By Beverly Weinstein

Dear Bev: How do I tell my boss I’m pregnant?

Turns out, the hard part isn’t breaking the news. Coming back to the office after maternity leave and working out the delicate balancing act between work and new baby is the bigger challenge, according to several new mothers I talked to recently.

Even though it may be almost 50 years since the Women’s Liberation movement shook things up for women in the workplace, issues around new working mothers are still being debated. Major newspapers and magazines regularly address businesses balancing “boomlets” of pregnant workers. (See The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com,  Forbes, The Washington Post for more news on modern motherhood.)

Then and Now

“When I was having babies, I felt I had to make it a secret until it showed,” said an executive at a major media organization, who began her career and her family in the early 1980s. “The first time, I didn’t tell until I was five and a half months along. I was the first person to ever get pregnant in the ad sales department at the company. I worked out the maternity policy with my boss.”

Nowadays, companies are considerably better prepared. “We have women coming and going all the time on maternity leave,” said the same executive, who is now a SVP. “We just prepare for it, and cover for their responsibilities. We do paternity leave now, too -two weeks.”

Most newly pregnant women in today’s workplace wouldn’t think of waiting five months. “I knew I’d have to take time for doctor’s appointments,” explained an ad agency media professional. “So I let my direct boss know well in advance of the three month mark, which was when I told everyone else at work.”

Today companies are required by law to provide a designated room for breastfeeding, an accommodation that didn’t exist in the past.

Breaking the News: The Law Is on Your Side

Despite laws protecting expectant mothers, some new moms are still anxious about telling their bosses and prepared themselves for negative responses.

“I waited until I was four months along,” said another media executive who recently had a child. “I knew I couldn’t get fired and was aware of the fact that laws protected me, but if the response wasn’t good, I was prepared to leave.”

Another media exec said she “agonized over it for weeks, because I had only been there for a few months.” “It was a huge stress, but my boss was very nice about it,” she admits. “Though, the second thing out of her mouth was, ‘Oh, you’re going to come back, right?’ ”

Returning to Work

Most working mothers admit the most difficult part is returning to work and defining expectations for your return. “Before you leave, have a discussion with your boss,” advises one new mom. “Just finding out about hours, flex time and job share are important. You won’t get everything, but you won’t know until you ask.”

“I phased back into work,” said another mom. “It was better than walking away from spending 24/7 with my infant to five days a week at work. My boss said she knew my needs were changing, and she was willing to discuss things.”

“When you first come back from maternity leave your hormones are still raging,” said one mother whose employer wasn’t flexible. “I was already tearful the first few days, then my boss said: ‘You need to say goodbye to your husband and son and get on the road for three weeks.’ ”

Having an understanding manager helps, but some managers won’t make concessions that change an employees’ level of involvement and responsibility. “I had one new mother ask if she could work three days a week and I said no,” explained one manager. “It’s a senior-level job and requires a full-time person. I need an employee on board for the full work load.”

“It’s almost an expectation by lots of women that they are entitled to work from home, and it may not be realistic based on business needs,” noted another senior female executive with grown children.

In working with several cutting edge digital media companies, it’s hard not to pay attention to the interesting divide between the digitally connected Millennial generation and the Baby Boomers who manage, them while simulatenously learning a thing or two themselves. The  New York Times  recently had an interesting column by James R. Gaines, Editor in Chief of the online publication FLYP. Gaines is over 60 and a seasoned journalist and editor who headed major print publications including, People, Time and Life. FLYP is an online magazine of sorts that is exploring new forms of multimedia journalism. But the loads of experience and expertise Gaines has to offer to his staff of young writers, tech experts, and multimedia gurus, he finds, are often matched by the insight into emerging technologies and new media that his staff provide him with.   It’s an interesting balance for a long-time manager. And one that sometimes reminds him of how much he has to learn. It’s humbling and thrilling, he says. And he is mostly excited to help these younger players conquer this new frontier as he calls it. He likens his roll to that of a parent, helping and providing for but not being a friend.  Gaines seems ok with this unusual management roll he finds himself in and he reminds us at the end of the column that while he might be the novice when it comes to the technology, the core of his company, and of all digital journalism, is still to tell a story. And that’s where his expertise really comes into play.

