Interview with my Mom – An Ada Lovelace Tribute

Jean Wilson is a retired Chemistry and Math teacher.  Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Jean became the first person in her family to attend college.  She earned a BA in Mathematics and a minor in Chemistry.  Subsequently, she earned a certificate in Medical Technology and a Masters in Education.  Since she retired in 2008, Jean, a lifetime learner, has taken up the clarinet and the flute and plays in the local Horizons band, has mastered quilting (and has completed a dozen masterpieces), and tutors a young woman from El Salvador.  And she’s a blogger … how cool is that?

What was your first indication that you had a talent in math and science?

At the end of Junior High, my 9th grade math teacher recommended that I enroll in accelerated geometry.  I realized later that this teacher intervention was instrumental for me.  At the time, I felt scared but also special that they had paid attention to me.  I worked very hard.  I also had crushes on most of my teachers – that helped a lot.  In high school, I was at the top of my class of 700 students in math, chemistry and physics.  Only one other boy was at the same level.

What did you enjoy most about math and science?

I was a lab assistant for 2 years.  I got to do this instead of study hall (which I dreaded).  I set up labs and got to do extra experiments.  After the fruit fly experiments, they asked me to stop doing labs.  I did typing for them instead.

What happened with the fruit flies?

It was a genetics experiment in which I had to sex the fruit flies to make matches.  I would knock them out so that I could look at them under the microscope to see their sex.  It would take me so long to figure out what sex they were, they would start to wake up.  They looked like giant monsters under the microscope – so I would SCREAM.  Eventually, the science department thought it was best if I didn’t do that experiment anymore.

What was your decision process in going to college?

At the time, there were 3 professions available to women: secretary, nurse or teacher.  Computer programmer, scientist, doctor – none of those were even considerations for me.  Things changed quickly in the 60′s – more options started opening up, but in those early 60′s, it was very limited.  My family had no money and I didn’t think college was an option for me, so I was preparing to be a secretary.  The high school counselor advised me about scholarships and also guided me toward a career of teaching.

I applied to colleges that had good math programs, some teaching curriculum and were a good distance from my home in Minneapolis.  My home life – including an abusive stepfather – was miserable.

I received full scholarships to all of the schools I applied to and accepted at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.

What did you learn in college?

I learned a lot of math and chemistry.  I never could get probability straight though.  The teaching program was focused on preparing teachers to be experts in their field, rather than an emphasis on teaching.  I had to take a couple of education courses and those were just a bunch of baloney – can’t stand that education jargon!

I also learned to get out of my shell a bit.  I joined a sorority and I was even elected president.  I gained confidence in leadership and I got to take a trip to New York City – it was my first time on an airplane and it was wonderful!

How did you support yourself in college?

They assigned me a job in the cafeteria freshman year and over time, I just kept adding jobs.  By senior year, I had 4 or 5 jobs.  Each year, I had to pay off my scholarship contract, but once it was paid off, I was able to keep the money.  My mom would send me a couple of dollars a month to help me get by in the meantime.

What came next?

I went to University of Minnesota for graduate school in Math.  That was a mistake – other than I met my husband there.  I did not like high level college math; chemistry would have been much better.  I left the program after a year to go teach.

How did you go about finding a teaching job?

There was actually a lot of sex discrimination in the hiring of high school math teachers.  Upon reflection, all of my high school math and science teachers were men.  With junior high, this was not the case.  Women could teach math in junior high.  Except I hated junior high.  I didn’t like the math and I didn’t like the age.  Unfortunately, I had to settle for junior high for awhile.  After I had a baby, I did substitute teaching in high schools and eventually was able to get a full-time teaching job in a high school.

We moved to Buffalo, NY in 1977.  At the time, there was a glut of teachers.  There were lots of baby boomers that were trained to be teachers (as a result of NSF funding to prepare for the cold war) and not enough kids around to be taught.  I was 300th on  the waiting list and substitute teaching was not economically viable.  I looked for other options.

What options were available to you?

Medical technology was an emerging field.  I went to school, quickly earned a degree, and worked as a Med Tech for several years.  Eventually, I grew bored in this field and took an opportunity to teach high school math full time.  Later, I moved to chemistry.

What was your favorite thing to teach?

In math, I liked to teach proofs in geometry better than anything else — I loved the logic of them and the fact that they were all like puzzles.  They were also interesting and challenging for me and the kids.

In chemistry, my favorite thing to teach was oxidation-reduction.  It is the basis of so many practical things; it was nice to teach something that had so much application in the real world.

I think my kids liked my demonstrations the best.  I screamed a lot and when they got me laughing, I always cry-laughed.  Those lessons seemed to stick the most.

