Resolution Achieved

I broke 3:20 in the 1000 m on the treadmill today. I knew it was going to be close when I was about 250 m or so from the finish. I dug deep to get just a little bit close to The Edge and came in two blinks under my target time.

I proceeded to go home from the gym (after doing some lifting after my rowing machine session) so I could change prior to heading up to Ashland to register for a 10K. I ran a 5K last week with no real issues. I've never run 6.2 miles. I'm just hoping to break an hour.

Taking off the Blinders

Now I've done it. I responded to a call for resumes that was posted by one of my contacts on LinkedIn. It was an easy way to take action on my employment situation dissatisfaction. I emailed the recruiter my resume on Tuesday night. I got a call from their office on Wednesday afternoon. My dissatisfaction, and the reasons why I'm unhappy, became starker the longer I spent on the phone. This is not just a rut or being bored with my current assignment. I'm getting very close to an existential career crisis. I'm not working on important projects (at least not as I define important), and my long term career options are extremely limited. There are very few opportunities for me to push my abilities and achieve important results.

Based on a phone interview I had with a hiring manager this afternoon, this new position has the potential to remedy many of my existential issues. I only have a vague idea of what the job would actually require of me on a daily basis, but I'm intrigued enough by the possibilities that I am going to keep pursuing it. The general theme of the hiring group would allow me to pursue an aspect of the pharma industry that I've considered as a focus for my career as I shift away from the lab. This, coupled with the potential that I could be part of a problem-solving manufacturing special forces type of group, could make passing on this position a painful process.

Why would I pass if the job could be so great? Accepting the position would require a big move to a place that does not meet certain criteria established by the wife.  Besides, just thinking about what a big move would entail has already been giving me stress. I know that there is a move somewhere in my future. THis might not be the ideal time logistically, but would it be better to sit around and wait for circumstances to force me into taking any job that I can find? I sense that I will need to grapple with these issues soon enough...

The Edge

Vincent goes to The Edge when he doesn't save anything for the swim back.

Successful SEAL candidates live on The Edge for an entire week.

I have never been to The Edge. I have never gone to where I thought I could go no further and kept going anyway. I've been trying to push myself that little bit further during my workouts recently. I keep thinking about a quote from the Russian wrestler Rulon Gardner held off to win the gold in the Sydney Olympics. Karelin said “I train every day in my life as they never trained a day in theirs,” Karelin went to The Edge every time he worked out. Those visits made him nearly impossible to defeat.

The Edge is pain and suffering, doubt and fear, misery and isolation. The Edge is looming out there waiting for me. Do I have the mettle to go there?

10,000 hours...again

The 10,000 hours required to reach expertise has popped up on my radar again. I agree with Vox Day that Gladwell's books leave something to be desired (I found The Tipping Point full of promise but totally empty on fulfillment), but he's wrong about the 10,000 hours to becoming an expert. It's not Gladwell's idea. He just wrote about it. This guy Dan, has done his research on Ericsson and his research on achieving elite performance. He has a coach, that's key to achieving expertise, at least in the papers that I've read, and he's engaging in deliberate practice rather than simply hitting balls at a driving range for hours on end. I would not be the least bit surprised if he's a pro at the end of his experiment.

Looking back at my own experience, I can see the impact of expert guidance and deliberate practice. I try to apply those principles in my life and my career. I wish Dan the best of luck. I've added his blog to my Google Reader account so I can keep tabs on his progress. Good luck, Dan.

Progress

I have embraced the power of incremental progress. It could be the seconds I keep knocking off of my 5000 meter time on the rower, or the recognition that skills are acquired by consistent application of existing skills to challenging problems, but something has shifted my perspective on meaningful progress in the last couple of months. I have always assumed that if I wasn't feeling so great in the gym one day, I could just take it easy that day and come back stronger next time. Now I feel the need to take advantage of every second that I have in the gym. I need to get better, no matter how crappy I may feel. I only have so many workouts available for a given year. Wasting one workout is a lost opportunity to get better.

