Tag: foreign service

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Leverage

Many BNCs were created around Latin America during the years around World War II.  They were supposed to foster understand and create connections among Americans and the people of Brazil and not incidentally counter Nazi propaganda, which was virulent and effective in the region.

BNCs have gone in and out of style with the U.S. government.  At times we have given them significant support; other times we benignly neglected them.  Even during the time of relative official neglect, however, we always kept the ties intact because most American FSOs (USIA and State) – working in the countries – like BNCs.   They are easy to like.  They are locally managed and usually self-sufficient.  Their boards of directors often include important local people, the kinds of people we want to get to know and they provide a continuity that us diplomats, who come and go like migratory birds, really cannot.  We always have friends at BNCs and this is important in hard times and good ones too. 

Most of the money needed to support BNCs comes from English teaching and English has become a big business in recent years. This is both a threat and an opportunity for BNCs.  The BNCs now must compete with for-profit organizations that are often well-financed and springing up like mushrooms after a soaking rain. I have no problem whatsoever with profit-making enterprises, but as an American I prefer that English be taught in the context of our culture and values. And the BNCs provide much more than nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.  Besides providing scholarships for language study, BNCs sponsor cultural events, hold lectures and help us with our exchange and educational programs. To the extent that we really reach youthful audiences in depth, the BNCs are a big part of the equation.

Last time I was in Brazil, I made it my business to visit the BNCs in my region (Rio Grande do Sul & Santa Catarina) on a regular basis. At that time, there were BNCs in Porto Alegre, Florianopolis and Joinville. I understand that the ones in Porto Alegre and Joinville are still prospering. Washington was in one of its less supportive phases back then,  but I could still contribute books, programs and time. Attention by American diplomats was and is still important to BNCs. It adds to their cachet. 

Today BNCs are back in style in official Washington because of their proven abilities to reach young audience and because of their expertise in English teaching. The English teaching is especially important in Brazil at this moment. The Brazilians themselves recognize the need. Their economy has gone global, but they do not have enough people with English skills needed to participate effectively. English is the world language of business, science and even tourism. With the flood of visitors expected for the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in Rio two years later, the Brazilians know that they need to start now to meet the demand for English.

We are in the enviable position of having what people want and wanting to give it to them.

There are around 40 BNCs in Brazil today. I say “around” because it depends on how you count. Some BNCs have a for-profit affiliation that some of the BNC purists think is not good. My opinion is that we should judge them by what they do.  If the organization does all the things that BNCs should do, i.e. it provides scholarships, holds seminars & exhibits, cooperates with outreach and integrates energetically into its local community, I think that it looks and acts like a BNC and we can call it one if that is what it wants to be called.  I think we should be as inclusive as possible. BNCs are a great legacy left to us by good and farsighted people – Brazilians and Americans – going back to the 1930s.  We can benefit from their years of work and we have a duty to steward it for the next generations.  I look forward to visiting our BNCs and hope to get to all of them over the next three years.  I am glad that they are back in style. 

Let me tell you a little about our BNC here in Brasilia. It is called the Casa Thomas Jefferson. I remember it from the 1980s, when it was run by my friend and USIS colleagues Maureen Taylor. Back in those days, an American FSO directed the CTJ. In fact, we still sent directors until 1997, a time of budget cuts and a general downplaying of the need for public diplomacy. But our departure did not spell the end of the CTJ. On the contrary, it has grown and prospered beyond the dreams of the earlier generation. 

The Casa Thomas Jefferson today is run by Brazilians with a local board made up of mostly Brazilians and some expat Americans.  It is completely self-supporting and has grown to include six significant campuses around Brasilia (look at the pictures I have included to see what I mean) and eight min—operations embedded in local schools.   

CTJ affiliates teach around 15,000 students each year.  Some start as young as four years old. I have included a photo of the little kid classroom. They are on break now, so the teacher is preparing materials for them. But the biggest groups of students are middle school of high school age, although a significant number of college students are still involved and there are some adults. 

