Sunday, March 1, 2015
Fractured Book Reviews
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Following are six book reviews in one... Here's the thing: I've recently neglected Goodreads, and I haven't posted any reviews here since my mild diatribe about Graham Nash's autobiography, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life. Oh, I still stand by what I wrote, but it now seems shrouded in a distant past.
Fresher in mind are the books I've enjoyed over the past three months (and a big plug here for www.audible.com, which makes my traffic-filled commutes and gym Stairmaster sessions tolerable). There are six in all, starting with "Flash Boys," which I enjoyed greatly and would heartily recommend. Michael Lewis is a wonderful writer, and every other book here gets 4 stars just by association with him.
How to dispatch the rest? Well, I've picked the titles at random, in pairs beginning with "Flash Boys," to post three short observations about each set and point out a common denominator. It's my new parlor trick… fractured book reviews:
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt / Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
Both these books are about time. One is measured in microseconds; the other in eternity. Reading “Heaven Is for Real” was an easy sprint… and the movie adaptation happened to be playing on cable at the same time. So I listened to the book one day and watched the movie the next. The movie is much better; it's not great, but it could have been a disaster, and it made me cut the book some slack… given the childish/childlike descriptions of Heaven. “Flash Boys,” on the other hand, was a delight to savor. The moral of both? Salvation, in this world, is unobtainable in any form. And everything, ultimately, is just a matter of faith.
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride / Yes Please
These two books remind me how hard people work to get to the top of their professions. “The Princess Bride” is one of my favorite movies, but I had no idea how much care, time, effort, planning and talent went into its making until reading this tribute by actor Cary Elwes. Meanwhile, Amy Poehler, it seems, didn't spring up fully formed on “Saturday Night Live.” She spent thousands of hours perfecting improv and comedy -- the way Steve Martin in “Born Standing Up” described playing thousands of club dates before he became an “overnight success.” Or the way the Beatles played hour after hour on stage for years to develop their distinctive sound. Both books also benefit from the audio format, since both include entertaining cameos from guest voices. My kids may well someday read versions of these books featuring holograms.
The Girl on the Train / The Bell Jar
Both, it turns out, are first-time novels. “The Girl on the Train” has become a respectable current commercial success, and “The Bell Jar” is a well-respected literary success from 50 years ago. Both (despite the new technology evident in “Train”) have a timeless quality too – a mark of their two talented writers. Both books, however, are filled with what I found to be not very likeable characters… main and otherwise… so it was hard for me to care much about them all in the end. It's true, Sylvia, and there's nothing you can do. I couldn't relate to you. Yes, even you.
View all my reviews
Friday, February 13, 2015
My Bloody Valentine
I still have scars from second grade, in the days before political correctness when school kids didn’t have to bring a Valentine for everyone in the class. I can still see painfully shy, ridiculously crew-cutted Bobby Varettoni with only two cards at my desk while all my classmates had dozens.
And thank you, Annemarie Shapiola and Maureen Dunn, wherever you are. I think you saved my life.
My mother – who, all her life, has been popular and outgoing – has no doubt received thousands of Valentine’s Day cards over the course of her lifetime. At 83, she still gets excited about the holiday, and she has always sent cards to me and my wife, Nancy, and to our daughters.
However, at 83, my mother is no longer steady on her feet, and she slipped and fell (it’s icy in New Jersey) when trying to mail this year’s batch of cards.
She’s fine. Just a bruise on her hip.
Still, it led to an interesting phone call with my daughter who’s away at college. She said she had been shopping for Valentine cards, but was afraid to buy one for Grandma precisely because “with my luck, she’ll trip and fall while going out to the mailbox.”
She was joking, of course – so, of course, I egged her on.
“And then you’d be responsible for her death, right?”
“Well, knowing Grandma, first she’d sop up the blood with the envelope of my card, and then she’d crawl back inside the house, display the card next to her chair, then phone to thank me.”
“You know, even if you don’t get her a card, she’s still going to go out to the mailbox every day to look for a Valentine from you. And then you’d disappoint her.”
“So I’m guilty no matter what?”
“Exactly!” I replied. “Welcome to my life.”
It’s a vicious cycle – and here it is, Friday the 13th, and I didn't even buy a card for my wife. Instead, I’ve made her a card that references Brian Williams. Hopefully, she’ll think it’s romantic and cute.
It’s certainly not as slick as the card my daughter bought for my mother. She called last night to say, “Bobby, your daughter just sent me the most beautiful, beautiful Valentine’s Day card ever!”
My daughter is a survivor.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Lessons From 7 Careers With 1 Company
Did you ever feel like Crash Davis, the fictional baseball player in “Bull Durham” who breaks the lifetime minor league home run record without anyone noticing?
