"Stay true." ~ Hua Hsu

Photo Credit: Kevin Jordan, Foothill Regional Park, Windsor, CA. Nov. 27, 2023

Greetings -  

I hope this edition finds you rested and well following the Thanksgiving holiday weekend! Whether you braved the TSA lines or hit the road, I hope you all had a safe, wonderful, gratitude-filled time with your family and friends.

In the Jordan family news department, my wife, Rosemary, and her team celebrated the successful opening of Enso Village in Healdsburg, CA (located in the heart of the Sonoma Valley wine country). The first residents moved in last week and we celebrated an outstanding, inaugural Thanksgiving meal with them and their families. For those not familiar with Enso Village, it can best be described as "a Zen-inspired Life Plan Community with a focus on mindful aging, the joys of nature, environmental stewardship, contemplative care and healthy life choices for adults 60+." The campus architecture is stunning and the facilities are beautiful and well appointed. 

While we were partaking in a week of "firsts" at Enso, our lovely daughter made her way to Portland, OR for a long weekend with dear family and friends. Though we missed her sparkling presence and joyful spirit, we checked in often. It was good to see and hear her having a fabulous time visiting her friends and some of our family! 

Central to this edition is the practice of gratitude and appreciation, as highlighted in the Spotlight Article section and woven into other sections. In addition, the themes of professional meaning, engagement with our work, and the ability to navigate generational divides are explored by a variety of authors. These can be viewed against the backdrop of two pieces that look at our (the United States's) current macro-economic state and societal transition into what Josh Bersin labels the "post-industrial" age (a fascinating, if not nerdy, exploration of where we as a society have come from and where we are, in his view, headed). Thoughtful perspectives and meaningful insights abound. 

As always, happy reading and listening! 

Be well, take good care of your families and community. 

-kj

PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)

Spotlight Article

As we move firmly into our first holiday season in our new(er) hometown, I have been reflecting on the wondrous journey that has led us here. It has been a year of significant (and mostly positive) changes and transitions. From the departure of our long-time home in lovely Alameda, to meeting an array of new and wonderful folks here in Healdsburg, to our beloved daughter successfully navigating a new school and a new state, to the opening of Enso Village, and so much more. The changes in our professional and personal lives have been as interesting as they are varied.  And there is much to be grateful for, even in these fraught and tenuous times.  

The holiday season and impending calendar year end offer important reminders re: the power of gratitude and generosity at work and at home (though this time of year should hold no monopoly on the thoughtful and creative expression of both). From a professional perspective, "celebrating your team members...can be a powerful, generous, and motivating gesture." This article, Our Favorite Management Tips About Showing Gratitude at Work, includes an array of pragmatic and thoughtful suggestions to praise and appreciate folks in ways that personalize their specific contributions and honor their efforts.

In the spirit of appreciation, I would like to thank each of you for your kindness, generosity of spirit and (for many on this list) your business. With gratitude, respect and deep admiration for you all, happy start to what I hope is a joyous season with family and friends.

Articles 

Harvard Business Review: 4 Fundamental Ways to Boost Employee Engagement. "Employees who feel a genuine sense of belonging at work are a powerful force. At a minimum, they’re less likely to quit, saving companies huge amounts of time and money in training and replacement costs. But their loyalty can also unleash massive gains in productivity and innovation, as they bring their best ideas and sustained effort to bear in supporting a company that they feel supports them."

Harvard Business Review: 4 Ways to Make Work More Meaningful. "Curiosity is not just a medium by which we achieve professional success, it’s also imperative to unlocking purpose and meaning at work. Curiosity about ourselves, our work, and our colleagues is the key to unlocking the significance behind our work. Adopting the mindset of curiosity with the intention of discovering purpose is made possible through four simple practices: crafting your work, making work a craft, connecting work to service, and investing in positive relationships. With these essentials in mind, we’re prompted to ask the right questions and come into each work day more intentionally, carefully, and mindfully."

The New York Times: Gen X Is in Charge. Don’t Make a Big Deal About It. "The original 'latchkey kids' are grown up, in the boss’s seat and ready to make the rules. If that’s OK?"

The Wall Street Journal: How to Handle Generational Differences at Work? One Family Offers a Blueprint. "Older and younger generations often view remote work, work-life balance and work ethic differently."

Josh Bersin: Welcome to the Post-Industrial Age. "This new age, coming in the era of AI, is one of continuous worker shortages, a scarcity of talent, and a highly flexible, hybrid, and gig-oriented workforce. People are hired based on skills, not just credentials; we engage and develop people as investments, not as expenses. And as AI becomes more prevalent, real workforce productivity (revenue per employee, GDP per economic worker), is going up, not down. So, our companies are becoming more lean, more performative, and more agile. Our research shows that most companies are not ready for this transition."

Vox: Wages are rising. Jobs are plentiful. Nobody’s happy. "It’s a good time to be a worker and a bad time to be a consumer — the problem is most people are both."

