many work places in which you will be employed during your professional life. Confrontation, defusing, negotiating, adjudicating, arbitrating, dealing, discussion, catharsis, tolerance, mediation, closure, anger, venting, etc. You can't run from life. Conflict is a basic part of life. You must learn to use it to your advantage. When people get angry they usually stop thinking logically, become distracted, and do the most rash things. You can often use that, to your profit, and manipulate them, to your advantage. History is full of such examples. You should know this also in order to not lose your sense, not be manipulated and used by others for their profit. See what makes people abandon their intellect, and what returns them to it, also. Note the people who cherish problems instead of solving them, who feel important with disaster looming; how others get right to the heart of it, solve it quickly, fix or reduce things to manageable proportions; rigid minds who cannot adapt to new knowledge, versus those who are flexible enough to see new things in the same old stuff, let alone happy in the high seas of change, seeing problems as opportunities, and so forth.

Guiding and Teaching Your Team
In traditional educational formats, the teacher or trainer or instructor has information which is to be imparted to the student, who is assumed to not have it. The information is interpreted for the student, chopped up into bite size portions for the student to absorb, and the teacher shows how it was or is to be used in certain applications. The act of teaching more or less depended upon the instructor having some special ability or understanding as well as that knowledge, usually a good deal of experience in his field or specialty. An architect taught architecture, a doctor taught his branch of medicine, and so forth. Unfortunately the process was as slow as the slowest person in the class, set in a slow and rigid time frame, scheduled out over a period of months or years according to the convenience of the teacher or institution and other details of the educational format, including the speed limitations of the statistically average slowest learner. And, of course, the school system's own innate desire to resist change and perpetuate itself and the status quo in order to remain alive permanently, as does every organism, natural or man made. Once you were in the 'class' you proceeded at the same pace as the others in that class, with no real provision made for those who already had that information, or could absorb and apply such information more quickly than the others in the class. "Just sit there and shut up - we have a whole class to teach here'" was the usual response to appeal for more, faster, etc. There were also plenty of faults with the ego of the instructor, his biases, the rigidity of his beliefs or 'school' of thought, his tolerance for question, or intolerance of challenge, ability or inability to adapt and accept new data, especially if a contentious student brought it in, and so forth, which often held the class up even more. Worse was the teacher who knew his material and his specialty so well he could probably do it in his sleep, but who did not have as high an ability to impart or teach it, and no tolerance for those who did not match his pace or interest in it, or could not understand or accept his method of imparting it. Sometimes an even worse ogre raised its ugly head: the teacher who had no respect for the learning ability of his students. The teacher-student relationship is basically passive: I know something and you do not, so I am better than you, so sit still and shut up and wait and listen while I give it to you.
Today there is so much information, and so many books and articles on every possible subject and application, and more being written every day, that we waste time by having it digested for us and fed to us at the schedule of others, along with any misconceptions or biases they may have, or that we may not want. If we are to learn enough of value to us, out of all of this huge and ever-changing sea of data, we must learn how to access it directly, ourselves, in real-time mode, and thus bypass the teacher bottleneck.
Now, through computers and instant electronic connection, we can immediately and directly access all this information ourselves! We are no longer subservient to the teacher, no longer need to be passive and wait for it to be spoon-fed to us at someone else's schedule. We can now be as aggressive as we want in going after what we want, when we want it. We no longer have to rely upon teachers and instructors and trainers for it. We can use what I call the LAP, Learning Attack Process. We have in our own hands the power of direct personal research, the ultimate tool for resourcing. Research is the first tool of L-Teams.
Direct and immediate access to information makes teaching redundant, time wasting, too slow, and too rigid for our needs. Teaching, in the sense of one person having to learn something and then teach it to others, is obsolete, extinct as dinosaurs. Unfortunately the education industry, and the mass of passive students, do not know this yet. That is good. It gives you an enormous advantage over all of them, for your career and personal success.
Any independent learner can now directly and immediately access immense amounts of information on any subject in which he is interested, at any level of expertise or complexity, and at very low cost, in comparison to the high costs of instruction, by means of the instant electronic connections of personal computer modem to the largest databases, updated every day, every hour, as new data becomes available.
The student no longer has to suffer the rigid structures of standardization and the convenience of others, but can be as flexible and innovative as he desires, study what he wants, in the order he feels right.
True academic freedom has arrived. At last.

