• First, there are those who are out there doing this or that and making things happen. These people typically put in years to perfect their craft, whether they are lawyers, actors, sports stars, businesspeople–or whatever. These people are actually doing something with their careers and lives. Their sense of self-importance and achievement comes from what they do. They are committed to getting things accomplished.
• Second, there are those who sit around writing about, talking about, and gossiping about those who are doing things in the world. Those who cannot do things or make things happen in the world are generally the ones who are best at writing, talking, and gossiping about those who are making things happen in the world. Writing, gossiping, reviewing, and passing judgment on people who are actually doing things is often a cheap shortcut to a sensation of power for those who lack the discipline necessary to do and create something that has worth. In reviewing, criticizing, gossiping, and so forth about others, the person can experience a fleeting feeling of importance.

When I was eleven years old, in February of 1981, the only television in our Detroit home was in my bedroom, and one time in the wee hours of the morning my mother and my four-year-old sister came into my room and watched Prince Charles and Diana get married. I have vague recollections of images from this wedding coming through as I tossed back and forth, incredulous that my mother and sister were disturbing my slumber all over some wedding spectacle. They both were so incredibly enthusiastic about the marriage. It seems funny to me that a single mother and her daughter would be watching this in the suburbs of Detroit, thousands of miles away from where the wedding was taking place. The marriage ultimately did not affect them in the least. Nonetheless, there they were, a little girl and her mother, glued to the television and watching a prince get married. As the years progressed, I would see one magazine after another arrive at our home with Diana on the cover and one rumor or another about her marriage. I would turn on the television and each day there was some gossip show that had a segment about the marriage. From the moment that marriage occurred, it seemed not a week went by wherein I did not hear some noise in the background about what Diana was doing. It was incredible to me that people could be so interested in one person. It was ironic, it seems, that Diana was eventually killed while she was in a car racing away from photographers. The public’s obsession with Diana is something that ultimately may have contributed to her death. Even today I see magazines in my house with her picture on them now and again, or I turn on the television and from time to time see a story about her. The public continues to be interested in Diana. Most of the world figures are never going to be like Princess Diana. Most of the public at large is never going to be an important politician, actor or actress, businessperson, and so forth; instead, what we often do is sit around and gossip, review and pass judgment on the people who are actually out there doing things in the world. The most popular magazines out there are magazines like the National Enquirer and Us Weekly: these are magazines that are continually gossiping, maligning, and generally discussing the lives, careers, successes, and failures of others. Why the intense interest in what others are doing? Why are people so fascinated with what others are doing and achieving in their lives? In my career I have seen the exact same thing: There are people out there who are doing and achieving things and, on the sidelines, there are those who spend the majority of their time as commentators on the people who are involved in doing things. This is a pattern that exists in every firm, company, and organization I have ever been involved with. It also is something that I have heard people talk about and have witnessed as a consistent pattern in any organization as well as the candidates I have worked with as a recruiter. Since I am also an attorney I will share with you some more of my insights into this. Several years ago the most popular legal site on the Internet was a site called Greedy Associates. This website was basically dedicated to associates inside of law firms who would gossip about people at their own law firms, and would disclose (sometimes maliciously) the financial states of affairs of various firms. Over the past ten years, the websites that have replaced Greedy Associates have all grown popular essentially by spreading rumors and bad news throughout law firms. Lawyers for the most part are not interested in flocking to websites for lots of positive information. Instead, their interest lies predominantly in going to websites where they can read about bad things that are happening to various employers. I started one of these websites myself, JD Journal, and was surprised by how much traffic the site got and by how interested lawyers are in this sort of news. I hate to say this but it is true: The great majority of people out there are incredibly interested in what others are doing–even more than their own lives. It is much easier to criticize and gossip about others than it is to achieve anything of significance in our own lives. To achieve something of significance requires an incredible investment of time and energy; it requires dedication; it requires risk; it requires believing in ourselves and overcoming obstacles. Conversely, gossiping or maligning others can usually be done very quickly by simply logging onto a gossip site or blog, sending an e-mail, or making a phone call. I want to also note a fact that is pretty subtle, but is an important one: The people who are most interested in gossip and so forth are most often the people who lack the dedication necessary to achieve anything of significance.

• Inside companies and organizations these people are the ones who feel alienated because when they do not do an assignment correctly they are told so.
• They are generally the ones who leave earliest, come to work the latest, and get the least done while they are at work.
• They are also the ones who are most likely to not get promoted because they do not put in a good effort.
• They are the ones who are disloyal and who easily find fault within their organization, and with the people working inside their organization, and with the products or services of their organization.

Lacking the dedication to do good work, the faculties to fit in with their coworkers and so forth, these people instead decide to turn their efforts toward gossip and criticism. When an employer is looking to hire new employees, one of the worst mistakes the employer can make is to bring in people like this. Just a few bad apples like this can easily destroy the whole bunch. In fact, it is precisely this fact and this attitude that can lead to the destruction of entire companies, governments, and so forth. Good organizations are experts in removing bad apples--and keeping the good ones around. For the past several years I have been involved in the property business, and I rent out office buildings, store fronts, executive suits, beach houses, and also premium beachfront real estate. My favorite business is the one involving premium beachfront real estate. The reason I enjoy this is that the clients I deal with tend to be big names in politics, show business, and so forth. It is not uncommon for a premium property I am renting out to an international celebrity to be surrounded by hundreds of paparazzi, and to have helicopters buzzing overhead all day while a certain famous person is there. Most celebrities do not want this attention and manage to slink into the property unobserved while they are on their vacations. However, there are some who prize this attention and find ways to alert the press when they are there. I have always been very good about being extremely discrete when a celebrity is staying in one of my premium properties. I never talk about it; I never tell anyone who is there, and I simply allow the celebrity to do his or her thing. However, a few months ago one extremely famous celebrity was staying in this premium beach house and had extreme demands for attention. This person had just finished filming a movie and the studio was putting him up for a one-week vacation. The actor wanted extreme privacy, and the reason was that he and his actor friends wanted to spend the entire vacation in the nude. Now, I do not know why someone would want to walk around nude for an entire vacation with a bunch of other men–but this was what was on the itinerary. The maid was astonished by this, but she simply did her job and reported the nudity to me later. As this man and his friends walked around the house nude every day, I went about my business seeing him on the covers of magazines, on television, and on billboards as I went about my day-to-day business. On the final day this nude actor and his friends were scheduled to presumably put their clothes on and get on a private jet to go back to whence they came, but the actor declared that he was staying another day and, on top of this, he refused to pay for it because “the maid had worked too much and the gardener had come” while he was staying there. This luxury property requires a lot of gardening, and after the gardener had come for an hour or so one day, all hell broke loose, and we had to get him out of there. The problem with this guy staying an extra day was that on his “extra day,” a bride from England was scheduled to come to the house with various armies of wedding planners, lighting designers, and so forth to set up for a large wedding scheduled to occur there. The actor flat-out refused to leave and got on the phone and told us that there would be “bizarre behavior” if the bride tried to enter the property while he was there. He was referring, we assumed, to the fact that he might be walking around in the nude. I was a little taken back by this, and the entire episode seemed just a little too much to believe. I had a serious problem on my hands because I knew that if the bride were unable to get into the house I could be subject to multiple lawsuits from her and countless wedding vendors. I finally decided I needed to take drastic action. I called one of the actor’s many assistants, who was also on the property: “If he is not out in an hour, I will call the police and every gossip reporter I can find and have him removed from the house.” I never would have actually done these things; however, after I made the threat, within fifteen minutes the man left. He knew that the press would have had an absolute field day with this episode if it had gotten out. I ended up letting the man stay an extra night as a courtesy, and the bride was able to get in with all her people at the appointed time. In the end everything worked out just fine. The reason everything worked out was that the actor was terrified of the press and how things would look to the public. He knew it would be a public relations and overall massive disaster, and people would talk about this the world over. I was able to quickly and painlessly solve the issue just using the power of gossip. It is something I am not proud of, but with my back against the wall I used it to great effect. I realized that my threat to use and create gossip came from a place of weakness. It was the best I could do and, while effective, it was admittedly pretty pathetic. The most powerful and influential people in the world are people like the actor I threatened to eject from the rental house, like Princess Diana, powerful businesspeople, and others. These are the people who make things happen and who are actually out there doing things that captivate the public attention. The people who live lives of significance are not the people who talk about and watch those who are making things happen; they are the ones who are accomplishing things. People who feel the need to gossip and malign others are usually coming from a place of weakness. There is nothing strong about gossiping and talking negatively about others. When you are coming from a place of strength this type of behavior is just something you do not need to engage in. The strongest people out there avoid gossip and avoid maligning others because it detracts from their ability to move forward. You should be focused on doing and not talking about those who are doing. THE LESSON Focus on what you are doing, not what others around you are doing. There are people to take action towards their goals, and then there people who sit on the sidelines and comment on the first group of people. People who are mostly interested in gossip and watching others usually lack the confidence and determination to take action themselves. The most successful people go account and accomplish things rather than sit back and watch others make things happen.

