I’ve just finished reading The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work an enjoyable and uniquely insightful book by Alain de Botton.

In de Botton’s own words, he wrote the book to “shine a spotlight on the working world,” exploring both its beauty and its beastliness. By turning a philosopher’s eye on the intricacies of labor and trade, de Botton has produced a compelling series of essays that focus on life’s hidden minutiae, offering insights into working people as well as the taken-for-granted structure of the world around us.

The Poetry of Work

The essays are compelling reading – and not only because the approach is novel and the writing superb. De Botton takes us to places most of us have never been, showing us the vast global framework of cargo ships and warehouses, delving deep into their particular logic and strange beauty. He takes us to anonymous structures on the outskirts of the urban core, where:

“…vessels slip in continuously, during humid summers and fog-bound winters, night and day, to deliver the bulk of London’s gravel and its reinforced steel, its soya beans and coal, its milk and its paper pulp, the sugar cane for its biscuits and the hydrocarbons for its generators – an area as noteworthy as any of the museums of the city, but about which the guidebooks are silent.”

De Botton sees poetry in areas others overlook, such as the food distribution facility in the British midlands, where, in early December:

“…twelve thousand strawberries wait in the semi-darkness. They flew in from California yesterday, crossing over the Arctic Circle by moonlight, writing a trail of nitrogen across a black and gold sky.”

It’s a Small World, After All

In his chapters on the global supply chain, de Botton bridges the divide between the First and Third Worlds, detailing how cold-eyed, lifeless fish are transported around the globe by an assortment of humanity. His single-minded pursuit of the journey of a slab of frozen tuna – from the ocean off the Maldives to an eight-year-old’s supper plate in a Bristol kitchen – takes the form of a stark photo-essay.

Eccentricity Generation

The book skirts the edge of pathos when it teases the poetic from a Monty-Pythonesque cast of eccentric characters:

• The man who painted multiple pictures of a lone oak tree for two years, come rain or shine;
• A three-day journey by the founding member of the Pylon Appreciation Society from the Kent Coast to East London, cataloging the 542 pylons that provide illumination for Oxford Street shops;
• An independent career counselor whose conducts business with clients in a house that smells of cabbage; and
• The inventor of a pair of shoes that walk on water.

And if you want to know what Japanese day-time television, French Guiana, the freezing point of hydrogen and the fragile ego of a Hong Kong journalist have in common, read the chapter on Rocket Science to find out.

Lese Majeste

All of de Botton’s characters are treated with gentleness and respect. The one time de Botton seems to be peeved by a subject of his inquiries is, unfortunately, the one place in the book where the cloak of anonymity fails him. His long chapter on ‘Accountancy’ profiles the European headquarters of “one of the world’s largest accountancy firms,” and his interview with the chairman of the operation is singularly bad-tempered. De Botton notes that the senior executive has forsworn the trappings of authority – sitting in an open cubicle, asking people to call him by his first name – yet, as the author scathingly notes:

“…power has not disappeared entirely; it has merely been reconfigured. It is by posing as a regular employee that the chairman stands his best chance of preserving his seniority. His subordinates admire the sincerity with which he pretends to share their fate, while he privately recognises that only a convincing show of normalcy will prevent him from ever having to be normal again.”

Say what?

More convincing are the comments on the frequent internal presentations the top guy delivers “against a backdrop of PowerPoint slogans”:

“It is evident that success in his job will ultimately depend less on anything he might do than on his relative luck in aligning his reign with auspicious currents in economic history. He is like a general on a battlefield vainly striving to maintain an appearance of control amidst the chaos of sporadically exploding munitions.”

‘Nuff said.

The one problem with the supposed ‘anonymous’ critique is that the company chairman is photographed in front of a PowerPoint slide where the logo of the major accounting firm is clearly visible. Curious which firm it is? Turn to page 253 to find out.

