Would you like to know what to expect in the new year 2010 with the burning issues of our time? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Predictions R Us, you all.

And, oh, what a great year we have in store for you. Here are 10 things I expect to see in 2010:

1. Victory in the Global War on Global Warming. Now that the climate-change deniers are out of office, positive measures are finally being enacted to heal our sick planet. The world is becoming safe again for polar bears. Notice what a fine cold winter we’ve been having? Dallas had its first white Christmas in 80 years. See, it’s working!

2. America’s sick health care system is healed. Now that Congress has agreed to pass a health care reform bill, no longer will we have thousands of uninsured Americans dying every minute for lack of health care. We will extend health care coverage to 47 million more Americans while at the same time reducing costs, saving $500 billion in Medicare waste and fraud and reducing the budget deficit, too. Wow! Thank you, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. And don’t forget Ben Nelson. Xoxoxo!

3. Recovery from the Great Recession and a return to full employment. That’s thanks, of course, to Barack Obama, who has saved and/or created so many millions and millions of new jobs. (Just ask him.) And because of passage of a health care reform bill, which will create untold millions more. Now, I call that the gift that keeps on giving!

4. Victory in the Global War on Ter—er, Man-Caused Disasters. Notice how incidents of terrorism against the United States have so dramatically declined since Barack Obama took office a year ago? (You haven’t? You need to pay more attention.) That’s because, as the Nobel Peace Prize committee recognized, Barack Obama is not George Bush. By projecting an image of weakness, Obama will fool al Qaeda and friends into taking pity on us and laying down their arms. (Or get laughing so hard, they can’t shoot straight.)

5. Barack Obama wins the Heisman Trophy and the Cy Young Award. OK, maybe that’s a stretch. But then who would have thunk a Nobel Peace Prize judging after only 11 days in office? If good intentions are the sole criteria, heck, why not the Pulitzer Prize, the Miss America crown and even the Pillsbury Bake-Off? After all, the important thing is he’s not George Bush. We even hear Obama may be in the running for Archbishop of Canterbury, but that’s probably just one of those rumors…

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Get free. Or, if you’ve lost your job in this Great Recession, celebrate your freedom by recovering your humanity and self-reliance. Become independent.

“What? Are you crazy? My layoff is a personal tragedy,” you say. “My career’s in flames! Whatever am I going to do?”

Get over it, that’s what. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Maybe not right now, but eventually.

Break your addiction to the office/factory-model job that’s bred in way too many of us a dependency and even a helplessness. Find a way to transfer your skills into something that will allow you to make a living without having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom.

Really. Think about it. Do you sense that something of your humanity has been taken from you in your workplace? I submit that there’s something very wrong about a lifestyle in which we sell ourselves to a corporate john who can chain us to a desk or an assembly line for eight hours a day with total control over our minds, our bodies and our whereabouts.

“I can’t talk now,” a woman told me today on her cell phone. “I’m at work.”

By that I apparently was supposed to understand that talking to me could get her fired. I was simply trying to sell automated calling and other services to a political campaign that had listed her number as the contact person. Maybe it was just an excuse to brush off a sales call, but the fear seemed real.

Let me hasten to say I am very much a capitalist, and proud of it. But by the same token, I am dreadfully weary of working for jerks on Maggie’s Farm who think they own me. I’m done with that.

I’m going to the bathroom. Now. And I’m not raising my hand.

A classic behavioral science experiment involves a fish tank with a pike on one side of a Plexiglas barrier and feeder fish on the other. Try as he might, the pike fails time after time to close the deal with his jaws and the feeder fish. A transparent barrier keeps getting in the way. Eventually the pike gives up. After that, it doesn’t matter whether the barrier is in place or not. The pike has learned he can’t eat the fish in this tank, so he no longer tries. The feeder fish swim all around him, but he knows he can’t eat them, and he doesn’t.