Discipline and Documentation
However, there are two major problems with all this academic freedom. Nothing is ever free, is it? Not even freedom! Especially not freedom.
First, the student must also provide his own discipline in both his time and organization and in his specialty or field of interest and work.
Second, how is he to prove his expertise to a possible employer without Grade Point Averages and the name of the school? The employer has no time to actually test every person who comes to his door with claim to have studied something; he wants some kind of quick and sure documentation, a diploma or sheepskin, an acceptable proof of knowledge having been acquired, proof that not only does the applicant know his work, but that he has gone through the discipline of the school in preparation for the discipline of the work place.
True, anyone can purchase a sheepskin easily enough, directly or through the mail, but that is not the real answer to this question. While employers may be largely dissatisfied by the quality of most job applicants that our colleges and universities are turning out, at least they have some degree of assurance that the student has been taught to do what he was told, and some vague general means of comparison between applicants. That was better than nothing.
Today that is not enough. Business managers today know they need real brains and real writers, and are getting desperate.
My solution answers both problems. The independent learner can go several times as fast as a taught class and deeper into his subject, study virtually anything he wants, and still have better documentation, and better proof of discipline, than any diploma:
First, the research team method deadlines impose the discipline and speed, and the team format imposes the demand to work with others in an organized and targeted manner, just as in the work world, and also documents it.
Second, the documentation that the Career Support Team can supply to employers can be better than any college can provide. Proof? How about proof of knowledge and expertise in the form of a book on his career subject? Easy.
Each person who writes only 10 pages a week can have a book or volume of work 500 pages long in one year, his first year. That is an accomplishment demanded by no school or college in the world.
More, the team can produce videotapes, speeches, and multi-media reports and presentations, of professional and expert quality.
True, this 'book' or body of work is not as quickly and easily read as a simple GPA and a page of vitae, but it is much better. While the employers of my SASS Study Team 'grads' do have to take extra time to see what the student has actually done, and interpret the range, depth, and quality of it for his needs, he can instantly see for himself that it is far better than anything done by the illiterate graduates of any college in America today.
Now the potential employer has to decide whether he wants real brains and ability, and at what terms, or merely a warm body to fill a generic slot in his organization, and at what cost. The employer may also have to decide if he wants to be challenged by a person of obviously superior abilities, who may want to take his job away from him. And can.