• They were not being paid enough
• They should be working for a larger company
• The company was poorly managed
• People had been screwed over by the company

His list of criticisms could fill several pages. What was most alarming about this particular person was the pattern we started to notice. The Underminer would often attempt to become friendly with our best employees. If any of them became friendly with this person, in a very short time, formerly enthusiastic employees would change right before our eyes. They would no longer be as enthusiastic about their work, stop completing assignments on time, get a “depressed” look and feel about them, and stop consistently showing up on time for work. If these employees were not fired, they would often quickly quit and leave the company. Sometimes the Underminer would affect the employee so negatively the person would quit and leave the company without having secured another job. In less than one year I noticed this pattern negatively affect the careers of at least 10 people. People who otherwise could have had excellent careers with our company left or were negatively influenced by this individual. This individual eventually was let go from our company and, incredibly, to this day is still trying to undermine our company and the people in it by spreading negative information. Am I upset by this? Am I hurt? Of course I am. However, you need to understand in every organization you will find people who try to undermine the company. The most alarming thing about the Underminer is the people this person approached and influenced are still floundering years later in their careers. They have moved from job to job and many are unemployed. Before learning to think negatively about work and the company, these people had been incredibly enthusiastic and talented. It was as if the Underminer had planted so much negativity in their impressionable young minds they were permanently affected. Over the years I have noticed patterns like this one repeat themselves in our company. Looking back, I’ve even seen this pattern repeat itself in law firms and other companies in which I have worked. It is often not just one person negatively influencing others, but several. What I am about to share with you could be some of the more important career advice you ever receive. You need to stay away from negative people inside companies. There is something called “guilt by association” that is easy to pick up and that can negatively affect you. If you are spending your time with people who are known as troublemakers or who are hostile towards the company, the implication is you may share these sorts of opinions as well. Once a company picks up on this and associates you with this behavior, you will be marked as someone who is not a friend of the company and is, instead, an enemy. When I was practicing law I saw many careers stalled and/or ruined in law firms because of the associations people made inside the office. When you associate with the wrong people a firm will view you as someone who is unlikely to be looking out for the firm and, consequently, will avoid promoting you, advancing you, or protecting you. Choosing to associate with the wrong people in the office will create huge problems for you. You are at work to make a living. Your job at work is to go there, be professional, and leave. You are not expected to go there to make friends or be a participant in various forms of gossip. You can choose to get involved in the social side of the office and watch your career stall, or you can choose to be removed from it. Not all social activity in companies is bad. In fact, a lot of it is good. However, you want to be removed from the social side of the office because you cannot be viewed as a supervisor by people with whom you’re friends. The further away you are from people in the office socially, the closer you are to being their manager. In addition, the closer you are to colleagues in the office, the more you are going to be affected by their negative behavior. None of this is to say you can’t be friendly with your co-workers. You need to be friendly with everyone in your company. However, you cannot become too chummy and you do not want to participate in the social network of the office too much. When I was in high school, one of my best friends got into serious trouble. He was on his way to lacrosse practice and was eating a giant bag of candy while sitting in the passenger seat of a car. He asked a couple of kids walking by if they wanted some of his candy because he noticed they were looking at him. The kids screamed and ran. My friend thought the whole thing was very strange (although he realized they may have misinterpreted this as a kidnapping attempt) until a SWAT team began fanning out on the practice field where we were playing lacrosse and threw his face in the dirt and arrested him. The entire thing had been a giant misunderstanding; however, the misunderstanding was serious enough he was suspended from school for three months. He would have been kicked out if his father was not an extremely influential person in Detroit who donated a lot of money to the school. During my last year of high school I asked my math teacher to write a recommendation for me for colleges and he agreed to do so. This math teacher had been very close to the parents of the children who had mistakenly believed they were about to be kidnapped. There were two sides to my friend’s scandal. One side thought the arrest was ridiculous because the offer of candy was genuine and there had been no kidnapping attempt at all. There had been other passengers in the car and they all testified the candy offer was legitimate. The other side thought the mere words were evil and my friend should be expelled. A few months after my teacher wrote the recommendations for me I was interviewing at a college, and the interviewer said to me, “What’s the problem with this math teacher? Why did he write such a horrible recommendation for you? It is so bad and there is so little substance to it we were actually going to call your school about it.” I think the math teacher may have gotten in trouble for the recommendation. He sought me out and apologized and one of the deans of the school took me into a meeting and told me the reason he had written the recommendation the way he did was because I had been friends with the kid who was suspended. The teacher actually withdrew his previous recommendation and wrote another. It was a strange episode. In fact, I do not think I ever spoke to my parents or anyone about it. Now that I am thinking about this I am wondering if this had an impact on the colleges I did and did not get into. The more I think about this the more I believe that it probably did. You need to realize guilt by association can hurt you with companies and other organizations. You also need to realize it is incredibly important you keep your distance from people in the workplace if you want to be considered for supervisory and other such roles. The social side of the office can be a great deal of fun and can also be entertaining. More often than not, however, the social side of the office will cause you far more problems than it is worth.

