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Generation X takes on the workplace
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REVIEWS BY NEAL LIPSCHUTZ
Fiction can be more telling than truth. It can even be more precise, since the details are readily available in the author's head and are not open to dispute. Realistic fiction is unencumbered by the need to check facts, to corroborate, to be fair, to have actually been there.
Day Job: A Workplace Reader for the Restless Age opens with this traditional disclaimer, "The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are products of the author's imagination and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening." But author Jonathan Baird must have trod some similar paths in his 26 years to those walked by his fictional protagonist, the young and confused Mark Thornton. Baird simply knows the territory. In a way that a hundred expertly conducted interviews would not convey, this offbeat fictional journal of a day in the life of a college-graduated twentysomething stuck in a customer service job vividly captures the ambition, ennui, frustration, and sanity saving sense of humor of someone in his or her first "professional" job. Not knowing exactly what he wants to do (it's got to be meaningful and fulfilling), not sure how to get there (or even how to start), and certain only that his dead-end job is robbing him of life, Thornton is in a perfectly alienated position to lampoon the absurdities of the modern office and of management fads. Seen from the bottom up, this book also illustrates how difficult, if not impossible, it is to manage and motivate bright young people in jobs for which they feel vastly overqualified. The book's clever conceit is that Thornton, as part of an ironic tribute to the company's obsession with implementing Total Quality Management (TQM), volunteers to keep a journal and present his findings to an outside consulting firm. The journal gives him a modicum of power and a place to vent. This finely drawn portrait of Generation X unease is aided by its arty layout. The text is presented in old-fashioned typewriter type, augmented by illustrations, doodles, and arrows. The originality of the story is aided by frequent and well-chosen excerpts from a host of books on management, philosophy, and other subjects selected by Carol M. Allen. The combination makes for a unique reading pleasure and a "truthful" look at some intractable workplace issues.
A Workplace Reader for the Restless Age By Jonathan Baird Allen & Osborne, $29.95 ISBN 0966080521
Through numerous examples of people who successfully and radically changed career course or modified careers with part-time avocations, Smye, a counselor and consultant, shows you can get to that new lawn if you are convinced the grass is greener on the other side of the street. Smye profiles many capable people who found they were unhappy with their lives. Rather than try to change themselves, they changed their environments. The author is particularly good on how one should reality-test dreams of change. You have to be able to take some immediate action, even if it's small, toward your goal, if it is a realistic one, Smye writes. She also advises people to stick with their core competencies (which are different from skills, which can be learned) even when making big career changes. There are a number of worksheets and checklists to help people figure out what it is they really want to do and then how to get there.
A Guide for Your Second Life By Marti Smye Macmillan, $14.95 ISBN 0028620585
Business Wisdom from Mom By Rhonda Abrams Villard Books, $22.95 ISBN 0375501924
Random House AudioBooks, $18
Forty years later, Galbraith's The Affluent Society has been republished, updated and boasting a new introduction by the author. Though elegantly written, the book can be at times complex reading. After the passage of a significant chunk of time, most of what Galbraith had to say stands up quite well and is well worth the effort. Consider this oft-quoted passage about the limits of the good life. A family is on an outing. "They picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?" Such cultural criticism doesn't sound like it was launched in 1958 at the height of unquestioned consumerist America, when a burgeoning middle class sought to raise its baby boomer kids in a sanitized suburban style. It was also in this book that Galbraith defined the now ubiquitous phrase "the conventional wisdom" and then showed how it was doomed to forever be fighting the last war. He wrote: "The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events . . . Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but . . . to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend." There is much to learn and appreciate here. Forty years later, Galbraith's ideas are fresh and provocative.
By John Kenneth Galbraith Mariner Books, $13 ISBN 0395925002 The spirit of business Business and spirituality might seem to reside at opposite extremes of human experience, but several new books link the two, such as The Gospel of Good Success: A Road Map to Spiritual, Emotional and Financial Success by Kirbyjon H. Caldwell with Mark Seal and Achieving Your Financial Potential: A Comprehensive Guide to Applying Biblical Principles of Financial Success by Scott Kays.
A Road Map to Spiritual, Emotional and Financial Success By Kirbyjon H. Caldwell with Mark Seal Simon & Schuster, $23 ISBN 0684836688
Achieving Your Financial Potential:
As the century draws to a close, the urge to compute lists is upon us. Witness rankings of the 100 greatest movies, books, and the like. Along somewhat similar lines comes The Ultimate Book of Business Gurus: 110 Thinkers Who Really Made a Difference by Stuart Crainer. This book offers mini-profiles of business big shots and summaries of their major ideas.
110 Thinkers Who Really Made a Difference By Stuart Crainer Amacom, $24.95 ISBN 0814404480 Neal Lipschutz is managing editor of Dow Jones News Service.
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Continuing the theme of making a living in a place you'd rather not be is Marti Smye's Is It Too Late to Run Away and Join the Circus? A Guide for Your Second Life. The bottom line answer from this book is no, it's not too late to change.
Some people, believe it or not, like their chosen work. They have found a way to be materially successful, fulfilled, and they even treat their employees well. Usually, they have a mother to thank. Wear Clean Underwear: Business Wisdom from Mom by management consultant Rhonda Abrams posits that the codes by which the ideal mother pestered us to live by (things like "share" and "eat your vegetables or you don't get dessert") have humanistic and beneficial application in the workplace. Myriad real-world examples, often of companies and their leaders who already have established reputations for doing right by their employees, are offered here. Abrams opens each chapter with a motherly pearl of wisdom and then shows how it can be positively employed by adults between the hours of nine and five. Every chapter ends with an entrepreneur detailing lessons learned from his own mother. It's a brightly written, positive book.
These three books share a common trait: They are about business and working, but there is precious little mention of money. In fact, dollars and cents are never linked with success in a job or as a company owner. It's one thing for authors who are consultants or graphic designers to note the importance of life outside the ledger sheet, but it's quite another thing for an estimable economist to do the same thing. After all, what is economics but the study of money and the creation and transfer of goods and services. But economics really isn't just about the bottom line. The eminent economic scholar John Kenneth Galbraith demonstrated that for us 40 years ago when he published his seminal The Affluent Society. He challenged the notion that economics was all about maximizing production. He described how an affluent society creates the needs it then seeks to fill, and he cautioned of the dangers of a system that maintains a robust private sector and an impoverished public sphere. Economics, Galbraith said, was also about the environment and the quality of our lives.