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June 07, 2008
The Slackoisie
Passion for mediocrity. See Scott Greenfield's inspired "The Slackoisie Fight Back", capping off a week of noises from the "no artificial time constraints" and "clients last" crowd. The Gen Y issue hits nerves. This past week Above the Law had some fun with it, too. For the next week Dan Hull exchanges the elegance of FRE Rule 612 (his favorite) for pretending to hawk scripts and ideas in Los Angeles. Even as a lowly if mature law clerk, I can get some things done for him this weekend while he's gone. Including the blogging. I know the City of Lights better than even Dan does--and so our weekend experiment What About Paris? is in good hands. After all, I am a younger-end boomer; I do value work and our clients. Hey, wait a minute, why am I the only one in the Pittsburgh office today?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Americans as half full of it?
Americans all think they are going to make it big, don't they?
"Half empty or half full? Test your optimism" by Diane Levin at her MediationChannel.com got me thinking. Running a business does require a bit of realism, and a pessimistic streak can help. You can discipline yourself to get that in your make-up, even if your Mom growing up was the Midwestern version of Pollyanna. Still, I'll take optimism as a "default" position for the kind of people I want in my orbit. Some western Europeans seem genuinely alarmed but intrigued when they utter the following, which is said to me frequently and out of the blue: "Americans all think they are going to make it big, don't they?!"* The idea, I gather, is that the great expectations generated by the free-for-all and break-neck culture of American life is a design for failure, disappointment and humiliation. They have a point. According to the Boston Globe, and as Diane points out, as many as 80% of us Yanks, have the sunny-side thing going--and it can work against us. But that is who we are.
*Brits who say this will then throw in, for effect, a loud and somewhat dismissive guffaw.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)