This is an example of how propaganda can be used against someone. Propaganda is one of the most significant and dangerous things you will ever confront in your career. It is something you need to guard against, and also something that you can often prevent just by being more known by those around you. If people do not have any information about you at work, they will simply invent it. If there is no information available about some person, place, or thing, others will always invent it. This is human nature. My grandfather was a newspaper reporter; however, during World War II he worked for the U.S. government in the Middle East as an intelligence officer, writing false propaganda, which was meant to create problems for the enemy. Typically, he created various leaflets and so forth that were dropped out of planes into enemy territory. My grandfather was so good at this that he ended up becoming a one-star general–a significant achievement for someone with no military background, who was just a newspaper reporter. This shows the tremendous power of words on the battlefield and also in life. Words are like weapons that can harm just as swiftly and effectively as bullets and tanks. When you understand words and their massive power to influence the minds and actions of others, you can understand why a writer with no military experience could be made a general. Propaganda and its effective use can undermine countries, groups, and people with ease. It can turn people against an enemy, it can make detractors support an enemy, and it can turn people against their own leaders. Propaganda is amongst the most effective and harmful tools available in warfare, business, and personal relations. The book Psychological Warfare relates the following pamphlet distributed in World War II:

Guard Against Venereal Diseases

Lately there has been a great increase in the number of venereal diseases among our officers and men owing to prolific contacts with Filipino women of dubious character.

Due to hard times and stricken conditions brought about by the Japanese occupation of the islands, Filipino women are willing to offer themselves for a small amount of foodstuff. It is advisable in such cases to take full protective measures by use of condoms, protective medicines, etc.; better still to hold intercourse only with wives, virgins, or women of respective [sic] character.

Furthermore, in view of the increase in pro-American leanings, many Filipino women are more than willing to offer themselves to American soldiers, and due to the fact that Filipinos have no knowledge of hygiene, disease carriers are rampant and due care must be taken.

This particular pamphlet appears to be an anti-VD pamphlet that was given to American troops. However, in actuality the Japanese gave this pamphlet to the Filipinos. The Japanese were trying to get the Filipinos to believe that the Americans were saying bad things about them, with hopes that the Filipinos would cooperate less with the Americans. It is not only high-level officials, countries, or international celebrities that fall victim to the ramifications of libel, slander, and propaganda; negative rumors and falsehoods can infect anyone at any social level, and they can affect you in your career. There are three types of propaganda that are typically used to lessen the reputation of others:

• First, there is black propaganda, which appears to come from a source other than the one it really does. The VD pamphlet example above is an example of black propaganda, because it emanated from the Japanese, not the Americans.
• Second, there is gray propaganda, which does not identify its source. During many wars leaflets have been distributed, which show generals living in great comfort while their soldiers live under horrible conditions. This false information from an unknown source can easily create divisions between leaders and their followers.
• Third, there is white propaganda, which comes from an acknowledged source. For example, in World War II, when British men were away fighting the war, the British ran many campaigns seeking to recruit women and others who had never worked before to work in factories and so forth, to help support the war effort.

Many rumors and falsehoods can become prevalent in society, despite not being true. There is a great willingness of people to believe various untruths, regardless of their source. In your career, one of the best ways to protect against false rumors is to always make yourself known and to be outspoken. Many organizations clam up and remain silent whenever any negative information about them is made public; however, clamming up will not make this problem go away. The only way to make sure that the truth is known about you is to speak up and make the truth known. The people who end up getting hurt are those who keep secrets and keep to themselves. The less that people know about you, the more propaganda and rumors can hurt you. Perhaps you are like many others who are introverts and are not comfortable getting out there and sharing information about themselves with others. If this is the case, I must tell you that in your profession the worst thing you can do is to keep information about yourself from your coworkers, bosses, and others. In the long run there is a real risk in being mysterious and unknown. People should know your story. The more they know your story and your position, the less likely it is that rumors and falsehoods will circulate about you. You should always keep the channels of communication clear and open with the people around you. If you are confronted with a false rumor about yourself, the best thing you can do is to prove it untrue. This will generally stop the rumor right away: “I am a prostitute? How is this possible? I have been going to karate six hours a day after school for the past three years. I also do this on the weekends. Why don’t you come down to the gym where I practice and train every day and talk to my coach and every other person there about this?” A statement like this might have stopped the rumor instantly. If the girl and her karate routine had been known by the other students in the school, such a rumor would never have lasted, since nobody would have believed it. The young woman’s main downfall was that she isolated herself from the group; since none of the students had much of a sense of this girl’s character, she was generally perceived as being stuck-up, rude, and having poor social graces. Nobody could stand up and say otherwise about her. In every society, those with bad manners or who lack social graces are ostracized from the group and are often considered bad people. In Thailand, for example, it is rude to touch someone on top of the head because this is considered a holy part of the body. It is also rude to put your feet up, pointing them toward others, because the feet are the lowest part of the body. If you were to go into a Thai person’s home, take your shoes off, cross your legs, and point a bare foot at your host, you would probably not be welcome back. In all cultures, we dislike and exclude rude people, and we give the benefit of doubt to those whom we know to be courteous and to have good manners. This is because good manners show that someone considers the other person important. People will never be open to your ideas or want to defend you if they perceive you as having bad manners. Arrogance drives people away and therefore does not make them befriend you or want to defend you. Instead, this type of behavior invites problems and often gives cause for people to create rumors: it is called spite. Few people realize that subordinates in any organization will always relate to superiors how the people they deal with behave. For example, if you are rude to a secretary, he will almost always tell his boss, and this will lessen the boss’s opinion of you. The secretary is talking to her boss each day, every day. The delivery person is stopping by the office to chat with the CEO. When you are interacting with various people, you may have no idea how many people they can influence, or how important they are. In most cases, the least important people have a far greater need to feel respected than the people at the top. Here are some examples of how people often exhibit bad manners and rudeness:

• Being late for meetings
• Interrupting people
• Failing to say thank you
• Ignoring people
• Failing to stand up when someone enters the room
• Not shaking hands when meeting people

When you are rude to people, you predispose them to disliking you. If someone decides to dislike you, the person will enthusiastically grab on to any rumor about you and will be very quick to spread it. Spreading a bad rumor about you will make the person feel good. Whenever you have invalidated someone in some way, he or she will, in turn, feel validated upon hearing something negative about you. By the same token, if you have shown courtesy and have made people feel valuable and important, they will not want to spread negative information about you, and they might even go to great lengths to stop the spreading of such information. Be known and understood by your peers. Shine in your ability to be courteous and appreciative of what others have to offer. Do not be arrogant. If you can remember these simple things, you will lessen the chances of facing negative rumors while you are on your path to success. THE LESSON Rumors are extremely dangerous. Competitors and colleagues alike share incorrect, negative information about you, these rumors can spread like wildfire and quickly shipwreck your career. Make sure that your peers know and understand you, show courtesy and respect for others, and avoid all types of arrogance; if you can do these things, you can mitigate the likelihood and potential damage of rumors.

