speaking to the heart

A few years ago, the Omnivore had the great pleasure of hearing David Whyte speak on his work, his vision for living, and read aloud some of his exquisite poetry. She recently discovered this wonderful, and very apt, David Whyte poem on fellow wordpress blogger Inspirare‘s website, and would like to share it. Hopefully it will resonate with some in the same way it has with the Omnivore….and if this is your first introduction to the peerless David Whyte….enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

The Truelove

 by David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of the baying seals,

who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them,

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly,
so Biblically,
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love,

so that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t

because finally
after all the struggle
and all the years,
you don’t want to any more,
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness,
however fluid and however
dangerous, to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

(from House of Belonging)

in the Netherlands, women just can’t win

Count yourself lucky if you were able to attend the Netherlands-Canadian Chamber of Commerce ‘Best Practices in Gender Diversity: Canada – the Netherlands’ event held on March 31 at KPMG headquarters in Amstelveen. It was a particularly relevant topic, given that the mindset regarding professional women in the Netherlands seems to be mired somewhere around 1972, and the 60 participants greatly enjoyed hearing the excellent panel of speakers share their vision and wisdom on gender balance. As we heard, much greater progress has been seen in Canada towards gender equity in organizations, and speakers Avivah Wittenberg-Cox (20-first), Ton Reijns (KPMG), Claartje Vinkenburg (VU), Adam Travis (Nokia) and Alison Konrad (UWO) pulled no punches in their frank and informative presentations on the progress of professional women on both sides of the Atlantic.

Without legislation like Canada’s Equity Employment Act, and by refusing to adopt Norwegian-type quotas, the Netherlands lacks the tools or teeth to usher along the gender balance agenda. Initiatives in the Netherlands such as the Talent to the Top Charter remain voluntary, and many of the objectives were already outlined in the Code Tabaksblat (the voluntary Corporate Governance Charter signed by many of the same companies that have rushed enthusiastically to sign the Talent to the Top Charter).

All of it remains very much up to the individual signatories, what and how they wish to implement policies around gender balance in their organizations. Canada’s approach ensures that companies must report to the Federal government on an annual basis on the actual state of progress with diversity practices in their firms, with hardest scrutiny reserved for government suppliers. This approach has resulted in competition between companies to be named ’employer of choice’ for women, and the government has followed through by implementing the annual Employment Equity and Diversity Awards to further reward and acknowledge outstanding employers.

When employers in the Netherlands start to fight over who deserves the title of ‘most woman-friendly employer’, perhaps we can truly say progress has been made. Until then, the Omnivore leaves you with a real quote made by Abel Slippens, the former CEO of Sligro, the country’s largest wholesale grocer/supplier, less than a year ago. Mr. Slippens does not appear to believe in the possibilities presented by women in business:

“Dat is Moeder Aarde, daar kan ik ook niets aan doen. De eerste zorg is nageslacht en je kunt geen twee topbanen goed doen. Vrouwen zonder kinderen missen een natuurlijk gevoel, waardoor ze moeilijk inpasbaar zijn.”

“It’s just Mother Nature, I can’t do anything about it. The priority (for women) is on their offspring, and it’s not possible to do two ‘top jobs’ at the same time. (Further) women without children miss a certain natural feeling, which makes them difficult to utilize”.

According to Mr. Slippens, therefore, women WITH children are no good, because their real attention is focused elsewhere, and women WITHOUT children are no good, because, hey, they’re not REAL women. Ready to hand in that Sligro card, ladies?

And along this same theme, of  ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’ many of us in the Netherlands were very irritated by an article that appeared in the (usually) ‘quality press’ Volkskrant earlier this month with its condescending, and even actionable, statements about women in management in the Netherlands made by top Dutch (male AND female) CEOs (the article’s title: ‘Women in Top Functions a Disappointment)’. Some quotes from these ‘top’ CEOs:

“Top managers like myself actively look for competent women, yet we cannot find any. I do not want to compromise on quality.”

“I would have loved to recruit a woman, but the man was obviously better. You have to be realistic.”

“Women drop out once they experience how irregular the work schedule of a top manager is. They are also less ambitious.”

“Women don’t want the top jobs. They believe they cannot handle it or are too busy with their private lives.”

