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August 21, 2008
Raymond Pettit, '72
Learning From Winners: How the ARF Ogilvy Award Winners Use Market Research to Create Advertising Success, Taylor & Francis, 2007.
The book: The best companies use the creative application of research to produce big ideas with significant impact on the market and on the people, employees, partners, retailers and customers. Readers will learn how brand managers and their agencies use research to drive new brand insights, redefine problems or markets, support risk-taking ideas, and illuminate diverse audiences. This book will be an invaluable resource for business executives looking for market strategy, consumer psychologists, teachers, students, and practitioners looking for a trusted guide for study in advertising, marketing and promotion.
The author: Raymond Pettit is senior vice president of MarketShare Partners, based in Los Angeles, California. He also is an at-large member of the Alumni Leadership Council and continues to marry business and musical pursuits with his wife, Beth Hall, a professional trumpet player in the New York City metro area.
Posted by lingjiex at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)
Michael Dulworth, '83
The Connect Effect: Building Strong Personal, Professional, and Virtual Networks, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008.
The book: This book shows how to take a conscious, systematic approach to networking. After a short quiz to measure your "networking quotient," it identifies three distinct kinds of networks: personal, professional, and virtual. The book examines their specific characteristics and offers strategies, tools and resources for building up and making the best use of each one. Stories from the author’s 20 years of experience running networks as well as interviews with executives, researchers and thought leaders, provide insights and advice about how networks function in the real world.
The author: Before acquiring Executive Networks, Mike Dulworth was vice president of learning services at The Concours Group. Before that, he was a founder and CEO of Learning Technologies Group, Inc. He is the author, co-author or a contributor to seven books and lives in San Francisco, California, with his wife, Teresa Goodwin, and son, Theo.
Web site: www.theconnecteffect.com/
Posted by lingjiex at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)
Miriam (Hammerman) Goodman, '64
Reinventing Retirement: 389 Bright Ideas about Family, Friends, Health, What to Do and Where to Live, Chronicle Books, 2008.
With 76 million baby boomers on the cusp of retirement, it's time to look beyond finances and examine how ending traditional, full-time work affects every aspect of life. Miriam Goodman interviewed hundreds of retirees, who weigh in on the subjects of home, marriage, family, friends, hobbies, health and even going back to part- or full-time work. Their insights will help readers create their personalized strategy for an active and fulfilling retirement. Goodman is a public relations consultant, journalist, radio producer and Emmy-nominated television producer. She has interviewed more than 1,000 people, from celebrities to diplomats, during her career. She has served on boards of nonprofit organizations in the fields of women’s rights, children’s rights and politics and is known in the San Francisco area for her work in social action causes.
AAUM: Why "reinvent" retirement?
Goodman: We need to reinvent retirement because boomers say they don't want to have the same kind of retirement their parents and grandparents had. Too often in the past, retirement was followed by deterioration—physically and mentally—and boomers are more experienced, educated, healthier, wealthier and, we think, wiser than the previous generations. We reinvented so much along the way, when or whether to have kids, how often we change jobs and spouses, how to question authority—these are all reinventions of boomers. Also, retirees who are 65 today have a good chance of living 30 more years, and we want them to be exciting years, not ones filled with dread.
What are the keys to a successful retirement?
Most of all, one should be free to follow his passion, whether it is music, golf or gardening. You must find something that is meaningful for you. Next, if you are fortunate enough to have a partner, you must both communicate your feelings about your retirement years and not make assumptions about what the other person wants to do. We also must recognize what we took from our work—structure, purpose and a community—and find ways to replicate these things in our post-work lives. So finding a purpose, establishing some kind of structure and participating in your community are other keys to a "successful" retirement.
What’s your best advice to someone preparing for retirement?
We need a plan. It is not good enough to say, "Oh, when I stop working I will find plenty to do." It doesn't work that way. You should have outside interests all through life, whether it is gardening or photography or singing, and then use your retirement to pursue the things you really love. Also, talk to your children about your plans. They may assume you want to be full-time babysitters and then will be disappointed when you take off on a long trip. Communication is key.
What were some of the common problems or challenges you heard about retirement when you wrote your book?
There is a great deal of anxiety involved with retirement. Some women say, "My husband is not allowed to retire." Wives don't want their husbands invading their "space" 24 hours a day, and too many men have no plans and just assume their wives will give up their lives and careers just because he is now home. Another problem is that many people think they must move to a new location without considering the advantages of where they are now. Perhaps the home is already paid for, they know how to get around on public transportation, they like their neighbors and neighborhood. Or they move to be near grandchildren only to discover that the kids are so busy with school and other activities that there is often little time for them to be with grandparents. The biggest challenge is to be true to yourself, understand your own limits and interests, and follow those.
There’s more to retirement than financial planning. What are some of the issues that retirees will have to deal with that they might not anticipate?
Looking for another job, dealing with the loss of self-image that was connected to their work, deciding how they are going to relate to their families. People tell pollsters they want to "give back," but they don't really investigate the volunteer activities and end up in a place where they are unhappy or not needed. People need to "play" again—at sports, at other recreation—and not feel guilty about it.
Were there any interesting stories about retirement that you heard when writing your book—an unusual path someone is traveling during retirement?
I talked to a retired attorney who moved his retirement up to 62 when he realized that most of the people in his mother’s retirement home were women and he wanted to have time to do things before it was too late. He and his wife began studying Italian for a few years and then they moved to Italy for a year. They would have stayed longer had the economy not interfered, but they came back and live full-time in their "vacation" house in the mountains where they have become involved in local politics and where he works on his collection of old cars. They travel every year to some place new. I have to say that women do much better in retirement than men do, perhaps because they have always been multitaskers while many men were involved in only their careers.
Posted by lingjiex at 06:08 PM | Comments (0)