• Opinions are fickle and change over time.
• Opinions can be created by a few individuals for reasons that are often self serving.
• Opinions are often not based on fact; they are biased.
• Opinions are often formed as a reaction against organizations that try to hold people accountable.

I took my last and final job as an attorney at a law firm that seemed excellent in all respects. The law firm paid the highest salaries in the city at the time and when I interviewed with the firm, the people who interviewed me told me I would get lots of good “litigation experience”, and that I would get the opportunity to go to court a lot. Going to court and arguing various motions in court, doing trials, and so forth, is something that young litigators are really after. In addition to paying the highest salaries in the city, the firm I was going to work for had an excellent reputation and was also one of the oldest law firms in the United States. Since I had gone to school on the East Coast, I knew that others on the East Coast thought highly of this law firm as well. Needless to say, when I told my parents that the law firm I was applying for paid nearly double the salary as compared to my then current firm, my parents were very enthusiastic and encouraging. When I quit my job at the old firm in order to go to work for the new law firm, the Founder of my old firm, John Quinn, came into my office and told me something I will never forget: “I see the court filings each morning that come into the courthouse, and the firm you are going to work for hardly ever goes into court. You are making a mistake.” This was a very smart man who used facts and figures in his argument. According to him, the facts and figures showed that there was not actually a lot of courtroom work at the other law firm. And it turned out he was absolutely right. One of the main reasons I had chosen to go to work in the second law firm was because so many people supported the opinion that this new firm was much better than the firm I was coming from. Since the firm had such a longstanding reputation, there were just a lot of opinions in the marketplace about the greatness of the firm. The law firm I was leaving had kept me really busy. There was a tremendous amount of work–more work, in fact, than I could believe. At the time, I even sort of resented having to tackle what seemed to be an insurmountable workload. I enjoyed the work itself; however, the sheer volume made my job very exhausting. Nonetheless, there was a lot of opportunity at this law firm. People were getting promoted to partnership all the time. The firm was always in the public eye for one of its cases or another. Many people in the community liked and respected the law firm a great deal. When I got to the new law firm, I was surprised to see that there was hardly any work at all. In fact, my first few weeks there I sat around with hardly anything to do. Then many other people started losing their jobs at the firm. Soon afterwards I started seeing people like the head of the accounting and human resources departments leave.

• Things such as lack of work are a statistical sign that demonstrates something is going wrong with a business.
• When people who have access to facts and figures start quitting, such as people who work in the accounting and human resources departments, it is a sign that something is wrong with a business.
• My being told before leaving my previous firm that the law firm in fact did not have a lot of trial work was a sign that something was wrong with the firm.
• The fact that the new law firm had hardly made any partners vs. the previous law firm I came from, demonstrates that something was right about the law firm I had previously worked for, and something was probably wrong at the law firm I had newly joined.

In all my years of working, I can flatly state that one of the best things you can do in your career is to make decisions based on statistical-type information–not the opinions of others. In my case, making decisions based on the opinions of the market, about which was the better law firm was a huge mistake. The truth of this (and almost any) matter almost always resides in the facts and statistics. I keep going over in my head, a 60 Minutes episode I saw recently about Bernard Madoff and a guy, Harry Markopolos, who for years was trying to get the attention of the securities and exchange commission, to explain to the commission that Madoff could not possibly be getting the returns he was showing; Harry had deduced this after doing a statistical analysis. He realized Madoff’s claims were absolutely impossible and that statistically it must have been a huge fraud. People invested with Madoff from all over the world due to the majority opinions about how good an investor Madoff was. The investors relied heavily upon the fact that numerous important and famous people had also invested with the con man. Unfortunately, no one ever closely examined the real statistics associated with Madoff’s investments. According to Markopolos, he had been working for a Boston investment firm and his boss wanted him to reverse-engineer Madoff’s trading strategy so the firm could duplicate the same results. Madoff was a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, and he was running an unregistered hedge fund at the time, which was producing great returns. The following exchange occurred in Markopolos’s interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes:

“He had the patina of being a respected citizen. One of the most successful businessmen in New York, and certainly, one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. You would never suspect him of fraud. Unless you knew the math,” Markopolos told Kroft. “I mean, you’re like a math guy, right?” Kroft asked. “I’ve taken all the calculus courses, from integral calculus through differential calculus, as well as linear algebra. And statistics, both normal and non-normal,” Markopolos said. Asked how long it took him to figure out something was wrong, Markopolos said, “It took me five minutes to know that it was a fraud. It took me another almost four hours of mathematical modeling to prove that it was a fraud. “

Opinions are varied and always changing. When one says ‘opinion’, he or she is naturally processing and filtering through tons of false reports and various prejudices that make up the entire social order. The danger of running your career, life, and finances based on opinions rather than facts, is very pronounced. After all, in many cases, people’s entire life savings were wiped out by Madoff. Various educational institutions lost major portions of their endowments. The losses suffered were immense and widespread. Historically, people have too often heavily relied upon false opinions, for instance, opinions that were based on prejudices against certain ethnic groups, or people from certain families. There are also opinions related to what is possible, which people have held dearly throughout history. Here are some of my favorite opinions that people have had in the past, which turned out to be completely false:

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. -Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this. -Spencer Silver, on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M “Post-It” Notepads. So we went to Atari and said, “Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.” And they said, “No.” So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, “Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’” -Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer. “Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” -1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work. You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training. -Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the “unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus. Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. -Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? -David Sarnoff’s associates, in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s. Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. -Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. -Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.

Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances. -Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.

Louis Pastueur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. -Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872. The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon. -Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible. -A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp. There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. -Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. -Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year. -The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957. But what … is it good for? -Engineer at the IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. -Western Union internal memo, 1876. The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives. -Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project.

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” -H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927. I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper. -Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”

A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make. -Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies. We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. -Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962. Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy. -Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He’s doomed. -Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast.

