Ben Franklin would thoroughly approve.

I have just read and will soon review Laura Vanderkam’s

Laura Vanderkam

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin (2010). In it, she explains how to cope with “the primary obsession of modern life”: having sufficient time to do what we do best and what we enjoy most.

Here is a composite of brief excerpts from Chapter 5, Anatomy of a Breakthrough. As you read them, you will no doubt recall a number of similar admonitions in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac and Autobiography.

After “seizing control” of your schedule (i.e. knowing what consumes your time as well as to what extent) and “once you picture an outcome, it becomes easier to focus your efforts on meeting it…Feel free to aim big. Few calculated risks end in disaster…Another tip for making a breakthrough more likely: start behaving, as best you can, as if achieving the next level is a done deal. Interact with your clients [and associates] in the collegial way a partner would. Think of yourself as a frugality expert; think of your time as being well worth the billable rate [or the annual salary] you’d like to achieve. Much of life is how you frame it. If you want others to believe you are successful, it helps to believe it yourself.” In fact, I presume to suggest that you must believe it, if only as a foregone conclusion.

How to achieve a breakthrough to your next level?

1. Know what it looks like.
2. Understand the metrics and the gatekeppers.
3. Work up to the point of diminishing returns.
4. Spin a good (but truthful) story.
5. Be open to opportunities and plan for opportunities.
6. Be ready to “ride the wave” once you locate one.

Benjamin Franklin

I also highly recommend reading Jason Fried and David Heinemeier’s Rework as well as Franklin’s works.

Joblessness – the Underbelly of the Whole Equation

I have written often on this blog about the ongoing challenge of joblessness.  Let me point to a statistic, an article, and a book to ponder.

First, the statistic.  The misery index is at a 26 year high: Huffington Post’s Real Misery Index.

The index for March/April 2010 was 33.1, a slight increase from 33.0 in February, representing another new high in the 26 years going back to 1984 analyzed by HuffPost.

Next, the article:  The Real Misery Index April 2010: Underemployment Woes Lead To Two-Tier Economy by Marcus Baram.  In this article, which explains the way they arrive at the misery index number, we read this:

Lynn Reaser, the incoming president of the National Association of Business Economists, calls it a two-tier economy, with those who are employed doing better amid rising consumer confidence while the unemployed suffer.

And, now, the book.  I have only read the review from Business Week.  The book is How the Economy Works:
  Confidence, Crashes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies by Roger E.A. Farmer.  Here are two key paragraphs from the review regarding the jobs issue:

The core of How the Economy Works deals with Farmer’s theory for why unemployment persists. There is no well-functioning market for matching unemployed people with jobs. Ideally there would be special employment agencies that coordinate the market. These hypothetical agencies would pay job seekers and employers for listing exclusively with them and then get paid for making successful matches. Such agencies don’t exist because people, unlike wheat, can refuse to be matched if they don’t like the buyer.

Strange things happen in the absence of a well-functioning labor market, Farmer says. Even when there are lots of unemployed workers, employers don’t get any price signal telling them to divert resources to their HR departments and increase hiring. So unemployment stays high. Of course, employers won’t hire if there’s no demand—but there will be demand if everyone’s working. Farmer’s point is that any given level of joblessness, low or high, can be stable and persistent. And the best way to sustain a low-unemployment equilibrium is to use the Federal Reserve as a giant trampoline for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.

The review says that this section of the book is the hardest to understand.  And Farmer tried to write an “accessible” book, and acknowledged that this is a hard concept to grasp.  But here’s what I think I know:  when people don’t work, they don’t buy.  When people don’t buy, there is no growth – there is fear.  And when there is fear, there is retrenchment.

In one part of my life, presenting books on social justice and poverty, I have learned that research has come to a simple conclusion about homelessness.  The solution to homelessness is…a home.  And providing homes for the homeless is actually more cost effective to society than not providing such people homes.  For a great read re. this, one that puts a name and a face to this issue, read Malcom Gladwell’s Million Dollar Murray).

So, maybe we could come to this simple conclusion – the solution to joblessness is jobs.  And the more jobs provided, the more money circulates throughout the economy, financing the more jobs that have been provided and then will be provided.