The article’s conclusion? Women should act like men in order to get ahead, but shouldn’t actually become too masculine, because then they aren’t being authentic. Oh, yes, and they should get married and have children, because this reflects stability, but should seek a stay-at-home partner because their 70-hour-work weeks means they won’t be seeing their (required) children very often.

One of Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’ colleagues at 20-first, Paul Vanderbroeck, wrote this truly excellent commentary as a response to this inflammatory article, for www.women-omics.com, Act Like a Man But Don’t Show It. Please read it yourself and do forward it to anyone you can think of who would benefit by reading it, particularly senior male leaders.

Multigenerational leadership – age difference in the workplace

I wrote an article a few years ago for Expatica, and included this quote:

“The dominant factor for business in the next two decades – absent war, pestilence, or collision with a comet – is not going to be economics or technology. It will be demographics”. Peter Drucker (1997)

At the time I was referring to the rapidly ageing global population, and I think that’s mainly what Peter Drucker had in mind, as well, from the quote’s context…but it is also starting to mean something else, both in society and in global companies. Four generations living and working together does not always have a happy ending. Four different generations means four different ways of addressing problems, of approaches to management, communication styles. How does a Boomer (born between 1946 and 1964) manage someone half their age…with very different values, work ethic, ambition, attitude and behaviour?

There has been a veritable avalanche of new literature on what it means to have Millennials (or Generation Y, or Generation Next….anyone born between 1981 and 2001) in one’s employ, and with good reason. By the year 2015 in the U.S. alone, Millennials (presently representing 25% of the workforce, to the Boomer 44%), will have a whopping 37% share of the job market, almost equal to the Boomers themselves, at 40%. The middle generation, the Xers (1965-1980) will just slowly ebb away, from their present 23% hold on the workplace to only 20% in 2015. This means….take Millennials, and the changes they bring with them, very seriously indeed. Says Millennial consultant (yes, there’s a whole industry built around how to babysit this demographic, it’s not just Amazon getting the benefit!) Mary Crane:

“They have climbed Mount Everest. They’ve been down to Machu Picchu to help excavate it. But they’ve never punched a time clock. They have no idea what it’s like to actually be in an office at nine o’clock, with people handing them work. You now have a generation coming into the workplace that has grown up with the expectation that they will automatically win, and they’ll always be rewarded, even for just showing up.”

In other words: there’s a lot of adapting to be done, and it’s not going to be done by the (future) majority!

Of all the literature available on this topic, there has been one consistently excellent source of solid information and well-reasoned advice, Bruce Tulgan of Rainmaker Thinking. Click on his name to see a wonderful YouTube clip where he calls Generation X ‘an accident of history’. The Knowledge Omnivore has often referred to them as ‘new industrial slaves’ because, let’s face it…Xers never even got up to bat. And their numbers in management are already declining. Bloated Boomers, now facing pension crises in the financial downturn, will never be able to afford to retire — they’ll sit there, warming their chairs, until the Millennials literally push them out. But I digress…look for Bruce Tulgan’s great new book, Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, now available on Amazon. From Bruce’s new book:

THE TOP 14 MYTHS ABOUT GENERATION Y

Myth #1: Gen Yers are disloyal.
Myth #2: They won’t do the grunt work.
Myth #3: They don’t know very much and have short attention spans.
Myth #4: They want the top job on day one.
Myth #5: They need work to be fun.
Myth #6: They want to be left alone at work.
Myth #7: They want their managers to do their work for them.
Myth #8: They don’t care about climbing the proverbial career ladder.
Myth #9: Money and traditional benefits don’t matter to them.
Myth #10: Money is the only thing that matters to them.
Myth #11: They don’t respect their elders.
Myth #12: They want to learn only from computers.
Myth #13: It’s impossible to turn them into long-term employees.
Myth #14: They will never make good managers because they are too self-focused.

I subscribe to Bruce’s excellent video newsletter and it is always full of practical tips, new research and…humour. Bruce is funny, what can I say? It’s the Omnivore’s favourite trait…

With thanks to the peerless Queta for steering the Omnivore to the following remarkable YouTube clip, ‘Lost Generation’. Listen, and think….

blog surfer

Check out my friend and coach Stephanie Ward’s great blog Success Tips for Life. Also check out all the free giveaways Steph offers on her website, Firefly Coaching, and while you’re there sign up for her great monthly ezine, The Firefly, which I read without fail as soon as it comes in. Worth it for her ‘cool resources’ section alone: a selection from a recent Firefly:

COOL RESOURCES
Need an affordable personal virtual assistant? Check out
this resource https://getfriday.com.