Many wars have stemmed from considering opinions above facts. People are promoted in many jobs based on opinions and not facts. We often use someone’s title in an organization as a method to form an opinion of them, and we fail to analyze the actual work they are doing. We resent people who have obtained an undeserved status, which has come solely from the opinion of others–not from the undeniable quality of their work. For example, the person who is promoted due to his marrying the boss’s daughter is often resented by coworkers, because his work alone did not merit the promotion. A major debate in society and in the workplace is regarding whether or not statistics should be used in the promotion of individuals. A decision by the Supreme Court was made this week, which dealt with the use of statistics in promotions. The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, were unfairly denied promotions due to their race. The court ruled that the City was wrong to not count a promotion exam because no African Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results. The City claimed that it had scrapped the results due to its fear that it would be sued by minorities if it had counted the exam. The use of statistics is generally affirmed over the use of opinion. Schools, employers, and others all come under attack when they use “opinion” rather than statistics in making decisions about who should and who should not advance. The failure to use statistics can be detrimental to you in both your career and life. I have always followed the financial pages closely and I remember during the dotcom boom and the housing boom hearing Warren Buffett talk about each. Each time he gave his opinion about these respective subjects, he said they did not make any sense due to statistics, and the fact that the rapid expansion of both of these markets, were based on something other than statistics. The housing boom and the dotcom explosion were the result of decisions that people made, which were based on opinions rather than statistics. If you have worked for an employer for 10 years and have gotten a paycheck every two weeks for 10 years, plus a series of promotions and raises, you might favor and trust these statistics, rather than taking a job with a start up that is trying something unproven. Lots of people screw up their careers like this. If you are in an industry that is slowly going out of business, you might consider this fact in your job search. In your career, you need to make your decisions based on statistics and facts–not opinions. THE LESSON Rely on facts and statistics rather than opinions; when you depend on mere opinions, you inevitably face disastrous consequences. You must understand the difference between facts and opinions, analyze both, and adopt the former while disregarding the latter to make productive decisions.

	International Collection Services license suspended
	Printable Content For Immediate Release: June 11, 2009 Minnesota Department of Commerce Summarily Suspends License Of International Collection Services–Bloomington collection agency charged with misappropriating client funds (St. Paul, MN) -The Minnesota Department of Commerce suspended the collection agency license of International Collection Services (ICS) of Bloomington, MN, charging the company with using customer funds to conduct the agency’s business instead of remitting the money to their clients within thirty days of collection as required by Minnesota law. Bloomington Police Department officers and Department of Commerce investigators executed a search warrant on Tuesday, June 9 and recovered financial records and computers from the company and its owner, Tim Peters. The search warrant was necessary because Peters refused to grant access to the company’s records, another violation of Minnesota law. The department received complaints from two out-of-state clients of ICS alleging they had not received money owed to them after ICS had collected on accounts due. Based on the complaints, investigators conducted an audit of the company’s trust accounts and allege that ICS has misappropriated over $125,000 from clients within the past three years. The company allegedly used that money to pay for operating expenses and to pay off Tim Peter’s personal credit card bills. “Consumers have an expectation that when a collection agency collects your money to pay a bill, they actually pay the creditor on your behalf, not spend the money on their own bills,” said Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Glenn Wilson. “When a breech of trust like this occurs, we suspend the license and shut down the agency.” The Department’s order for summary suspension of International Collection Services’ license will be considered at a hearing in front of Administrative Law Judge Eric L. Lipman on June 29, 2009 at 9:30 am in St. Paul

And then we also found this:

State shuts down Bloomington collection agency

by Elizabeth Baier, Minnesota Public Radio June 11, 2009 St. Paul, Minn. — The Minnesota Department of Commerce has suspended the collection agency license of Bloomington-based International Collection Services, accusing the company of misappropriating more than $125,000 from clients in the last three years. According to the department’s allegation, ICS used customer funds to conduct business instead of remitting the money to its clients within 30 days of collection, as required by Minnesota law. Officials with the Bloomington Police Department and Department of Commerce executed a search warrant on June 9, and recovered financial records and computers from the company and its owner, Tim Peters. The search warrant was necessary because Peters refused to grant access to the company’s records, another violation of Minnesota law, according to officials with the Department of Commerce. Multiple phone calls by Minnesota Public Radio to the International Collection Services went unanswered Thursday. On its Web site, the company says it works on a contingency basis and only gets paid if it collects on a client’s debt. “We are so confident in our ability to collect that we will attempt to collect your debt for FREE,” according to a message on the Web site’s homepage. “If we can’t collect, then you owe us nothing!”

We of course realized a short time later that “Cash” is actually Tim Peters. The entire matter is now being investigated by the authorities. Our estimates for how much money we lost range from a few hundred thousand dollars to perhaps more. Around four or five months ago something unusual happened. We had originally paid my dentist over the phone with an “e-check” to settle our disputed debt with him. We paid him the day that we had reached our settlement over the phone. However, six months later he attempted to submit a charge with an e-check for the same amount again. We caught this, called the dentist office and they claimed that the entire thing was an error. But the more I think about this, how could have it been an error? In addition, it seemed to me very unusual that the dentist referred me for collection–for a procedure I did not even approve. What I should have noticed and what I should have understood from all of this was that the dentist was a dishonest guy. In my experience, (1) dishonest people generally do business with other dishonest people, and (2) if someone takes advantage of you once, they are likely to take advantage of you again. My first reaction when I started speaking to Bryan Cash was that he was a very good collector. He called and harassed and harangued me like crazy. He was working for a guy, however, who was trying to collect from me for a questionable transaction in the first place. Generally, people who commit unsavory acts, associate with other people who commit unsavory acts. There is a reason for this: It generally comes down to the fact that most people doing business with one another are smart enough and decent enough to ask questions to understand if a transaction is honest or dishonest. Here, for example, Cash was attempting to collect on a debt which was not valid. He should have easily known the debt was not valid because there was no contract associated with it. Any honest debt collector would likely ask questions about the legitimacy of a debt in this situation. Cash simply went forward trying to collect the debt. This should have been a clue to me right away that he might not have been an honest guy. Dishonest and nefarious people typically pal around and do business with other dishonest and nefarious people. This is just the way it is. It has probably always been this way and probably always will be. Another thing that I should have picked up on was the dishonesty of my own dentist. Once I’d paid him with a check over the phone, I should have realized that he might try something dishonest again. This is exactly what happened when he tried to bill me a second time. For the most part (although it is not always the case), certain people have a certain nature that they simply will not change. Throughout my life I have preferred to give myself the benefit of the doubt and to believe that most people are honest and decent. I also like to believe that if someone does something dishonest once, that he or she deserves a second chance because he/she might have made a mistake the first time. However, I continue to learn that this often is not the case. Most dishonest people will be dishonest again and if you encounter someone through one bad person, the odds are that the person you encounter will also be a bad person. If someone lies or takes advantage of you one time, the chances are high that they will do it again. You also need to understand that you are likely to meet bad people through other bad people. There are just certain rules that you should follow in terms of anybody you meet–including employers. In this month’s New Yorker there is a good article about Angelo Mozillo, the disgraced former Chief Executive Officer of Countrywide Mortgage. I read this article with considerable interest yesterday, wondering how I would have felt working for a company if I knew that Mozillo was lying to the public, to bankers, and to others about the quality of the mortgages he was selling. I think I would have been very afraid of the situation and would have gotten out of there. This is what some people did before the company exploded. They got out because they were uncomfortable. Good people will generally leave bad situations. Good people simply do not want to be associated with people or organizations that are involved in nefarious dealings. Being associated in any way with questionable or unethical behaviors will taint you, and most people want to stay clear away from people of questionable or unethical repute. For example, if you put on your résumé that you used to work for a company that makes pornography, your odds of future employment are probably going to be tainted. I know this because I have interviewed several people before in our Los Angeles offices who have worked for pornography companies in one capacity or another (accountants, sales people, receptionists, and so forth) and they always try and cover up or downplay this fact on their résumé; however it generally ends up coming out when I interview the people. I am not comfortable with this track record of employment. Many employers will not be, as it calls one’s character into question. It is not ok to go into interviews and talk about the things you have done wrong. It is also generally not a good idea to work for companies where something nefarious is at play. You should not trust someone who has acted unethically or dishonestly once, because the odds are they will do so again. Your job search and future prospects will be determined by the company you keep.

