Posted in January 2012 …

Jan 30 2012
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Career, Polls

Weekly Poll #2 – Deferring Doing Good: Are you doing it? Why?

Weekly Poll #2:

Deferring Doing Good: Are you doing it? Why?

One of the themes I alluded to in Weekly Ponder #3 had to do with the idea that quite a few of us in the Good Generation currently tend to be members more in “thought than deed.” In short, quite a few of us are working at jobs full time that, whether we enjoy them deeply or not, we may have a hard time defining as technically “doing good”. We may be “doing cool” or “doing nifty”. We may also just “do less bad.” But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, during a private moment, it would be a true statement that we have chosen for one reason or another to “defer doing good” on a full time basis.

I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing. Many times, it might simply be the reasonable thing. And I don’t know if that is good or bad, either.

I just know that at some point, some of us stood at Robert Frost’s famous spot where “two roads in a yellow wood diverged” … and we chose the path more traveled. Despite all the motivational graduation speeches we have  heard in our lifetime expounding on the virtues of taking the less traveled road – whatever that means for each of us – we consciously chose not to.

Why is that? What still keeps you back? Are the reasons back then still valid today? Do you have regrets? Do you think “it” – whatever that is – will still be there when you are ready in a few years? How many of us are doing this?

That is what this week’s poll is about: learning why some of us deferred their inner urge to do good more full-time instead of part-time or “dream time” (in our minds only)… and if we are going to be okay with that in the long term.

As always, please do feel free to share any suggestions for future polls you may find interesting to learn more about your fellow Good Generation comrades and their views on various topics. I’d be happy to pick up on some of these ideas in the future.

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Jan 29 2012
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Forum, Weekly Ponder

Weekly Ponder #3 – Ultimate Do-Good Goals: How Does Nirvana Look to You?

Weekly Ponder #3

Ultimate Do-Good Goals: How Does Nirvana Look to You?


Perhaps I am mistaken, but before this whole doing good business became an actual career option, it seems that used to be easier to define what we meant by the actual word “career,” “success” and how we envisioned our goals in that regard. One could think about the idea of moving up the corporate ladder and become an executive, or ideally, the big boss herself. One could think about the goal of making a boat-load of money, then doing whatever one felt like. For this latter piece, one could easily predict once monetary progress from position to position up the ladder. One could also think about the dream of producing an iconic product that would be used everywhere in the world, and to receive credit for this.

But what now, if you are part of the Good Generation of people talking all day and night about doing cool things for people and planet? Damn you and your ideals and gibberish about purpose! Is it that easy for you to articulate what your goal is? What is it you want in the end?

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Jan 24 2012
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Announcements, Lists

Happy Lunar New Year 2012 – The Black Dragon Arrives!

*Note: Forgive me for less frequent activity or articles this week as I’m celebrating lunar new year with my wife on a nice beach. I could negotiate bringing the laptop, but not the hours it takes to write articles, sorry! Be it as it may…

***

Dear Good Generation,

Thought I was excited about January 1 when I shared my 2012 New Year’s resolutions? Think again, because actually NOW is the time to really get started!

Not only is it the official lunar new year for folks of Asian heritage like myself, but it’s a special year to begin with. According to the calendar of elements astrology, this year is the year of the dragon. More precise, the astrology symbol is the dragon and its element in the 12 year cycle this time is water, related to the color black. In other words, it’s the Year of the Black Dragon.

Although I can’t say I am particularly religious about astrology, I do like it when the Chinese predict that my natural element, when combined with the element of a particular year, ends up in an auspicious combination. Word has it that this year, I should “do well in social activities.” Whatever that means, interpreting this liberally to the activity of blogging, I certainly hope that Good Generation will continue to grow its community of readers and contributors as it has to-date. Of course, I don’t expect this to happen just out of nowhere. There’s things I’m looking forward to include going forward.

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Jan 23 2012
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Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Final Part 5) – Return Expectations and Know Thyself

Key Ideas in this Post

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with identifying opportunities and becoming more aware of your actual role on the job.
  • In Part 3, I discussed the importance of  understanding what type of people and personalities manage impact investment funds to determine compatibility with your own style, but also to get a sense how your negotiation may be influenced by their background.
  • In Part 4, I suggested that sensing whether or not your impact investor knows what types of organizations she wants to invest in was very informative because it will tell you a lot about your potential life and the long term viability of the fund you are considering.
  • In this final Part 5, I will ask you to probe for the impact investor’s return expectations as an indication of how much they are in touch with reality and then ultimately how to assess yourself and your preferences before going into that interview.

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Jan 21 2012
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Forum, Weekly Ponder

Weekly Ponder #2 – In Search for a Cause: Do you need one or can you be a “generalist”?

Weekly Ponder #2

In Search for a Cause: Do you need one or can you remain “generally” passionate?

Whenever we see profiles of today’s changemakers, we tend to see two flavors: (1) those that champion one specific cause and (2) those that prefer the “general idea” of doing good, which can lead them to serve several causes or “issue areas”, e.g., healthcare, education, poverty, etc. Thus, as more and more young people find inspiration and motivation from their peers and idols around the world to dedicate themselves to a career of doing good, many ask themselves what their personal story will be.

It is actually very easy to follow the story of people being magnetically drawn to a particular issue, say, AIDS or illiteracy, as a matter of personal background or unique experiences. We read about it every day. Joe goes on vacation in Africa, sees some poor people, is moved, ends up staying 5 years living with the locals, eventually returns home, tells a story, raises money, starts some company, does good, gets contacted by NY Times, does interview – BAM, fame, fun, the rest is history. But what about the others? What about the rest of us without an apparent cause?