Do you ever hear from your students?

Oh yes!  Several have reached out on Facebook!  When I was still teaching, many came back to visit.  One gal who went into chemistry returned to do a lecture for my class.

What advice did you give your students?

The advice that I tried to give my students was that they needed to learn how to learn and to enjoy it.  Learning is a lifetime occupation — you never know what is going to come up, but you have to be ready to adapt, and the only way you can do that is by having the confidence and the ability to learn something new.

How are you liking retirement?

[smile] I don’t miss the school board or the administration one bit!

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In honor of Ada Lovelace day – an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

Now hiring: All slow learners

Would you hire a slow learner?
Someone who makes you uncomfortable?
Someone who is is usually vague and boring?

Quite some time back, I had the privilege of being taught by Bob Sutton.  He was not your garden variety teacher: our organizational behavior class was punctuated by lessons from a roadside shop’s attempts at pricing (consumer psychology) and Reagan’s Iceland arms control talks (spin management).

I recently had a chance to dust off some old notes, and felt compelled to share this table.
Take a look:

So now I ask again:
Would you hire a slow learner?
Someone who makes you uncomfortable?
Someone who is is usually vague and boring?

Remember – these are weird ideas THAT WORK.

(DISCLAIMER: The above table has quite a bit of hyperbole, meant to disrupt your way of thinking.  We would not recommend taking literally at face value…amongst other things, we always think listening to customers is a good idea!)

The St. Patrick’s Day Carnival of HR is up!

Jessica Miller-Merrell over at Blogging4Jobs has posted the St. Patrick’s Day edition of the Carnival of HR. She has assembled 28 posts from around the blogosphere. They cover a wide range of topics, but Jessica has made it easier to find the ones you are most interested in by sorting them by topic and providing a brief description for each entry.

Some of the standout posts include:

• Cathy Missildine-Martin’s in-depth look at Profitability Through Human Capital.
• Paul Smith’s parable of a new hire in Was It Something I’ve Said.
• Mervyn Dinnen’s observations about leadership from interviewin candidates in Good Leadership Starts Before Your People Do.
• Mark Stelzner’s cautionary tale from childhood Change Hurts.  Resistance Hurts More.
• Bill Boorman’s take on Social Learning–The Future of Training.
• Sharlyn Lauby’s excellent reminder regarding Performance Metrics:  Beyond the Numbers.

Go check out the carnival! It’s a great way to get a sample of the best and you might discover a blog you weren’t aware of before.

“But She’s Not the Right Alice!” Recruiting Pressures in Wonderland

I saw Tim Burton’s glorious Alice in Wonderland this week. What a 3D feast for the eyes and ears! Thoroughly entertaining, even if I did feel the White Queen’s bushy eyebrows were a tad bizarre. Although, having sat through a plethora of trailers prior to the main feature, I wonder how long it will take for us all to have overdosed on 3D fantasies.

Btw, for those movie-goers who leap to their feet as the last scene fades, I urge you to sit tight for the credits, the extra treat is worth it!

While watching Alice ‘succeed’ (somewhat unwillingly) to the vacant position of Challenger to the Jabberwocky – not worthy of a spoiler alert, since I resisted letting slip the victor! – it occurred to me that the White Rabbit delightfully played the role of a cute long-eared fluffy incarnation of an unappreciated recruiting agent.

It didn’t take long, after Alice’s appearance, for the Underland gang to question the Rabbit’s professional abilities. The Dormouse and March Hare were scathing, and even Absolem the Blue Caterpillar (<swoon> how I adore Alan Rickman’s dulcet tones!) was initially ambiguous enough to cast doubt, despite the White Rabbit’s exasperated protestations that he had done his homework, searched for years, and was adamant he had successfully tracked down the right Alice!
 
Which conveniently(!) reminds me of an article by Nick Fishman in February’s TM Magazine on the topic of applicant screening. Life is Not an Open (Face)book warns that, in these days of social networks as well as online availability of more formal resources, it’s unwise, and at worst a legal liability, to rely too heavily on information that’s readily (or not so readily) available on the internet.

Dangers lurk on both sides of the equation – damned if you do, damned if you don’t!

If you do take the information provided by candidates at face value, you run the risk of being duped by false accreditations. In a tough job market, the temptation is even higher than previously for applicants to ‘load’ their resumés, and even to resort to unscrupulous ‘diploma mills’ offering degrees for sale.

Conversely, for those who delve into online resources, there are cases where otherwise perfectly suitable and reliable candidates have been overlooked because of less than flattering images, or inadequately validated data, or data not even relevant to the position. Even apparently trustworthy data can be misleading; Nick Fishman cites an example of employers using the FBI database that was not created for, nor intended as, a tool for applicant background checks, and may contain incomplete information or, even worse, confused identities.