Contemporary practitioners, both clinical and organizational, are faced with the pervasive presence of narcissistic disorders in those who consult us. It is a disquieting encounter, because–even as we recognize that our work to understand and assist persons and organizations with narcissistic pathology has increased the reach and efficacy of our interventions, and the lessons of this work in turn have transformatively impacted psychoanalytic theories-there are particular qualities at work with narcissism that are painful to work with analytically, perhaps in significant part because they militate against a defensive introduction of non-analytic methods into analytic work. It is in the nature of narcissistically organized persons, and perhaps also, I will argue, narcissistic organizations, to deny the reality of the other (i.e., the analyst), to wrench the analyst into playing a hated but necessary part in the patient’s internal drama, to try to disable or destroy the analyst in the service of a soothing return to a narcissistic self-sufficiency, and to project onto the analyst, with resentful hatred, a whole internal world of persecutory and toxic part-objects, as the first step toward eventual understanding, health, and wholeness.

While this quote may seem overly complex, it does elucidate a final characteristic of NES that I believe merits consideration: That a person with NES will not confront his or her weaknesses because doing so would interfere with his or her inflated sense of self. Instead, institutions and individuals that call into question that sense of self of the person with NES are perceived by the person as toxic objects. As a final point, this explains why people with NES may change employers frequently or leave their chosen profession. I realize that the picture painted above of NES may appear extreme, however it is important to note that NES is s quite common, especially among the highest performing people inside most organizations. Again, I would estimate that over 10 percent of people starting their careers in major firms have NES and will have more difficult careers for that reason. People with NES are generally the people who have come from the very best schools and have had a historical pattern of academic achievement that is nothing short of extraordinary. NES is something that can actually create the sort of super achiever who shows up to work and truly excels. In a scholastic environment, where such persons have the luxury of choosing most of their courses, working hard, and getting immediate feedback via grades, and in conditions that demand performance at a high academic level, persons with NES are likely to thrive. It is very easy for me to pick up the signs of NES when speaking with young people in the job market and others. People with NES generally believe that they should be given the type of work that they want. They also tend to believe that they are extremely intelligent and valuable to their employer. In addition, these sorts of people tend to be very calculating, analyzing most situations vis-à-vis whether or not they are getting the upper hand. If they are criticized by their employer, they may simply leave, rather than facing the possibility of any shortcomings in ability or performance. As a recruiter I can tell you that I see this occur frequently. Because our firm solicits telephone calls and interest from the highest caliber people on a daily basis, the NES person is one of the types of people we often speak with. The following similarities generally define the people with NES, whom I speak with: -They generally have not worked at a “real job” before starting as a first-year associate inside a law firm; -They generally did exceptionally well in college and attended a top 10 law school (NES, in fact, appears to be more likely to occur in a person who has attended better law schools); -They generally come from a sheltered, upper middle-class background, or their parents are academics; -They generally believe they are smarter than the people they are working with. In essence, people with NES would likely never have made it into a prestigious law firm had they not been sheltered by school, parents, and others for so long. The artificial academic environment, the home environment of privilege, the constant positive feedback from academic institutions (where social dynamics are not as emphasized as much as common academics might have been), and the lack of prior work experience all serve to isolate the person with NES, allowing their condition to grow in the absence of a “real world” environment. While I would be the first to argue that a law firm is not necessarily a real world environment, it is much more like the real world than a school or a sheltered upper middle-class upbringing is. The issue with NES inside a law firm and other organizations is that the persons with this disorder are primarily in service of themselves. For the most part, working for an organization is something that is not going to quickly lead to massive glory, riches, or fame. Instead, employees are hired to work hard to make money for their firm. There may be little opportunity for the sort of continual positive feedback and the kind of reassurances the NES person needs, and may be used to from his or her upbringing. What usually happens to the NES persons is that he or she does not hold up well against the initial criticism that all new workers in most companies receive–no matter how constructive the criticism may be.  The person do not take orders well, nor do they understand why others are considered to be their peers. Such people most often leave the employer quickly with fantasies about achievement in a much higher caliber work environment. Or, they may switch between firms for a few years. Some start their own businesses-most of which fail. A few stick with it and become better employees. While this topic has gone largely unexplored, it is very real and it affects numerous people-especially the ones who appear strongest on paper. I do not pretend to know the answers. Certainly, the inability to find a balance between one’s self and others is a serious condition. Recognizing the presence of a problem like this is usually the first step. The second step, then, would be correcting the problem by getting help. The biggest challenge in dealing with this condition, though, is that those who need help are not likely to ever realize or admit they have it. If you have completed reading this article, you most likely do not have NES because, if you did, you would not confront it by reading all the way through. You would have stopped several paragraphs ago. What you should understand, though, is that the people you work with who have NES are likely on a dangerous collision course with failure. If the NES person does not fail within your organization, the chances are great he or she can negatively affect you if you work with him or her. Do your best to avoid NES people. THE LESSON Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome (NES) afflicts many people in the current job market; they see themselves as special, and deserving of whatever they want at the expense of others. NES puts these people on a collision course with failure. Even if they do not themselves fail, colleagues with NES can negatively affect you; avoid NES and people afflicted with it at all costs.