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Jan 20 2012
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Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 4) – “Targets” or: What to Invest in?

Key Ideas in this Post:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with identifying opportunities and becoming more aware of your actual role on the job.
  • In Part 3, I discussed the importance of  understanding what type of people and personalities manage impact investment funds to determine compatibility with your own style, but also to give you a sense how the negotiation may be influenced by their background.
  • In this Part 4, I will suggest the importance of sensing whether or not your impact investors know what types of organizations they want to invest in. This will tell you something about your potential work environment and the long term viability of the fund you are considering joining.

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Jan 19 2012
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Good Thermometer, Polls

The Good Thermometer – January 2012

The Good Thermometer keeps track of what our Good Generation community is interested in reading and talking about.

Please take 30 seconds for 3 clicks and tell me what you like most, and what you would like to see more of in the future. You can instantly see current results.

I will run the Good Thermometer once a month starting today and hope to get as many votes as possible to get a representative sample of our community members and learn what makes you come back regularly.

Thanks a lot again for swinging by, hope to see you again soon!

(FYI, stay tuned for Part 4 of this week’s “Impact Investing Career Checklist” series coming up shortly)

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Jan 18 2012
13 Comments
Career, Impact Investing, Lists

A 6-Step Impact Investing Career Checklist (Part 3) – “Personalities” or: Who Runs the Show?

Key Ideas in this Post:

  • Impact investing is the latest hot topic in the do-good community around the world. At its core, the idea of actually “investing” in social-purpose organizations and achieve both “social and environmental” and “financial” returns for money, as an alternative and complement to philanthropy, gets people excited. Whether you think it’s just repackaging of old ideas or a legitimate paradigm shift, this “field” has undeniably gotten significant attention in the last five years.
  • In Part 1 and Part 2 of this 5-part series, I proposed a 6-step mental checklist that may help you navigate your career in this field, and I started with elaborating on the first two items dealing with understanding why people seem to care about impact investing, identifying current opportunities, becoming more aware of your actual role on the job, and remain cautious because career development is probably currently not a priority for the majority of impact investing firms but those with most money, scale, and years of experience (which is very few).
  • In this Part 3, I will discuss the third component in the checklist, which involve understanding who you are dealing with as the so-called “impact investor”. I will claim that the personalities of people running impact investment firms nowadays spans a certain spectrum and may or may not be a good fit with you depending on your own preferences and needs. Understanding this will help you probe in your interview and during your research phase to better gauge if a particular firm is the right place for you. Trust me, this is definitely not much talked about when all the media nowadays report and debate on impact investing on its theoretical and abstract features, while paying on average rather little attention to its human level. Let me ask: while impact investing managers can talk passionately about the people their investments help all day and all night, how many can articulate where they see their employees move within their organization in five years? Lastly, do not be surprised if you see a strong theme around money and attitudes towards it. I write about them at length in this post because it is somewhat of an impact investing “dirty little secret” and not discussed because we are supposed to talk about doing good here, right? Well, what I would simply like to do here is to draw the connection between personalities and the way they lead people to interview and negotiate with you sometimes in rather strange, seemingly counter intuitive ways.

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Jan 18 2012
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Impact Investing, Polls

Weekly Poll #1 – Impact Investing: Why do it? Why work in it? What to expect?

Weekly Poll #1:

Impact Investing: Motivations, Expectations and Careers

Picking up right on the theme of the week, I was curious to learn more about your motivations for looking at impact investing. Do you just find it generally interesting? Do you see a career in it potentially? Why? Why not? What are your expectations about how much people should earn in return for social investments?

Please vote on all questions so we can get some reasonable numbers in the mix. You can instantly see current results. I know you are there, because the latest post series has proven very popular! As announced, if all readers combined can provide me a minimum of 100 votes (on each question), I’ll release my hostage: Part 3 of the 6-step career checklist for impact investing post series! I know it’s devious, but hey, we might as well get used to some warm up to take our Good Generation community to a higher level of interaction and discussion. In this case, the cost to you for this starts at a modest 6 clicks.

Lastly, kidding aside, please do share with me any suggestions for future polls you may find interesting to learn more about your fellow Good Generation comrades and their views on various topics. I’d be happy to pick up on some of these ideas in the future.

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Jan 18 2012
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Announcements, Forum, Polls

Announcement – Introducing the Weekly Poll

Dear Good Generation,

In addition to the “Weekly Ponder” series, I’d like to add yet another item: the “Weekly Poll”. Not only do I like to change things up as you know from plain vanilla articles and questions, but I also am highly interested in collecting on the community’s behalf some more information, which I then can share and mention in subsequent posts.

My opinion about the best way to fight our notorious lack of data in the area of do-good careers is to start somewhere, keep it simple and hopefully find some surprises and interesting nuggets along the way. I’m serious, don’t show this to the folks at Gallup, they would probably turn in their graves by the lack of finesse and design in my poll – oh well.

Oh, and yes, I deliberately inserted my poll in the middle of a (apparently popular) post series. The cost of the next few articles has just gone up by a few clicks! That’s right, I’ll offer an incentive for participating in the mini-poll: once I get a minimum number for participation, I’ll post the next part of the series. Consider this a retaliation for all of you who ignored my benign (and arguably poorly marketed) request for some participation in the last Weekly Ponder!

More on this in the actual Weekly Poll, though. For now, thanks for joining in and as always, please do send me your suggestions for interesting poll topics and questions as it relates to our blog community, so I can consider them for the future.

Sincerely,

Thien

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