John Berger

de Botton’s book reminded me of another of my favorite authors. John Berger is a Marxist art historian best known for Ways of Seeingand the wonderful coming-of-age novel G.

His examination of the life of a country doctor A Fortunate Man is a great companion to The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

Berger examines the daily life of the country doctor with an art historian’s and sociologist’s perspective. The working life of one man is situated in the broader framework of the social relationships.

The book is full of insights like this on the structures of social intercourse:

The easiest – and sometimes the only possible – form of conversation is that which concerns or describes action: that is to say action considered as technique or procedure. It is then not the experience of the speakers which is discussed but the nature of an entirely exterior mechanism ot event – a motor-car engine, a football match, a draining system or the workings of some committee. Such subjects, which preclude anything indirectly personal, supply the content of most of the conversations being carried on by men over twenty-five at any given moment in England today. (in the case of the young, the force of their own appetites saves them from such depersonalization.)

Both authors show depth of meaning and discover truth when they focus on the everyday. As writers, we should always look deeply into the world around us.

Ellen Taliaferro, MD (aka Dr T) is a recovering emergency physician now serving as the Medical Director of the San Mateo Medical Center Keller Center for Family Violence Intervention in San Mateo, CA.

Using her background in emergency medicine, stress management, and writing, she has created a program called Healing the Wound Within with a personal Writing Practice Prescription.

In addition, she continues to speak on Domestic Violence As A Health Issue and The Medical Aspects Of Manual Strangulation As A Form Domestic Violence Assault.

Dr T grew up in Will Rogers country and loves country humor. She sees herself as a true Okie: “Sooner born, Sooner bred, and when I die I’m California dead.” Of note, she finished her clinical career at UTSW medical school and Parkland Hospital. While there, the Dallas Morning News named her as one of the 100 most influential Texas women — an amazing feat for an Okie.

Pro-Track Profile

Dr. T. is a professional member of the National Speakers Association. She’s also a Board Member of the Northern California Chapter. Ellen is one of a growing number of established members who have enrolled in the 2009 Pro-Track class in order to take their career to the next level.

To hear what Dr. T has to say about professional speaking, well writing and Pro-Track, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:09 — 1.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Appearance is everything at this weekend’s Group of Eight food crisis meeting. Delegates from the eight leading northern hemisphere economies met in Italy to discuss world hunger.

Adverse publicity in advance of an “aperitif and gala dinner” caused the lavish dining arrangements to be replaced with a working dinner and no wine tasting.

The Financial Times report concludes with a reminder that a 2002 UN Food and Agriculture Organization meeting was embarrassed when a lobster and foie gras menu was offered at a forum on global hunger.

Executives and politicians (and their PR handlers) need to maintain constant vigilance as contradictions in lifestyles between the have’s and have not’s threaten the legitimacy of their words if undermined by their actions. The 21st Century is as rich as breeding ground for this hypocrisy as ever was the France of the Sun King or Victorian England.

The Detroit auto executives maladroit arrival in DC in “the jet” (as corporations refer to their private aircraft fleets) is but one example of the speed with which the current crisis is undermining previously non-problematic behavior in the C-Suite.

Executive communicators should be aware of the overall context of a spokesperson’s actions, not just the content of their speech or PowerPoint slides taken in isolation.

Authenticity is a valuable commodity.

Gourmand tastes should be indulged in private. You are what you eat.

What Smart Speakers Do Differently in Tough Economic Times

Saturday’s meeting of the Northern California chapter of the National Speakers Association featured a panel of Past Presidents who discussed ‘What Smart Speakers Do Differently in Tough Economic Times’.

Host Barry Wishner talked with:

* Michael Soon Lee, CSP
* Marilyn Manning, PhD, CSP, CMC
* Craig Harrison
* Patricia Fripp, CPAE, CSP

In this fourth and final highlight from the event, Barry asks the panelists what is the one piece of advice the audience should implement on Monday morning.

