My Year of Hopefulness - advice for MBAs still on the hunt

I can't tell you how often I shake my head at my own dumb luck. I started business school in 2005 for several very simple reasons:

1) I knew that I wanted to be a stellar performer in the nonprofit industry. Many of the donors that I worked with were from the business world and I wanted to understand their language, the circumstances they faced at their companies, and the way their minds worked.

2) I was 29, I wanted a graduate degree, and figured if I didn't go then, I may not go at all.

3) I wanted to live an extraordinary life and I wanted to help other people do the same. Understanding our commerce and financial systems inside and out seemed like a very efficient way to accomplish both of those things. Money, and heart, make the world go 'round.

I graduated in 2007, when it seemed that nothing could stop our professional lives from zooming to the top of the charts. I was blessed to be graduating in a very strong economy and alums I spoke to said I should thank my lucky stars. I did.

And then 6 months later, my beliefs, and everyone else's for that matter, about the economy were turned on their heads. The worst recession since the Great Depression. I have great empathy for fellow b-school grads who graduated the year after me, and more still for those set to graduate next month. You are facing extraordinary circumstances; we all are.

Today, I read Jack and Suzy Welch's column in Business Week and they see three possible avenues for newly minted MBAs. Quite frankly, their advice applies to everyone in the job market at the moment and it's very worthy of repeating:

1) Settle, work like heck, and learn to love it.
If you're looking for a new job, or thinking of moving on from where you are now, you might have to settle for a lower title, a new industry, slightly different job responsibilities, or less money than you had originally planned for. And that's okay. Make sure it's work you enjoy and that strategically you'll be poised to leverage it going forward into a position that is a better long-term match for you.

2) Put yourself out there full throttle. Decice the three dream companies or dream people you'd like to work for. Write to them, email them, call them and ask for five minutes of their time. Then prepare for that five minutes more thoroughly than you've ever prepared for anything in your life!

3) Go it alone, sort of. Sit down and make a list of the three things you're really good at and that you love doing. Then imagine the types of companies you could start with those skills. If you need to fill in some gaps, recruit a friend or colleague who has those attributes and see if you can make a go of it. In an earlier column, the Welch's said that this is the BEST time to start a company if you can deliver more value for less money than your competition.

Building on this advice, I'd say try two of the three. Actually, I think you should do all three, and here's why:

1.) Settle and like it. When I was 22 and just graduated from college, I loved theatre. I still do. In a lot of ways my work in the arts saved my life. I wanted very much to work in that industry so on my mother's suggestion, I wrote to every theatre company in NYC and asked them to hire me. I was willing to do anything from fetching coffee to taking messages to running errands. The Roundabout Theatre Company hired me as a customer service rep for $10 an hour and from there I built a career in that industry for 6 years. It was a great time in my life and taught me that a settle (strategically) and love it plan can and does work.

2.) Writing to people - My friend, Richard, has encouraged me for some time now to write to every person I admire that I'd ever like to have some type of working relationship with. He's relentless about repeating this advice to me. Case in point - I love the work that HopeLab does. They build video games for young people managing critical illnesses. I wrote them a letter, they responded, and I hopped on a plane to visit them in the hopes that some day down the line the time will be right for us to work together on some project.

3.) Do your own thing - we should all be working on doing our own thing! If this downturn has made me realize anything it's that I want to be in control of my career. I no longer want to just hand it over to someone else to evaluate and grow. Going forward, I'd always like to have my own side projects that I'm working on, and someday one of those side projects just might be a killer idea that I can build a whole business from.

In short, we all have choices and options. Even in these grim, tough times, we can all find a way to make ourselves useful, and with all the uncertainty a multi-pronged plan might just be the safest thing we can do.

My Year of Hopefulness - Suzy Welch's 10-10-10 principle

Suzy Welch was on the Today Show this morning promoting her new book about her never-fail operating principle - 10-10-10. With decisions, consider how your choice will effect your life 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years from now. It's such a deceptively simple rule of thumb, that it made me think why I hadn't thought of it myself - always the sign that something is a good idea.

Let's consider an example to see how 10-10-10 works.

What if you're thinking of leaving your current job and have been offered a position at a new company:

10 minutes - how will you feel about giving your notice at your current position? How will you feel about not seeing your current co-workers everyday? Do you feel like you would be leaving important work unfinished that you'd like to add to your portfolio? How does this jump contribute to your long-term plan? How do you feel about getting up every morning and going to this new job?