Brazilian government entities contract with CTJ for English teaching and cultural training for their officials who are going overseas or who will have to work with English in their jobs here. CTJ recently trained Brazilian air traffic controllers, who need to use English in their daily work, and also engineers from EMBRAPA (the Brazilian agricultural research agency) who have to travel and interact with scientists worldwide. 

We still work closely with CTJ, providing mostly moral but also some material support. Our Information Resource Center (FKA library) is collocated with the Lago Sul branch of the CTJ, as is the Fulbright office. We are probably most useful to them when we provide connections and training opportunities for their staff and management.   CTJ wants to keep in the forefront of developments and we, with our worldwide reach (State is a unique organization in that respect) help with that.  We also have stationed in Brazil officers devoted specifically to education, English teaching and information resource management, who provide extremely valuable support.  So I think we do our part. 

As I have been writing, we during the last week we have been cooperating with CTJ on our English immersion program (see earlier posts). This has been a wonderful thing. CTJ will hold its own EducationUSA fair later in August. We can cooperate again in something that we all benefit from doing and benefits Brazilian young people. 

All things considered, it is a pretty sweet deal for everybody involved. I like an agricultural metaphor. It is like an orchard. We are harvesting the fruit of trees planted and nurtured by those who went before us. Our job is to keep it growing, all the while enjoying the fruit. 

Public diplomacy is hard to measure. If I tally up all the people who have gone through BNC programs all over Brazil this year alone, I am sure we have reached thousands. Over the years, we are in the millions. But Brazil is a country of 190 million. How can we hope to have an impact? Might it not be better to “reach” millions through things traditional or social media?

First I have to respond that doing one thing does not preclude others. Our BNC efforts include face-to-face meetings, which are labor intensive, but they also have enormous social media and traditional media components. You saw the full-page newspaper report on our English immersion, for example. We also got a good piece of time on the evening television news. There is a definitive synergy. But let me put that aside for now. 

The BNC experience is deep, intensive and rich in favorable outcomes. Many of the people who use the BNCs develop lasting connections with American. Some of the students at CTJ, for example, are second or third generation, as former student parents sent their kids. Significant numbers want to study in the U.S. or work at U.S. firms. They are strongly committed and this has an effect through social networks, electronic and otherwise.  Recent studies have shown that people get many of their attitudes through social interactions several steps removed from themselves. The attitudes of friends of friends of friends can affect your attitudes and even physical characteristics such as body fat. Academics have studies this for a long time and we know it is true, although those who tell you that they really understand the transition mechanism are lying to you. I believe that getting 100,000 people really interested and talking to others is better than “reaching” millions in a shallow and short term transaction. I cannot prove that to you, but I think even a casual perusal of the history of ideas shows that it happens. 

The BNC is a high leverage activity.  I can devote relatively small amounts of time and money and DEEPLY reach lots of people, who will in turn reach many more. Take the example of our recent intensive English group.  Around 1600 students applied from public schools around Brazil. These are ordinary Brazilian kids, w/o much contact with America. They are doing an extraordinary thing just by applying. Around 100 were chosen. They are already a special group chosen from a special group and the experience improved their skills making them even more special. Now consider when they go home to places that are hard to find on the map. People will ask them about their experience. They will be the source of opinion. Who knows how many they will reach personally and how long they will continue to do it, but it will be a big number. And their experiences will pass through friend to friend for a long time.

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Brazilian Kids Getting to Know Brasilia

Our English immersion students got their tour of Brasilia.  Fewer than half of them had visited their nation’s capital before, so we had an opportunity to introduce young Brazilians to Brasilia, which was fun.  The weather, as usual, was brilliant as you can see from the photos.

The central government area, the “Plano Piloto” has remained much as it was designed.  It is supposed to be modern with clean lines.  Because the high plains (planalto) were flat and empty, this place provided a blank slate for the architects and planners.  You can see the model in the picture above.

Building a new capital in the interior of the country was a dream of Brazilian leaders for centuries. They understood that moving the capital would draw development into the country.  They identified places, like Brasilia, with near perfect climates, but they were just too far away from existing infrastructure.  Beyond that, many officials and politicians were unenthusiastic about leaving their pleasant coastal cities and there was significant bureaucratic foot dragging.