Insight
Some may argue that the insights and experience of the traditional instructor are lost. Not necessarily so. These are (often better) replaced by the authors of the information sources used, which in most cases will be current periodicals of professional level in the various fields studied, and by the potentially sharper minds of those authors, and his L-Team mates. Being current, these sources, and their interpreters, will usually be much more pertinent than the memories of an instructor who worked in the field ten or twenty years before, and their insights and experience right up to date, cutting edge, where the action is. Often the author is actually the up-to-date working professional and teacher of the same material in a college, but there only minimally, with a TA actually dealing with his students, so they get less of him than your team does by studying his book, interviewing him (and his competitors) in person, etc..
When we hear about an expert in any field of expertise, and ask what has made him an expert, we usually find that not only has he attended schooling in that subject and read widely in it and performed other necessary duties such as hands-on experimentation or work in it, but also that he has written on the subject, offering not just information about it but also perception and feeling and sometimes even belief and inspiration and wisdom to others entering it. That is more than most teachers and professors can do, or usually do, especially if they use TAs. I believe that Teaching Assistants are the abomination of the educational world, and a gyp of every student suffering them, and that use of them should be actionable. If you are paying for a professor you should get a professor. Or be clearly informed beforehand that you will only get x hours of the professor's direct personal time, and x hours of a TA, for your money.
In real life, and in the S-Team, however, the onus is upon the student to access his own information, and to read and absorb it, and to do the exercises and work demanded in order to learn his profession and career field. His team will aid him, but he must do the main and hard work himself.
In writing about something, explaining it to his reader, the writer is forced to work at understanding it first himself, which gives better results than can be produced in any classroom where the work and answers are standardized and the student can easily get the 'right answers' from someone else and avoid all the mental sweat of really studying and achieving them himself. In the traditional standardized school one can graduate with honors and yet remain an ignorant and illiterate good-for-nothing. The teach-and-test system virtually begs the student to cheat, so we should not be surprised that they do. The movie 'Cheaters', for instance, based on the famous Chicago test answer theft, gives some depth to this viewpoint, and is supported by many other similar incidents, before and after. It has almost become an annual event; all we need is a Guiness Book of Records category for educational test cheating to be an official competition.
Through the rigors of writing and direct access research and editing, the collected work of a Study Team 'grad' or Career Support Team member documents the actual range and depth of his knowledge and ability, and demonstrates more accurately than any GPA or single thesis can the real-life pertinency of his studies -- not what is presumed to have entered his brain by some grade or scoring system, but proving what actually has, and what he can actually do.
In my full year program, every student does fifty small theses, one a week, at least ten pages each, providing him an incredible amount of research, writing, and learning, and honing the ability to instantly research anything needed.

One more minor detail: Costs
In the Career Support Team format, with only your own 3 to 5 team mates, it costs a lot less than 4 to 6 years (and $100,000?) at college, to research, write, and print your own career-oriented books, and become experts and authorities, even without my coaching.

Exams
Life is it's own exam, never scheduled and never giving warning for preparation time, never 'fair'. Again, life is not fair. Remember that. Those who expect life to be fair are deceiving themselves, and are doomed forever to sad and often painful disillusionment.
The only way to know the right answers in real life is to know your stuff, work at it, and be on the ball. And even then you must make a certain number of mistakes. You can and do get hurt.