Behaviorists call this phenomenon “acquired helplessness syndrome.” It’s a big deal in Russia and the former Soviet republics, where they’ve been trying to convert to a market economy. But their people are just too risk-averse, having become so dependent for generations on a paternalistic system that promised to meet all their needs.

Google Russian scholar “Igor Kon,” and you’ll get the idea. He talks about homo soveticus (his spelling), but he might as well be talking about homo americanus. In many ways, it’s not that different.

Unfortunately…

If you were hoping for a better year ahead, I don’t recommend reading those traditional year-ender economic forecasts this time. The New Year 2010 probably isn’t going to be a heck of a lot better for the working class than the Old Year 2009, if at all.

Let me spare you the angst and summarize it for you. My one caveat, stated here yesterday, is that most bean counters are treating this like just another economic cycle of recession and recovery, just more severe. And I think that misses the point. (See yesterday’s ‘Unemployment: The real story,’ which makes the case for a much more fundamental change in the business of making a living.)

Taking that into account, here are highlights from the Associated Press’ attempts to make sense of it all:

• Between the millions of baby boomers who should be leaving the workforce but now can’t afford to retire and the swelling tab to employers for unemployment costs, jobs could become comparatively harder to find as pressures c0ntinue to mount on businesses not to hire.
• While 21.7 million new jobs were added between 1989 and 1999, the same figure for the decade just ending was a meager 464 thousand.
• Following a decade of “normal” unemployment right around 5 to 6 percent, the “New Abnormal” may well be an era of chronically high unemployment averaging 8 percent or more over the next decade, according to economist David Levy.
• Economic historian John Steel Gordon calls this “the mother of all jobless recoveries.”
• The best-case scenario may be a return to the old normal (5 to 6 percent unemployment) by the middle of the new decade. Worst case: Not until the next decade.

Read the rest of the gory details, if you must, at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34601256/ns/business-us_business/.

The Washington Examiner is becoming a journalistic force to be reckoned with in a profession otherwise dominated by partisan ideologues who haven’t had an original thought since the Great Society. Recently the Examiner has enjoyed a major talent infusion from rising conservative voices like Byron York, Michael Barone, Mary Katharine Ham and Michael Freddoso.

So, it was a special honor to get a featured spot in its “Sunday Reflections” page yesterday. We had submitted a column as a regular op-ed page offering, but editorial page editor Mark Tapscott–obviously a very discerning individual!–thought highly enough of it to ask for 200 more words and slate it for the Reflections spot. (I can’t even remember the last time an editor asked me to add something…)

Our intention was to contribute something of cutting-edge nature, and we think it succeeded. Followers of “Back to Work!” will hear echoes of things previously posted on this site:

Here’s the real story on America’s unemployment

By: Steve Adams
Sunday Reflections Contributor
December 27, 2009

KEY DATA: Real total U.S. (U-6) unemployment exceeds 17 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Take-away: The modern office/factory-model job as we know it actually could be headed for extinction.

I’m one of the many casualties of the Great Recession. My position — along with 200 others — was eliminated 13 months ago at a major nonprofit organization in Colorado Springs. Permanently.

Oddly, I keep finding myself referring to it as a “layoff.” It’s not like there’s going to be any callback. Is it denial? Perhaps in part. (Reality and I aren’t on the best speaking terms right now.)

More likely, however, it’s a kind of collective future shock. Some of our thinking just hasn’t quite caught up with the realities of this Brave New Economy. We tend to assume, for example, that when recovery comes (and it’s right around the corner, the partisan cheerleaders keep promising), we’re going to pick right back up where we left off pre-recession.