• There are organizations in which style is definitely valued over substance.
• There are organizations in which substance is definitely valued over style.
• There are organizations in which people wander around in Birkenstocks and call each other “dude.”
• There are organizations in which employees are expected to call superiors “Mister” and “Ms.”
• There are organizations in which employees need to make appointments with superiors before speaking with them.
• There are organizations in which supervisors chew tobacco in the office and during meetings.
• There are organizations that value your having strong family connections more than your work ability.
• There are organizations that are extremely secretive with their employees.
• There are organizations that believe everyone who puts in a solid effort over the course of six or seven years should be promoted.
• There are organizations in which employees work around thirty hours per week, which is considered a good effort.
• There are organizations in which employees are hired and are then almost universally encouraged to leave after five or six years of service.
• There are organizations that have been collapsing for years, but that portray themselves to employees as strong and secure.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, however, that your success and happiness in your career may have more to do with your thoughtful and intelligent decision to join an organization that best fits you culturally. People simply want to be around people they like, and when people like each other in the workplace, both sides of the relationship benefit. OBSERVATION:

We all have certainly heard that Albert Einstein flunked out of grade school. Perhaps Einstein was too concerned with the theoretical rather than the practical. Whatever the reason was, Einstein simply did not experience success in the environment he was in at the time because the school and the people in it could not understand or appreciate where he was coming from intellectually. Do the employees in your organization understand where you are coming from? In a business environment, when the employee and the employer see eye to eye, success is far more likely than in situations where they do not.

Employees Often Fail to Give Strong Consideration to Culture When Choosing an Employer.

The problem with the way many employees manage their careers is that when choosing a job, they are motivated primarily by prestige and money, more so than by the cultures of the organizations they are considering. When an employee instead evaluates offers based upon where she believes she fits in the best, that employee is far more likely to find happiness and success in her career. The problem, however, is that most employees simply do not think this way, the reason being that employees are competitive by nature, and “fitting in” is not nearly as easy to quantify as things like money, company cars, and other perks. In almost all respects, it is most difficult to gain the best positions with the largest, most prestigious, and highest-paying employers. Yet, the pressure to join these organizations typically commences while an individual is in school. The problem with this type of thinking is that it can often lead employees to make horrible career decisions. If an employee is always thinking in terms of what he can do to look best to others, he will often neglect what is best for him personally. None of this is to say that there are not numerous advantages to come from being part of a truly significant organization. Nonetheless, this should not be the only consideration on which an employee bases his career choices. OBSERVATION:

Many people, in fact, have subordinated much of their happiness in life in pursuit of money, respect, power, and admiration from their peers. This leads many people to base their entire concept of happiness on things like having the largest house, the most expensive car, and other traditional accoutrements of the American Dream.

Failing to Consider Culture Ends Many Careers Prematurely–Careers That Could Have Otherwise Been Highly Successful.

It is easy to find out an organization’s compensation structure, but this is a simple and superficial distinction to make between organizations. It is not as easy to gauge an organization’s prestige level; however, it is much more difficult to evaluate a organization’s culture and whether that working in that culture will keep you happy over the course of your career. One of the most significant mistakes employees make when evaluating competing offers from organizations is believing that money is the most important factor they should be considering. While money is certainly an important component of any analysis, it is not the most important factor. Making any career decision solely based on money can be a horrible mistake. If you properly assess all variables, including culture, and you choose the right organization, you may have a stable career and life. If you go to an organization just because of monetary considerations, you may wind up so disgruntled that you are eventually not working at all. OBSERVATION:

On a day-to-day basis, in each of our offices, we speak with employees who began their careers with ultraprestigious, high-paying law firms. Many of these attorneys stopped practicing law two to seven years into their careers because they became disillusioned. Most of these lawyers say things like “I would never work in another law firm. I would only work as an in-house attorney.” The résumés of these attorneys are sometimes littered with one firm job after another, where the next and then the next firm were virtually identical in terms of culture to the very first firm that the attorney joined right out of law school. Of course these attorneys are not happy practicing in a law firm. They have only worked for one type of law firm during their entire career. The problem is that these attorneys have worked in a firm culture that was such a bad fit for them that they never got the opportunity to experience practicing law with a group of people they like, respect, and emotionally profit from. Not all law firms are the same. Fitting in with the community of lawyers that make up a particular firm is the key to long-term success and satisfaction in law firm life. Not fitting in is often the key to failure and can even lead to one changing career paths altogether.

Consider the choice of where to live, and compare the process of making that decision with choosing to join any particular firm or organization. Some people prefer the lifestyle in New York to Los Angeles, or prefer San Francisco to Seattle. Preference for one city or neighborhood is entirely personal and individual. The considerations are whether we feel accepted and appreciated in a community and whether we see people around us who share similar goals and aspirations. Whether that community supports and enhances your lifestyle becomes a driving force in your deciding where to live. And, just as you need to feel that you can thrive in the community in which you live, you should feel that you can thrive in the environment in which you work. You should constantly ask yourself these questions: Is this organization a place where I will feel accepted? Will I be surrounded by people with the same values and goals? Will this organization complement my lifestyle? Boiled down, what is the culture of the organization?