Last week I set my own quiet milestone – 30 years working at Verizon and its predecessor companies – without any fanfare.
Why the secrecy? When you’ve been with “the same company” for so long these days, you are more likely to get condolences, or curious stares, than congratulations.
So I want to out myself here to dispel a huge myth.
The truth is, it’s NEVER the same company after so many years. You may not change companies, but the company changes around you.
I can count at least seven different career lessons with seven different companies over these past 30 years.
1. The Entrepreneurs. Cutting short a career in journalism, I excitedly joined a small company in 1985 that sold the first generation of personal computers to consumers. I’ve always loved technology – and this was a skunkworks project for NYNEX, a Baby Bell, that needed PR support. My colleagues there were tech evangelists and wonderful teammates. The business model failed, but not for lack of effort or creativity – or fun.
The lesson: You’re never truly failing when you’re doing something you love.
2. The Phone Company. The NYNEX mothership then offered me a job as a writer and editor for its phone company subsidiary, New York Telephone, which produced internal newsletters and magazines. I was again surrounded by great colleagues – talented writers and in-house graphic artists – but the company itself was mired in the past. In the elevators, middle-aged men wearing suits with white athletic socks would talk incessantly about their retirement plans. This drove me crazy. Even an attempt to streamline my magazine’s production by using a “modem” was denied because it would have meant attaching a “foreign device” to the public network.
Lesson: In the short-term, you can find work you love even in a company you don’t.
3. Media Relations. Long-term, the phone company wasn’t the place for me. Luckily, I was able to transfer to New York Telephone’s press office. It was led by a smart, funny, urbane, chain-smoking phone-company anomaly who was welcomed as family in the Daily News newsroom and in dozens of New York City bars and restaurants. He rescued me because he liked to collect writers on his staff and, as a former journalist, I admired and valued the work of current journalists.
Lesson: Everyone needs a mentor.
4. No Job Description. By the mid '90s, I had earned promotions and was raising a new family. My career was poised, I thought, for great things. Then my mentor retired, and the new department head was not a fan of the old ways of doing things. He developed a complicated, matrixed chart of his new organization. Without a box on the chart for me. When I questioned this, he shrugged and gave me a New Age explanation that boxes on an org chart weren’t what was important. When he realized it was important to me, he finally owned up and gave me the following advice:
Lesson: “People will judge you by the way you handle adversity.”
5. The Job I Created. To shake things up, the new VP had brought in two outsiders – a well-know political figure to run NY regulatory affairs and a successful Media Relations VP from a competitor. Neither knew much about NYNEX, however, and I had worked for the company more than 10 years by then, knew it inside and out by virtue of my previous jobs, and wasn’t on anyone else’s payroll. So I helped them both – and learned so much from both in return. One of the executives was female.
Lesson: After witnessing the double standard in the way women are treated in the workplace, I will never tolerate it and, for the sake of my daughters, I will do everything I can to eradicate it.
6. The Mergers. NYNEX merged with Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic merged with GTE. The company, and the respective PR organizations, underwent massive changes in the late 1990s. I was a corporate spokesperson, and I directed the staff functions for two PR VPs. Now when new org charts were being developed, I was creating the boxes. A big reason for the mergers was to gain scale and scope for our wireless business. The first merger was valued at $24 billion; the second at $52 billion. Bets don’t get any bigger than that, and our plan was to create a new market for any-time communication, on any device, in any place.
Lesson: The best job in the world is to work for a company that’s doing something to change the world for the better.
7. Financial Communications. Since 2001, I’ve been a spokesperson for a huge and growing corporation. I like the bird’s eye view I get from headquarters, and I specialize in financial communications. Even if I’m not Crash Davis, I can claim to be the Cal Ripken of Verizon’s earnings press releases. More importantly, I have the privilege of working with journalists who are at the top of their profession. I do my best work when I can bring the outside-in perspective of journalists – and the way their work reflects marketplace sentiment – to help continuously change my company for the better. At this time last year, I was working on a $130 billion deal related to our wireless business... so it seems the bets DO get bigger after all.
Lesson: It’s all a matter of perspective, and perspective changes over time.
Ha! That’s a pretty vacuous statement. I can illustrate this a little more concretely.
Early in the morning of my 30th service anniversary with “Verizon,” I shared an elevator from the parking lot with three other people. One man was on his cell phone, conducting business in Spanish. Meanwhile, a woman and another man were in animated discussion about a new Verizon Wireless pricing plan, and the need to make it simpler for customers to understand. It was as different as could be from any entitlement-laced chatter about retirement.