In the video you’ll hear:

* Why you should call your 10 most loyal customers – now!
* How to convince a client they would be crazy *not* to hire you
* The one question to ask when a client says they found you on Google
* How to improve your skills as a professional speaker
… and much more …

Answer: They are, according to the International Labour Organization, the only four nations on the planet with no paid maternity leave.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports, countries not run on twisted draconian principles of 19th Century capitalism, are debating whether to increase government mandated paid maternity leave. Imagine. The UK is considering an increase from nine to twelve months. Sweden offers 480 days of paid parental leave.

The FT considers the ‘cost to employers’ argument that some 3rd World countries (and these United States) claim is too burdensome, but concludes:

Maternity leave provides clear benefits to society. Apart from the advantages of babies spending their early months with their mothers, breast-fed children have lower rates of infections, childhood diabetes, eczema, obesity and asthma.

Companies benefit from maternity leave by allowing women to return to work when their children are a little older, rather than forcing them to resign if they want to be with their babies. Employers hold on to people and escape the additional costs of having to replace those who leave.

Little wonder President Obama saluted “the hardest-working people on Earth” in his recent address to Congress. With family values like these, Mom has no choice.

Coverage of the Summer Olympics has included television reports of wonderful varieties Chinese cuisine. As the 2008 Games approached the Chinese government took it upon themselves to provide approved translations of menu options on offer in local restaurants.

This, according to an article by the wonderfully named Fuchsia Dunlop (a name I’ll never tire of!) in the Weekend FT.

She lists the literal translations of many Chinese dishes found on restaurant menus:

“Chicken without sexual life” (a young chicken)
“Iron flooring cremation” (cookies baked on an iron griddle)
“Pock-marked old women’s bean curd” (stir-fried tofu in hot sauce)
and “the fragrance explodes the cowboy bone” (no other translation given – my imagination runs wild…)

Lost in translation

At the root of these amusing lists is not some Chinese inability to grasp the basics of English translation. Rather, the lack of congruence between Chinese characters and roman script impedes clear communication:

You can only go so far in borrowing from Chinese because beyond a certain level you have to know the actual Chinese characters to understand precisely what you are talking about. In Sichuanese cuisine, for example, there are two cooking methods that would both be transliterated as kao, but you can’t tell them apart unless you see the actual characters. The different characters for “salty” and “umami” are both rendered in the Roman alphabet as “xian “

The inability of one civilization to render the finer points of its culture into words that would be clearly understood by another is not limited to cuisines. Many social and cultural nuances are lost in translation – business arrangements; educational systems; humor, love, marriage and death. It’s made apparent when we see the literal English used in these menus. Official attempts to provide a standardized alternative are equally limited. Fuchsia Dunlop explains how these are:

…a pale reflection of one of the world’s most marvellous cuisines. Lyrical descriptive terms – like feicui (jadeite) for greenish foods, and guaiwei (strange-flavour, used for an intriguing combination of tastes) have been lost in the translation, and mapo doufu has severed its connection with the lovable pockmarked old dame of Chengdu. As Raymond Zhou wrote in the China Daily, this standardised translation is “a double-edged sword. It removes the ambiguity and unintended humour . . . But it takes away the fun and the rich connotation too. It turns a menu into the equivalent of plain rice, which has the necessary nutrients but is devoid of flavour”.

As with food, so with business. Corporate communications either lose their flavor or suffer unintended mis-translations in the journey from West to East and back. This is all part of the rich tapestry of human life. Give me an exploding cowboy bone any day over the stark accuracy of the standard translation.

Wimbledon tennis has concluded for another year, the Tour de France is rolling through the French countryside, the boys of summer are playing on baseball diamonds and the world awaits the start of the Olympics in a few weeks. Sport is filling the airwaves and, as I’ve noted before, is a common topic in business circles.

The proclivity for senior executives to attribute their success in business to lessons learned as a team sports player is discussed by Lucy Kellaway in Monday’s Financial Times.

