Just Joan

Archive for December, 2010

HR pros and recruiters repeat this message constantly:  Don’t post incriminating photos of yourself anywhere on the web.  Unless, of course, you want to be incriminated.  People giving career and job seeking advice also tell you to monitor your personal brand on the web.  That means keeping tabs on what you say, and what is said about you.  I heard this lesson repeated several times by the presenters at the recently held online conference The Career  Summit.

One of the tips made at The Career Summit is to use Google Alerts.  With Google Alerts, you can choose any topic or phrase and have “alerts” sent to you anytime that name or phrase appears in the computing cloud. Experts suggest using any name or company whose brand you want to monitor, starting with your own name.  I have my name searched once a day, and results are emailed to me.

It had been a while, though, since I did a Google image search on my name to see which pictures would be found by anyone searching my name. So, in a  fit of procrastination, I did one today.   Happily, the first page of search was my familiar head-over-my-right-shoulder avatar which appears on this blog and basically everywhere else on the web my name can be found.  Here are some of the other pictures that a “Joan Ginsberg”  Google image search yields:

A picture of me at United Meat & Deli. I think I know how this got on the Web - but it wasn't by my hand.

My friend Benjamin McCall. He posted a comment after mine on a blog. Google thinks he's me. It's a good thing he is so handsome!

The famous folk singer Joan Baez

Actress Christina Hendricks, who plays a character named Joan on the TV series Mad Men. I wish I looked like her.

Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Joan Ginsburg. I jokingly call her my Auntie Ruth.

How about you?  What kind of images does a search of your name yield?  Show me or tell me in the comments below before December 23rd, 2010 and I will enter your name in a drawing for a $25 Starbucks card.

I‘ve been thinking a lot lately about the conflict between the two different schools of thought regarding goals and the effort it takes to meet them.  One is represented by the inspirational saying “Shoot for the moon – you may land among the stars.”  Remember your mother saying “I don’t care if you succeed – only that you try your best”?  These statements represent the idea that it is the effort that matters, and that a strong effort  IS the success, or at least brings some kind of success. I’ll call it the “Mommy” school.

The second school of thought is the Yoda school, illustrated by his statement: “Do or do not. There is no try.”  Remember  Gene Kranz in the movie Apollo 13?  “Failure is not an option.”  Either the Apollo 13 astronauts returned safely or they didn’t.  Advocates believe that it is failure, and/or the fear of it, that will keep you from achieving success, and that only completeness represents achievement.

So which one of those ideas should prevail if I am examining my 2010 Put Up Or Shut Up  goals, originally posted on Victorio Milian’s Creative Chaos blog?  Here is what I Put Up a year or so ago:

I will step up my efforts with SHRM, local and national, to improve the HR community and help increase collaboration among members.

I will do something every day that helps me develop professionally – attend a webinar or conference, write a blog, read or write a white paper, etc.

I will become a more active networker – phone calls, Skype, etc. This is the hardest part of all for me because I am kind of shy!

Here is what I did with each:

1.  I volunteered for my local SHRM communications committee, and became a regular contributor to their newsletter. I also started encouraging members to become aware of HR bloggers and I continue to publish a feature called “5 to Follow” in our local newsletter, suggesting blogs.  I have regularly contributed to the group on LinkedIn.  My efforts to get the local more involved in Twitter, though, have completely failed. I have offered to run free classes for members, and have offered suggestions for the chapter to use and get involved in Twitter.  All of those efforts have been rebuffed outright. Nationally, I went to the SHRM Legislative/Legal update in Washington, DC and made some new connections, but haven’t done much else at the national level.

2.  Okay, I admit to not actually doing something every day.  BUT – on some days I do several things.  I clearly do far more, overall, than I did before I made the pledge.   I have done enough to earn about 80% of my SPHR recert requirements in just one year.  I repeat, though, I don’t do something every day.

3.  I have developed my network greatly, and my network is about 3  times larger than it was a year ago.  It certainly could be better, and it could be more diverse, and it could have more local people.  I am still finding it hard to connect with people locally, even though I have made some special local efforts.

Do  you now see my conflict? Did I fail, because there isn’t one item that couldn’t have been achieved more completely?  The Yoda school seems to say I failed.  The Mommy school, on the other hand, might argue  that I had sufficient success because I tried quite hard.  I may not have reached the moon, but I probably reached the stars.

I’m repeating these goals for 2011, so maybe that’s the answer; if I hadn’t failed, my goals would be entirely new.  What do you think, though?  Which school of thought is more relevant? Or reasonable? Or sensible?  Did I fail or succeed?  Have you been faced with the same choice?  Use the comments to tell me!