I was on my way to the company’s gym before going to the office, so I had thrown on my suit over my workout clothes. After I stepped aside to let the others off so they could begin their workdays, I looked down at my feet.
I was wearing white socks.
Why the secrecy? When you’ve been with “the same company” for so long these days, you are more likely to get condolences, or curious stares, than congratulations.
So I want to out myself here to dispel a huge myth.
The truth is, it’s NEVER the same company after so many years. You may not change companies, but the company changes around you.
I can count at least seven different career lessons with seven different companies over these past 30 years.
1. The Entrepreneurs. Cutting short a career in journalism, I excitedly joined a small company in 1985 that sold the first generation of personal computers to consumers. I’ve always loved technology – and this was a skunkworks project for NYNEX, a Baby Bell, that needed PR support. My colleagues there were tech evangelists and wonderful teammates. The business model failed, but not for lack of effort or creativity – or fun.
The lesson: You’re never truly failing when you’re doing something you love.
2. The Phone Company. The NYNEX mothership then offered me a job as a writer and editor for its phone company subsidiary, New York Telephone, which produced internal newsletters and magazines. I was again surrounded by great colleagues – talented writers and in-house graphic artists – but the company itself was mired in the past. In the elevators, middle-aged men wearing suits with white athletic socks would talk incessantly about their retirement plans. This drove me crazy. Even an attempt to streamline my magazine’s production by using a “modem” was denied because it would have meant attaching a “foreign device” to the public network.
Lesson: In the short-term, you can find work you love even in a company you don’t.
3. Media Relations. Long-term, the phone company wasn’t the place for me. Luckily, I was able to transfer to New York Telephone’s press office. It was led by a smart, funny, urbane, chain-smoking phone-company anomaly who was welcomed as family in the Daily News newsroom and in dozens of New York City bars and restaurants. He rescued me because he liked to collect writers on his staff and, as a former journalist, I admired and valued the work of current journalists.
Lesson: Everyone needs a mentor.
4. No Job Description. By the mid '90s, I had earned promotions and was raising a new family. My career was poised, I thought, for great things. Then my mentor retired, and the new department head was not a fan of the old ways of doing things. He developed a complicated, matrixed chart of his new organization. Without a box on the chart for me. When I questioned this, he shrugged and gave me a New Age explanation that boxes on an org chart weren’t what was important. When he realized it was important to me, he finally owned up and gave me the following advice:
Lesson: “People will judge you by the way you handle adversity.”
5. The Job I Created. To shake things up, the new VP had brought in two outsiders – a well-know political figure to run NY regulatory affairs and a successful Media Relations VP from a competitor. Neither knew much about NYNEX, however, and I had worked for the company more than 10 years by then, knew it inside and out by virtue of my previous jobs, and wasn’t on anyone else’s payroll. So I helped them both – and learned so much from both in return. One of the executives was female.
Lesson: After witnessing the double standard in the way women are treated in the workplace, I will never tolerate it and, for the sake of my daughters, I will do everything I can to eradicate it.
6. The Mergers. NYNEX merged with Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic merged with GTE. The company, and the respective PR organizations, underwent massive changes in the late 1990s. I was a corporate spokesperson, and I directed the staff functions for two PR VPs. Now when new org charts were being developed, I was creating the boxes. A big reason for the mergers was to gain scale and scope for our wireless business. The first merger was valued at $24 billion; the second at $52 billion. Bets don’t get any bigger than that, and our plan was to create a new market for any-time communication, on any device, in any place.
Lesson: The best job in the world is to work for a company that’s doing something to change the world for the better.
7. Financial Communications. Since 2001, I’ve been a spokesperson for a huge and growing corporation. I like the bird’s eye view I get from headquarters, and I specialize in financial communications. Even if I’m not Crash Davis, I can claim to be the Cal Ripken of Verizon’s earnings press releases. More importantly, I have the privilege of working with journalists who are at the top of their profession. I do my best work when I can bring the outside-in perspective of journalists – and the way their work reflects marketplace sentiment – to help continuously change my company for the better. At this time last year, I was working on a $130 billion deal related to our wireless business... so it seems the bets DO get bigger after all.
Lesson: It’s all a matter of perspective, and perspective changes over time.
Ha! That’s a pretty vacuous statement. I can illustrate this a little more concretely.
Early in the morning of my 30th service anniversary with “Verizon,” I shared an elevator from the parking lot with three other people. One man was on his cell phone, conducting business in Spanish. Meanwhile, a woman and another man were in animated discussion about a new Verizon Wireless pricing plan, and the need to make it simpler for customers to understand. It was as different as could be from any entitlement-laced chatter about retirement.