President Juscelino Kubitschek decided to just do it – finally.  You can see the man at his memorial above.  He was the son of Czech immigrants and he always reminds me of Victor Laszlo. Building Brasilia was a truly audacious move. Juscelino or JK* pushed it through by force of will.  He was criticized because of the expense and the inefficiency related to the urgency of the endeavor.  There were no good roads to Brasilia and no infrastructure to build a city. They had to bring in everything: materials, workers, even water. They had to make a lake.  Bulky and heavy materials, such as concrete, were sometimes flow in by airplane at great expense.  JK understood that if it were not done fast and the construction pushed beyond the point of no return, it would never be done at all, so he accepted the cost and absorbed the criticism (Critics called him Pharaoh Juscelino).

President Eisenhower made an official visit to the city in 1960 and he and JK inaugurated the city, showing American support for the project.   Eisenhower’s visit was a high point of U.S.-Brazil relations. Read a contemporary account of the event and the building of Brasilia here & the joint statement by Eisenhower and Kubitschek from Brasilia here.

It has now been more than fifty years since this spot of the high plains was turned into a city and we can see that it was an idea that worked.  Much of Brazil’s growth in recent years has been in the central region.  Having the capital in Brasilia helped pull interest, people, resources and development into the region, just as JK thought it would.  JK’s slogan was “fifty years of development in five years.”  It didn’t work out like that. But in the fifty plus years since his time, the region has achieved his dream.  I think he would be content.

The picture above shows a couple of the English immersion kids becoming part of the celebration of Brasilia long before they were born, standing in front of a picture of a crowd of the time.  You can read more about this here and here. 

Let me just add a few more pictures.  Brasilia was very beautiful. Below is a bust of Tiradentes, a national hero who fought and died for Brazilian independence.

Both pictures below are of the National Assembly. In behind you can see the building that house the various ministries. 

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The Kids are All Right

Twenty-five English language students from Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Tocantins, and the Federal District came to Brasilia for a week of full time English immersion sponsored by the Casa Thomas Jefferson and the American Embassy in Brazil.  Their kick-off event was an American style picnic at the home of the U.S. Marines.  Here they ate typical American foods, like hamburgers and hot dogs, played basketball and volleyball, participated in contests such as sack races and generally got to know each other.Ambassador Thomas Shannon opened the program along with long-time Case Thomas Jefferson Director Anna Maria Assumpçaõ.

The American Embassy in Brazil has sponsored immersion courses like this since 2006 and hundreds of young Brazilians have enjoyed the benefits.  This year five binational centers will participate, drawing participants from all the regions in Brazil.  Besides the Casa Thomas Jefferson, ICBEU in Londrina, ALUMNI in Saõ Paulo, CCBEU in Belém and ABA in Recife will participate. The immersion programs are part of the now ten-year old youth Ambassadors program, which brings young Brazilians to the United States.  On previous visits, they have toured the U.S. and met many Americans including First-Lady Michelle Obama.   This year, for the first time, American students will come to Brazil on return visits.

In the pictures you can see the types of activities this year’s students experienced in Brasilia. We cannot take pictures of the learning taking place, the understanding being shared or the friends being made, but we are sure that these will be the best parts of the program.

The event was covered by a reporter from the Correio Braziliense and the local TV Globo affiliate.

The English immersion and the youth ambassadors programs are very competitive and require a high level of English-language ability going in.  But they are all kids from Brazilian public schools and most are from interior small cities.  It make you optimistic about the future to meet and talk to kids like this. 

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A 4th with a Bang in Brasilia

We hold the July 4th Celebration on various days because the Ambassador and others must attend various celebrations around the country.   We held ours in Brasilia yesterday.  I had nothing to do with the planning or implementation, so I think that I can say with some credibly that the planning and implementation were superb.