Do you send out a newsletter? Consider using Constant Contact,
they offer a f’ree 60 day trial http://www.constantcontact.com

Looking for a fresh new font? You can create your own, or
pick from a gallery of fonts created by others. See more here
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com and guess what – it’s f’ree.

And who says the best things in life aren’t free? They are if you know Steph…

Another blog and ezine I love belongs to Jo Parfitt, founder of Summertime Publishing, Expat Rollercoaster, and countless other ventures, author of 25 books on everything from cookery to careers to writing (watch for her just-published book of poems, A Moving Landscape, on Amazon). Her monthly Inspirer Newsletter is thoughtful, and thought-provoking, heart-warming and, well, inspiring. Also carries the dates of her highly acclaimed writing workshops. Also check out Jo’s blog, for more up-to-date info on things Expat…and things Jo.

Coach extraordinaire John Niland of Success 121 sends his monthly Outstanding Professional newsletter and it is informative (I have my 10 best-ever time management tips from one of his newsletters, and it is tacked firmly to my bulletin board for whenever I start to stray), educational (always provides notice of very interesting training and coaching events coming up), inspirational (John’s work to provide fresh water wells and pumps in Africa, PumpAid, is a wonderful story of perseverance and caring) and humorous (he’s Irish, he knows how to be funny, what can I say?).

cool downloads for your iPod

The Knowledge Omnivore’s loving spouse gave her an 80GB iPod three years ago, and she hasn’t looked back since. Not only does it now contain over 5300 songs (okay, importing the Omnivore’s massive and eclectic cd collection into iTunes took some time, but it was definitely worth it!), it also contains photos, audio books, podcasts and a LOT of playlists. I thought I’d share some of my favourite music, podcast and book sources:

Digital Music. I get most of my downloads from iTunes Store Canada. This was a no-brainer once I discovered that an album costs $9.99 Canadian from iTunes Canada…and €9.99 from iTunes Netherlands (a 30% difference) Get your act together on this, iTunes, Europeans are already being royally ripped off with cd prices, time to buck the tide….unfortunately you need a Canadian credit card to use the iTunes Canada site (or American one for the U.S. site, etc.), so can’t hold out real hope here, but maybe Europeans can press Apple into giving them a decent shake. It’s the same @#$%@#$ music, after all. But I digress…just want to make a point that 99.9% of the music on my iPod is legal, since I believe in giving artists their due..maybe not their bloated recording companies, but the artists, yes.

I have a LOT of Canadian music on my iPod, including Kathleen Edwards, Crash Parallel, Sam Roberts, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Martha Wainwright, Leonard Cohen, Paul Horn, Sarah McLachlan, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Loreena McKennit, k.d. lang, Lowry Olafson, Jann Arden, Diana Krall, Our Lady Peace, Matt Dusk, Michael Buble, the Rankins, Barenaked Ladies, Holly Cole, Nickelback, Hedley, Colin James, Hank Snow, Shania Twain, Ashley MacIsaac, Sum 41, Bryan Adams, Paul Anka, Joni Mitchell, Alanis Morissette, the Guess Who, Avril Lavigne, Heart, Bruce Cockburn, Rush, Anne Murray, Nelly Furtado, Robbie Robertson, Simple Plan, Celine Dion, the Tragically Hip, Great Big Sea, Chantal Kreviazuk, Amanda Marshall, Oscar Peterson, Serena Ryder (and I’m sure I left out a few). You don’t have to be Canadian to make it onto my iPod, but it helps…

Podcasts. Such is the dominance of Apple that ‘podcast’ is a combination of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’…so it’s no surprise that I use the iTunes Store as my main source of podcasts, but they are all free, whether you get them there or through other free download sites such as Podcast Alley. I use them daily for my workout and meditation routines, but also as a source of information on global business, etc. Some of the ones I subscribe to are: Radio 538 – Tiesto’s Club Life; Oprah’s Spirit Channel (everyone from Byron Katie to Eckhart Tolle, including an entire series on ‘A New Earth’), and ongoing tips on ‘the Law of Attraction’; 20-minute Yoga Sessions (from Yogadownload.com); a Quiet Mind; Beginning Meditation; Exercise-World fitness social network; fitMix Archives (fitMusic.com); Learn to Meditate; Meditation Oasis; Meditation Station; My Thought Coach; Pilates on Fifth Video Podcast; PODRUNNER; Power Yoga with Dave Farmar; Monocle; BusinessWeek; and the great iTunes University series of top lectures from Ivy League Schools, with some of the best from Stanford.