My resolutions are statements of where I want to get better this year. I'm getting closer to my goal time in the 1000 meters. I missed it by two seconds a couple of weeks ago. It was frustrating to be so close, but it was a victory to be so close too. I'm closer to that goal than I was at the beginning of the year. I need to keep working to reach that target. I can do 12 pull ups in one set. I'm still a good ways from my goal of 20, but I'm making nice progress. I struggled to do 5 pull ups in a set at the beginning of the year. I'm on track to reach my goal. I keep pulling as many as I can each time I go to the gym. Every rep gets me that much closer to my goal. More muscle helps me look better naked. I just need to get my diet under control so I actually lose some fat...

I keep reading. Given my progress so far this year, I've been reading Anna Karenina. I usually avoid the long novels on my shelves because they take so long to read. That's why I usually save my Dickens read until later in the year. I still haven't bought a book. I know the temptation will start getting stronger as the year progresses. I can do it...

A Spoonful of Sugar

There is a guy in another analytical group who offers a preview of what I may become. I've never worked with him, but people hold him in pretty high regard. He's come to my presentations and asked challenging questions. He's technically savvy, but he also complains to no end about the culture of our building and decisions made by our senior managers. When I hear him go off on his rants, I want to ask him why he stays. If it's so horrible, why not find a different job?

I don't know why he sticks around, but I'm afraid that I could be in the same situation myself in a decade or so. For all my criticism of the division's strategy, I'm not doing anything to find employment with a different company. A part of me is starting to accept that I could be with PCH for a long time. Making the decision to stick with the company comes with accepting the crappy culture and the questionable strategy. It also means working on projects that are not innovative and cutting-edge. They're about getting products to the market for the simple objective of having a presence in the market place. Regardless of what I write here or say to my friends, if I stick with the company, I've implicitly accepted that those activities are valuable.

But then I work on a little problem that crops up on a project and get a little bit of success on finding an answer. I can be in the pit of despair hearing about the importance of some retread project only to be lifted to near ecstasy when a little blip appears on the baseline of a chromatogram. I experienced this Janus of emotions on Tuesday. I was trying to figure out the best way to find a new job after leaving a group meeting, only to be ready to float home when an experiment offered hope that I may be closer to answering a vexing question about the project that has been at the center of my work world for most of this year.

For all the crap I have to deal with, I do get to pursue my crazy notions without too much interference. This is a powerful incentive to stick around. While it would be nice if these problems were on products that might offer something new, the thrill I get from solving the problem is independent of its social significance. These experiments make my job bearable. Take them away, and I would be miserable. I keep hoping that I can have a role in shifting the culture to something a little more focused on solving problems. That hope is slowly fading, but until it's totally gone, I expect that I will keep finding reasons to convince myself to stay at PCH.

Perhaps that expectation is the best reason to start looking for something else right away...

Hidden Secrets

Marcie Schorr-Hirsh missed an opportunity to say something interesting and meaningful in her post about the secret element that propels successful people to higher levels of achievement then comparable professionals who began their careers with similar tools (as based on education, training, and the like). She attributes different levels of success to some pap about differences in levels of adult development. That may be the case, but I see something else in the limited data discussed discussed in the post. Could it be that successful people simply look at things differently than their peers? While their colleagues are busy sitting at their desk for the appointed hours dutifully performing those tasks assigned to them by their boss, these soon to be successful people are working on projects that will actually impact the performance of the company. They are demonstrating their value while everybody else simply demonstrate useful utility.

It's easy to strive for perfection. Interesting work is a far more nebulous, and thereby more challenging, target. Interesting is deviating from the established routine and looking at a problem from a new perspective. Interesting is suggesting a new way to handle situations that have been handled the same way for a decade simply because that's the way that it's always been done. Interesting is doing work that you love simply for the love of the work, risks and rewards be damned! Perfection is a comfortable and familiar place. Interesting is a little strange and unsettling. Perfection is an important commodity with plenty of value. Interesting creates unexpected value with the potential to change an industry.