10 months - settled in to your new position, how does this new experience shape your overall career outlook? Your outlook on your life in general? Did you have to take a pay cut or get a pay raise for your job? How has your new financial situation changed your life, if at all? Could you experience any buyer's remorse? What have your gained through the new experiences and projects in your new position?

10 years - how do you imagine the position you are considering will effect your life 10 years down the line? What contacts and skills did it give you that effected your long-term career goals?

The questions for each phase are endless. Suzy Welch recommends doing a values self assessment first to identify what's most important to you. That will help you compile the questions at each phase that are relevant to you.

When doing the value self-assessment, ask the big questions: do you care most about financial independence and financial security? Is your goal to live a life of adventure? Do you care most about collecting good stories and meeting interesting people? Do you want to start your own business? Is travel important to you? Do you want to be a life-longer learner or an expert in a specific field.

By taking the long-view, the action steps for the near-term become much clearer. It's all about perspective. How do you want to design your life?

My Year of Hopefulness - Jack and Suzy Welch

I never thought I'd say that Jack and Suzy Welch give me hope. Sound business advice. Straight talk about tough issues. A dissenting opinion. Yes, yes, and yes. But hope? Pure, empathic hope? Yep. Believe it.

In their recent BusinessWeek column, Jack and Suzy Welch not only gave me hope, but they made me tear up. They talk about the entrepreneurs all over this country who are about to emerge as the bright shining light to lead us into economic recovery. "Those kids (the ones at colleges inventing businesses right this moment) and their ideas are the future of business, if we just hang on tight...you can be sure, too, that legions of people out there aren't frightened by the economy. They're called entrepreneurs. And challenges don't make them surrender; they make them fierce."

If ever there was a rallying cry, a mantra to hang on to in this economic mess that seems to get worse by the day, this is it! And if you, as an entrepreneur (or an aspiring entrepreneur), still had any doubt about whether or not entrepreneurs should really consider starting a business in this climate, isn't a vote of confidence from Jack and Suzy Welch just about the best vote you could find? They don't say things to be nice or supportive or upbeat. They say them because they believe them whole-heartedly.

I love this article so much that it is currently hanging up by my desk. So when I sit down to do research, to consider where my career might, could, should go, and to write about entrepreneurs, I'm reminded that Mr. and Mrs. Welch are on our side. And with support like that, it seems we've run out of excuses to not take our careers in our own hands. In their very simple language, Jack and Suzy Welch have not only given us their support, they've put all their cards on the table and told us that the world needs us - we are the people we've been waiting for to lead us out of these dark days and into a better world of business. It is not just an opportunity for us, it is a responsibility. The world needs us. Be fierce.

Winning by Jack Welch

Today, my boss showed an interview of Jack Welch when he was on his book tour for his then-new book, Winning. The interview contained all of the Welch-like outlooks that anyone in business has come to know well; f nothing else, he is remarkably persistent and consistent. Though I disagree with some fundamental beliefs he has about managing a company, I do think he provides excellent food for thought for today's business leaders.

Off the bat, I have to admit that I have experienced Welch-style management first hand. I interned at The Home Depot for my summer between my years of business school. And though Welch never worked there himself, one of his proteges, Bob Nardelli, was the CEO for over 6 years. We all know how that played out, and there are numerous articles that have been written about the damaging culture of that place.

Many of the troubles that The Home Depot is facing now have nothing to do with the housing market. They have everything to do with the fact that in 6 years Nardelli decimated the culture that made that company great. People were afraid of him. He had dirty stores with low service levels and focused on the large professional contractor, a customer who was never all that interested in The Home Depot. They consequently sold the business after Nardelli's termination. While Nardelli tried very hard to play hardball the way Mr. Welch taught him to, he forgot the lessons of shedding what is not essential, focusing on others when you are in a leadership position (as opposed to oneself), and realizing that a great company never believes they are best so they continually seek to learn and improve.

Where I strongly disagree with Welch is in his philosophy that is the namesake of his book: winning. He says a company's job, its only job, is to win. He goes on to say that from winning, all good things come. My question to him would be, "Do you win at all costs, by any means necessary?" There are a lot of companies that got very large, fantastically wealthy, by completely disregarding the environment, by squeezing every last drop of margin out of their suppliers, and treating their people with less than respect. Wal-Mart is a great example of all of these operating principles. Now they're working hard to reverse their ways. They certainly won by Welch's definition. But was it worth it?

I would amend the mission statement of a company by saying that it's job is to win with integrity. And by integrity I mean that it must consider that the communities in which its employees, suppliers, and customers live and do business are also stakeholders in their business decisions, as much as its stockholders. If a company wins and puts the health and well-being of its communities at risk, then in the long-run we all lose.