Identifying our Work

I've been shown the door a lot . However, quite often, I recognize the importance of understanding that I jump into situations that I don't want to be a part of and will get booted from, in order to say that I tried that option. Why not just cut to the chase and create more certainty with what I do want to do? An answer is that I don't know what I want to do, but I have some resourceful indicators. My brain never stops. It is constantly going when I am not in a situated situation. Check out your own signals and you'll create opportunities in the places that you want.

I have parents that are very interested in their work. They're great at it. However, I frequently get asked what is it that my parents do. I respond, saying my father is an innovation consultant and my mother is a writer and "professional mom". You can relegate any profession by emphasizing the minute modus operandi functionalities. Describing "what they do" as they make phone calls, give PowerPoint presentations to people, are passengers in airplanes, own a home, and drive around in cars. My mom certainly is a "professional mom". She devotes her time to, according to her book, "creating in [the] home as sanctuary of love, nurturing, and support" (Kuczmarski 8).

It's been great to grow up in a caring place, devoted to support and development, but it can make you a bit panicky at times, if I don't feel as if I am developing. The real transformation is maintaining connections with family, obviously, but becoming able to create one's own haven of fostering care, love, and nurturing healthy living. Additionally, Susan Kuczmarski "encourages teens to take time to appreciate their inner strengths as well as those of the people around them" (Kuczmarski 14).

Now it's fantastic having a mother who is not only incredibly wise and keen on the field of parenting, but devoted to always being available to listen, and interested in talking about problems and providing genuine help. However, a debilitating tendency that can arise in most teens -- *ahem* me, especially, about 5 years ago -- is to ricochet and reject this genuine help for fear of being a trophy child. If a teen believes he has really become a trophy child, things will change fast in that teen's life. I felt that being successful with friends, family, school, sports had all been for the sake of proving that my mother could raise a kid. Given the tumultuous melting pot of hormones, pubescent changes, and highschool peer pressure that a teen already copes with, now feeling like a trophy child hits the teen with a tidal wave of fear. The last thing that anyone wants is to be is some object that is paraded around to enhance the status of someone else. The definition of a trophy child or, more commonly, a trophy wife, engenders self-sabotage or an amputation of the relationship.

I felt as though I needed a clean slate, I needed to get wherever I was going without outside help. I switched schools, got into activities other than sports, pursued acting, pursued painting, read different books, dated different women, visited different places -- great things to do for becoming a cultural and eclectic person. However, I did them in a freakish attempt to make sure that I wasn't a gem of success for another person.

The important realization is that "you don't own success" no one does. Anyone who thinks that they are successful because of another person has got another thing coming.

Although not the most prudent response, the immediate reaction foranyone who feels their life has become an implement for Person B's success is to that sever ties with that person. If that can't be accomplished, the next -- with an even greater lack of prudence -- reaction is to sabotage the possibility that Person B could triumph from your success, even if that means throwing the monkey wrench into your own works. However, being a personally unsuccessful isn't a good solution because that has a negative effect on my one's. The best solution is to acknowledge that personal success can be admired and recognize by other people, but that ultimately, it is your own. You not only must acknowledge your success, but your must share it with yourself and others. In the process of emanating your own success with others, people who helped you along the may feel satisfied and content, even successful themselves, but you were always the one behind the wheel and accomplished it.

Ultimately, Susan Kuczmarski's writing, in regards to trying to listen, always be present to teens, and providing a nurturing, loving place for them to grow reveals quite an enormously sincere effort to parent. It is all quite interesting advice. However, some of her writings tend to be advice on being a parent, so that the teen feels parented, which is the last thing that a anyone would ever want. Susan Kuczmarski does an incredible job of being, simultaneously, a parent and friend. However, her writing should not be misinterpreted -- with guidelines for parents to lay ground rules, encouraging the teen to practice kindness, and controlling the balance of structure and flexibility in the household -- as advice on ways to be a parent, so that the teen feel parented. Feeling parented cogs up the human "machinery" in the anyone's mind. It specifically jeopardizes the teen because the teen is trying to create his own identity, individuate, cope with school, learn, cultivate a social sphere, and an enormous amount of other daunting tasks, and having to ward off the sensation of one person trying to be parented, creates a more bizarre sense of certainty. Leading the teen on his or her own path, versus having the teen not only discover and create his own path, but embark on it himself. A teen's job is to discover, create, and embark on his "flight" and the parent's job is to provide the fuel, cargo, and anything they'll need on that flight, and to supply a crash-landing runway for emergencies. Other than that, parents should be some of the best friends a teen can get, and, fortunately, I've had parents that make excellent friends.


The MAP System for Growth

Thomas Kuczmarski claims that the key to new product success involves three Ms -- measure, manage, motivate -- an A, for attitude, and three Ps -- plan, process, people. According to Managing New Products, you can't manage what you can't measure, and that the act of management can occur with creative and that "the cross-functional teams dedicated to executing the plan of course must be managed". However, teams or any entity that is dedicated to something does not need necessarily need management because they already would be motivated to do the task . It all depends on what the team is lacking, if they lack leadership, they need a leader, if they lack the capacity to administer jobs and responsibilities but collectively have the motivation, they need management. The final M, motivation, refers to motivation with "intangible, soft incentives, such as positive feedback and team structures that encourage employees to embrace risk, and "hard incentives" such as reward systems that enable employees to benefit from intelligent risk-taking" (Kuczmarski 11). While the notion that the "soft incentives" of positive feedback is a type of "hard incentive" reward system itself, this is remarkably similar to Joseph Nye's distinction between soft and hard power. Basically, Joseph Nye described two types of power in politics. There was soft power was power through attraction and co-option, the ability to shape the preferences of others, while hard power was the use of force, military might, carrots and sticks, coercing and threats, inductions and payments. It's difficult to classify military might and any hard-power coercion or induction as having anything but a crippling effect, let alone a motivating impact. The message of the article I wrote on soft-power and hard-power using Nye's references, was that power cannot be trounced by power. J.R.R. Tolkien writes, "Power is an ominous and sinister word in all" of his books (Tolkien. 152). Additionally, he writes that the ring in his tales can be allegorically considered as an example of the failure of trying to ward of power with power. While the distinguishing characteristic between an intangible "soft incentive" and a "hard" reward system is unclear, the necessity of motivation is genuine, for certain.

Attitude links the Ms and the Ps, making it a "linchpin" which makes a lot of sense because you sell yourself and a poor attitude cripples any exchange while a captivating attitude can only create more of it. Apparently, planning produces more breakthrough products. Furthermore, understanding that technology and businesses are in an ever-increasing process is vital to learning the art of building new products . It seems the new products shouldn't be managed, at all, but simply given a few subtle adjustments, having the product create a life of its own. The people-component of MAP basically only gives a reference to a reward system or "splash" that honors work outside of one's expertise. While such a dynamic concept as "people" engenders a smorgasbord of neglected considerations in the topic of "people" -- motivation, punctuality, esteem, proficiency, dynamism, commitment to the task, knowledge of their vocation, awareness of other employees, to name a few -- encouragement for growth outside of one's expertise certainly couldn't be a more significant emphasis.

Sincerely comprehending some of the clean and efficient phraseology used by Tom Kuczmarski simply engenders a sure-fire result of swift success.


Kuczmarski, Thomas. Managing New Products. Chicago: Book Ends Press, 2000.