As always, the human element cannot be replaced by new technology. The recruiters worth their weight (whether internal or external to an enterprise) are the ones who make full use of emerging technologies and the wealth of information available, yet take the time to support that data with intelligent research and reasoning, resisting the temptation to cut corners.

Take a bow, White Rabbit, job well done!

Photo credits:
Walt Disney Pictures
pasukaru76

Quotas won’t work without a talent pipeline

The month of March is full of women.  There is international women’s day, women’s history month and Ada Lovelace.

When we think of gender issues globally, we think in terms of rights: reproductive, health, property, suffrage, education, etc.  Like most I find it hard to grasp that these issues still plague our world, but we must not forget that they do.  I love Secretary of State Clinton’s message

we must say with one voice that “women’s progress is human progress and human progress is women’s progress.”

In the west, women’s issues tend to be more about workplace equality: pay equality and senior leadership opportunities.  However you feel about the issue, you should know that companies are taking this very seriously.   An example is Deutsche Telekom’s quota.

The Economist has a great article on this topic.  The article suggests that,  putting quotas in place without appropriate pipeline building, is going to have some negative consequences.

I have a few thoughts to add to this topic and, since The Economist forgot to ask me, I figured I’d write them here.

I do believe that there is bias at play, but I think that, in general, it is not a practice discrimination against women that creates the lack of  women in the leadership pipeline.  The problem comes often as a result of children.

That’s right people, I blame the children.

Really.

Speaking from personal experience here, there has yet to be discovered an appropriate balance of effort between the sexes when it comes to childbearing.  Yes, I do understand from my male friends that they suffer in the process of pregnancy and childbirth, and that we women need to get a spine, but I’m going to judge in favor of the female on this one.

It is often true, that during pregnancies and infancy, many women intentionally take lesser roles in our careers to balance out the needs on the personal front.  I know all kinds of women who have done this,  and I’ve yet to hear much regret in this decision.

The problem is when there is no logical path back.

Having a discussion about taking a lesser job, one that you are over qualified for, to support a more rich personal life, is relatively easy.  Having a conversation about shifting back to a more challenging job from a lesser one, is much harder.

First, there is no conversation opener — pregnancy and maternity leave/return is a great conversation starter.  In most cases, it’s really hard to avoid.  Finding yourself underutilized and overlooked is much more subtle.  There is often not a moment in time that the switch happens, it tends to come about more gradually and with less required paperwork.

Next, there is the guilt.  Should you wait until your kids are in school?  Out of school?  When is the right time?  What will your friends think?  What about your family?

Lastly, assuming you force the conversation and you rise above any guilt there is often no formal process.  You find yourself having to serve double years of service as no one is comfortable promoting you back to your old level in one jump.

My practical solution to this process, is, of course, more conversation and more flexibility.  I think companies that are serious about needing a pipeline of qualified women for senior leadership positions, need to build a process under which women who are capable and ready to take larger roles are encouraged to do so. 

There needs to be a formal process and path back.

I agree that without a pipeline, any quota system is going to have problems and the steps to build that pipeline requires a practical look at children in the equation.  This is the elephant in the room, and it must be addressed if we want to make progress.

Do it for the children!

Be Careful with Averages (Especially with Compensation)

The Department of Labor put together this chart that compares the average amount spent on compensation and benefits between private and public sector employees.  At first glance, you might think that those interested in high paying jobs should look to public sector employment, or that public sector employees are overpaid.  However, drawing such conclusions from a simple average is premature.  In this case, the problem is that we aren’t looking at pay for the “average employee” across these two dimensions; we’re looking at averages calculated from entire groups of very diverse people.  Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at University of Massachusetts breaks these numbers down into a distribution of earnings in an effort to discredit initial interpretations of these averages, and to come up with some meaningful takeaways from the data.   

Comp is much more polarized in the private sector, where private sector employees are over-represented in lower and higher income brackets, while most public sector employees fall in the middle ranges.  43% of private sector workers earned less than $25k per year and more of them are part time (26%).  More public sector employees are college educated (45% of public sector workers have a college degree v.s. 29% of private sector workers).  The data suggests that employees performing similar jobs in the upper end are paid significantly more in the private sector than they are in the public sector.  And if you’ve got a lower skilled job, then it’s probably better for you to work for your local municipality.