My future colleagues also prepared a poster exhibit showing photos from all the visits by American presidents to Brazil.  Almost all the presidents of the twentieth century visited Brazil.  The first was Theodore Roosevelt.  He was no longer president at the time.  He visited the Amazon rainforest (then called jungles) along with the Brazilian explorer and anthropologist Cândido Rondon, for whom the Brazilian state of Rondônia is named.  Together the explored the “River of Doubt” now named the Rio Roosevelt, so both men contributed their names to the wild land. I didn’t know many people at the party. Next year I will. The most interesting discussion I had was with an old guy who had been an engineer in the construction of Brasilia, more than fifty years ago. It was really barren then and the big lake was just a marshy river.  The old guy told me about the time when Eisenhower came to help inaugurate the new city and the U.S. Embassy here.  That was also recorded on our poster show, but it was interesting to get the story from someone who could speak of it from living memory.

We had all sorts of interesting food, including little hamburgers, about the size of a silver dollar, and fries and little pepperoni pizzas. I stayed away from the booze (we are working at these things) and drank a lot of Guarana. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a sweet drink available mostly in Brazil. It is a precursor to some of the energy drinks. It is supposed to give you more vigor and I suppose it does, but no more than a Coca-Cola or a cup of coffee. It tastes good and kind of looks like beer in the twilight.   

We had two bands playing. The first was a kind of rock band. The lead singer seemed to think he should channel  Jethro Tull except with a harmonica; it was interesting, but not really my sort of music. We also had the Brazilian Marine Band. They played patriotic music, including the American & Brazilian national anthems as well as a lot of Sousa music. I liked this much better.

The Ambassador gave a good speech in Portuguese and English followed by recorded remarks by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.  After that came the fireworks, while the Marine Band played the “Stars and Stripes Forever,”  “The Thunderer” & “Semper Fideles”.

You can see the various pictures.  They are very high resolution, since I didn’t shrink them because of the darker exposures.  Click on them to look at the whole picture at a bigger size. I think they are very good and all taken with my little camera. Ain’t technology wonderful?

It was a great celebration. I am looking forward to the weekend when I can explore Brasilia a little more. Unfortunately, I have to wait for the technician to come and install my cable and Internet. I have a “window”  of 12pm – 6pm on Saturday. It is a bit of a problem, but I will be really happy to have internet access at home.

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Lost Like Tears in the Rain

Foreign Service Officers get to experience more transitions than most people.  We go to different countries, do different things, speak different languages and in some ways even have different personas.  It is no surprise that some people refer to them as “incarnations.”  Each transformation seems more comprehensive or more important than the others, but from the longer perspective they don’t seem as discontinuous.  

I am in the cleaning up and throwing away stage of this transition. It is a slow process because many things cause pause and stimulate introspection. Today I dug out a bunch of green pocket-notebooks, where I had taken notes and recorded impressions from my first weeks in Iraq until now. What should I do with them? Do I throw them out or save them? I have too much stuff, have written too many words.  I feel the compulsion to write “history” but even I am unlikely ever to read it with any meaning.

The ephemeral nature of life is weighing on me just now. My history and observations are ephemeral.  My blogging gives me the illusion of eminence. I read that there are more blogs than there are people in the earth.  Most are not active, but that gives an idea of the scope.  One more disappears like tears in the rain.  So why write? Because this is one of the things I do. 

This is not a useless “because it is there” rationalization. I believe you have to go through the motions and duties of life.  The meaning lies in the activity itself as much as, maybe more than, the putative effects. The accomplishment of our activities is what creates joy and fulfillment. I have always written journals. Now some of that goes to the blog.  What it has accomplished in the great scheme of things I don’t know.  But it made me a better and more joyful person. My question in almost all parts of life is “So, what do I do?” You can often know what to do before you can understand the reasons and sometimes if you do the right things, the reasons follow.

I have never been very religious, but I believe in transcendent truth. There are many ways to truth. Religion is a road for some people. I love the idea of Jesus. I have read the Bible and still do. I know the words to the old hymns and they inspire me. These are good to help find the way to truth & right action, but religion is not the road I can travel.  I cannot base my faith on words, no matter how beautiful, true or good. I usually know what to do, even when the explanations are difficult.

