by: Adrienne Rodney

You think you got it bad? Try waiting in a mile-long line where a callback is like hitting the jackpot and landing a part is like going to heaven.

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First Lesson: CHANGE THE GAME

Darbi Worley, producer of the Everything Acting Podcast, knows that not every role is right for her. “I look at every project as a jigsaw puzzle missing one piece,” she says. “I am a puzzle piece and I only fit certain puzzles. If I jam myself into the wrong puzzle, both the puzzle and I are going to be really uncomfortable. Better to wait for the right puzzle. It’s out there.”

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Second lesson: RE-FRAME REJECTION

Lidia Ryan says most thespians go on twenty auditions before getting a job – sometimes more, sometimes less. There are too many circumstances to take it personally. “I may lose a part not because I’m not a good actor or they [casting agents] didn’t like me,” she says, “but perhaps because I look too much like one of the actors in the project that are already cast, or they decided to go with…the opposite sex. It’s never a rejection of you; they just decided to go with someone else. If you see it as a rejection of you, well then you will probably just give up.”

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Third Lesson: KEEP GOING

Brooke Lewis, a horror-film actor and producer, knows how hard you have to work to be noticed. “When you get in front of those people you better be prepared and you better be good,” she says. “However, how will these people ever know you exist if you don’t put the work in to get there? If you’re not putting yourself out there in the work sense, then you’re not moving. You’re not getting to the next place.”

Ms. Lewis put herself out there by staying busy. “I can’t tell you how many coffee and dinner meetings I used to take, with anyone and everyone in the industry who I could have some kind of beneficial relationship with – where I could help assist them and they could teach me. I mean, you really have to put the time in.”

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Fourth Lesson: TAKE ACTING LESSONS

Dan Nainan was a senior engineer at Intel touring around the world with cofounder Andy Grove as his “Demo God” doing technical demonstrations on stage. He says, “Although the technical part was easy, the public speaking was terrifying, so I took a comedy class to help with stage fright, and found I had an affinity for comedy.” Now he’s a professional comedian and actor who appeared in a “Get a Mac” commercial for Apple. Learn how actors and comedians deal with their fears and it will surely help your career, and perhaps even lead to a new one.

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Fifth Lesson: DO SOMETHING ELSE

Kai Soremekun, creator of the web series CHICK, says. “When you’re looking for a job and worried about your future you’re already afraid.” She recommends, “Stop watching the news.” and “Get a hobby or project.” She describes a friend who renovates houses, “Often she is so wrapped up in the latest house she’s working on that it almost becomes a hassle to drop what’s she’s doing to go to an audition. But the result is she’s less invested in the outcome of the audition and so books more acting gigs.”

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Kai brings up a very important point. Optimism, helplessness, and depression have been studied for decades by Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association, and director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

In his book, Learned Optimism, he describes how worrying about things out of your control (e.g., the economy, most news stories, etc.) will make you feel helpless and depressed. However, being engaged in an activity like a hobby or side business will keep you positive, particularly if it is meaningful and benefits others. Watch Dr. Seligman explain how to live a fulfilling life on this TED Video.

by Brooke Allen

I was eight when we got our first television. Although it cost a month’s take-home pay, my parents consumed it sparingly, as if it were candy.

In the eighth grade I became interested in Amateur Radio, and lost interest in TVs configured as receivers, so I took one apart and rebuilt it as a shortwave transmitter. When my friends watched the Flintstones, I talked to people all over the world.

Yet television is insidious and relentless, and by my senior year in high school, my father, mother, sister, and I would spend hours each day sitting together as we drifted apart.

My freshman year at college was 100% TV-free and it felt great. As I flew home for the summer I formulated a speech about how I had no time for television.

Before I could speak, my dad told me the TV was in the barn if I wanted it for parts. My family had figured out what was happening to them. One night after dinner, my mom and my sister watched as my dad took out a .22 and put a bullet through the picture tube.

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Clay Shirky discusses television and brains with time to spare in his book Cognitive Surplus – Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. He says TV claims about 200,000,000,000 brain-hours in the United States each year. He estimates this to be about 2,000 times the effort that it took to build the Wikipedia in all its various languages.