Books

Stay True by Hua Hsu. [Stay True is] "a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art." [KJ note: This thoughtful, heartfelt memoir is a tribute to the power (and nuance) of friendship, identity and memory. It is set (mostly) on the UC Berkeley campus in the late 1990s. For those familiar with Cal specifically and the East Bay more generally, references abound to cafes, restaurants, stores, etc. that, largely, are still there. Rosemary was in grad school at Cal during this period so these places hold a special memory for us.)

Three Hours In Paris by Cara Black. "Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris to assassinate the Führer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life—all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a set-up."

Blog Posts & Opinions

The New York Times: David Brooks: People Are More Generous Than You May Think. "...The point is, across a wide range of experiments, in widely diverse populations, one finding stands out: In practically no human society examined under controlled conditions have the majority of people consistently behaved selfishly.”

Seth's Blog: Generosity and gratitude. "Generosity and gratitude often go together. They light a path on the way to better."

Pocket: The Unexpected Pleasure of Being Mediocre. "Laura Lippman was raised to excel, which meant dropping sports in favor of schoolwork. Decades later she returned to the tennis court to conquer her fears once and for all."

Podcasts/TED Talks

On Being with Krista Tippett: Three Skills for Staying Calm, Sane, and Open in a Chaotic World (Krista interviewed by Dan Harris for Ten Percent Happier.) "[Krista] shares lessons learned from 20 years of interviews, including: how to live with open questions, counterprogramming against your negativity bias, and getting over the God question."

Joan Garry: Embracing Our Finite Time (with Oliver Burkeman). "This conversation is a call to rethink how we view and use our time, not to squeeze more out of it, but to make our work and lives more meaningful and impactful."

TED2023: An alternative to the "midlife crisis." "Midlife doesn't have to be a scary time, says entrepreneur Chip Conley. In this short yet profound talk, he takes inspiration from the natural world to reframe our 40s, 50s and 60s as a transitional stage that's full of grace and beauty — and urges us all to make aging aspirational."

Arts, Music, Culture, Fiction & Humor Corner

The Bitter Southerner: Obituary For a Quiet Life. "A man passes away without a word in the mountains of North Carolina, and his grandson sets out to write about the importance of a seemingly unimportant life."

Longreads: The Soundtrack of Our Lives: A Reading List on Pop Concerts. "It’s been a huge year for live music, so let’s take a tour."

The New Yorker: Beyond the Myth of Rural America. "Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts."

The New Yorker: False Star by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain. "...So this is a story about how I got my part of the money, how I spent it, and the people in my life at that time, such as Big Man, who raised me, and of course June, who I loved before any other, and who has been gone now longer than any of us had the chance to know her when she was alive."

The New Yorker: Thanksgiving Rider. "This document acknowledges that Lauren (“Talent”) has agreed to appear for a MAXIMUM of THREE (3) days and TWO (2) nights at the residence of her mother (“Venue”) during the Thanksgiving holiday, pursuant to the terms of this agreement."

Reflections

"Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever."

~ Charlotte Bronte

“The word tradition stems from the Latin word traditio, which translates to'delivery, surrender, a handing down, a giving up.'Maybe it’s time to realize that surrendering, or letting go, is very much a part of tradition.”

~ Lauren Krauze

“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”

~ Rosalynn Carter

"Prayer For My Daughter"
By David St. John

What prayer becomes me now
As these times darken daily
Until sons & daughters grow as
Fragile as the wind along these
Ever-altering surfaces of a world
Ripping apart—& whose
Fault really this sorrowing
Of fathers drawing only maps
Of their own fears as whole
Cities begin darkening in ash
Shadows as uncertain as Blake’s
Own wild consumptive city by
The Thames & as Vivienne
& I walked those mornings
By the Pacific along
The Venice boardwalk talking
Looking past the ocean beyond
Waves barely holding the horizon
& I knew I could never make clear
My thanks for how she’d stood
Her ground those times I dragged
My wreckage through the house
As she with forbearance & humor
Helped me take my time to find
Safe harbor she who’d lived
Those impossible years twelve
To seventeen in a town of
Old & new angels
Their drugs & nightmares—
The friend who’d slashed herself
& bled out or the boy who’d stepped
Onto his family’s fifth-story terrace
& a few steps beyond embracing
An ending of a life he felt already
Past repair & soon across her body
New tattoos like elegant illuminations
Of some Victorian screen unfolding
Inscriptions of inked cursive
Words like fire walking
Flaring as she began turning away
From old friends who’d
Defined the closing perimeter
Of a vortex she’d left refusing to
Acquiesce to a killing dark as she rose
Free & I think how
Young she is to know & how long
It took her father to choose light
Over dark & one night
Listening to her d.j. her radio show
At midnight I heard her play Leadbelly
Singing “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”
A song I’d once thought she’d known
Only from Nirvana & then a Hendrix
Twelve-string acoustic bootleg
Then Bessie Smith songs I had no idea
She knew & loved living up in Arcata
Between the redwoods & the sea
Where she’d grown singular & strong
In the solace of herself
While building her own Arcadia
As the prayer I might once have hoped
To send into the storm became
This belated song owing its life
To her grace & tolerance arising
Now as simply as then with music
Playing between the redwoods & the sea