Mysterious experiences are not part of my daily thoughts, but I have a big one. Some people think I am nuts when I tell the story, but I will tell it anyway with the caveat that my words cannot describe the feeling. My father’s death affected me profoundly and grieved until I had a strange dream. In my dream I glimpsed a transcendent reality, an eternal now.  Everybody, yesterday, today and tomorrow was there and I knew them all. I cannot explain much better, but even after more than ten years this feeling lingers and comforts me.

My title comes from an old science fiction movie called “Blade Runner”. A character, who had been a ruthless villain is about to die.  He recalls his unique & fantastic experiences and laments that all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.  It is all accompanied by the evocative music of Vangelis.  Watch the scene at the link above. You could interpret it as a lamentation on the futility of life.  I do not. I always found the scene vaguely uplifting. My dream gave me an answer to the words at least.  Are tears in the rain lost? They are certainly small in comparison to the mass of rain water, but are they truly insignificant?  Aren’t they really just returning to their “home” or did they ever really leave? Didn’t they always remain part? All the water in the world is always part of the water system. I am content with my own answers to the questions themselves and to the wider ones they imply. And I know what to do.  

Life is changing for me again. I have been doing this part long enough and it is time to do something else. Brazil will be a new adventure with new ideas. It will change but stay the same. I look for meaning in the paradox.

The picture up top has nothing to do with the posting. It is my last left from my tree farm visit. It shows the truck up near the first wildlife plot. Alex has the truck now. Maybe he will let me use it when I need it. 

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Different Skill Sets

Nobody likes to do everything or is equally competent in all areas. I understand that and I am reminded again now that I am working in the press office.  I needed a place to stay from now until I go to Brazil and they needed someone to fill in, so that is what I am doing.  It is the kind of exciting job that they might make into a TV show.  We have urgent challenges, big personalities and short deadlines. Yesterday, for example, we worked on the press surrounding the extradition of a Mexican drug lord, statements from high level meetings and various other hot items.  It is a truly essential job but I don’t like it.

Some of my colleagues love it and I can understand why. I get to be close to important people and events and, in time, I could probably convince myself that I am an important person too. But it is a “machine bureaucracy” where you are most successful to the extent that you can maintain the integrity of the hierarchy and the procedures. 

We often speak of bureaucracies in pejorative terms, but the reason all literate human societies have developed bureaucracies is that they work wonderfully within their areas of expertise. If you need to control events there is nothing better, providing that conditions are reasonably predictable within the accountability of the bureaucracy and you have the resources to make it work. I can affirm that we have a great bureaucracy.  Nothing gets lost. Information passes efficiently through the system; decisions are made and promulgated.  The machine works. The question really is not whether or not a bureaucracy works; it does. It is rather where and when the bureaucracy is the appropriate tool for the task.*

I am able to do the work and I am willing to do it because it needs to be done. I got all that language training that I loved, so it is fair to do some of the more bureaucratic tasks.  As I said, some people love that sort of work and many think I am crazy for loving the language training. I suppose people should do the things that they do well. I will be glad when I can get back to doing the things I am better at doing, the things I like to do. It won’t be long.

* Give a man a hammer and every problem starts looking like a nail. That phrase comes from Abraham Maslow and a lot of my understanding of bureaucracy comes from Henry Mintzberg.  I don’t pretend to be a scholar on this, so this is my extrapolation from their ideas.   One problem for bureaucracy is that it grows and applies rules to inappropriate situations.  But the bigger problem is that most humans don’t adapt well to highly-rule based system.  It is essentially not a human system.   If you want to see an ideal bureaucratic system, look at a computer program.  A computer automates many of the machine bureaucratic functions, which is good, since it frees people for the tasks that they are better at doing.