Broadcast television and the Wikipedia are both things your brain can consume, but the Wikipedia is also something you can help produce. And if you do, two things will happen: 1) The world will be a better place, and 2) You will increase your connectedness with others.

In 1973, my girlfriend and I hitchhiked to Appalachia to spend a week with her aunt and uncle, who had surprisingly little news to convey about her childhood friends. “Don’t worry,” my friend said, “we’ll get the low down at the hoedown on the weekend.” It turned out there were no more hoedowns; they had been canceled once Hee Haw went on the air.

Shirky says that when lonely people watch TV, they report feeling less lonely, even though their passivity and the one-way nature of the experience makes them even more alone.

Q. What do people do when they lose a job?

A. They watch more TV. (Click on the graph above to see an interactive version of how people spend their time throughout the day. The big dark red band is TV viewing by the jobless. The tiny orange sliver is time spent working.)

When you lose a job, it is easy to feel useless and disconnected. And yet, watching TV is a useless activity that does not make you more connected – it just makes you feel as if you are.

Instead, do something with your excess brainpower (cognitive surplus). Even if you can’t find someone to pay you right away, I’m sure you can find something you enjoy doing for its own sake.

View the rest of this article for more pictures from people who have better things to do than watching TV all day (such as taking photographs). Copyrights are reserved by all original photographers.

The photo above was conceived of by model Miss LoLo who says, “The inspiration behind it was to display an independence from TV and to motivate people to think outside the idiot box.” The photo was taken by  Dave Wolanski who says, “My50th birthday was a month ago. I can hear the clock ticking and I don’t want my legacy to be that I knew all the quirks of the characters of NCIS, one of my favorite shows by the way.”

Would you go out of your way to take a photograph for a complete stranger for no money?

Eleven people did that for me.

TWICE!

The First Time: I wanted to illustrate an article about my favorite park in Japan so I wrote to people who lived near the park on my favorite social networking site, Couch Surfing, and asked if anyone had a photo lying around. None did, but 11 people went to the park to take pictures just for me. This is free time and generosity at work.

This Article is the Second Time: Zillions of people have posted gadzillions of photos on Flickr, including hundred of smashed TVs.

We asked 12 people for permission to use there photographs for this article and 11 said yes. (Still have not heard from one of them.)

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Ede swares he does not have a gun. However my father did, and Ede has the perfect photo to go with the story of how my dad shot the TV.

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Hopefully Andrina did not waste too much of her day watching this TV.

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Chase says, "The economic downturn may make it hard to find a regular job, but it can also be a great time to go into business for yourself. Invest that time in yourself in one way or another."

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Reed says his brother, his girlfriend, and he found this old TV in the desert and decided to put it out of its misery.

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Jim says, "I find that ordinary television just sucks the intelligence right out of my head. The best use for a TV is as a DVD monitor so that you can at least choose exactly what to put into your mind. Have you heard the Groucho Marx quote about TV, probably from the ealry 1950s? He said, "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."

Julia says, "I like watching TV as much as any other teenager, but I don't think that a life should depend on that."

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Whitney and some German friends found this shirt in a store and althought they did not have enough money to buy it, they tried it on in the changing room. "I, however, snuck a photo, SHHH"

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Dustin says, "I'm proud to say I watch zero TV and haven't had cable for multiple years. Life's too short to spend yours watching someone else's."

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WATCH THIS VIDEO to hear Daniel Pink describe what motivates people to work. This is what No Shortage of Work is all about.

If you are unemployed, you are autonomous. We help with purpose and mastery.

If you are employed, find purpose in helping those who are not.

NSoW is not a commercial venture; it is created by people who believe that creating something of intrinsic value is compensation enough. (Note: We are not affiliated with the producers of this video or Daniel Pink.)

A book review by: Steve Amoia

Pat Williams, who was assisted by Mike Sielski, has written a book about a famous American baseball player. (Baseball has the same popularity in the USA as cricket enjoys in Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa and the West Indies.) More importantly, this is the story about a great American: Mr. Jack Roosevelt Robinson, a man of incredible courage, character and integrity. It is a story that transcends sports. This tale epitomizes the tremendous burden carried on the shoulders of one man and how the rest of us can benefit from his example in our daily working lives.

