A few months ago I wrote an article encouraging the unemployed and the misemployed to take a “big picture” view of their life before trying to find a job. The article addressed a number of highly important life factors: simplification, health & fitness, relationships, enjoyable work, financial freedom and others. Focusing initially on the enjoyable work portion, I shared my own personal idea of what a person needs to be happy while working for someone else…needed, wanted, trusted, respected, empowered and appreciated.

In my experience, the combination of these six things at the same time is a rare situation. Perhaps part of the reason for that rarity is that too much emphasis is placed upon simply earning money and getting ahead so that you can support the lifestyle that you think you want or need. So often we find that even when some individuals find true happiness at work, they actually fear the day they have to retire and begin to deal with the rest of their lives on a fulltime basis. Maybe we should all be looking at the big picture much earlier in our lives.

Shortly after writing that article, I was asked to speak to a Georgia Tech Alumni network group. I decided to use the Getting A Life article for the outline of my presentation. The group that evening primarily consisted of people in transition who were looking for a job, and the message that I delivered was well received…so much so, that I began to think seriously about conducting a periodic one-day seminar aimed at helping people (particularly the misemployed and unemployed) come to grips with what they were really seeking...not just in their jobs, but in their overall lives as well. The goal of the seminar would be for the attendees to walk away with some new ideas about how different their job search might be if they first:

As I began to plan the content of our one-day seminar, I decided that I needed to become better educated in some of the topics. The first one that I have tackled is health & fitness. I guess that is because January is typically the month when many of us head for the gym, start working out, and try to eat better. During the past couple of months, I have found that there are serious differences in the way the conventional medical & pharmaceutical professions view healthcare and the way the topic is viewed by those who are knowledgeable in the field of natural hygiene. But they both seem to agree that the current body of knowledge about exactly what goes on in the human body is miniscule compared to what is not known by anyone. Everyone also seems to agree that the standard American diet (S.A.D.) is woefully inadequate when it comes to promoting good health...see the Feb 3 Fortune Magazine cover story "Is Fat the Next Tobacco?" In our future seminar, we will share information that we have learned and encourage our attendees to conduct their own independent study and draw their own conclusions.

For those who might be interested in the feedback from last month's article about the Augusta National Controversy. First of all, I did hear from Martha Burk and from Furman Bisher of the Atlanta Constitution; but I still have heard nothing from Hootie Johnson of Augusta National. The response in general was 99% in support of what I had written.

Jim Hicks specializes in delivering value well beyond executive search. Following a 27-year career equally split between line management and consulting, he founded The Ansley Consulting Group in June of 1999. He sincerely feels that the most important decisions a CEO will ever make are those regarding the recruitment of leaders and those involving the selection of leaders to be promoted. Jim's former roles include COO of Nautica, EVP of Polo, Principal at Kurt Salmon Associates, and implementer of The Deming Method while working with Bill Conway of Conway Management. A former officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, he holds an Industrial Engineering degree from Auburn University and an MBA from The University of Hawaii.