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Blustery Day with Intellectual Challenges

I attended a lecture this evening on Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive movement. It was an interesting talk, but the whole thing made me feel a bit inadequate.  There were lots of smart people in the audience, such as Michael Barone and Ben Wattenberg.  They asked insightful questions, but it wasn’t just that that made me feel lower.  I have never been able to keep my experts straight. These guys can compare subtle differences between works of various people and between philosophies. I have a more mix & match mind.  It works well in many things, but I am outclassed by the big brains when it comes to straight intellectual debate.

FSI gave me a kind of an aptitude test recently. I didn’t pay much attention, but it did “reveal” that I don’t set clear boundaries, meaning my learning style is find similarities instead of differences. They spend a lot of time developing these tests, but they never really tell you what you can do about it, since they always say that all the styles are equally okay. IMO, the holistic approach works for lots of things, but it doesn’t work for the intellectual parsing I talked about above. I enjoyed the talk and I took notes.  I will use the information for something in the future, I suppose.  But I will be unable to keep it straight.

That Michael Barone is a genius. I have long read his books and watched him on TV. He seems to be able to remember the details of every political contest, down to the county level, since the founding of the Republic.  The interesting thing he brought up was the hypothetical about what would have happened if Roosevelt had not died in 1919.  He probably would have run for president in 1920 and almost assuredly would have won.  How different would history have been?  Would he have repeated the energetic presidency of his youth, or would the second act just have ruined his reputation and maybe hurt the country. Of course we will never know.

On the plus side, I had my informal first Portuguese test and I got – unofficially – 2+/3.  This means nothing to most of you reading this, but it is a decent score after six weeks of instruction for someone who has been away from a language for twenty-five years.   The assessments are on a five point scale.  Zero is when you cannot say a word in the language; five is educated native proficiency. Even many native speakers in a language cannot get a five, since it is an educated speech.  We have to get a minimum of 3 speaking and 3 reading, which is “minimum professional proficiency.” 

I would like to get to 4 both speaking and reading and I think I have a good chance, but it is hard, since the difficulty rises exponentially.  It is a lot easier to get from 1 to 2 than it is from 3 to 4 and – as I said – almost nobody gets to 5, even if you are born in the country.  Four is good.  Everybody knows what you are talking about and you don’t make any serious mistakes, but you retain a (no doubt) charming accent, think Ricardo Montalban. Language is such and important part of my job that I think it is worth the effort. I had a 3+/3+ in Polish, which served me fairly well, but I can do better than that in Portuguese. I already have some background; besides it is an easier language & State is giving me the time and instruction I need to get the job done.   Back in 1985, I went to Brazil with 3/3.  During my time there, my language improved, but I didn’t test when I came back, so I don’t know what I had.  I don’t think it was better than a 3+.  I was very fluent, but I lacked the polish that I hope to get this time around.

The pictures are from my walk around the Mall today. It was cold with a very strong wind, but I walked from State Department to the Gold’s Gym at Capitol after my Portuguese class and it was okay because the wind was from the west, i.e. at my back. I took the Metro up to the stop near AEI for the lecture this evening and so avoided the freezing wind most of the time. 

The top pictures are of the Grant Memorial near the Capitol.  In the second picture, notice the half moon above Grant’s head.  Below is the skating rink on the Mall and some portraits along the path.  I recognize Washington and Napoleon, but I don’t know the other two.

More photos are at this link. 

BTW – I am sorry that I am not writing more. Portuguese and Brazil is taking most of my intellectual energy, as I mentioned.  I watch the Brazilian news every day and read some books and magazines. After the homework is done, there is less time to write. language training is serious business, but rewarding.    

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Learning Portuguese

I started Portuguese again. Well, actually, I started filling out forms, attending orientation and taking those “learning styles” test.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to take the Meyer-Briggs test again. I am an INTP, which means something to people who know about such things. I have Brazil area studies tomorrow morning and finally tomorrow afternoon I get to study some Portuguese. Then I have to get out early to vote and get Chrissy a birthday cake.

Studying at FSI will be fun. One of the best things about the FS is being able to get this kind of training.  My goal is to speak Portuguese well enough that Portuguese speakers don’t feel the need to compliment me on my speaking.  I have noticed that the worse you speak a language, the faster people feel the need to tell you how well you are doing. When you really speak it well, nobody thinks much about it.