Legendary Athlete and Civil Rights Champion

“Jackie” Robinson was a star in the American Negro Leagues of baseball. He was a multi-sport legend at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) and also a former military officer. One of the painful ironies of the United States was that an African-American could die defending America on foreign lands, but he could not play in the Major Leagues (the highest division of American baseball.) Two men changed this injustice and altered the American sporting landscape forever: Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Jackie Robinson, the first man to break the color line of professional baseball in 1947. This was the first act by Mr. Robinson as a life-long champion of civil rights.

Strength of Character for a Greater Good

This book is replete with inspirational quotes, along with the long road of courage that was taken by Mr. Robinson. He had to make a vow to Mr. Rickey that lesser mortals would have never considered for a day. Jackie Robinson had to promise never to retaliate against the racial slurs, insults and deliberate attempts to physically injure him during his first season with Brooklyn. Mr. Robinson was a proud man and a ferocious competitor. But he understood the challenge that awaited him, and in one of the most unselfish acts, sacrificed his own personal feelings for a greater good. His actions opened the doors for generations of African-American athletes, and also opened the eyes to the country at large. As Dr. Martin Luther King would eloquently state many years later (and I paraphrase) “A man should be judged by the content and quality of his character. Not by the color of his skin.”

A True Champion

If I take one thing away from this great book, it would have to be the initial meeting that took place between Mr. Rickey and Mr. Robinson. It set the tone for everything that would follow. Branch Rickey began to insult Robinson in every form possible as a means to “test” him. 

“Anger smoldered within Robinson, but he remained quiet for awhile.’ Mr. Rickey, are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?’ ‘Robinson, I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.’ “

Learn from His Example at Work

In an American society that is becoming increasingly sensitive, bad-mannered and thin-skinned, we need to look at the sterling example of Mr. Robinson. The next time that a boss or colleague gets under your skin, think about Jackie Robinson and his unique workplace circa 1947. It might put the matter into its proper perspective.

To learn more about the book at Amazon.com, please click here.

My rating: *****

Steve Amoia is a freelance writer, editor and translator from Washington, D.C. He is a contributor to NSoW and writes the World Football Commentaries blog.

by: Adrienne Rodney

My father, Mark Rodney, the musician, told me something profound that his musician father, Red Rodney, told him, “Whatever you do, whether it’s playing a guitar or building an atom bomb, learn you craft well; so when you get out into the real world, you are well prepared.”

For Father’s Day, we asked our readers and others for sage fatherly advice.

Some advice is easy to swallow. Alicia Moore’s dad encouraged her to accept transformation in the workplace. “You’ll change your career three times in your adult life. So it’s okay to change your job as your life changes. Don’t be afraid of it.” Alicia remembered these words when she left her job to start her own business as a virtual assistant.

After Mary Ruiz became disheartened from constant rejection from prospective employers, her dad knew the right words to say, “It doesn’t matter how many people say ‘no’ to you because you only need one ‘yes’.”

Some fatherly advice is not as easy to swallow. Richard Bird worked on his dad’s fishing boat when he was fourteen and he quit after one week. His father said. “We have an option ‘A’ and an option ‘B’. Option ‘A’: you can work for me and get paid. Option ‘B’: you can work for me and not get paid. This is a family business and we all have to work if we want to survive.” Richard continued to work for his father, and held his fishing guide license for 20 years.

Because Anand Bhatt’s dad couldn’t understand why he chose to be a musician, he struggled to find advice to give his son. But when a frustrated Anand needed him, he was there to get his son back on track. “Stress is not to be avoided. Life is like a guitar string. If it has too much tension, it’ll snap. But if it doesn’t have enough tension it doesn’t make a sound at all. You need just the right amount of stress to make life sound like you want it to.”

Many of us can reminisce about the long conversations we’ve had with our fathers, laughing at how fruitless we thought their lessons were at the time. Sometimes we don’t understand the power of their words until years later.

Brooke Allen, founder of NSoW, was told by his father, Tom Allen, Jr., “It is easier to make money doing what makes you happy than to buy happiness with the money you are paid for doing what makes you miserable.”