I was on my way to the company’s gym before going to the office, so I had thrown on my suit over my workout clothes. After I stepped aside to let the others off so they could begin their workdays, I looked down at my feet.
I was wearing white socks.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
To Tweet or Not to Tweet?
I won't be tweeting during the Golden Globes broadcast tonight.
If I could act so smart or look so good, I'd be at the Beverly Hilton Hotel instead of in my living room in New Jersey.
But I do understand the impulse. Everyone wants to be part of the conversation; everyone wants to feel special.
Look at me…
… I even take selfies whenever I see a step-and-repeat banner, as if I were a star.
But, really, is there anything I can say tonight that will add to the show? On Twitter, there's always someone who has posted my thoughts, with faster fingers and even more attitude. A deeper search reveals that even my quick-witted virtual friends have expressed something that has been expressed many times before, in many variants… proving that, really, we’re all more the same than different.
I asked my wife about this today. We were parked outside of a Starbucks, waiting for one of our daughters to emerge with a coffee. I kept doing double-takes while I waited for her, because I kept seeing other young women who looked or dressed exactly like one or the other of my daughters.
My wife, who — like Ron Swanson — is wary of social media, said this: "I know I'm not special. And it’s OK. It's not always bad to be like everyone else. We all want to feel as if we are part of something larger than ourselves."
She’s right. Tonight, I’m going to put my phone and computer down. I’ll just be a guy in New Jersey, trading comments with his wife, while we both enjoy the show.
If I could act so smart or look so good, I'd be at the Beverly Hilton Hotel instead of in my living room in New Jersey.
But I do understand the impulse. Everyone wants to be part of the conversation; everyone wants to feel special.
Look at me…
But, really, is there anything I can say tonight that will add to the show? On Twitter, there's always someone who has posted my thoughts, with faster fingers and even more attitude. A deeper search reveals that even my quick-witted virtual friends have expressed something that has been expressed many times before, in many variants… proving that, really, we’re all more the same than different.
I asked my wife about this today. We were parked outside of a Starbucks, waiting for one of our daughters to emerge with a coffee. I kept doing double-takes while I waited for her, because I kept seeing other young women who looked or dressed exactly like one or the other of my daughters.
My wife, who — like Ron Swanson — is wary of social media, said this: "I know I'm not special. And it’s OK. It's not always bad to be like everyone else. We all want to feel as if we are part of something larger than ourselves."
She’s right. Tonight, I’m going to put my phone and computer down. I’ll just be a guy in New Jersey, trading comments with his wife, while we both enjoy the show.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Time Flies Over Us...
 |
| Daughter flying a kite, years ago, wearing her Derek Jeter shirt. |
I'm thinking of this Nathaniel Hawthorne quote this morning.
I'm about to spend the day with my grown daughters. I can hear them laughing, getting coffee in the kitchen.
I'm pretending to work at my computer while they get ready, but really I'm just listening to these wonderful sounds.
Don't tell anyone.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Resolution for 2015: Value People, Not Personal Brands
Odds are, if you’re like me, you probably don’t.
It’s because we’re all concerned about personal branding, right?
This concept has grown in importance in recent years and reached a crescendo for me recently when I read, “How to Promote Yourself Without Looking Like a Jerk.” It’s a good article, too, filled with useful advice (SPOILER ALERT: “It’s essential to express humility”).
I was disconcerted, however, when I realized this wasn't posted on Buzzfeed; instead, it was an article in the Harvard Business Review.
There are now so many rules and demonstrated best practices that “personal branding” is taught in our classrooms, and not just for the benefit of business students. Even Kevin Hart recently schooled Sony in the concept.
But isn’t there a point when there are so many rules that they become at odds with the authenticity that’s needed to truly create a personal brand and achieve some form of influence?
In a favorite scene from the 1999 cult classic “Office Space,” a waitress and her manager at a restaurant called Chotchkie’s discuss why she is required to wear a minimum of 15 novelty buttons on her suspenders to express herself and show “flair.”
Is social media influence the 2015 version of Chotchkie’s flair, where knowledge workers and professionals are being judged and measured by Klout scores and proprietary algorithms?I know… we should all be concerned about personal branding. It can be a necessary job skill and communications tool. I blog, I post here on LinkedIn and often on Twitter, I flat-out enjoy Instagram, I flirt with Google+. As a PR rep for a large company, I see many others doing the same.
But I also see professional journalists and writers and PR experts under greater and greater pressure to create personal brands and measurable influence.
I wonder, is all this personal branding headed for a jump the shark moment? Some monumental, irrevocable privacy hack that will make everything that comes after it seem silly?
