Table of contents

1. Change vs. Transformation
2. Best of the Blog
3. Books: Nextville. For the Relocating Kind

Some years ago at a Green conference in New York City, I sat next to an attractive, well-dressed woman, and while waiting for the session to begin, we chatted about our work. Call it networking or whatever you like, that's what we Americans do: ask people what they do and talk about our work. As it turned out, our work was quite similar. Her focus was change; mine, reinvention in later life. We also both loved our work, and felt we were improving lives.

When the session was over, we swapped cards and I've hung on to hers, not because I needed her services, but because of what a great reminder it was. The card said: Everything Changes! She was someone who helped organizations and individuals embrace change as a fact of life and turn it to their benefit. Apparently, she was doing quite well which is an indication of how badly we need to make peace with change. It is fear -- often unfounded -- that keeps companies from failing to innovate until forced to. Think about the millions of dollars the auto industry spends to lobby against better gas mileage instead of pouring that money into -- I don't know -- an electric car, perhaps? Fear of the unknown keeps many of us stuck in work that doesn't align with our values or locked into paper pushing and seeking our joy elsewhere. Peter Drucker called this retirement on the job.

I was reminded of the encounter with the change advocate this morning when I opened my email and a colleague had forwarded a request from Charles Duhigg of the New York Times who is doing a story on "transformative life changes -- both personal and professional." I'm going to include some quote from his letter here because I know there are many of you reading this who might qualify as candidates for interview. But before I go there, indulge me in a short riff on the difference between Change and Transformation because I know I confuse them and the dictionary isn't that helpful. Change can lead to transformation, but tends to be incremental and more easily accepted. Transformation is the whole enchilada, a complete makeover often following and/or as the result of a life-altering event.

Mr. Duhigg needs to hear from people:

• who have deeply transformed their lives--either personally and/or professionally
• who dramatically transformed their careers, or who found professional or personal success after struggling for years
• who have transformed their lifestyles, or health or fitness or habits, in ways both large and small that had profound implications in their daily lives and routines.

Good News Hunger

How often does a good news rise to the top of the list? Well, today it did in New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof’s wonderful piece on Beatrice Biira, for whom the gift of a goat through Heifer International was the transforming event of her life. The fact that the column was #1 on the most emailed list was an indication of how much we hunger for good news in a time when it is in short supply. This is not only that rare occurrence, but a reminder of how relatively easy it is to make a huge difference in the life of someone who is heading into the oblivion of “one more illiterate African woman, another of the continent’s squandered human resources.”

Much Ado About Retirement Savings

As if economic news wasn’t depressing enough, this week Hewitt Associates, “a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company,” got some press with a report that is sure to fuel money worries in all but the most financially secure Boomers-and-beyond. Quote: When factoring in inflation and increases in medical costs, Hewitt predicts that employees will need to replace, on average, 126 percent of their final pay at retirement—significantly more than the traditional targets of 70 to 90 percent pay replacement. Yikes!

But all is not lost, the report goes on to say. Small changes ...

Being Downsized

Last week, a young friend got the ax. She was one of 8,000 people downsized by a large investment bank with reported losses of $10 billion in the first quarter. If that figure boggles the mind, it’s only because few of us can conceive of it in any real terms. How many tall skinny lattes would $10B buy? How much human misery does downsizing cause? It didn’t matter that she had been at this firm for 10 years and had been assured when the last round of layoffs occurred that she ‘had nothing to worry about.’ She is single and turns 40 next March, so time is certainly on her side. Also, she has credentials in another , completely different field that could soften the loss of income. But that will take time to develop, just as it will take time to recover from the blow.

At first, she was more upset about the way it happened ...