Brooke’s dad was a trained sculptor, and his career arc took him from fine art to management and consulting. Brooke thought his dad was crazy because it seemed to be hard to make money doing what gives you pleasure, and being a sculptor paid very poorly indeed. Brooke believed a good way to make money is to do things that make other people happy, and the easiest way is to do things that make them rich.

“Only later,” Brooke says,  “did I realize that he was right, because, if you spend your days working at making yourself miserable, you’ll find it very hard to make up for that, no matter how much money you spend.”

Sometimes, the best advice is to not take the advice. Rory Rowland’s father was uneducated (having left school after the 5th grade), and gave his son two pieces of advice: “Get an education,” and, “You can steal more with a briefcase than you can with a gun.” Rory decided to take his dad’s first suggestion but not the second, and now he consults to financial institutions, adding value, and getting paid much more legitimately than anyone could steal at a teller’s window.

Atypically, in a case of ‘do as I do, not as I say,’ Anna’s hard-working, honest dad recommended she take a job as a stock broker to make more money, even though she lacked confidence that she would know how to do right by her clients. He said, “A lot of people in that business don’t know what they’re doing. Besides, everybody is out for themselves, and the only people who are losing money are the ones that already have a lot of it.”

Anna was perplexed. She knew he wanted her to secure a better financial future, but he raised her to value morality. “He wouldn’t act like that himself,” she says now, ”and he raised me not to act like that either. So I’m ignoring his advice and remembering what he taught me to begin with.”

My father’s advice has ranged from questionable to good, although now that I am older I’m learning to reserve judgment. However, without question, he was right about practicing one’s craft. He’s been playing his guitar every day of his life since elementary school, and he surrounds himself with all things musical. That’s why he’s a pretty damn good guitar player: he took his dad’s advice.

It is Father’s Day – have you thought about what your dad has done for you? Do you think about the lessons you hope to teach your children?

Interview by: Brooke Allen

LISTEN TO NEIL and learn to MASTER A JOB INTERVIEW from a master.

Years ago, Mike Myers (aka Austin Powers) taught Cambridge educated Neil Mullarkey how to be funny, and along the way Neil discovered his authentic self.

Neil has been in double-acts with Mike Myers, Nick Hancock, and Tony Hawks. He has performed in numerous radio and television shows, including BBC’s Whose Line is it Anyway. (The show began in1988, ten years before ABC brought it to America.) He has been in many films including Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Goldmember.

For 25 years, as a founding member of the Comedy Store Players, and as owner of Improv Your Biz, Neil has been teaching the art of improvisation.

I recently caught his performance in the British Comedy Invasion in New York City. The audience was thrilled when he introduced his colleagues and mentors, Eddie Izzard and Mike Myers, as surprise guests.

So I asked him if he would speak to NSoW about the importance of mentors, and he graciously agreed.

Listen to Neil describe his relationship with Mike and what he learned. He talks about how he mentors others, teaching people from all walks of life how to improvise. You will hear about his alter-ego, L. Vaughan Spencer, the world’s worst self-help guru and author of Don’t be Needy, Be Succeedy.

Neil explains how improv can help you discover your authentic self. While actors might play people they are not, improv artists have no time to be anyone but who they are. In a good scripted performance, each line leads to the next. In good improvisation, each person hands other performers an opportunity to carry on, using what is called an “offer.” You may not know where you are going, but you offer the opportunity for another person to go somewhere. However, in normal conversation, we often bring a conversation to a screeching halt with what is called a “block.” These are conversation enders.

But a really good improvisationalist sees a block as just another form of an offer. Neil and I role-play with what is probably the most dreaded block job seekers face: The Turn Down – “I can’t possibly use you.” You will learn how this is not a block at all, but an invitation to explore everything else you might do with your life. And the best place to start is in the hiring manager’s office; the best time to start is immediately after you are rejected. The conversation does not need to be over. You have just been handed an “offer” to begin an entirely new discussion.

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW NOW.

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Before there was Dr. Evil, there was Dr. Wicked.

Watch MIKE MYERS and NEIL MULLARKEY perform together at the Edinburgh Festival on YOU TUBE.