Averages often offer poor and sometimes misleading insight when it comes to compensation reporting.  Too much is lost when data is aggregated.  The fact that the average salary for a US subsidiary is lower than a Mexican one may or may not be a problem; if they are the same, it may or may not be a problem; or, a problem may exist when the average salary in the US is higher than it is in Mexico.  Then you ask yourself, who cares about salary averages broken out by country, or business unit, etc..  I see too many compensation reports that just offer these higher end aggregates and don’t allow someone to look deeper into the numbers to draw meaning.  If you’re going to show an average, then be sure to allow someone to cut that average across multiple dimensions to get to some level of granularity; otherwise, an average is just a tease.

Bringing order to a chaotic work day

My usual day started with early morning meetings, catching up on email, looking up my memory for the to-do tasks and following up with my team by writing more emails, participating in meetings, and resulting in more emails.

As you can imagine, it was pretty hectic, a reactive work style and of my own doing. However much I tried to come out of it, I sunk in further so decided to take help from the “Productivity” class – one of the cool benefits of working @ Oracle is the access to a wide-variety of development tools (ok – I had to put in my compliments for Oracle somewhere )

My style is now “task based” and its simple –

• I am writing down all tasks – work and personal (using Outlook) with the goal of not relying on memory.
• I have set myself a frequency on checking mail (every 1 hour)
• I am now quickly processing the mail and dividing into 3 buckets
  - If it can be replied quickly in 1 min or less, do it immediately.
  - If it needs an action or following up with someone, create a Task for it and set a Start Date and Due Date. The tendency is to focus more on Due Date but at the same time “Start Date” is critical, as setting it correctly based on the work load for today / tomorrow and the current week, will determine how successfully I will get to it and complete it.
  - If it’s a FYI mail, move it into an archive folder and rely on “search” tools to find it later

• All I am now focused is to get the Tasks done and yes – writing this blog post was a task for Today.

I now have a “0” mail Inbox and a healthy list of 30 tasks that I need to do this week.

The added benefit of having Tasks is that I can now lookup my Tasks for the last week and send my Goals mail (which is the work I did last week + work to do this week) to my team. For some of the larger tasks – I can also pull them easily into my performance review document

My team is also following this approach, and as a result, we are all now competing with each other to show who is more productive. And, just the fact that, I have come out of a 2 year blog hibernation shows how happy I am with the new “me”.

What about you ? Do you have any productivity tips to share ?

The March 7th Leadership Development Carnival is up!

Go check out the new March 7th Leadership Development Carnival. Dan McCarthy has gathered together over 40 top posts, putting them in an Academy Award categories format. Dan introduces each submission with a brief description to help you decide if you want to read it.

Some notable posts include: Art Petty‘s Leadership Caffeine-Learning to Lead in the Project-Focused World, Jason Seiden‘s Your Job Sucks? Really? I’m Shocked. Oh, Wait: No I’m Not, Anne Perschel‘s Fixing the Hole in the Corporate Soul, Jason Reid‘s Multi-tasking – doing things badly in twice as much time, and our own Amy Wilson‘s Pay for Performance is Dead…almost.

This is a terrific opportunity for you to get a great sample of a variety of perspectives, thinking, and just plain good writing. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a great blog you never heard of before.

Lofty goals

I love my Tivo.

I think it’s the best invention of it’s decade and a close second to the remote control, as being the most useful invention of my lifetime.

I love it not so much for it’s technology, but for it’s simplicity.  The idea was so simple, all the technical pieces we readily available, and yet it changed the way we watch television forever.

Tivo changed my relationship with television, and in doing that,  it changed my expectations of television.  If it’s true that television has more to do with our generational divide than date of birth, we should expect that we haven’t seen the real result of the impact of Tivo yet.  That’s pretty cool for such a small company.

When I think about what I want for our own industry, I really want the same thing.  I want to change the way we think about systems and business.

I want to change how we look at people in business.

I want to bring the human back to human resources while also making business work better.

I want to realize the statement Laurie said about me.  I want to make work better.

The landscape of business is becoming more complex every day.  Social norms, expectations and markets are all changing.  Rapidly.

Global isn’t an idea, it’s a business imperative for big companies.  Companies are having to make bigger decisions with less insight since management by walking around is a lot harder when you have to walk across an ocean.

We need a new relationship between systems and business and I for one, think that it’s about time.  It all starts with lofty goals in my world.

Congratulations Amy on an outstanding TEDTalk

While I didn’t get to go to the talk I did get to hear people raving to Amy about how interesting it was (and ask a lot of questions about Paul!).

Her photo was in regular rotation during the breaks at TEDActive.  So now, not only can she forever say that she gave a talk at TED, she was also a prominent background for others TED memories as well.

Yes, I’m consumed with jealousy and pride.    Awesome stuff Amy, you rock girl!

photo credit: Jenny Yang