My strategy this time is to learn other things through Portuguese rather than the other way around.  What I mean is that I will read or listen to things in Portuguese that I want to learn anyway. This is especially true of information about tropical forests, energy and Brazil itself.  Of course this seems obvious, but it is not the way we usually do it. We usually choose texts and speeches specifically to teach language. These things are sometimes old or not topical. 

I have been watching Brazilians news and reading about the country in Portuguese.  I bought a history of Brazil in Portuguese, a nice Brazilian atlas & a compendium of Brazilian literature. It would be easier to learn  “substantive facts” in English, but I think it is useful to make the connections in Portuguese. I read “The Prince” by Machiavelli in Portuguese. I wanted to reread this for other reasons, so I figured that I may as well do it in Portuguese. Frankly, I don’t think I would have been able to understand it in Portuguese if I had not already been familiar with it in English, but with that qualification it worked out okay. I am also reading a novel, “Caravans” in Portuguese. This is an old book by James Michener, which I read in English more than twenty years ago. It is a bit of a chore to read it in Portuguese, but I think it is good practice, since it features dialogue, conversations and first person discourses.  The news tends not to have this and neither do most textbooks or non-fiction articles.  

It is hard to find books in Portuguese locally. But I got a web-based bookseller in Brazil called Livraria Cultura.  With the Internet and a credit card, you can get whatever you need. The only problem is that they send it registered mail.  Nobody is home during the day and/or Espen won’t answer the door, so I have to pick it up at the post office.

The pictures – On top is FSI. It is a nice place to be.  The other pictures are not much related, but I took them today after work. You see the Segway tour on the Mall. I dislike Segways. It is kind of a lazy man way to get around and they tend to come up quick behind.  Segways are supposed to be foolproof, but just before I took the picture, one of those guys fell off. The company owner of Segways recently died by driving one of those things off a cliff.  Doesn’t sound so safe or foolproof to me. The next picture shows American elms on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House. These trees are “Princeton elms”, supposedly resistant to the deadly Dutch elm disease. The picture below that is the White House. 

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The Lasts

Fall is always the season of finishing. Another growing season is done. Days are getting shorter and cooler; the last flowers are blooming; the last leaves are falling. It is both a sad time and one of contentment of harvest and jobs completed. This fall has more of these characteristics for me than usual. I won’t be here next year. This is the last time I will be seeing some parts of Washington for maybe some years, maybe forever. 

Of course I will be back at the Main State, but my visits will be episodic and not the continuous presence I have now. I probably won’t be going over to Gold’s Gym, for example. I expect to be in Brazil for three years.  Who knows after that? I like to live in Washington, but the work here is not as interesting as what I can do overseas. There just aren’t many good jobs at my level. Many of the lower-ranking positions are more fun, if less ostensibly prestigious. I don’t like the political interface or the endless meetings. That doesn’t bode well for a triumphant return sometime in the medium term future. 

I have never had much of a long-term career plan and I don’t have one now. I have always relied on serendipity and opportunistically taking advantage of what comes. You don’t have to be smart if you are lucky and I have been lucky. Brazil, Norway, Poland and even Iraq were places that I wanted to o and places where I was content to be. There is not much time left anyway and I suppose I should be thinking about career transition.

The story I recall, the one I tell myself and others is that I learned about the FS randomly. I remember waking up from a nap at the student union in at UW-Madison and finding a booklet about careers in the FS left on the table in front of me. I was only vaguely aware of the FS before that time. The booklet had a practice test that didn’t look too hard, so I decided to try for it. For me that has become a kind of creation myth. I really no longer know how much is certainly true and how much is embellishment borne of the retelling. But I think the story has colored how I view the job. I guess I still see it as more of a gift than something I worked hard to get. And it has usually been fun. A sort of career plan that I did have was to work in the FS for around seven years and then leverage my experience a well-paying executive job. It never happened because there has never been a significant amount of time when I wasn’t either having too much fun at my current assignment, too excited about the next one or both. 