Read the Humongous Shortage of Work’s  review of Neil’s latest book, Don’t be Needy, be Succeedy. They even have a promotional video you can watch that is a real hoot.

A DISCUSSION WITH BILL BLACK.

by: Brooke Allen

William Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-07. Bill is an outspoken critic of our regulators, banking, and business leaders. You may have caught him on Bill Moyer’s Journal, or in his congressional testimony where he stressed accountability and the fact that elites refuse to accept responsibility.

I recently attended a conference on institutional decision making and group behavior. Many academics presented experimental results and mathematical models to explain how we make bad decisions. Yet, when I asked about the role morality plays in individual decision making, I was told that little research has been done and therefore there was not much that can be said about the topic.

So, I called Bill Black. I caught him at a conference run by the Gruter Institute for Law and Biology.

Brooke: You coined a term, “control fraud.” Could you tell us what that is?

Bill: Yes, control fraud is when the people that control a seemingly legitimate entity, whether it is private, non-profit, or governmental, use it as a weapon of fraud.

Brooke: There seems to be a lot of that going on now.

Bill: Yes, way too much. And the FBI just announced that property crime had fallen to yet another all-time low, because we don’t count serious white collar crime. None of the major things that cause massive losses are even counted. And, if you don’t count it, at the end of the day, it doesn’t much exist [as far as they are concerned].

Brooke: I recently sat next to a young soldier coming back from Afghanistan; a wise man at age 20. I asked him, “What have you learned?” And he said, “I have learned to make apologies, not excuses. If your gun jams because you have not maintained it, and your buddy gets killed because you can’t cover him, you have to apologize to his widow, and it is not your gun jamming that caused his death.”

He also said, “I now see my country as a nation that cannot apologize, and that is full of excuses masquerading as reasons.”

How can we be excused just because we haven’t modeled morality mathematically therefore we can’t know anything about it? This young man knows something about it.

Bill: Brigadier S. L. A. Marshall found that small unit cohesion was the absolute key. You will do astonishing acts of bravery for your little group, and you will do it for members of your group who you actually hate. And they’ll do the same thing for you.

What you see from our elites is an almost complete unwillingness to take responsibility. We even have all these flakey apologies. To take the soldier’s statement, when he apologizes, he doesn’t say, “I am sorry if you have interpreted my comments in a manner that caused you distress,” which is the standard non-apology apology that people use today that puts it on you; there must be something flawed about you that led you to take offence at your husband being shot down because my gun jammed.

Brooke: I have an MBA in Finance, and I took an ethics class, which was all about how to stay legal, and not about ethics. The strongest impact for me was in a course called Managing Organizational Behavior where we talked about the Milgram Experiments. [A series of experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram of Yale University, where he showed that most people would go so far as to give people an apparently lethal shock when instructed to do so by an authority figure.] These experiments were presented in class as things that couldn’t be repeated again. We are obligated to mention them, but don’t worry about them because we can’t repeat the experiment. But, isn’t that experiment repeated all the time? I had a hard time sleeping after that because I saw it in all our behavior. It was not Germans in Germany who did what they did in World War II, but humans, just like the rest of us, and we are all capable of that. That, combined with small unit cohesion (you fight for your buddies, not your cause) is a combination that is extremely powerful and scary, isn’t it?

Bill: It’s weird, but I had the same experience. That is the single scariest thing I have ever watched in my life, and of course, I have seen much more horrific, graphic, violent things that are real – and that was an experiment. My fear was, my god, what would I have done? I know what I hope I would have done, but after you see that film, you have to wonder. [He continued with a discussion of the Stanford Prison Experiments.] That’s why you have to have immense restrictions on abusing people you have made powerless, because it is such a human thing to abuse them.

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Perhaps psychologists consider running the Milgram experiments to be unethical these days, but reality TV producers do not. In 2006, a British TV station produced a show called The Heist in which illusionist, Derren Brown, began with 13 businessmen and women, and was able, in just two weeks, to persuade four of them to commit what they believed to be an authentic armed robbery. As part of the show, he reenacted the Milgram experiment as a test to identify his four most obedient participants. Darren got the same results Milgram did in 1963: over 50% of the subjects administered what they believed to be lethal shocks simply because a man in a white coat told them to. You can watch a report on the TV show here.