Writing and Thinking
More importantly, and something that no exam or test can ever show, writing actually shows how a person thinks, and how deeply, quickly, and realistically, which is often more important on the job and to an employer, than what one supposedly knows from school. Everyone can always learn more on the job, but thinking ability is often more valuable to a company than data remembered.
This has another side: Is it rightful, in a moral sense, for an employer to be able to see into the inner workings of an employee's mind? Is this not an invasion of privacy? What if one could see that, for instance, a certain employee has no moral compunction about stealing or some other illegal action? Is the employer within his rights to assign that employee a job where he can not steal, even though this severely limits his salary potential, and even though he has not yet committed such an act? In fact, by studying the writing of a person, such things are often quite clear about him, and it is possible to make certain conclusions about many of his orientations. By having the writer answer certain kinds of questions, these things can be even more thoroughly explored. At what point does this become unfair to the worker, or to a potential employee?
If a company was to run its own in - house private school, using my SASS Study Teams and LAPs methods*, and detects such things in its young students, could it either attempt to correct them, or dismiss that student, send him back to public school? Could the company detect budding genius and perhaps escalate it, and perhaps contract it for life, perhaps to lease out to other corporations on assignment? This is all now open country, and what is illegal or limited or even considered immoral here in the US may be perfectly fine in another nation, giving multi-nationals a big advantage.
[* I firmly advise any and every company which hopes to be in business next generation and seriously wants and needs future intelligent and literate employees, to abandon the public school system and immediately begin to develop its own in-house Learning Team centers as a much more effective, flexible, and less expensive alternative, guaranteeing themselves the kind of minds they need for future competition against other aggressive companies. Today's traditional standardized public educational system, from kindergarten to masters, is a total loss. It can not be fixed, can not be tweaked enough to meet space - age demands. It was built in the 1800s for horse - and - buggy needs, not high - tech high - speed high - change global competition. The whole mess must be deep - sixed, replaced by something with the width and depth and speed needed by the demands of the future, not the past. But it won't be; it's too imbedded, and the eduction industry is too massive, precedent - bound, and self - referent to change. The company employer is on his own, and can choose an alternative. That future will be much more money - and materialism - oriented, information - and result - oriented, much more complex, specialized, and many other things not included in, and not able to be included in, the present teach - and - test system. The only way to handle this future demand will be by in - house corporate SASS Study Team facilities (instead of schools as we know them), using tools and methods which are largely unknown by, and inconceivable to, the professional educators working today. See my books, Future Education and The Corporate Option Plan (COP).
Educational triage will be required, a political correctness no no. Each company must now seek out on its own the brains it will need, and itself cultivate the unique talents necessary to its future survival. Effective intellect (unlike mere obedience and memory) is a limited resource, and often not able to be found by traditional tests. In the search for and acquisition and development of the mental abilities necessary for future business survival, even governance, educational warfare is about to commence. Present education methods, and job fairs, are alright for warm obedient bodies, but if you want more real brains, you will have to fight for them, at high cost, or develop them yourself.
The tactic of demanding that students write about and prepare to teach a subject, which my SASS method requires, means they have to study the material even more thoroughly, if they are to know it so well they can 'teach' it to others in the conventional sense of instructing novices and even those experienced in it.
Further, and perhaps the most important of all, writing for career advancement requires above all that the student seeks at all times for a way to make some advancement in his career subject, perceive something skipped or avoided, find a 'hole' or crack in the knowledge about it, look at it in some different way or relationship, offer something new about it, make some contribution of value to his career field. While there are formula ways of doing this, which anyone can learn and use, and we do, there is also that certain leap of intuition or perception that goes beyond rules and tools, that magic, if you will, that is the essence of the human mind, called imagination and creativity, and curiosity. Most people have imagination and curiosity right from the earliest age, but repressive obedience training and traditional schooling destroys those tender buds before they can 'cause trouble' in the classroom. When we are able to keep these most valuable of all human characteristics, and use them, they often produce contributions of great value to mankind.

WRITING
Because [1] writing is the best way of learning, and [2] because so many people cannot write well, and [3] because most companies are in such desperate need of people with good writing abilities, you must really concentrate on your writing for career success.
You learn writing best by doing it, by reading a lot, by observing other people (and yourself), from discussing things with your Career Support Team mates, from reporting on the interviewing you do of executives and workers and other people, learn by doing research, and learn by reading books and more up to date information sources such as periodicals, journals, magazines, catalogues, directories, and even learn from 'junk mail', but especially (90% of it) through doing your own writing.

