second thoughts

FROM CAPTAIN TO PASSENGER

OUT THROUGH THE IN DOOR

Paul Rutherford

Dec 9, 2019
3 min

OUT THROUGH THE IN DOOR

“There’s a lot worse out there.” E – a long-standing friend – was wondering whether he had one more career move in him. “Coming up to 20 years with the company, albeit under four different owners. “A lot of change, and there’s more to come. I wonder if I should get out before the new owners make that decision for me? “But while it isn’t perfect, there’s a lot worse out there.” E’s comments sent me on a flashback, to my first full-time job after graduation. The company owner g

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THE SELFIE TEST

Paul Rutherford

Nov 18, 2019
1 min

THE SELFIE TEST

Sometime when you're feeling important When your ego is fully in bloom. Sometime when you take it for granted You're the best qualified in the room. Sometime when you feel that your exit Will leave an unfillable space. Sometime when you cannot imagine How others will continue with grace. Take a bucket and fill it with water. Put your hand in it, up to the wrist. Pull it out - and the hole that's remaining Is the scope of how much you'll be missed. For Rutherposts direct to y

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THE FOURTH COOKIE

Jun 10, 2019
2 min

THE FOURTH COOKIE

Excerpt #2/2 from 'Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie', the 2012 Princeton commencement speech by alumni Michael Lewis. He is the author of 'Liar's Poker' (Norton, 1989), 'Moneyball' (Norton, 2004) and 'The Big Short' (Norton, 2010). 'A few years ago...,a pair of researchers in the Cal psychology department staged an experiment. They began by grabbing students, as lab rats. Then they broke the students into teams, segregated by sex. Three men, or three women, per team. Then they put

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RATIONALIZING LUCK

Jun 3, 2019
1 min

RATIONALIZING LUCK

Excerpt #1/2 from 'Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie', the 2012 Princeton commencement speech by alumni Michael Lewis. He is the author of 'Liar's Poker' (Norton, 1989), 'Moneyball' (Norton, 2004) and 'The Big Short' (Norton, 2010). 'The book I wrote was called "Liar’s Poker." It sold a million copies. I was 28 years old. I had a career, a little fame, a small fortune and a new life narrative. All of a sudden people were telling me I was born to be a writer. This was absurd. Even I

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JOB TITLE CHASE CODA

Fortune Magazine

Apr 18, 2019
1 min

JOB TITLE CHASE CODA

Excerpt from 'Why Unusual Job Titles are Bad for You and Your Company' by Daniel Bukszpan. Director of First Impressions All About People is a staffing and recruiting company based in Phoenix, Arizona. It has 25,000 successfully-placed candidates to its credit, and co-founder Sherri Mitchell said that she’s seen numerous jobs of old sneak into the 21st century with new-look titles. “Back in the day you would hear ‘receptionist,’” she said. “One of the trendier ways of describ

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THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #5

Paul Rutherford

Apr 8, 2019
3 min

THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #5

So what does it mean to be a Partner? At heart, it's belonging and not belonging – the want to be an integral part of a venture and the need for independence, to be on the outside. PROFESSIONAL PARTNERS Partnerships are most common among professional services – accountants, architects, doctors, dentists, lawyers, management consultants. There are plenty of the legal practices on TV (The Good Wife, Kavanagh QC, Suits,) because the core of their business is conflict, especially

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THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #4

Paul Rutherford

Apr 1, 2019
3 min

THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #4

For 15 years, I was wading through the murky waters of GMs / VPs / CMOs, all of which made me feel important but much of which was mutual stroking. If I’m a Chief of something and you’re Head of something, we’ll both be impressed with each other (and ourselves). Starting afresh at Beaumont Karlson was a welcome change. Two founders – who had already run two (successful) start-ups - invited me to join them in venture number three. I wrinkled my nose, thinking "why on earth do

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BEFORE THE GREAT CHASE

Paul Rutherford

Mar 25, 2019
4 min

BEFORE THE GREAT CHASE

Someone asked me recently about my working life; what have I done in my career? And, like many, I slipped in the audio version of my CV - a well-honed, anecdote-filled summary of 30-something years. That same day, I was on the train out of London. Two Asian lads - 14 years-old, perhaps 15 - sat near me. One of them had money worries. Not mortgage or credit card levels of worry; something much more pressing. New girlfriend levels of worry. How was he going to pay to take her o

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THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #3

Paul Rutherford

Mar 18, 2019
3 min

THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #3

When a stint with a global corporation ends abruptly, the brand still opens career doors. A combination of “you must have been good to get in” and “you must have learned good habits while you were there” carries momentum. Not to say that positive change happens immediately. The futher you rise, the more frogs you have to kiss. After I'd spent many months splashing in many ponds, a head-hunter invited me to meet with a newly-appointed CEO. He’d just joined a software company w

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THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #2