Well, probably not. Already this recession has wiped out all job growth from the previous expansion. And when the dust finally settles, there’s likely to be a net permanent loss of jobs — jobs, at least, with the kind of pay and benefits we’ve become accustomed to.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Here_s-the-real-story-on-America_s-unemployment-8679698-80076392.html

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I have found it immensely comforting and reassuring to know that in my life I am not really the Provider. That’s the Owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, the Heavenly Father. Jesus came to give us life abundantly. As he stated in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matt. 6:25 For this reason I say to you, stop being anxious [about] your life, what you shall eat and what you shall drink, nor [about] your body, what you shall wear. Life is more [than] the nourishment, and the body [more than] the clothing, is it not? 26 Look attentively at the birds of the air, for they do not sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father provides for them. You are of much more worth than they, are you not? 27 But which of you, by being anxious, is able to add on his height one cubit? [or, add onto his lifespan a single hour?] 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Be attentively observing the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not labor nor do they spin [to make clothing]. 29 But I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God clothes in such a manner the grass of the field, being [here] today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, [He will] much more [clothe] you, [O you] of little faith, will He not? 31 Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink?’ or, ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For all these [things] the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these [things]. 33 But be seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these [things] will be added to you. 34 Therefore, you should not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for the [things] of itself; sufficient for the day [is] the evil of it. [Analytical-Literal Translation]

Merry Christmas from Back to Work!

A gnawing feeling that you’ve done something wrong is a commonly reported experience of those who have lost their jobs during this Great Recession. We know it’s nothing we did, but it still feels wrong.

I clearly remember my first experience with joblessness 15 years ago: I felt naked, stripped of a garment I was supposed to be wearing. It eventually led me to question the basic rationality of traditional employment.

Having a traditional job, a regular paycheck and fringe benefits can breed a kind of security-mindedness that crushes the spirit and rots the bones when it’s withheld. For generations, Americans have assumed that such security is our birthright, and we do not handle it well when that security is withdrawn.

Bardwick

Judith M. Bardwick, a management consultant and psychologist, says entitlement results when people “don’t have to earn what they get” and soon “take for granted that they receive.” In Danger in the Comfort Zone (Amacom, 1991), she says this danger is greatest when “life is too safe”:

By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people. Facing risk is the only way we gain confidence, because confidence is the result of mastering challenge. Confidence is an internal state. It cannot be given; it can only be earned. The only way to get genuinely confident is to be familiar with fear and then conquer it.

Bardwick wrote those words at a time when “re-engineering” the corporation–and flattening the organization’s employee ranks–was still a novel concept. Today it’s the name of the game. Organizations have had to make a lot of radical changes to survive–change product lines, re-brand their very identity and, yes, put quite a few people on the street.

Individuals today have to do much the same thing in terms of reinventing their careers. The old ways will no longer do. For many of us, making a living will no longer equate to “permanent” employment in a fulltime job.

That might be self-employment as a professional independent contractor or entrepreneuring a business from scratch. It might be a succession of temporary positions or what’s sometimes called the “composite career,” like my relative by marriage who delivers newspapers, sells Melaleuca, does home improvements and works weekends as a part-time associate pastor. It’s a living.

These days there’s not a lot you can really call “permanent,” anyway, is there? Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose the reality we have to deal with. We just have to deal.

Here’s Part 2 of our look at that 147-page jobs & career bibliography published by the U.S. State Department and available in its entirety at www.state.gov/documents/organization/79788.doc.

This section, dealing with Assessments & Work “Fit,” provides quite a few excellent resources for the person in any phase of career transition. I would only note that it’s heavily skewed toward Myers-Briggs-related sources, and that brings with it some built-in limitations. (The MBTI, for example, doesn’t pretend to measure anything in the realm of aptitude or basic career skills.)

The good news is that for all those limitations, the Myers-Briggs has been so widely employed for so long that there is a rich array of career-related materials built around it. Perhaps in a future installment we’ll explore some of the other more comprehensive inventories available now.