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Brooke: Are business schools doing a good job of teaching ethics?

Bill: When I am in a dispirited mood, I refer to them as “fraud factories.” They do a miserable job right now. We know empirically that in business schools and econ programs, when people enter they are materially less altruistic than their peers, and we know when they get done with the program, that is even more true. (See a paper by Gintis and Khurana.) So, through self-selection, training, and peer effect, we are turning out people who find it easier to cheat other people and to not care about other people. So, yes, we are teaching ethics, and we’re teaching it effectively, but it should be called “anti-ethics.”

Brooke: So, if you want to get a good ethics education, you should take diligent notes, and then negate whatever you are being told.

Bill: Yes, put a negative sign in front of most anything.

I refer to our prior conversation with Professor Mintzberg of McGill University, in which he said there is a clear moral obligation for colleges to disclose the flaws in their education, but not a legal one. Bill and I continued to discuss how a moral obligation is enough of a reason to refuse to do something that is wrong, and you don’t need to discuss it any longer.

Bill: That’s right. You’re done. Period. It doesn’t matter how fancy you make it, how many excuses you create, you’re done. End of story. It’s off the plate as an option if it’s unethical.

Bill explains how our simple social rules keep most of us from cheating each other. He continues,

Bill: What if you say my job is to maximize return to the shareholders, and, if it is not illegal, and short-term profitable, then am I supposed to do it even when it is immoral? If that’s the rule, then you have just developed a rule that will destroy America.

Brooke: A psychologist friend of mine says that many of her patients don’t have psychological problems; they have morality problems. They want to feel good about themselves while they cheat on their spouses, screw their business partners, or steal from their clients, and if she can’t help them with talk therapy, they want a drug. She says, “They don’t have an emotional problem. The problem is their emotions are working fine.”

Bill: Exactly. The problem is they are not listening to their body. There is something in their system that is telling them that what they are doing is very wrong.

We return to the question of whether ethics can be taught.

Brooke: A fellow applied for a job with me, and I asked if I hire him, could I introduce someone to the job he currently has because I am all in favor of helping improve employment, and when I hire someone away from another employer, I haven’t decreased unemployment, I’ve just transferred my problem to his prior boss.

He said, “I would never recommend anyone to my job because I am asked to do immoral things.”

So, I asked him why he had not quit.

He said, “What are you talking about? I need a job.”

I said, “Let me see if I have this straight. What you are doing is immoral and you don’t think anyone on the planet should do it, but you are willing to do it.”

How does this work? How can I teach someone that, if they have that feeling, they have to stop, and it doesn’t matter if they are getting paid to do it; they have to stop?

Bill laughed: Did he get it, once you talked to him?

Brooke: I might have succeeded in sending this guy home much more conflicted, because he came with an attitude that it was his employer that was causing his problem, and the solution was to get Brooke to hire him. I made it clear to him that he was not qualified to work for me. I said, “If I do something immoral, which can easily happen – I’m deathly afraid of that – I need you to tell me that I am doing something wrong. And if I don’t respond, you need to tell my boss, and Compliance, and if the organization doesn’t respond, you need to quit your job and you have to go to the regulators.” I need that because I do not think I am immune from what Milgram showed.

Bill: You expressed that it was an ethical issue where the individual had deliberately put scab tissue on to make sure he did not internally frame it as an ethics issue. All you can do with a person like that is make the point that they are acting immorally directly to their face, in a naked way, and you did it where there was an actual consequence of his unwillingness to take a moral stand.

Similarly, when you find somebody is unethical and you fire him you need to consider avoiding the advice you get from everyone and give him a negative reference. People have to take a willingness to get sued, and if that can’t work, then as a society, we have to give protection.

We must simply start teaching ethics in our own ponds with our own kids, or own friends’ kids, using our own behavior. You always look, as a parent, for teaching opportunities that are not didactic, so it was always great when someone gave me back too much change when my kids were present, because I simply made sure that they heard me giving it back, and that they were actually paying attention when I did it.

Brooke: Recently, I was on a train and sat with this young woman who is in her second week on the job working for a dubious corporation, that’s to say a large Wall Street firm, but I repeat myself.