Interesting would be very difficult to coach, but perfection is very amenable to routines and strategies that a good career coach can use to squeeze a little more success from an executive or two. Maybe that's why Ms. Schorr-Hirsh passed on the opportunity to say something interesting about successful people.

Realness

Realness is an innovation behavior that's being promoted in my office/lab at the moment. It's about making an idea concrete and tangible rather than relegating it a few bullets points in a slide deck. The point is to get something in people's hands. Creativity blossoms when you're holding a prototype. A talking point just puts people to sleep. A thing inspires action. Here's my effort to shake up my career.

Dr. Guy who may be a contact to a position with an interesting start-up company,

Before participating in the career panel a couple of weeks ago, I thought about whether I wanted to tell the students what they expected to hear about the pharma industry or whether I should say what I really feel about working for a massive drug company. I think my comments made it clear which approach I selected. I told the students what I really feel about the future of my employer and the industry as a whole. There will always be a pharmaceutical industry, but fresh ideas are desperately needed to ignite a new wave of innovative products that effectively cure disease.

The frustration that I expressed in the career panel is in large part a function of my recent efforts to launch a product that is already being sold by a different company. I've been working with the contract manufacturer to get analytical methods in place, and I have also been involved in discussions to address degradation issues with one of the products. These efforts have consumed my days for the better part of this year. We have had some success in progressing the project against considerable challenges, but this success feels hollow. Rather than working on developing an innovative product that would offer consumers another choice, we are using considerable resources to duplicate another company's product. The business side of the division may be able to justify this use of our resources, but I am having a hard time reconciling this allocation of my energy with my desire to work on complex problems in the development of innovative products.


I turned down a position at a small discovery company in Charlottesville a couple of years ago. This company offered a rich array of technical challenges, but with only 8 people, there were no opportunities to develop as a leader. Two years removed from that decision, I am glad that I decided to stay with Pfizer. I have become a better leader. I have no doubt that I could pursue a management position with PCH, but I am not passionate about our products or the leadership's vision for the future of the division. The time is right for me to leave the security of a behemoth like Pfizer and apply my skills and experience to the development of truly revolutionary products with a company like that one we talked about at the career panel.

I would greatly appreciate anything you could do to introduce me to your contacts at...

Talking to Myself

I've been writing down my thoughts in one form or another since high school. Unburdening myself of some cognitive surplus helps me think a little more clearly, and I've found that writing about something usually leads to fresh insights. My realization that I'm unhappy working on a me-too project is one instance where my writing about an issue led to a new perspective on an important issue (important to me at least). I usually don't fully understand the results of experiments that I've run in the lab until I've tried to write a paper or prepare a presentation. The internal dialogue required to make my interpretation of a data set clear to somebody else almost always makes that argument significantly better. Talking to somebody else about a research problem typically has a similar result. 


I've been reading a book, Conversational Realities, that explores this notion of how language influences thought. There is a passage that describes what I've experienced in trying to understand a new concept, "People's attempt to realize their thoughts - to formulate their thoughts to themselves in ways which make those thoughts socially usable, so to speak - must be negotiated in an inner back-and-forth process, in which they must attempt to understand and challenge their own proposed formulations as the others around them might." (Shotter 44) Thoughts "only become organized, in a moment-by-moment, back-and-forth, formative or developmental process at the boundaries of our being, involving similar 'linguistically mediated ethical negotiations' as those we conduct in our everyday dialogues with others." (Shotter 46)


This internal dialogue is a skill. My enrollment in the Marist online MBA program has given me a handy reference to compare my ability to learn new material now as compared to my study skills as an undergrad 15 or so years ago. School seems much easier now. Grad school seemed easier, but those classes were all in a subject that I have been dealing with for my entire career. I've never taken a business class, but I've been able to learn the material enough to do well in the classes without too much effort. My practice with this internal dialogue, posing questions to myself to gauge my understanding of a topic, has been a key tool in learning new material.