OK, here goes:

BOOKS

Buckingham, Marcus and Clifton, Donald O.
Now, Discover Your Strengths
Free Press, 2001

Davis, Sandra and Handschin, Bill
Reinventing Yourself: Life Planning After 50 Using the Strong and MBTI
Uses two scientifically based tools to help the reader understand themselves and make wiser decisions about work and relationships.
Consulting Psychologists Press, First edition, 1998

Jung, Carl
Psychological Types
Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd, 1992

Keirsey, David and Bates, Marilyn
Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types
Prometheus Nemesis Book Company, Third edition, 1984

Kroeger, Otto and Thuesen, Janet M.
Type Talk:  The 16 Personality Types That Determine How We Live, Love, and Work
Dell, Reissue edition, 1989

Laney, Marti Olen
The Introvert Advantage:  How to Thrive in an Extrovert World
Workman Publishing Company, 2002

Martin, Charles R.
Looking at Type and Careers
The book contains descriptions of the preferences of each of the 16 MBTI types and contains a section called “Careers Selected Most Often” for each type.
Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1995

Tieger, Paul and Barron-Tieger, Barbara
Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type–Revised and Updated Edition Featuring E-careers for the 21st Century
Discover the perfect career for you through the secrets of personality type.
Little, Brown, Third edition, 2001

ONLINE RESOURCES

Barriers/Challenges to Career-Decision Making – www.langara.bc.ca/counselling/career/barriers.html

Birkman Career Style Summary – www.ssicareerzone.com/ssicareerzone/Index.asp?ref=024

Bowling Green State University – www.bgsu.edu/offices/sa/career/students/planning_process.html
And www.bgsu.edu/offices/sa/career/students/self_assessment.html

Career Anchors:  Some Speculations on their Evolution – www.solonline.org/repository/download/1009.html?item_id=507557#one

Career Changers – www.learnmoreindiana.org/@adults/adults_careers/

Career Interest Profiler – www.testingroom.com/b2cfiles/tests.html

Career Key – www.careerkey.org

CareerMaze – www.careermaze.com

Career Perfect’s Work Preference Inventory – www.careerinnovation.com/panel/values

CareerStorm Navigator – www.careerstorm.com

Complete Kiersey Temperament Sorter II – www.advisorteam.com/user/ktsintro.asp

Creative Job Search’s Online Guide – www.amby.com/worksite/cjs/cjsbook2/skill6d.htm

Discover Your Drivers – www.askmerrill.ml.com/html/mlrr_explore_drivers
·    Located on the Merrill Lynch website and based on the book Don’t Retire, Rewire!
·    “Discover Your Drivers” is 1 of 3 parts of a section entitled “Envision Your Future:  Achieve The Retirement You Want”

Motivational Appraisal for Personal Potential – www.assessment.com

Occupational Personality Questionnaire – www.myskillsprofile.com/tests.php?test=4

Online Career Assessment Tools Review – www.quintcareers.com/online_assessment_review.html

Princeton Review Career Quiz – www.princetonreview.com/cte/quiz/default.asp

Queendom.com – www.queendom.com

Skills Profiler – www.acinet.org/acinet/skills/default.aspx

Type Logic – www.typelogic.com

University of Minnesota-Duluth – www.d.umn.edu/student/loon/car/self/career_transfer_survey.html

University of Waterloo – Career Development eManual – www.cdm.uwaterloo.ca/step1.asp

What’s Your Personality Type? – www.personalitytype.com/quiz.asp

We’ve been getting quite a few opportunities to do radio interviews about “Back to Work!” and I enjoy doing them. Here are two installments on Florida Moody Radio with Steve Krumlauf. Thanks for the forum, Steve! Listen to them here:

http://openaudiovideo.moody.edu/OSAM/OSAM/ASX/Audio/wma/Radio/WKES/2009-12/2009-12-17_BackToWork-StephenAdams-1.asx

http://openaudiovideo.moody.edu/OSAM/OSAM/ASX/Audio/wma/Radio/WKES/2009-12/2009-12-18_BackToWork-StephenAdams-2.asx

Become a Fan

Back to Work! is now shooting at 400 Facebook fans. We’re getting more resources posted, and the audience is growing. To become a fan, go here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Back2Work/176292758575.

