A Millennial's Muse — Part 3: All in the (Work) Family

Here read the true tales of a young twenty-something cubicle dweller by day – dreamer of "there's got to be more than this" by night – trying to find the moral of her everyday story. Walk with Jackie down cubicle lane as she humorously shares the pitfalls and high points of moving to a new city for her first job, building a life post 5 o'clock, and searching for meaning in every crevice of her stu-stu studio.

Dear Fellow Millenials,

What about not doing your job and still being paid for it? As much as I tried to fill the shoes of an Education & Programs Assistant during the beginning phase of my new job, I was bored and left unattended (baby's bassinet floating in Cubicle #8032) while my boss, who was also new, tried to find her bearings in our newly created department. Can't something be old or borrowed or blue?

I tried to pass time perusing the company's internal library of online resources. After reading an article on how to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and another on the do's and dont's of negotiation, I resorted to peeling off old scotch tape from the surface of my desk. Then, I turned my attention to things like building mechanics and co-worker dispositions.

Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

Those initial mornings when I entered the building where I toiled, I met the weird stare of the security guard on duty. Observant one that I am (sometimes), I realized that others entered the building using the standard pull/push doors while I utilized the more ornate revolving door. Was it just there for decoration? Did I appear like a hillbilly just being introduced to her Beverly? Not one to cave in to peer pressure, I revolved the heck out of that contraption. What would you have done?

Elevator Ecstasy

The same security guard must have had a magical button behind her desk, because the elevator doors opened and the bell would ding the moment I appeared before them. Her timing…ohhh her timing. The first time I witnessed this simple miracle, I called home (story of my life).

"Mom, want to hear something amazing?" Then I'd reveal the elevator trick.

Each remaining day of that first month:

"Mom, guess what?"

Mom: "What, Sweetie?"

"She did it again."

It's All Relative

I'd like you to meet some characters who were integral members of my work family:

Top Gun
My boss – I called her Magnum. Why? Because she was a pistol. A tough cookie – the toughest – a biscotti if you will. She's the type of person who thought that being born in New York made her somehow cooler than people born elsewhere. I was born in South Beach, a place that exudes pretentiousness, and I'm not cool by birth. Not one bit. I was the president of the National Honor Society in high school. Brace yourself…and the president of the National Junior Honor Society in middle school. Birthplace is bologna.

Dark-humored Dan
Armed with a very dark brand of humor, Dark-humored Dan added just the right amount of bitter and spice to the workplace. If Magnum asked him to do something, he'd respond with, "Sure, but can I poke my eye out first?" or, "Do you mind if I kill myself after?" In the midst of stuffing envelopes for two days straight, he turned to me and said, "I think it would be more fun if I lit myself on fire."

The "Male" in Mailman
I'm pretty sure I could have broken the office no-dating policy with Renaldo, the middle-aged, heavy-set resident mailman. While I didn't receive a single piece of mail in my first few months, Renaldo never failed to park his mail cart next to my cubicle and say, "Let's see if we got anything for you today," with an exaggerated nod of his head, a raised brow and (if some higher power really wanted to punish me) a lick of his lips.

Hi-dee-ho, Friendly Neighbor
Just over the shared wall of my cubicle sat someone who I will always regard fondly as "Neighbor." Early on, I was terribly impressed by her phone etiquette. I also heard Neighbor talk to her dad often and thought to myself, she can't get through the day without a phone call home either? We were like the TV sitcom Home Improvement, only separated by a fabric partition instead of a wooden fence.

After a few weeks, I felt like I knew Neighbor really well despite having never spoken to or seen her. I had no legitimate reason to walk down her row of cubicles, so how would I ever see the face behind this now familiar voice? When curiosity eventually lit a fire under my seat, I opted to take the longest and most indirect route to the restroom (loo) and there she be. Definitely a face a cubicle neighbor could love.

Any Neighbors in your world?

Wandering yuppie,
Jackie

A quality slogan can say it all

Working out at the gym is almost certainly the only part of the day that helps me maintain my sanity. Not only do I get the chance to let loose and release some steam, but I also get to observe my fitness center's absolutely outrageous slogan: "Feed your mind some body."

"Feed your mind some body?" I think to myself. "What the hell does that mean?" Ryan Healy agrees. It's one of the most ridiculous taglines we've ever heard.

Luckily, I don't think our gym has to worry too much about competition. But it got me thinking about just how important a slogan can be. How do you go about choosing the right one?

Speak for your company

What important objectives are ambiguous when reading your company name? There's bound to be something missing, so make sure it becomes tangible in your slogan.

"Don't pick a slogan that simply reiterates your company name," says Karen E. Klein, BusinessWeek. "It should enhance and complement that primary statement about your company and provide would-be customers with new, positive information about you."

Put your vision into words

If a picture is really worth a thousand words, this part should be a cinch. Keep a rolling list of energetic words that speak to your vision.

If you don't have a white board you can devote to this task, tape a large sheet of paper to the wall and leave a couple markers near by. It's important that you can reference your list over and over again.

If you don't already own a Thesaurus, buy one or use thesaurus.com. If you use Microsoft Word as your Thesaurus, that's okay too. But in my experience, it's a far cry from an all-inclusive resource for finding like words.

Give yourself options

Finally! It's time to put the puzzle together. At this point, it's easy to come up with one slogan you think is flawless and call it a day. I strongly suggest that you fight this urge.

Unless you're working solo, the odds are against you. At least one member of your team is not going to like your idea and you'll be left with nothing.

This is why it's always best to work together – it's really the most fun part anyway. Still, not everyone wants to be a part of the creative process. Some people just want to assess and criticize, so provide options.

Just like the word search, keep a running list of all the prospects. No matter how stupid you think any idea is, write it down. It only takes a moment for something seemingly worthless to turn golden.

Highlight your top picks

At the conclusion of your brainstorming session, rank the best. This way you can prepare to sell your top ideas to the rest of your squad.

"Ideally, a slogan should be fewer than seven words," says Klein.

"It doesn't have to be funny, clever, or rhyme," says Eric Swartz, president of TaglineGuru.com, "but it should be simple, positive, believable, memorable, competitive, original and benefit-oriented. Always avoid [slogans] that are vague, awkward, confusing, complicated or communicate an unintended double meaning. Don't use trendy business jargon."

Watch Your Back

A few months ago, Bon Jovi had a little disagreement with a Jersey businessman who was marketing an energy drink called Mijovi. The businessman named the beverage after his girlfriend, Jovita (nicknamed "Jovi"). But Jon saw it as a direct assault on his famous name.

Once you've lined up your top slogans, run them through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make sure you're not asking to get sued. Fortunately, for the creator of Mijovi, the Jersey rocker had no grounds for a lawsuit, but with all the excessive litigations we hear about in current events, it's not worth having to deal with the high-powered lawyer of a spoiled celebrity.

The Engagement Gap

Forget the generation gap for a minute; let's talk about the engagement gap. Towers Perrin recently conducted a survey of over 90,000 employees in 18 countries. Their findings are less than shocking.

21 percent of employees are engaged in their work, and only 38 percent are partly to fully engaged. Towers Perrin calls this the "engagement gap." According to the article from Market Watch, the engagement gap is, "the gap between the discretionary effort companies need and people actually want to invest and companies' effectiveness in channeling this effort to enhance performance."

That's human resource jargon for "If employees are not engaged, they will not perform!"

While this seems like common sense, the real value of this survey is its ability to quantitatively relate this information to a company's bottom line. The article goes on to say,

Firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased operating income 19 percent and earnings per share 28 percent year to year. Those companies with the lowest percentage of engaged employees showed year-to-year declines of 33 percent in operating income and 11 percent in earnings per share.

In a related study over a longer time horizon (three years), the firms with the highest levels of employee engagement achieved a 3.7 percent increase in operating margins, while those with the lowest levels of engagement suffered a drop of 2 percent.

This link to a company's bottom line is a huge breakthrough in the area of HR and talent management. For years, "people issues" have been pushed to the background due to a lack of quantifiable financial effects. I can't tell you how excited I am to see this slowly changing.

People like my mother have been pushing this emphasis on people for years. Finally, they have charts and stats to show the CEO!

I am not an HR expert by any means, but I truly believe the best thing a company can do to engage their employees, especially young employees, is to give them greater visibility across the organization. Employees at the bottom of the ladder need to know where they fit in, and how their work helps the company overall. All it takes is a quick meeting and a couple PowerPoint slides. Try it. You'll be amazed at the response.

It is my hope that the single greatest change that will take place in the workplace as Gen-Y climbs and eventually commands the corporate ladder, is a new found focus on employee engagement, above ALL else. Because, after all, what could be more important to a company's bottom line then its employees?

When life stifles the brain, make a creative turnaround

Ever since moving to Madison, WI to start working on the business, I've been hitting brick wall after brick wall with my personal creativity. I guess the culture shock of moving halfway across the United States is enough to get anyone a little sidetracked.

Still, it's frustrating. My lack of creative spunk was so evident in my posts that when I told myself, "Wow, that really sucked," I was just being nice. My writing was really much worse.

A few days ago, I accepted the fact that I was in a rut. I'm hoping it was the beginning of my turnaround.

"What made my brain work so much better back in Jersey?" I asked myself. What do I need to infuse back into my life to re-ignite my spark?"

This is what I came up with…

Train your body, feed your mind

If you look good, you feel good. No surprise there, right? But, there are bigger advantages to working out than just physique.

Exercise is a natural high. It increases blood-flow to the brain and releases endorphins (nature's "happy pill") into the bloodstream. The result is a happier, more focused you.

Working out has also been known to "quiet the mind." For instance, when I go to the gym, I allow my business anxieties to temporarily fade. It allows for a bit of imaginative meandering that I usually wouldn't get in the midst of busy work.

Speaking of busy work, you know that numbing down of the brain that you sometimes get when you're buried in papers? Exercise reinvigorates your brain by enhancing its nerve connections.

Write things down, but don't use a pen

"A-ha" moments don't transpire with timing in mind. If you're not prepared to record your brilliant ideas they'll likely get lost.

My whole life people have lectured me about carrying a notebook to record my thoughts. The only problem is I hate having a lot of "stuff" in my pockets. So I work with what I got.

A cell phone is the perfect instrument for keeping paper-free notes. Most brands and models have a notepad feature. Use it to keep your ideas safe and your pockets light.

And what about those ideas that emerge from the things you see? A billboard, a t-shirt, or a poster can all flick the switch on a great idea of your own. Break out your camera phone and put it to good use. Lord knows, the last time I used mine was probably to take an incriminating photo of one of my friends.

"A lot of creativity is random," says Michael Michalko, author of Cracking Creativity. "The thing is, when you start recording all your thoughts and ideas, they start to combine with each other. Combination synthesis is the core of all creativity."

Be prepared for your random moments of genius. Take advantage of the simple tools technology offers to make it happen.

Read everything (and I mean EVERYTHING)

Books, blogs, newspapers, magazines – read them all and read them A LOT. But don't ignore the great things that come in small packages.

Great ideas can live in the midst of 500 pages of pure text or under the bottle cap of a glass bottle of Snapple. Don't overlook the sporadic reading you do over the course of the day just because it seems a bit trite. At any point of any day, somewhere in our sight, there's something to read. Ask yourself why it's there. Who wants me to read this? Why?

Being in the midst of design management for our new company, I think a lot about the way things looks. Don't neglect the way messages are displayed. It's just as important as the message itself.

Stay in Motion – Newton's First Law

"An object at rest tends to stay at rest, an object in motion tends to stay in motion…unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."

-Newton's First Law of Motion

Naturally, the human mind is a bit more complex than physical science. But in terms of the idea I'm trying to get across, Newton's right on the money.

If I want to have a productive day, doing work in just one place doesn't cut it. Eventually, the distractions of any environment will take hold and throw your inertia all out of whack.

I keep my brain in motion by periodically changing environments. This assures that any "unbalanced forces" (aka distractions) can only affect me in limited ways.

In a nutshell, anyone dependent on their own creativity to make things happen has a steady antagonist looming over them. If you want to come out on top, you need to arm yourself with some fierce weaponry.

Hopefully, my arsenal will help prepare you to hammer down your distracters, but you're the only one who knows what'll really work for you. So take note of the circumstances that surround you at the peak of creativity. Learn to embrace those circumstances and you'll rarely find yourself in the situation I found myself in during the past few weeks.