In an age where everyone in the pack is trying to demonstrate flair, where is leadership? Perhaps it's found among those who truly inform, advocate, educate, entertain, build, repair, create, comfort or invent. And perhaps even David Ogilvy was wrong when he said if you can't be brilliant, you should at least be memorable.
I think the whole concept of personal branding has been overblown, and that the fewer personal branding rules there are, the better.
As a resolution for 2015, let me suggest a model from someone who recently spoke to the Verizon social media team.
Justin Foster, branding strategist and author of “Oatmeal v Bacon,” pointed to three universal truths that are now amplified by social media. He expressed them in the negative (one rule was, “don’t be stupid”), but I like the positive corollaries better:
- Be interesting.
- Be kind.
- Be smart.
If we're all trying to focus on any of these three things, I don’t think anyone would ever have to worry about their personal brands.
Oh, and one other rule… be sure to have a talented colleague like Theo Carracino snap your LinkedIn profile photo surreptitiously, and from a distance.After all, I don’t think my smile would be authentic if I was posing.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Valuing Everything Bright and Hopeful
I find myself obsessed, and mesmerized, by black-and-white words on electronic screens and in newsprint.
Is the world really spiraling out of control?
Earlier this morning, I was looking through recent photos on my cell phone, intending to post something on Twitter (despite everything, you have to keep up appearances, right?) when I noticed all the bright colors surrounding me.
I felt as if I had been suddenly snapped out of hypnosis.
Even in the photos I took at work — an interconnected hive of office space neighboring a vast tract of New Jersey swampland — I saw signs of hope.
There’s a Christmas tree with dozens of donated toys. There are otherwise bland cubicles strung with holiday lights. There’s the stuffed lion wearing a Penn State sweater I bought for our Secret Santa swap, and the miniature gold Notre Dame helmet I received in return.
As I continued to flip through the photos, I was astounded by all the beauty.
There are the smiling faces at the dinner with colleagues from work, and photos of festive Morristown Green outside… the first gathering of friends from my daughter’s barn… the warm hospitality of our end-of-year IABC-NJ board meeting… houses decorated with lights… gift-wrapped packages… photos of family members coming home… my wife with her arm around our daughter, wearing a red dress, before they left yesterday on their annual outing to see “The Nutcracker.”
I value all the people who shine so brightly, and I am grateful for all the colors that surround me. They fill me with hope and inspiration and light, even in the world’s darkest hours.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Ferrygrams From Weehawken
The best way to travel between New Jersey and New York is also the most scenic.
It's NY Waterways' Port Imperial/Weehawken ferry line, and I love taking photos of the New York City skyline, coming and going.
If you're looking for an interesting place, found in New Jersey, I suggest starting here and then simply enjoying the ride. It reminds us, in the immortal words of photojournalist Dan Eldon that the journey is the destination.
I've posted 10 other photos from recent ferry trips to this Google album.
PS - Here's a ferry arriving in New York, March 2019...
Monday, December 8, 2014
How Long Until the Elmos Show Up at Ground Zero?
I visited the 9/11 Memorial for the first time yesterday morning.
Not long after the terrorist attacks, I saw a chilling bird's eye view of the site through a gaping hole in the side of Verizon's building at 140 West St., which had been damaged by the collapse of Building 7.
Some force kept me from visiting the memorial sooner, but the recent openings of the museum and One World Trade Center all but shamed me into standing at the foot of the void.
I can prove I was there too. While I was at looking at the names inscribed in bronze around the perimeters of the two memorial pools, I found myself inadvertently in the background of more than a dozen people taking smiling selfies.
Of course, much has already been written and discussed about this phenomenon. But to see it in person was a bit like peeking again through that gash in the side of the building in 2001.
These weren't "I was here" poses. These were people extending expensive cell phones high in the air on selfie sticks and playfully mugging for the camera. Lovers were hugging each other with big smiles on their faces. A group of young women wearing fake tiaras were capping the previous night's birthday celebration with a group portrait. All that seemed missing was someone posing with Elmo or one of the other costumed characters who roam Times Square.
It's not that I'm against selfies. I take more than my share. There are countless photos posted on the @Sept11Memorial Twitter account that strike a respectful and balanced tone.
Posted here is a photo I took yesterday morning of Michael S. Baksh's name. On Sept. 11, 2001, my wife was teaching where his children went to school. He died on his first day at work as an insurance executive at Marsh & McLennan.
I have to believe that people, in their hearts, know that some things are still sacred. If you believe that too, please take a moment today to say a prayer for Michael Baksh and his family.
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