I ask her, “What do you do if you are asked to do something unethical?”

She says, “What are you talking about? There are two sides to everything?”

I say, “But what happens when you are on the wrong side? Have you ever taken an ethics class?”

She says, “Of course. It was required. But, that’s what’s wrong with you old people, and how you guys used to be taught, because in our classes, we all get to discuss all sides, and everybody is entitled to their opinion.”

Do you think that is the right way to teach it?

Bill: I’ll give you my interaction with a young person who worked for a law firm who said, “What I like about my firm is that it is really ethical.”

You know, you don’t often hear that, so I said, “Wow, that’s great. How did you learn about that aspect of the firm?”

And she said, “Well, I know that my firm would never do anything against the interests of Israel.”

We both laughed. This would probably distress supporters of Israel, but Bill and I know that you can’t know in advance that Israel will be for all time on the right side of every issue.

Bill: I was dumbfounded. Frankly, I decided my powers of persuasion were probably impossible when dealing with somebody like that. It is bizarre what some people define as ethics.

The young woman you met was taught that ethics disappears because issues are complex, so there is never an answer, and we are not required to seek an answer.

Brooke: Many of our subscribers at www.NoShortageOfWork.com are in the New York area, used to work in finance, and are now unemployed.

One of the things I try to teach, which is probably the most useful thing from economics, is the concept of opportunity cost.

I say that when you’re unemployed, the advantage is that you can do anything because the opportunity cost is zero. You might have to struggle to get people to bid up your price, so it is a good idea to pursue things of value to others.

If you are not working at an unethical firm because you are not working at all, then you are not called upon to compromise your ethics. You will not have to say to yourself, “Oh, my god, if I don’t continue to do this, then I will lose my job, and I won’t have money to send my kids to college where they can take an ethics class.”

Perhaps, if you are on the street without a job, now you have time to reflect on those things.

Bill: That’s right. Reflect. Take the opportunity to read. And teach your children well.

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Bill Black recommends To Kill a Mockingbird.

What do you recommend? If you have read a book lately of interest to No Shortage of Work readers, let us know. We will even try to arrange for you to interview the author, although I wouldn’t count on getting Harper Lee to take your call.

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We are meeting again. Click HERE for details.

You can always find or create a job for yourself if you are willing to change your job, change your location or change the amount you’re asking to a lower amount.

If there is insufficient demand for your particular skills and experience, first you will have to learn to do something else and provide skills that are currently in demand.  Employers don’t care about your past.  They care only about your future and your ability to contribute value to their customers.

You can change your location.  Sometimes you will have to move from one part of the country to another, from where there are few jobs to where there are more jobs.  Many people transform their entire lives by moving from an area of high unemployment to an area of low unemployment.

The third thing you can do to get back into the work force is to lower your demands.  Remember, because your labor is a commodity, it is subject to the laws of supply and demand.  If you ask too much, people will not hire you, because customers will not pay your demands in the price of the product or service that your organization produces. It is not the employer who is forcing this downward revision in wage requirements; it is the customer, through his or her buying behavior.

There is a small, creative minority in America who is never unemployed.  No matter what happens, they always have a job; sometimes two jobs.  If they lose a particular position in one place, they find another position doing the same thing, or something else, somewhere else.  They are fast on their feet.  They move quickly and they don’t accept unemployment as an option.  And they always have jobs.

There are always jobs to be done.  Even in the worst economy, there are always problems to be solved and consumer needs to be met.  For this reason, all long-term unemployment is ultimately voluntary.

There are more opportunities for you to fulfill your dreams and aspirations in the American economy than have ever before existed, or exist anywhere else in the world.  You can be, have, or do anything that you can dream of by preparing yourself for better and better jobs.  It is never crowded at the top.  There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.  Your job is to get good, get better, and then make yourself indispensable.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, examine the trends in your company and your career. Determine where the market is going and what you need to do well if you want to be a leader in your field.

Second, be prepared to change your job description, lower your demands or move to somewhere else if necessary so you can get and keep the ideal job for you.

Refuse to put limits on your imagination.

A conversation with Henry Mintzberg, Professor of Management Studies at McGill University.