Why So Much Writing?
The Career Support Team method is based on the best and most reliable method of getting ahead, by becoming a known expert and authority, through writing, cooperation, and self-promotion. Your S-Team also does similar work such as creating presentations, taping speeches, video-recording events, and so forth, which are all are based on writing, researching information sources, interviewing, polling, and other work in response to a question or assertion or career problem which provokes the mind to think, and then to work out possible solutions to that problem and write a report, article, script, or book about it.
The purpose of this system and method is threefold.
First, the spoken word is too quick and easy, usually facile rather than intellectual, usually shallow rather than of any depth, and usually either uselessly narrow or vaguely grandiose rather than comprehensive and purposeful and pertinent. The spoken word is gone as quickly as the breath used to voice it, lost in ear and mind as well as in body. Those who later remember it do so each from his point of view, inaccurately, and without depth. (This can be verified by experience and experiment, and has been, many times, but you should test it for yourself, too, to see how truly useless speaking is: tape some samples and a week later have speakers and listeners try to recall the exact words and content, then replay the tapes to compare with your recollections; most people are lucky to recall accurately 10%, and most recall only 1% or 2%!) No logic or purpose is required for the action of speech. Any damn fool can talk all day long, and most do. Anyone can make pointless noise with his mouth, and most of us do, much too much.
Writing, on the other hand, requires concentration, purpose, and a certain amount of discipline. It takes time, in which the writer must compose a whole thought, relate it to other thoughts, view reality as well as exercise his resourcefulness and imagination, his logic and sense of precedence and order of progression, and his sense of values and priorities. He has an obligation to himself as well as his reader to make sense, lest he waste his own time and that of the other, or he will not be read, his argument or idea will be ignored and lost, his time and effort wasted. He knows he must apply his ability to inform and influence, or he will be thought a fool. He may display his passion about something, for or against, yet be careful not to be thought unbalanced or incoherent. He risks exposing his ignorance in mistakes about information, or lack of it, or make errors in use of it. The writer must understand his reader lest he be misunderstood, be thought too shallow or too deep, phoney or abstract, or pedantic or worse. Unlike speaking, writing, in short, is to be done on a serious plane, even when its overt purpose might be to amuse or entertain.
To write well, one must know well. The writer must study his subject, and study the act of communicating it, as well, if he wants to inform and influence others regarding that subject.
This is why I say writing is the best tool for learning. One cannot write well about something without studying it, and thinking deeply about it, and thus learning it. To study something without a purpose is to gain only a very little about that subject; there is no focus. However, to study it to write about it, or to teach it, gives that study a meaning and value, a scale upon which to weigh the pertinent and casual, the flow and order, the means to select and discard, to search for relevance.
Since the advent of the phone, tv, radio, and air travel, writing has become so neglected that most corporations now complain that even their top executives can't write well, let alone their entry-level workers. The memos and letters coming from an executive should be clear, express the company's style and policy and viewpoint accurately, be spelled correctly, and be reasonably grammatical, to get the desired point across, achieve the desired result in the least time and with the least effort, not have to be explained and modified verbally, and to keep the company from appearing either stupid or ignorant or uncaring or antisocial or criminal to those who read what its officers and staff write. Most memos and other corporate correspondence, both within the company and from company to the outside world, are not well done at all, and some are total catastrophes. Those people who can write well will be welcome at most companies, if for no other reason than that they can and do write, write well, and PROVE it by showing an actual published book or articles of their written work. Career - wise, good writing is a powerful selling point, these days.
Further, the Team method depends upon juxtaposition of the unlikely as well as the ordered in study and perception, rather than rigid exposition for the purpose of cold reply to a rote and purposeless exam question. Nothing stands alone, for all subjects are related to all others at some point or time, and to reality, to the past and future, in some respect. The careerist in any profession must write, must relate his reports or articles or books to the world of reality as seen by the customer, to show real - life real - time pertinency, usefulness, meaning, interest, and even entertainment, use all his abilities to share what he feels, or according to his interpretation. Every writer is different, a unique individual, with his own ideas and contributions to give to society, not to just record and produce data and be an easily replaceable part in the machine, but with varietal repetitions and juxtapositions, so that each reader may interpret it his own way, to get what each can out of it, left and right brainers each seeing what the others do not.
Writing betrays much about the writer. The clarity of his thinking is easy to see, if it is there. If not, is he truly a fur-brain, or is he saying something beyond our understanding and of greater value? Is the problem that of grammatical error or poor word choice or lack of vocabulary, or is he simply padding with extra words to make an impression? Given a dozen or so pieces of serious writing done by a person, you can usually discover, though unstated, his moral levels, fields of interest, feelings for reality, purposes and needs in life, feelings toward others and toward society in general, perceptions about how others feel about him or her, and so forth. In fact, since writing brings out so much about the writer, maybe we should keep all writings under a certain amount of security, lest writers unwittingly display too much about themselves. Writing tells so much about a person that it should probably be licensed under the Fifth Amendment as self - betrayal, a truly unfair permission to look directly into the writer's mind.
This use and analysis of writing as a criteria means that the corporation can hire the best out of those available, and avoid hiring persons with undesirable characteristics, or hire the least worst of them out of those available, by directly studying what they write, rather than relying upon vague and often dishonest grade point averages or cheated test scores or purchased credentials. Every person reasons from his experience. Thus, the writer reveals just how much experience he has, and whether his attitude is simplistic or didactic or appeasing or waffling. He tells you quickly whether he is liberal or conservative, a joiner or a loner, a thinker or doer, self-conscious or aggressive, casual or intent. The dissembler, for instance, reveals himself instantly. Those with great imagination are as easy to spot as those lacking it. Those who have great resourcefulness are as apparent as those whose minds and presentations are orderly. The thief of ideas and words may also be a thief of things, of objects of value. The corporation may even hire such people for its own purposes, knowing in advance just what they are getting. Some companies may seek a type of person who is exactly so honest and trustworthy that he will steal for the company but not from the company.
If one has written a book, or enough smaller pieces, the company does not have to take anyone's word for what he is, or the analysis of anyone else, but has his work itself to read, on which the company can do their own analysis, along their own lines and for their own purposes. They may be seeking a specific type of person, or just browsing, trying to see where a certain one will fit, or whether Candidate A is a better general fit than Candidate B, or which of those available is a better fit in a certain context. Or, like a customer in a clothing store or super market, they may be shopping for a certain something, without knowing in advance exactly what it is, perhaps a maverick to spark their new product innovation program, or a fitter-in to fill a team need, or a happy camper / sociophile to pull others together.
Writing done by any intelligent person, as in Career Support Teams, is so diverse and individual that it can not be simply scored by standardized numerical method or graded by point-grade systems common in the traditional narrow rigid simplistic educational format, but must actually be analyzed for individual qualities such as perception, imagination, originality, and the other characteristics and abilities that traditional systems can not evaluate.
The analysis of real writing is an expensive and time - consuming task. One could go broke on the costs of hiring professional analysts at a high per - hour or per - piece rate. However, in my Career Coaching (212.876.5483), by having my Study Teams analyze and critique each other's work, the cost is minimal, each is helping each other, and widening each other's people - base, learning from each other, gets new ideas and ways of doing things, gives each other an array of samples to emulate and to avoid, shows the mistakes others are making, and in such a manner that they are least likely to make the same mistakes themselves. I make it necessary for each to point out the errors others are making, and to provide a valid correction, and at the end, to compare their own work to see if they are making the same mistakes, and tell how they can avoid them. The rule is that the Team doing the analysis can not simply point out an error, but must also demonstrate a better, more workable and realistic solution. This process helps to make automatic the self - comparison that precludes arrogance and other faults of hubris, and practice analysis of others so much that it becomes automatic.
By such deep involvement methods, each Study Team and Career Support Team member learns more than he can be taught.