Making a Lateral Move Is Your Best Chance to Find Your Perfect Firm Culture

Many of our candidates, when preparing for an interview, want help identifying those questions that will help them unearth the true culture at a firm. In short form, the question that needs to be answered for each lawyer and every employee is simply, “Will I like it at this firm or organization?” Unfortunately, try as we might, we cannot always answer these questions as well as we would like. The culture of a firm may vary from practice group to practice group, and it is impossible to pin down with any meaningful certainty whether or not a good firm is always a good fit. Often, the only way to learn this is to actually go to the interviews and speak with the attorneys or individuals you may be working with. It’s important to remember that the interview process for a lateral move is much different from when a law student interviews for a summer clerkship. This is a plus. Unlike summer associate openings, which can sometimes number in excess of a hundred, when a law firm conducts a lateral search, many candidates are interviewing for one or possibly two available openings. In these situations, the law firm is not as concerned with competing for any one particular candidate. Conversely, when a firm is in a heightened state of competitiveness, it can sometimes be more difficult for the lawyer interviewing for the job to get a sense of whether the particular law firm is comprised of people with whom the lawyer would want to spend the rest of his or her career. But this is the kind of firm you should be seeking. Keep your best interests at heart, and do everything you possibly can to ensure that you find a good fit. Obviously, your task is to get the job; however, you also need to understand the firm’s culture. At BCG we have identified several ways in which you can evaluate whether a particular firm is right for you. Preparation Is the First Key to Evaluating Culture. You’ve gotten an interview. Before the interview, you should research as much as possible to determine the objective factors: How big is the office? What is the salary? In our opinion, this objective fact gathering is helpful in determining how well the firm or organization is doing financially and how it has grown over time. Diversity. It may also be important for you to look at the firm’s or organization’s commitment to diversity. We don’t know of any organization that doesn’t have an antidiscrimination policy. However, some organizations are more proactive in this area than others. Is it important to you that there are employees of color or of various sexual orientations? Location, location, location. Where is the office located? Of all these factors, we find that this tends to be the least important factor in evaluating culture. A California company known for having employees that wear Birkenstock sandals around the office might have a New York office with that same type of atmosphere. However, even in Hawaii or Miami, there are going to be radical distinctions amongst organizations. These distinctions are important. The city makes little difference in regards to the type of culture that exists within the organization. There are laid-back firms and organizations in Chicago that are down the block from offices where you wouldn’t think of entering without wearing your most formal business attire. The key is identifying and understanding the various cultures of the organizations themselves. Governance. How an organization conducts its day-to-day business is important. Employees have to run the business of their organization, and how they choose to structure the organization can say a lot about its culture. The business model often reveals the core values of the organization. Generally, organizations are governed in one of several ways: The democratic organization allows each employee to become involved in the decision making, regarding anything from new hires to compensation to long-term planning. For many organizations, the democracy may only include supervisors, so it is not necessarily realistic that a junior employee will be making high-level management decisions, or even weighing in with an opinion. However, many democratically run organizations do have some level of junior involvement within the organization’s governance, such as on pro bono committees or with respect to summer associate entertaining and recruiting. This type of culture is entirely inclusive, although sometimes it is the result of too much administration bogging down each individual lawyer’s already heavy workload. The values reflected here are participation and integration, which may come at the cost of expediency and/or consistency. Many organizations govern using a small, centralized committee of decision makers, which results in greater consistency, in terms of vision and management. However, this culture is more exclusive in terms of firm governance, which may turn off the young attorney or employee who wants to be a part of the decision making and planning efforts of an organization. In this system of governance, it’s important to find out how the leaders are chosen and the values they hold dear. At the end of the day, however, what is more important than the method of governance is why a particular organization chooses the business model it does. Asking an organization’s superiors why things are the way they are helps define an organization’s culture and vision for the future. If you hear that the goals of the business match yours, you have likely found a culture in which you will succeed and be happy. Word on the Street. You probably know the reputation of the organization where you’re interviewing. Is it known around town as a sweatshop or a quality-of-life organization? BE CAREFUL! Even if a reputation is mostly on target, you could end up joining a practice area or working with a partner that is decidedly unlike the overall firm or business culture. “Lifestyle” and “quality-of-life” are other ways the business community may refer to a certain organization. These terms have become somewhat hackneyed of late, but still have value in terms of defining a particular organization. A quality-of-life organization is fairly self-explanatory, which is to say that the organization has placed a premium on allowing associates to have lives outside of work. What does that mean? Sometimes it means a slightly lower billable-hour requirement than at other firms. Other times it may mean that the firm’s or organization’s management is more amenable to situations other than typical full-time associate positions, including part-time, telecommuting, flex-time, or non-partnership track. The popularity of this term has caused it to be somewhat diluted. Don’t take these types of labels at face value, and investigate what that term means within a particular firm. Again, be careful. Sometimes attorneys and job seekers interviewing for a position swing too far in terms of evaluating. Spending all of your time in this process wondering, “What can the law firm or business do for me?” will prevent you from showing a potential employer that you are a good match for it. This is a two-way street, so showing a law firm or other organization what you are made of is just as important during an interview as evaluating the organization.

Conclusions

The key to true job satisfaction is determining which organization’s culture suits you and your career. Finding the right culture will allow you to find a job that won’t feel like work. What is going to make the difference over time is not a $5,000 per year salary differential but whether or not you feel comfortable and appreciated in a particular environment. No matter what the reputation of the organization is, going through the process of discovering who the people are and what they think of you and your skills will be the best indicators of your potential long-term satisfaction and success. THE LESSON Just an ad for the Career Coaching Club.

• They put too much emphasis on skills and experience.
• They are overly impressed with interviewing skills.
• They think in terms of who is going to work the hardest.

Are these sorts of things important? Of course they are. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, the following are likely to happen:

• The person will bring down the morale of the people they work with.
• The person will harm the company through their negative outlook.
• The person will abandon the job for something that looks better.

When people go into interviews, they are trained to act like they have a good outlook. The best interviewees know how to say all the right things. But when it comes right down to it, it is generally very easy to see if the person is likely to do well in their next job: Do they have a habit of being optimistic, helping the company, and improving even when the grass may look better elsewhere? The reason this is so important is that eventually the grass will look greener elsewhere no matter what job we are in. One company may be able to pay a higher salary. Another company may be considered a ”hotter” place to work. Another company may be considered a place that is more fun to work. When you start evaluating everything around you and comparing apples to oranges, another job is always going to look like a better thing—eventually. It is for this reason that many people tend to move between jobs (and often relationships) with some frequency. In terms of how these people look at the world, they can never actually find happiness. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers. Several years ago, I was on the freeway going to work when a man jumped to his death off a highway overpass around 20 cars in front of me. For around an hour I sat in the car in traffic while police and accident scene investigators cleared up the scene. It was not a pleasant scene in the least. While the accident happened far enough in front of me that I did not see the man’s face, the image of the man’s body coming off the bridge in his last few moments of life sticks in my mind to this day. There was simply nothing happy, or inspiring, about what I saw. It was a tragic end to someone’s life brought about by their inability to see the happiness in the world. Everyone looks at the world around them in different ways. Take two separate people and put them in an exactly same situation and they will have opposite impressions. Some will consider what they are seeing to be bad; others will consider what they are seeing to be quite good. It is like this with jobs as well. There are people who are able to see the good in jobs and there are those who never see the good in jobs. Metaphysics is the study of reality and asks questions about (1) what is there (2) what are the features and relations of things? One of the most famous studies of metaphysics was done by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. Here, Kant argued that metaphysics can only be scientific if it describes not the way the world is itself, but how we experience the world. Kant believed that one can never actually know how the world is in itself. For example, space and time are not objective aspects of the world as it is in itself, but are forms of our experience of the world. Under Kant’s interpretation, reality is simply our experience of the world. It follows from this that since two people will perceive the world in different ways, each person has a different reality. Some of our realities can be very positive and inspiring—other realities can be nightmares. The key to this is that we are all experiencing reality in a different way. Experience in structure by our minds and everyone’s mind is different. Kant describes this sort of ”experience knowledge” that is gained from experience as ”a posteriori” knowledge. The man who jumped off the bridge could have decided that he had many reasons to be happy. For example, he could have been excited about the good weather in Los Angeles, the relatively good economy at the time, the proximity to the beach, and the fact that if he decided to, he could certainly improve his life and standing in the world. Instead, the man had come to the conclusion that the world was not a happy place and that he no longer wanted any part of it. I have been a recruiter and in the career business most of my working life. I make my living when people are investigating finding new jobs. I have made a ton of hiring mistakes in my career; however, the thing I have seen time and time again is that it is very easy to tell if someone will be successful in their next job. Look at how long they were at their previous job. No job is fun all the time. The key to success, in my opinion, is if people have the power to stick it out in jobs and find happiness wherever they are. This is all about how you look at the world. THE LESSON Many people in hiring positions make mistakes because they do not truly know what they are looking for, and place too much emphasis on skills and experience. Instead, they should focus on a person’s outlook; those with a negative worldview can bring down the morale of those around them and ultimately harm the entire organization. Learn to find happiness whatever your job or position, and you will make yourself more appealing to top hiring managers.