Kellaway reports that a recent survey of British business leaders found that

Nearly half of the chief executives of the biggest British companies have won awards for their sporting prowess – twice as many as have any academic trophies. Most of them were captain of football or rugby at school or at college and quite a few went on to play for their county.

Executives credit the teamwork learned on the playing field for later business success.

Kellaway is not convinced. In her view, sports encourage delusions of grandeur, a stifling conformity and an inability to communicate clearly:

Sportsmen and CEOs also both make a hash of the Queen’s English. Each generates its own jargon and then feels compelled to borrow the jargon of the other. Sport is responsible for some of the most grating phrases in business, including ballparks, level playing fields, stepping up to the plate, bench strength, getting to first base, raising the bar and playing hardball. Footballers, meanwhile, are starting to talk like management consultants: David Beckham now says “going forward” every time he opens his mouth.

Finally, she points to the problems women have getting ahead in the business-world being exacerbated by the jock culture of boardrooms dominated by the ethos of the locker room.

I’m not a sports fan myself. And look, I’m not a CEO. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

The saving grace for businessmen using sporting cliches is that they are marginally less offensive than military ones. Despite the fact that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

Sci-Fi legend Bruce Sterling (Heavy Weather, The Difference Engine, Distraction and other great novels) is one of the cyberpunk gang of authors who have seen through the more pollyanna views of ‘cool new technology’ to warn that innovation can potentially create disruptions in everything from the climate system to the social system.

I’ve been a fan of his since coming across Heavy Weather in the mid-1990’s. Climate change was not cool back then. We’re so much older than that now and the planet is so much warmer.

I was delighted, and honored, when I ran into him earlier today at the FiRE Conference in San Diego and he agreed to be interviewed for Professionally Speaking.

I really had no idea what he’d talk about. The last thing I expected was a discussion on the Mafiosi-like features of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels. In fact he’s planning to set his next book in Europe. To hear him explain why he finds modern “post-national” Europe so fascinating, and why he predicts the view from across the Atlantic will soon “return to the slightly paternalistic attitude of American’s as poorly educated hay-seeds,” click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:47 — 2.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

I’ve noted before that there are precious few women engineers in most American companies. This, despite women being in a majority on campuses, as they beat out their male counterparts in the increasingly competitive college admissions process. Indeed, women are substantially represented on the lower rungs of the career ladder in technical and engineering departments.

But the story changes as they reach their mid- to late-thirties. Over half of all women voluntarily quit their jobs. What gives?

Monday’s Financial Times has a detailed analysis by Columbia University economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett who identifies five factors forcing out female engineers:

1. Many are turned off by male behavior. A reported 63% of women in science and engineering experience sexual harassment.

2. Women feel isolated.

3. Many lack role models and no-one to mentor their career progression.

4. They prefer not to embrace risk-taking career gambles.

5. Finally, they are caught between a rock and hard place when it comes to maintaining 70+ hour work weeks AND managing child and elder care.

Hewlett offers some sound advice for companies who wish to maintain their pool of qualified female engineers and scientists past their 30’s. Failure to do so, she points out, is a national issue:

“In the US alone, reducing female attrition by one-quarter would add 220,000 qualified people to the science, engineering and technology labour pool.”

Someone in the news here at HP Labs is April Slayden Mitchell, who works on video for mobile devices.

April is profiled on a wonderfully quirky blog called DollyMix (Thought Candy to stimulate your ladybrains) which kicks off a series of interviews with “geek girls” by asking her why there are so few women in the technology industry. She offers sound advice to girls still in school who are thinking of a career in science or engineering:

Take as many computer classes as you can and don’t be afraid to ask questions and get involved – even if you are one of the only girls. Also, while you are taking those engineering and math classes, focus on your writing and oral presentation skills as well. The ability to communicate clearly with others through both spoken and written word can only benefit your career.

Geeks with superior communication skills will always have an unfair advantage over their more insular colleagues, men or women.