Paul Rutherford

Mar 11, 2019
4 min

THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #2

Three months after my start with IBM, one of the senior managers who had hired me announced he was going somewhere else, and a few other chairs were going to be moved. I wondered if I had bought a last-minute ticket on The Titanic? To be fair, my other boss tried to make good of an unplanned situation: “No need to look over your shoulder; there’ll be more change soon enough, and the cards will fall well for you.” Good to his word, two weeks later I was invited to an ACT* sess

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THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #1

Paul Rutherford

Mar 4, 2019
2 min

THE GREAT JOB TITLE CHASE #1

‘The Great Job Title Chase’ started for me at Xerox. At the time the company had split the UK into six regions. ‘Regional Directors’ held the local resources and the collective responsibility to achieve total revenue targets. Simple and straightforward, except for its largest customers. Financial, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, retail - companies that had the temerity not to fit into the Xerox regional structure. Companies with multiple sites and multiple functions across mul

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TITHE AND TEA

Paul Rutherford

May 22, 2018
2 min

TITHE AND TEA

Last week, we took a narrow boat down the Kennett and Avon canal. Slow pace, a different time. One day we visited the chocolate-boxy Bradford-on-Avon, and took a walk to drink in some local history. Most impressive, a C15th tithe barn. 50 metres long, 10 metres wide, the building annually stored a tenth (tithe) of farmers’ produce which fed the nuns at the Shaftesbury Abbey - the richest nunnery in England. Before returning to the boat, we stopped at a much smaller outb

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UNDOING A RULE OF THUMB

Paul Rutherford

Mar 24, 2018
7 min

UNDOING A RULE OF THUMB

40 Books in 2018 Michael Lewis THE UNDOING PROJECT 368pp Allen Lane 2016 This is Draft 6. Perhaps it’s number seven. I’ve lost count. Why go to so much effort to write a blog post that will be read by a small audience? Because I’ve been struggling to find the best way to capture Michael Lewis’s book in 1500 words, and to do it justice. Here are some options: 1. The Undoing Project (TUP) is a biography of two brilliant thinkers who helped to re-invent C20th psychology; 2. TUP

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PRIORITIES

Paul Rutherford

Mar 12, 2018
2 min

PRIORITIES

I don’t know the origin of this story; there are several variations out in the digital ether. Sometimes the moral is spelt out explicitly; I prefer a looser interpretation. The professor stood at the front of the lecture theatre behind a large workbench. On it stood a large glass specimen jar, the sort that collectors of the macabre use to exhibit animals with too many limbs. It was the start of term, so he was playing to a full house. From beneath the table he lifted a bucke

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"LIFE'S A SERIES OF STEPS"

Paul Rutherford

Sep 25, 2017
6 min

"LIFE'S A SERIES OF STEPS"

Back in 2007, my MP - then in Opposition - agreed to talk about working in the House of Commons. As we didn't have a budget, the aim was to create 'content' to promote our small, local business. It turned out to be a frank, open exchange about women in work, careers in politics, managing upwards and self-belief. Here's the interview that Theresa May signed-off for our publication nine years ago. I hope that as Prime Minister, she'd do the same today. Micro CV @ 2007 Educated

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SURRENDER COHERENCE

Jul 31, 2017
2 min

SURRENDER COHERENCE

Excerpt from 'All LinkedIn and Nowhere to Go', by Ann Friedman 'And in the frenetic world of just-in-time professional connectivity, LinkedIn’s vision of the listicled life is more and more the norm. Just take, for example, another recent influencer post by another social media guru, Dave Kerpen, who helms a network concern bearing the ominously bland name of Likeable Local: 'In reviewing his own tenure as a regular contributor to the LinkedIn news site, LinkedIn Today, Kerpe

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LEAPS OF FAITH

Paul Rutherford

Jul 3, 2017
3 min

LEAPS OF FAITH

There are no rules and no guarantees when trying something new. But we can learn from the successes of others - especially those outside our field. 1 Welcome unexpected proposals Aged 16, Julie Taymor went to Paris and joined the Jacques LeCoq mime and theatre school. At 18, she returned to the US to study anthropology, folklore and shamanism. Julie then won a Fellowship to study Bunraku theatre in Japan and shadow puppet forms in Indonesia. An unconventional caree

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BIAS ALERT! BIAS ALERT!

Paul Rutherford

Jan 9, 2017
7 min

BIAS ALERT! BIAS ALERT!

How a standard filler for a newpaper's lifestyle section became an exploration of biases, meaning, values. And how a blog post, like a poem,'is never finished, only abandoned.' The quotation in the headline caught my eye: "I didn't show enough vulnerability". Only after, did I notice the name George Osborne. I read the 10-minute edited transcript, ending with a great thought: "I wasn't showing enough vulnerability and acceptance that I was getting things wrong." We all think

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5-POINT PARKA

Paul Rutherford

Sep 19, 2016
3 min

5-POINT PARKA

The best job interviewers make a candidate think. The interviewee has to press pause on their pre-programmed “then I did; then I did; then I did…” and come into the present moment. In the comfort zone, we see personality. In times of stress, we see character. Throwing a candidate a little off-balance enables you to get beneath the surface and find a little more of what the person is really like. The 5-Point PARKA Here's a simple technique to do that. Of course, using i

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