The Martian Method
In my every SASS Super Study Team there is a Martian. In your Career Support Team, you may want to use a similar idea. Each member takes turns being the Martian. A different person for each assignment. His duty is to question and challenge the obvious, break the team out of ruts, eliminate blocks, erroneous assumptions, and more. It is a difficult task. In the Catholic Church, when they go through the process of canonizing a saint, they have a "devil's advocate", whose job is contesting why they should make the candidate a saint. Being the team Martian is even more difficult.
The Martian's job is to be super-critical, to not know what 'everyone knows', make others explain what they take for granted, and look at it again, since most of us do take so much for granted and are unable to question ourselves, assuming that everyone else knows what we know, feels what we feel, sees things like we do. Most of the time The Martian's work will merely annoy the others, but he must be persistent, because every once in a while he will help them find the exception, the time when the known does not apply, when the obvious is wrong, or the accepted not acceptable. That usually means a major breakthrough, since it gets the others to eliminate a block or erroneous assumption that is holding them back, fogging the issue, etc.
The Martian (like a person newly arrived from another world, thus the name) knows the dictionary meaning of words, the denotation, but not necessarily the connotations, local meanings, intentions, history, etc., and other and additional alternate unwritten meanings and significance with respect to our culture or personal experiences and knowledge. These must be explained to The Martian, especially when they add to and/or differ from the dictionary meaning. See Hirsch's Cultural Dictionary for some good examples.
When there are different perceptions possible or alternate meanings or ambiguities, the Martian deliberately uses one of them in his interpretation so as to deliberately confuse and misread the work, and bring out the possible errors and wrong ideas that can be applied by others, and eliminate them. This is to make the writer as exact and specific as possible in his writing, and prevent him assuming that the reader knows what he is talking about.
The other team members will act as judges and must be fair, not misuse this to get back at the person who has been the Martian to their writing. No spite or revenge or grudge is acceptable in acting as the Martian to another team member (though maybe it can be if you are critiquing the work of another team -- life IS situational, isn't it?).
The Martian Method is a way of sharpening our perceptions by having to explain, and look harder to explain. It helps thinking on feet without assuming criticism, over reacting over - defensively; enables more accurate communication skills, subject awareness, becoming used to logic, facts, differences between facts and perception, preconceptions and assumptions, etc.