Audio Books. While I have some standard downloads from Amazon, most of my audio books are free downloads of classics from LibriVox, which are read aloud by volunteers and uploaded. These include works by everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Emily Bronte, from Somerset Maugham to Saki, and give me tremendous pleasure. I haven’t tried others, but both AudioBooksforfree and Literal Systems come recommended by the peerless Project Gutenberg, phenomenal source for free downloads of both ebooks and audiobooks (most of the latter are downloaded in podcast form). I also download podcast audio readings of New Yorker Fiction, fabulous.

Playlists. While the Knowledge Omnivore relies on very savvy friends like the estimable Khun Rodney for much of her playlist pleasure, she has recently fallen like a brick for iTune’s Genius. Genius searches through your total song collection and makes recommendations, and while not foolproof (you get some strange combinations occasionally) when you have 5000+ songs on your iPod, SOMEONE’S got to search through to put playlists together….and it offers a continually fresh selection ensuring monotony never sets in….unless, of course, you have abominable taste in music, in which case even Genius cannot help you….

For those with concerns about the privacy of Genius (thanks to the incomparable Queta for reminding me of this), and many of us have an Evil Empire suspicion about Apple, for sure, have a look at a good article on CNET. CNN is positively orgasmic on the topic and says ‘iTunes ‘Genius’ feature is pure genius!’. Decide for yourself…

why women mean business

Be sure to order my friend Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s brilliant new book Why Women Mean Business, and check out the great new website she publishes, www.women-omics.com.

Why Women Mean Business, published in January 2008 to great critical acclaim. and co-written with FT star Alison Maitland, makes all other discussion on the impact of women on the future of business irrelevant. From Sally Helgesen, author of The Female Advantage, The Web of Inclusion, Thriving in 24/7:

“Wow! What the authors are doing is extraordinarily valuable. They draw upon a wealth of information and put it into a global frame. Why Women Mean Business establishes an inarguable, last-word-on-the subject business case for why organisations absolutely must get better at attracting, retaining, inspiring, and promoting talented women. It will be at the top of the reading list I provide for clients!”.

Why Women Mean Business takes the economic arguments for change to the heart of the corporate world. This powerful new book analyses the opportunities available to companies that really understand what motivates women in the workplace and the marketplace. Find out how companies that learn to adapt to women will be better able to respond to the challenge of an ageing workforce and the demands of the next generation of knowledge workers. The authors compare policies and approaches in countries around the world, that offer surprising and envious results.

Why Women Mean Business, Wiley & Sons, January 2008, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland

Women’s Men

Happily, in addition to an unfortunately large number of men’s men, there is a growing number of women’s men — that is, self-confident men who genuinely enjoy the company of intelligent women, who like, respect and admire the opposite sex, and who have no difficulty in acknowledging the need for, and promoting, gender equality.

Top of the list would be Tom Peters. Tom has been speaking on the topic of women’s economic power, the urgent need for gender balance on corporate boards and similar topics for more than a decade. His relentless championing of women business leaders, writers, academics and other professionals puts him in a category of his own as a ‘woman’s man’. A big shout out to Tom Peters for making a difference, and let him tell you himself why women make ALL the difference:

One of the Knowledge Omnivore’s favourite women’s men is Michael Kimmel. Michael, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York, has devoted his academic and research career not to studying women (although he’s done this, too), but men. A series of fascinating books and studies, including The Gendered Society, Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity, the History of Men and his excellent new book, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (there is a special website devoted to Guyland, and read Michael’s article ‘Men Will Be Boys’ in the New York Post) have significantly contributed to our understanding of why men are….well….men. In Guyland, Michael interviewed over 400 (mainly white) men between the ages of 16 – 26.

His study shows that the guys who live in “Guyland” are mostly white, middle-class, totally confused and cannot commit to their relationships, work or lives. Although they seem baffled by the riddles of manhood and responsibility, they submit to the “Guy Code,” where locker-room behaviors, sexual conquests, bullying, violence and assuming a cocky jock pose can rule over the sacrifice and conformity of marriage and family. Obsessed with never wanting to grow up, this demographic, which is 22 million strong, craves video games, sports and depersonalized sexual relationships. In the end, Michael’s ‘Guyland’ offers a highly practical guide to male youth.