It was more like a hound-dog following the next scent than a step-by-step progress.

Anyway, I think about these things as I walk around in the still warm fall days and evenings. I came into the FS in October and got to know Washington for the first time during this time of the year. That was twenty-six years ago, but the area around the Mall has not changed much. I remember walking around the first time. It was like in that movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I was so excited to see the monuments: Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and so many other things. It is no longer a new experience, but it is still exciting. What a privilege to be able to be among them all the time. That is something I will miss. So this fall has a special poignancy for me.

Let me tell you about the pictures. They are simple things taken around Washington. First is an informal football game on the fields in front of the Washington Monument.  Next is the Main State, the Harry Truman building. It is not one of Washington’s most attractive. I am not a big coffee drinker, but the next picture shows them that do.  The little wagon is owned by a guy from someplace in the Middle East. It is good coffee, I guess. People wait for him to show up in the morning. Horse cops patrolling the Mall on Clydesdales in the next picture. Jefferson Memorial with fall color maples. Another of my Capitol pictures. The African Art museum is just above and below is the statue of Casimir Pulaski on Freedom Plaza.

Below is the Washington Memorial and the last is just the moon.

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Secrets of Success

I wrote these notes for these posts during my time on promotion boards, but held off posting them until the work was done.  

After many years of trying to figure out the tricks of getting promoted, I finally got it.  It is an epiphany. After now reading  the files of 100s of my very competent colleagues, I found that the secret of success is to be good at what you do. Of course, the write up is important. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, it doesn’t make a sound for any practical purpose. But you have to have something to write about.  A week of energetic writing and spinning won’t make up for a year of lethargy on the job. You just cannot sell Edsels.  On the other hand, people stand in line to get the good products they want.

I like the fact that people write their own first pages on their assessments. It gives a better look at what they can do and what they think is important.  Some people “get it” more than others. In their own write-ups they emphasize the right things first and they make logical and meaningful connections among the things they accomplished.  

There is focus.  In the good EERs, I notice a “purposes principle” at work. They explain the “so what?” and list the results and outcomes of what they have accomplished.  I also get the impression that they frequently ask the purpose question.  When someone gives you a task, it is not impertinent to ask, “what do you plan to use it for?” This will often make the person focus more, give you a better idea of what is necessary and maybe make it more of a partnership.  The person getting the task might know, for example, that there is a better way to achieve the goal.   Of course, you have to ask the question in the right way, but a good leader should be glad to have subordinates who try to improve on what they are given.

Nobody is perfect and I like it when I can find areas of actual conflict or mistakes that provided learning opportunities. This is perhaps the hardest part to get right. Nobody likes to be criticized and it is always a risk to have any criticism prominently mentioned. However, it may be a acceptable risk that sets you apart. Nobody has a good year every year. It is unlikely that someone goes from one success to another w/o any setbacks.  I was reminded of the juvenile lovers who ask their partners whether they love them more today than yesterday. Despite what we hear in song and story, the inevitable true answer eventually must be “no”. It doesn’t mean that careers, or love, do not or cannot grow over a long period, but it will never be a straight and clear path in either case.  

That said, it makes no sense to dwell on failure. One of the things I dislike most is when people seem to revel in the hard times they have suffered. Difficult conditions are a mitigating factor, but the fact is that there are two sorts of criteria. You either did something or you didn’t.  Almost fought the great chicken of Bristol just doesn’t compare to actual achievement.  Ideally, you should mention the problem immediately followed by how you moved on from it.  And remember that most FS careers have had some hardships. I served a year in the Western Desert of Iraq, with dust in the air and bad guys behind the rocks; many of our colleagues have had worse. The bad plumbing or poor phone service at someone’s post just doesn’t sound very impressive.

Overall, some files just seem to sing beautifully, others are a little off key and a few are bad. Sometimes one person manages to be/do all three.  That is why I like to see the person in more than one type of job or place.  Some people can do well one time and in one place. That is admirable but doesn’t mean they should be promoted to more responsibility. It is not the one home run that counts but the day-to-day success that adds up over a long period.