Research for Your Writing
Having had articles and/or a book published gives you enormous advantage over any other applicant for any position, everything else being equal, and doubly so if it is in your career field, and well done. It proves to the employer that you are literate, knowledgeable, organized, can finish a project, and much more.
It makes your raises and promotions certain rather than tentative or possible, and sooner than later. Your employer looks at you with new respect. You have become an expert, an authority. (Authority n.[ME. or Ofr.; related to authentic] one who creates or enlarges; one who has power or influence resulting from knowledge, prestige, etc.; one who writes, an author.) He wants to keep you. At the very least, he can show you off, "Our in-house expert . . . ". He might use you in advertising, or teaching new people, or for who knows what. New opportunities open wide to you.
Becoming published in magazines, periodicals, or your own book, is thus one of the smartest and most useful things you can ever do, careerwise. Start today.

Your Personal Research Sources
There are many aids that can help you make your writing the best possible.
You learn by reading a lot, by observing other people (and yourself), discussing things with your Team, interviewing executives, workers, customers, and other people in the business, and by doing research, and, most of all, by writing. Research by first hitting the encyclopedia for a basic briefing, then scanning a few basic books in that subject for more solid and extensive foundation and background material, then using more up-to-date periodicals, journals, magazines, catalogues, directories, and even 'junk mail', for the latest news. Then go electronic, for up - to - the - minute refinement, and all the current names and events for interviewing and networking and making the most valuable contacts and connections in your chosen career field.
See my list of suggested research sources in Chapter 12, and consult writing books and periodicals in your local public library and bookstores, and online sources, for many more.

End of Chapter Nine
Click HERE to go to Chapter 10

Click HERE to go to the Introduction
Click HERE to go to Table of Contents
Click HERE to go to Chapter 1    Your Career, your Life Work
Click HERE to go to Chapter 2    People Study
Click HERE to go to Chapter 3    Your Career in Context
Click HERE to go to Chapter 4    Setting Your Career and Life Goals
Click HERE to go to Chapter 5    Long Term Career Development
Click HERE to go to Chapter 6    Career Strategies and Tactics
Click HERE to go to Chapter 7    Realistic Expectations
Click HERE to go to Chapter 8    Your Personal Career Support Team
Click HERE to go to Chapter 9    Team Management; Research and Writing
Click HERE to go to Chapter 10   How to become an Expert
Click HERE to go to Chapter 11   Miscellaneous, and Executive Summary
Click HERE to go to Chapter 12   Your Personal Career Research Resources
Click HERE to go to Chapter 13   Those Awful People At Work Problems
Click HERE to go to Chapter 14   Assumptions and Expectations
Click HERE to go to Appendices
Click HERE to go to Bibliography
Click HERE to go to Index
Click HERE to go to Personal Career Coaching FAQ
Click HERE to return to my HomePage, to access COP and other documents

Careerists, please contact me directly to obtain your own personal printed copy of Career Zen, more complete and up to date, especially with the latest on Internet career information sources and research.   Note that Career Zen is privately published, is only for my clients, and is not available in any bookstore or from any other source.

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