If you have an unquestioning attachment to an organization that defines your identity, is that your religion–or your job?

David Noer (”Healing the Wounds,” Jossey-Bass, 1993) suggests that people lacking a good grounding in a personal “core purpose” are at greatest risk of developing the condition he calls “organizational codependency.” We might define this condition as that unquestioning attachment to an organization that defines our identity, where our boss becomes a kind of surrogate parent in terms of our needs for attention, encouragement and approval.

In this case, the business organization becomes almost a kind of religious institution. Obviously, this is idolatrous and unhealthy. To quote Noer:

Under the old paradigm, a great deal of people’s sense of  relevance and purpose was provded by the organization, which behaved somewhat like a religious institution. A small consumer finance organization that had been acquired by a larger financial services institution is a good example. There was a hierarchical all-male “priesthood” that culminated in a charismatic founding father who was deified by the employees and who responded by dispensing gifts (a year-end bonus and promotions) to the loyal. This organization had its catechism in the form of a belief system that customer service was supreme and a demand that personal needs be subordinated to an overarching organizational loyalty, with the ultimate reward of continued employment and the honor of being part of the team.

This organization had other characteristics of a formal religion: a regular Saturday morning meeting (service), with stories of sales and quota achievements followed by applause, handshakes, and affirming smiles (testimonies), and a pep talk by the founding father (sermon). There were rewards (gift certificates for dinners for two dispensed to some who had done an extra good job) and symbols (a watch commemorating fifteen years’ membership in the congregation). The organization did not have a company song, but it did have a number of mottoes and slogans, tacked to office walls. … The organization was highly productive and efficient. Second, the organization was essentially a spiritual place. Employees derived a sense of purpose, worth, and value from it. Unfortunately, because the organization was newly acquired, it then experienced a layoff and was the unwilling recipient of a number of policies and procedures that stripped away its uniqueness.

That, of course, is the moral of the story. It is not healthy to place one’s spiritual currency in business organizations’ vaults. The organization cannot guarantee that currency’s safety. … We must have the courage to engage in detachment, to stop defining ourselves in relation to our business organizations, and to resist the simplicity of putting a taproot into organizational soil. … Above all, we need to connect with something bigger than ourselves, with a personal core purpose.

In other words, what god are you worshipping? If it’s something made of wood and stone–or bricks and mortar–you’ve got your spiritual currency in a place where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal.

“If who you are is where you work, who are you if you lose your job?”

David Noer, whom we’ve been quoting this week, asks this provocative question in his landmark book, “Healing the Wounds”  (Jossey-Bass, 1993). Noer advocates cultivating a Diffuse Root Strategy:

Breaking organizational codependency begins with a conscious decision not to rely on our employer to nurture all aspects of our lives. The fundamental change that must occur can be most easily illustrated by comparing two types of plants. One plant gets all its nourishment from a single taproot, just as an employee’s self-esteem, identity, and social worth can all be nourished by a single organization. When we have a social and  emotional taproot into an organization, we will manipulate, cajole, control and scheme simply to hang on.

Considering the option, manipulating and controlling make sense. But, what happens if that single taproot gets cut?

Another plant variety has a diffuse root system, reaching out to different areas of soil. Emotionally healthy individuals reject the simplicity and seductiveness of having all their needs nourished through a taproot into the organizational soil. Through planning and effort, they can develop a diffuse root system. They have a number of roots into the community, professional associations, families, clubs, religions, and friends from outside their place of employment. If the organizational root is cut, they can still function, grow, and thrive.

You can diagram your own root system, and it is usually helpful to have your significant other do it with you. Many who have tried this are surprised at the extent of their taproot into the organizational system. This discovery can serve as a wake-up call and stimulate them to cultivate other options—and diffuse roots.

See www.changethis.com/62.01.HealingWounds/download.