Saturday, June 25, 2005
Always a way out
My friend Charlotte Gottschau has shared this item with her mailing list.
It shows that there is always an alternative to a job that makes you miserable.
Carne Ross, a 38-year old British 15-year career diplomat can no longer stomach the thought of bending the rules to ensure the economic interest of his country trumps human suffering. He quits the British Foreign Office and invents a new title, an Independant Diplomat - in a truly restorative transformative way: "putting right before might and morality before national interest." Two excerpts are directly below, and the Guardian article itself "Diplomat at Large" is below that. What guts Carne Ross has.
"A contradiction in terms, according to some of his Foreign Office friends, but not according to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, which last week chose Ross as one of its seven "visionaries for a just and peaceful world". For the next five years, the trust will pay him a stipend of almost £40,000 a year to attempt to prove his former colleagues wrong and turn his vision of what might be called committed diplomacy - putting right before might and morality before national interest - into reality.....
".....At the Foreign Office you are taught to think that trade and market share and security are the most important things, and that human suffering is not important if it's nothing to do with Britain. I disagree with that analysis. The best way to a safer and more peaceful world is through alleviating suffering. Simplicity is the only thing that works in a complex world."
Details of Independent Diplomat can be found at www.independentdiplomat.com
My friend Charlotte Gottschau has shared this item with her mailing list.
It shows that there is always an alternative to a job that makes you miserable.
Carne Ross, a 38-year old British 15-year career diplomat can no longer stomach the thought of bending the rules to ensure the economic interest of his country trumps human suffering. He quits the British Foreign Office and invents a new title, an Independant Diplomat - in a truly restorative transformative way: "putting right before might and morality before national interest." Two excerpts are directly below, and the Guardian article itself "Diplomat at Large" is below that. What guts Carne Ross has.
"A contradiction in terms, according to some of his Foreign Office friends, but not according to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, which last week chose Ross as one of its seven "visionaries for a just and peaceful world". For the next five years, the trust will pay him a stipend of almost £40,000 a year to attempt to prove his former colleagues wrong and turn his vision of what might be called committed diplomacy - putting right before might and morality before national interest - into reality.....
".....At the Foreign Office you are taught to think that trade and market share and security are the most important things, and that human suffering is not important if it's nothing to do with Britain. I disagree with that analysis. The best way to a safer and more peaceful world is through alleviating suffering. Simplicity is the only thing that works in a complex world."
Details of Independent Diplomat can be found at www.independentdiplomat.com
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Between work and life there's balance
... but do you have to sacrifice career goals to get it?
By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff | June 19, 2005
PHILADELPHIA -- There is one significant lesson Joe Oringel learned while a student at the Wharton School: leave the office by 6:30 p.m. to have supper at home with family... Oringel graduated two years ago from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which produced such hard-charging workaholics as Donald Trump and Warren Buffett. But for the last three years, the prestigious business school based in West Philadelphia has set up an innovative ''work-life integration" course to show students how to juggle work, family, and community -- without sacrificing career goals.
''The big idea is that most people think work and the rest of life is antagonistic of each other, and that you got to find balance," said Stewart Friedman, the management professor who teaches the popular elective course.
''What I am focusing on is helping people think about themselves as leaders at work, home, and community so that their goal is to improve performance and results in all the different parts of their lives by looking at the whole."
Read the whole article to learn more about the course and the rationale for it.
... but do you have to sacrifice career goals to get it?
By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff | June 19, 2005
PHILADELPHIA -- There is one significant lesson Joe Oringel learned while a student at the Wharton School: leave the office by 6:30 p.m. to have supper at home with family... Oringel graduated two years ago from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which produced such hard-charging workaholics as Donald Trump and Warren Buffett. But for the last three years, the prestigious business school based in West Philadelphia has set up an innovative ''work-life integration" course to show students how to juggle work, family, and community -- without sacrificing career goals.
''The big idea is that most people think work and the rest of life is antagonistic of each other, and that you got to find balance," said Stewart Friedman, the management professor who teaches the popular elective course.
''What I am focusing on is helping people think about themselves as leaders at work, home, and community so that their goal is to improve performance and results in all the different parts of their lives by looking at the whole."
Read the whole article to learn more about the course and the rationale for it.