Sounds like the chicken and the egg, doesn’t it?

Tony Burgess asks, “What’s your primary focus: leadership or effectiveness?”

Here is an excerpt from article written by Tony Burgess for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. This week’s focus: leaders for the future.)

What matters more, leadership or effectiveness? If you asked me that a couple months ago, I would have said that they are inextricably intertwined, and you can’t have one without the other. David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, recently spent a day at West Point talking with us. His central observation was that for all our espoused focus on leadership, all we talk about is effectiveness. That got me thinking.

In the U.S. Army, success is accomplishing the mission and doing so at least cost — in terms of lives. But what about when the situation is complex with ambiguous and even contradictory feedback as to whether or not you are succeeding?

Let’s get concrete here. Consider the following scenario — (Note: the names in this story have been changed). You are Chris, a 23-year old infantry platoon leader who has recently arrived in Afghanistan. You have a four-year degree and Army Ranger School under your belt, but let’s face it, you’re still wet behind the ears. Today, you’re getting a new mission: Establish an outpost in a remote valley in order to extend the influence of the government of Afghanistan into a region where there has been no government presence to date.

And why has there been no Government presence in this valley? Well, maybe because the terrain is absolutely ruthless: jagged, snow-capped mountains rise abruptly off the valley floor to 15,000 feet — the southern tip of the Hindu Kush — and the only way to get one of your humvees across the currently swollen river guarding the valley entrance is by airlifting it with a helicopter. The people in this valley speak a language that is like no other in the world, which complicates your ability to communicate and to gather intel. They follow an extremist version of Wahhabi Islam interwoven with their Pashtunwali tribal code, and they govern themselves through a tribal hierarchy led by elders from each village. Oh, and did I mention that they are fierce warriors and hate outsiders?

Your basic plan is to get into the valley and quickly establish a defensible outpost while simultaneously running patrols focused on connecting with the people and gaining understanding of the area. During your initial patrols, the few people you come across refuse to look at you and quickly scurry away. Your interpreter speaks Pashto and the people you run into either don’t speak it or refuse to acknowledge it. One day, walking through a village that is carved into the steep banks of a mountain, a man points you to the biggest dwelling and motions for you to follow. You and your patrol comply and stop outside the house. An older man, at least 6 1⁄2 feet tall but very thin, emerges. He has a dyed red beard down to his chest and the biggest, blackest eyes you have ever seen, like two oversized black olives. He speaks Pashto, and introduces himself as Haji Salar. You talk for a long time in the courtyard and, eventually, he invites you to be his guest for lunch.

Inside his mud-walled home, it’s sweat-dripping hot and smoky. You sit crossed-legged on the dirt floor, and your full body armor feels like a heavy straight jacket. In between sips of some kind of warm, thick goat milk, you keep wondering where you’ve heard this guy’s name before. Then, it hits you — Haji Salar is the father of Haji Jahangeer, the # 1 high value target in the region — a man who U.S. Special Operations Forces have been trying unsuccessfully to kill or capture for years. You ask him how his son is doing. His startled look fades quickly back to confidence, and he tells you that he has not seen or heard from his son for months and has no idea where he is.

After lunch, you depart but only after he invites you back the next day. You continue to meet with Haji Salar, both at his place and at your place, the small outpost you are building. You begin to grow a relationship. You give him supplies like bags of rice and beans to distribute to the people, and he introduces you to several additional elders. Together, you begin to talk about work projects that could begin to move the valley forward (wells, a school, road, etc.). Weeks pass in the valley, and you have not been attacked once. But your higher headquarters cautions you that intel reports indicate Haji Salar is talking to his son and reporting to him the details of your conversations, the status of your outpost, and every move you make. When you confront him about this, he denies having heard or spoken to his son for months.

* * *

To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

Tony Burgess is the cofounder of the Company Command and Platoon Leader professional forums, a growing network of junior officers in the U.S. Army who are deeply committed to serving Soldiers and growing combat-effective teams. This movement was highlighted as an HBR “Breakthrough Idea for 2006.”

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. This week’s focus: leaders for the future.)