By Brooke Allen, founder of No Shortage of Work

“Perhaps business schools should issue recall notices.” These words were spoken last week by Henry Mintzberg, a featured speaker at a Fordham University conference titled, “MBA Under Siege: Reimagining Management Education”

Because I feel my MBA is one of my all-time worst purchasing decisions, I gave Professor Mintzberg a call at his office in Montreal.

I began, “As a hiring manager, I can report that there are lots of recently minted MBAs with upwards of $100,000 of debt, who, as far as I can tell, have no skills or knowledge I’d pay them a dime for. Worse yet, they come with an attitude, and it usually isn’t a good one. Are you saying that business schools have an obligation to tell students when their product is faulty?”

He replied, “There is no question that schools have a moral obligation to disclose, but it isn’t clear that they have a legal one. Toyota has a legal obligation to let people know when they uncover a problem, but the case can be made that schools are not failing all students, and in many cases they add value. I refer to the functional courses in business, not the courses in management, where they do very badly.”

“But, the fact that most Toyotas work just fine does not mean they should cover up a fault in a few,” I said. “Besides, one of the things I hated about my MBA education was that the discussion in Ethics class was about legality, not morality. Isn’t a moral obligation enough of a reason to do something? Shouldn’t universities hold themselves to a higher standard than businesses?”

Mintzberg laughed, “Don’t look for too much morality at most Universities these days. It is popular for academics to make the case that honesty pays, that ‘It pays to be good’ n – not so– it’s a sham. Sometimes, it pays to be bad. Shouldn’t you always do the right thing, whether it pays or not? I’ve written about that in my book, Power in and Around Organizations.”

“In your more recent book, Managers, Not MBAs, you say that businesses are all about making things and selling them, but MBAs don’t study that. Instead they develop a disdain for production and sales.”

“That’s right. Selling is earthy, and business schools don’t do earthy things. Marketing is one-to-many, and it is hard to tell if you are doing a good job. Selling is one-to-one, and there is instant feedback.”

“And rejection can make you feel bad,” I said, “I once took a day-long sales training class that began with the instructor asking each of us why we where there. One fellow said, ‘I want to manipulate people so they will do what I want.’ The instructor took out his checkbook, refunded the $100 fee, and told him to leave. He said selling was about helping people make decisions that are in their own best interest. Then he taught us how to do it. On that one Saturday, I learned more of value than during five years of night classes at N. Y. U. where not once did I see anyone, professor or student, called on the carpet for their ethics or morality.”

He said, “If you want to be a doctor, you should go to Medical School, and if you want to be a nurse, you should go to Nursing School, but if you want to manage in business, you should not go to management school.”

“So, how can someone learn about management if not in school?” I asked.

“Some colleagues and I have created a program called Coaching Ourselves. We provide materials and guidance, but the basic idea is that small groups of people can learn a lot by reflecting on their own experiences, and sharing their thoughts and feeling with others. Rather than send employees to business school, we created an in-house program that helps develop groups of managers for a few thousand dollars, rather than hundreds of thousands.”

I was impressed. “We’ve sent three people in our group for master’s degrees with explicit instructions to report anything they learn that we can use, and they have not reported a single thing. I can certainly imagine it would be much better if we just got together and discussed things in the context of our own circumstances. But what advice do you have for our readers, many of whom are unemployed or working at firms with no education budget whatsoever?”

“They could do Coaching Ourselves by themselves; implement our methodology without us. They would get the benefits of pre-selected and synthesized material, not a person to help, but people can certainly implement these concepts on their own.” Of course, on their own, managers can still get the benefits of reflecting with each other on their experiences, just without the CoachingOurselves content downloaded to stimulate their discussions.

“It may be much more time-efficient for us to buy a solution for our employees, but if my friends and I were unemployed, we’d have more time and much less money, so perhaps we could roll our own. Professor Mintzberg, I, and our readers, thank you for your time.”

“And I thank you.”

It is refreshing to hear a business school professor call it like it is.

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If you would like to join with other NSoW subscribers to learn from each other as Professor Mintzberg suggests, go to our newsletter submission page, and select “Form a Study Group” from the first drop-down menu.