As Gloria Steinem says on the dust jacket: ‘Michael Kimmel’s Guyland could save the humanity of many young men — and the sanity of their friends and parents’.

Listen to Michael on Gender and Privilege:

Another amazing, and ‘early mover’, woman’s man is Tim Sanders. His terrific first book ‘Love is the Killer App‘ is a blueprint for emotionally intelligent leadership, utilizing knowledge, networks and compassion (the Knowledge Omnivore’s three favourite things!).

The following from Howard Rothman for amazon.com:

Is love really all you need? Tim Sanders, director of Yahoo’s in-house think tank, believes love is the crucial element in the search for personal and professional success. In Love Is the Killer App he explains why. Sander’s advice is to be a “lovecat,” his sincere and surprisingly practical prescription for advancement both inside and outside the office. It starts with amassing as much usable knowledge as possible, which he explains can be done by religiously carving out time to read and then poring through as many cutting-edge books in your field as possible. It follows with an emphasis on networking to the extreme. Sanders offers concrete suggestions, from compiling a super list of contacts to ensuring all are regularly stored in an always-accessible format. And he concludes by advocating a true mindset of compassion, which he says involves sharing this knowledge with those contacts and ultimately helping anyone who in one way or another may ultimately help you. Through identifiable anecdotes and specific recommendations, the book promotes an undeniably feasible yet decidedly offbeat program that has worked for the author and could prove equally favorable for others who apply it.

And check out Tim’s great new book Saving the World at Work, reflecting his unique vision on sustainability, fair trade, corporate social responsibility and environmental protection. Tim tells us here why Good is the new Great:

So who do YOU think would qualify as ‘women’s men’? or good examples of ‘men’s men’? Let the Knowledge Omnivore know….

The Alchemy of Illness

In The Alchemy of Illness, Kat Duff echoes your thoughts in an uncanny manner….anyone with a long-term illness can relate so easily to Duff’s poetical, spiritual and playful way of coming to terms with what’s happened to your body, your self and your soul.

For those who are sick, this book offers solace and recognition. For those who care for them either physically or emotionally, it offers inspiration and compassion. Finally, this fresh perspective on healing reveals how every illness is a crucible that tries our mettle, tests our limits, and provides us with an unparalleled opportunity to integrate its lessons into our lives.

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

In ‘Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast – the Evolutionary Origins of Belief ‘, Lewis Wolpert analyzes the belief of…belief. Are we born with an evolutionary defense mechanism to believe in things that make us feel better about the world? Are we ‘hard-wired’ to suspend disbelief? And should we agree with H.L. Mencken when he says ‘Believing passionately in the palpably not true….is the chief occupation of mankind’.

From an interview with the Guardian’s John Sutherland:

Humankind’s incorrigible and wholly irrational religiosity originates, Lewis Wolpert believes, in our addiction to causal explanations. We make gods and religious systems for the same reason that we make tools. Religion is as human, and as explicable, as the flint axe and the computer. It is a tool for the soul. Religion is a natural consequence of how we are wired as human beings: we have an inbuilt “belief engine”. We should not, for that reason, accept that our beliefs, particularly our religious beliefs, are correct.

Wolpert, one of our best known explainers of science, came to his view about religion through his family experiences. He was born into a strict Jewish household and was, he records, “quite a religious child” until “I gave it all up around 16 and have been an atheist ever since.” More specifically, he is “a reductionist, materialist atheist”.

And as a reductionist, materialist atheist without ever previously realizing it, the Knowledge Omnivore says ‘hear hear’.

Matthieu Ricard

Many thanks to the Knowledge Omnivore’s brilliant daughter for bringing this book to her attention.

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk and cellular geneticist who works on scientific research to measure the effects of meditation on the brain. His remarkable book, Happiness, A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, is recommended by Richard Gere, Pico Iyer and George Soros (to name a few) and offers a hands-on, step-by-step practical guide to identifying, developing, finding and keeping happiness in our lives. He calls happiness ‘our birthright’. And then tells us how to recapture this birthright.

“Happiness does not come automatically. It is not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back. It depends on us alone. One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labour, day after day. Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time. In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves”.
Luca and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza in Happiness by Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard is called ‘the happiest man in the world’. Watch him and decide: