PurpleCar

by Photocapy

My friend’s father was complaining that his 21-year-old grandson (my friend’s nephew) would not answer his emails. The grandson (like many young adults now) is experiencing some job woes and his grandfather wanted to keep a caring watch over him. Communication between them had stopped when the emails went dead.

A co-worker of my husband was lamenting that his 30-something son won’t make time for a lunch date. My husband asked how he was trying to contact his son. The co-worker said phone calls and emails.

Our advice for both of these ex-email-communicado senior citizens? Learn how to send text messages. My husband’s colleague took the advice, texted his son and a lunch date was arranged within minutes; he was amazed. The man went from feeling distressed over his son’s “cold shoulder” to extreme relief that it was a medium problem not a personal one that kept his son from making time for him.

The grandfather I talked to was still skeptical. His wife said, “Well, I just don’t think I’m going to learn how to do it.” I spent some more time with the grandfather, showing him some shopping and coupon apps on my phone, the navigation features, and how to text.

I’ll teach a course to older users this fall in my township. One of the more important things we will be going over is texting. Worlds will open up to these grandparents when they see their grandchildren’s words immediately in response to theirs. This is a simple thing that does a lot of good for the relationship, but the idea of smart phone texting just seems so foreign and intimidating to older people.

We each need to take some time to sit with some senior citizens and show them how we use our devices. What is basic to you is new to them, and they need the information. Elderly people especially tend to become more and more isolated. Our households are rarely multi-generational now, which means grandchildren are growing up without the exposure to the wisdom of grandparents, and grandparents are living without the revitalizing energy that comes with being around children and young adults. Texting can help facilitate communication between the generations and lead to more face-to-face meetings.

“Ever seen an iPhone?” is an easy question to ask the elderly person on the train next to you, or at the coffee hour after church. These older people are very curious about smart phones but they are self-conscious about asking. I’ve always been bombarded with questions about tech by older citizens when we are in a quiet conversation. They want to know. They are afraid to ask.

Open up a door for a person who doesn’t yet have the keys.

Let me know in the comments what approaches you take. Also, if you were teaching my “Tech for Boomers (and above)” class, what would you include?

We’re more than just cheesesteaks!

What Silicon Valley Had and We Did, Too

The “burgeoning” tech scene in Philadelphia is following the same historical footsteps of California’s Silicon Valley. Technology isn’t new here, and it wasn’t something that simply dropped down on Palo Alto, California one Monday morning in 1977.

California’s San Francisco valley area grew quickly. Palo Alto, the suburb with 7000 businesses that hire 98,000 people, was only incorporated in 1894*. Industry around electricity, gas, radio and television grew in the next century. Stanford University grew along with Palo Alto, providing educated workers and research facilities to the nascent industries.

Philadelphia goes much farther back, of course. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, which we’ll get to in a minute. But let’s remember that we, too, have a long history of industry and research in many areas, including radio and computers. ENIAC, the world’s first electronic general purpose computer, was invented at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. But going back further, you can see Philadelphia was a pioneer industrial city, in health care and trading routes, then later in textiles, railroads, naval engineering and radio manufacturing. We have plenty of research facilities to back up the industries here. Industry and scholarship grew hand-in-hand in Palo Alto, and Philadelphia has always had a strong presence in both areas.

Here’s what one paper from MIT, quoting a Stanford University scholar, said about the early elements Silicon Valley needed to continue to its current success as an electronics and software hub:

List of companies in the city of Philadelphia

“A leading role for local venture capital,

…a product mix with a focus on electronic components, production equipment, advanced communications, instrumentation, and military electronics

…[and] a tolerance for spin-offs”

We may have missed the early train to the consumer technology boom, but we in the Philadelphia area definitely can show up to this meeting. We have superstar-level venture capitalists (I swear, every event I attend in the city has a “6 Degrees from Josh Kopelman” conversation going on by the bar). We have Comcast, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and lots of incubator support for startups. We tolerate “weird spinoffs,” especially in the arts (Fringe Fest, Mural Arts Program).

What Silicon Valley Had, and We Didn’t:

Our long-standing tradition of bad politics and broken status quo holds us back. The MIT article states that the Silicon Valley also had:

“…a keen awareness of the region as existing largely outside the purview of the large, ponderous, bureaucratic electronics firms and financial institutions of the East Coast;

…a close relationship between local industry and the major research universities of the area;

an unusually high level of inter-firm cooperation”

More companies in Philadelphia

Other local experts can pipe up here, but I’m thinking perhaps our nubile tech companies cannot wrench themselves free of the phenomenon of “East Coast” banking (whatever that is) or the ubiquity of “Philadelphia Lawyers.” (I don’t know what “inter-firm cooperation” is. I grew up in the Commonwealth, I went to college here, I’ve lived in Philly since 1993; I’ve never even heard the term.) This tethering to the “same old, same old” may hold our most creative talent down.

So perhaps those are the areas we can work on, to open up some of the doors that the Silicon Valley had opened for it early on. We can always improve upon the relationship between local industry and the universities. Sure, there are programs, outreach and support, but judging by the laments of “brain drain” by the city government, Temple, Drexel and Penn surely aren’t encouraging their students to take jobs at a Philly start-up, or heck, in one of the many Fortune 500 industries we have in the city and surrounding areas.

Philly always seems to be in an eternal identity crisis. We love kvetching about what we are and what we aren’t, as a city, as a people. Despite all the noise and hands we throw up in frustration, the start-up industry is taking hold here, no matter what. We should embrace it and nurture it.

Let’s Discuss

What are some areas of concern for you? What do you see as the most helpful move we could make to get start-up entrepreneurs to come and stay in Philadelphia?

_________________

references:

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_based_in_the_Philadelphia_area

http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/00-014.pdf

I wrote a guest post for my friend Stacy Lukasavitch, Social Media Coordinator Extraordinaire. She knows things you don’t. So check out her site after you check out my “Behavioral Books for Marketers” post.

go head, cliiiiiiiiick iiiiiiiit. you know you want to.

Even tiny tots have their own ideas. Give kids and your employees the space to make their own decisions.

What is “agency”?

You have it. Your kids have it as soon as they’re born.  Even your employees have it (don’t worry, it isn’t their local recruiting office).

“Agency” is a short yet fancy word for “decision-implementing capability.” An individual has agency if she has the power to change her mind or take action. Even the tiniest of human babies have some rudimentary level of agency.

In academia, agency is a touchy subject. Questions about consciousness and when actions are intended or made from instinct are typical areas of study for some Developmental, Evolutionary or Behavioral Psychologists. These scholars concentrate on an individual’s agency and how it emerges in the human life cycle. Philosophers of the “I think therefore I am” Descartes variety debate the very existence of agency in humans and animals.

Different beliefs about agency are also evident in parenting styles. Some parents are strong authoritarians who believe small children do not have the knowledge needed to make good choices. In contrast, permissive parents give their children’s budding motivations the utmost importance. Employers can fall into these extremes, too, swaying between micro-managing and a leaderless, hands-off approach.

Neither extreme works well. Too much authority can rob people of motivation. Too little leadership may cause people to lose focus. A happy balance between the two extremes can make your workplace or your home life run a bit more smoothly.

In his book, Drive: the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink puts forth a theory that people need autonomy, mastery and purpose in any endeavor in order to stay motivated and achieve goals. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose fall under an individual’s agency. In the workplace, this translates into managers giving employees the tools they need to 1. work individually in an environment of trust (autonomy), 2. be able to constantly improve their skills (mastery) and 3. function as a part of a larger system for the greater good (purpose). Take away any of these aspects, and you’ll see your employee morale go down and your turnover rates increase.

Official Definition from M-W.com

Parenting is similar. We strive to give our children the tools they need to become adults, but along the way many children aren’t given the space and time to master those tools. Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed, a look at how to get lower-income, underserved kids to success by inculcating good character traits, has elicited a loud rallying cry from many middle-class and elite educators who claim parents are failing by not allowing their kids to suffer the consequences of poor decisions. Over-protective “helicopter parents” jump in to solve all their child’s problems and erase any growth opportunity for the child. (Here’s an egregious example: At a nearby high school, parents have been known to bring lawyers along to teacher’s conferences to dispute their child’s grades!) This overzealous protection results in dependent, confidence-lacking young adults that fail to launch.

At work and at home, you can strike a healthy balance between overbearing leadership and reckless free reign. Determine just how much agency your charges (i.e., your children or employees) have in relation to their tasks. When assigning a new responsibility, ask yourself 3 preliminary questions:

1. Do others in this situation accomplish this task? (compare your charge to her peers)
2. Does this person have the tools to accomplish this task? (check her resources and talents)
3. What will happen if this person fails at this task? Is the danger perceived or real?

If you are comfortable with the answers, make a plan and implement it. Give your people room to grow by giving them the tools to exercise their own agency in a productive way. Your children or your employees will always have their own agency, because there are as many opinions as there are people in the world. You want to provide an environment where everyone understands the goals and are motivated to use their agency, i.e. make decisions, that help achieve those goals.

Have you ever heard the term agency before? What words do you use to describe this phenomenon of personal motivation? Let’s discuss.