A Millennial's Muse — Part 2: Navigating New Terrain

Here read the true tales of a young twenty-something cubicle dweller by day – dreamer of "there's got to be more than this" by night – trying to find the moral of her everyday story. Walk with Jackie down cubicle lane as she humorously shares the pitfalls and high points of moving to a new city for her first job, building a life post 5 o'clock, and searching for meaning in every crevice of her stu-stu studio.

Dear Fellow Millenials,

My grand entry into the working world came and went without much pomp and circumstance (can't yet seem to let go of school benchmarks for comparison). I set three (3) alarm clocks and my cell phone to ensure that I would wake up on time for the first (and second, and third…and fifth) day(s) of work. My mom also called me at the designated wake-up time in case the batteries in all four (4) alarms (and who even knows how many she set) all happened to die on the same day at the same time. Comment if you have a neurotic Jewish mother (who you love more than anything).

Pajamas See the Light O' Day

Free coffee was served in the lobby of my building every morning, and while other caffeine-seeking residents came dressed in collared button-down shirts, I showed up everyday at 7:12 a.m. in pajama pants (usually bright-colored, not forgetting my roots with the Sunshine State) and a Gators t-shirt.

I would look around in hopes that someone else had joined the Victoria's Secret PINK collection pajama brigade – wearing pants with the word "PINK" (written in bright pink ink) stretched across their rear; butt my status as a trailblazer was consistently reaffirmed.

I'd take said coffee back to my living room (which was also my bedroom, kitchen, closet, and bathroom. Life in a studio…sigh), feeling proud to be an individual. Then I'd sip to the tune of The Today Show. Matt Lauer is a fine way to start the day. Trust me. Were you also devastated when Katie Couric bailed?

Button Up

Can we talk about work attire for a sentence or two? Pricey threads, kids. Each pair of lined, pleated pants at Banana Republic or Ann Taylor Loft are around $80. Add another $12 – $15 (in the District of expensive alterations) when you fall into the "good things come in small packages" height category.

With three (3!) as the dominant number in your salary, such circumstances were hard to reckon with. And as hard as you tried, nothing from your Urban Outfitters college wardrobe could pass for business attire (been there, looked dumb).

Making My Mark, One Staple at a Time

First day on the job, I checked my new email account and stumbled upon a treasure of a message with a username and password to order "new hire" office supplies from Staples. I believe the instructions said, "anything you need." In that instant, the multi-million dollar corporation I worked for basically handed me a license to kill (them…financially).

Look under the Jackie covers and you'll spot an obsession (likely incurable) for school (now office) supplies. Tied with chunky peanut butter, I think the annual back to school section at Target (and no, I refuse to say Tar-jay) is the best thing in life.

The Staples website became my new virtual playground. It didn't matter if the other kids weren't playing. Who needs friends when you can gorge yourself on iridescent thumbtacks and star-shaped post-it notes?

Large bold-faced headings – Office Supplies, Furniture, Technology Supplies – appeared on my wide-screen monitor (the width of which made me dizzy for a week until my eyes adjusted). Then, like a burp I never felt coming, 20 sub-topics within Office Supplies hit me…they hit me hard. Desk organizers, drawer dividers, highlighters and adhesives just to name a few. I didn't know where to begin, so I closed my eyes, clicked, and landed in the stapler category. Symbolic, you think?

During this virtual shopping spree, my boss stepped into Cubicle #8032 (without knocking first). I casually probed her to see how much her recent "new hire" order had been. She revealed, "$100, maybe a little more." I looked at my sub-total of $70 and thought to myself, what a wonderful world. I clicked the "continue shopping" button with conviction.

I was told that if I placed my "new hire" order before 3:00 pm, it would be delivered the next day, but anytime after 3:00 pm and it would arrive in two days (perish the thought). At 2:39 pm, I began to sweat. I'm proud to say that I pulled through for next-day gratification. Phew.

My boss returned (again without knocking) to tell me that the minimum office supplies order is $30, so when people need to re-stock and are under $30, they ask others in the office if they need anything. And I thought I had dreams before this job. I really couldn't wait for the day when someone in a cubicle neighboring mine would shout, "Anyone need some supplies?" and I could respond with, "I'm in desperate need of multi-colored paper clips!"

Faux-feeling professional,
Jackie