“MEDIA will change as radically as technology allows, and right now the Internet is moving over the media landscape like a tsunami. But the job I learned to love when young was to tell stories, and the story has lost nothing in this transition. It is as elemental and as riveting as ever.

Everybody’s worried about the device. Could Microsoft’s Courier be the answer, or the iTablet? Good question, but not the most important one. It’s less the device than the devices — the crafts and the art of storytelling — that need updating most urgently for the digital world.”
Gaines’ story is reminiscent of a topic we touched on in the past: this divide between generations and how the future of media will be shaped by it. As we recruit for many digital companies on the brink of becoming leaders in the digital space, helping to form and create their teams and interviewing the candidates that will make these companies successful, it’s interesting to see the strengths and weaknesses parties from both ends of the spectrum bring to the table.

How do you think the tech boom has affected the leadership now expected from the baby boom?

And how will the younger set fair when business requires more of them than their computer savvy?

Read Gaines’ story on the New York Times.

According to the Wall Street Journal, current law suits involving T-Mobile and CB Richard Ellis have asked this very question.

“The federal Fair Labor Standards Act says employees must be paid for work performed off the clock, even if the work was voluntary. When the law was passed in 1938, “work” was easy to define for hourly employees…As the workplace changed, so did the rules for when workers should be paid.”

The changing workplace the author refers is to the one dominated by smart phones and technology that blur the lines between work and pleasure and make it increasingly easier to communicate at all hours.  The reality is that nearly everyone at least checks in on their email after work, but if becomes the larger part of your non-work life, how do you draw the line? Short of a lawsuit that is?

Should employers expect their employees to be available outside of work? Is it up to employees to draw the line between what they will and will not do after hours or should the employer define these rules for them?

And finally, if it is expected then should after-hours work, even on a Blackberry, be compensated?

By Jill Granoff as told to Amy Zipkin

Photo by David Turner for the NYT

I GREW up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Queens and on Long Island and went to a yeshiva. When it came time to go to college I chose Duke. I planned to major in psychology and to get a Ph.D. in industrial psychology; I think it was a faculty member who suggested that an M.B.A. would make me more marketable.

JILL GRANOFF

Chief executive, Kenneth Cole

AGE 47

ENJOYS Skiing with family and attending rock concerts.

FAVORITE QUOTATION “The future depends on what we do in the present.” – Gandhi

On my application to Columbia Business School, I wrote, “My goal is to become a management consultant.” I would be a psychologist to businesses instead of to individuals. I got full tuition and a stipend.

I had just turned 21 and was one of the youngest in my class. Most companies that came to campus to recruit for internships between the first and second year of business school weren’t interested in me because I had no work experience after my graduation from Duke.

My father was a photographer and was taking photos at A. T. Kearney, a management consulting company. He suggested that I apply. At my interview I was asked, “Why should we hire you?” I said, “It’s not what I’ve done but what I can do.”

I was hired that summer and joined the company full time after graduation. It had a very industrial client base in male-dominated industries. After one presentation to a board, I recall the client in charge saying, “I guess you have to run home now and make dinner.” The funny thing is, I don’t cook.

When several of the partners left to start their own consulting firm, I went along. I was asked to take the Estée Lauder Companies as a client because I used and understood the product.

After two years of consulting, I asked Fred Langhammer, who was then chief operating officer of the Estée Lauder Companies and would later be C.E.O., if he would hire me. I believe it’s important to ask for what you want. And I recall he said: “We don’t have M.B.A.’s. Where would I put you?”

I didn’t take no for an answer, and I was named his executive assistant.

I worked for Fred for three years and then felt it was time to work in a division. I met with Robin Burns, who was president of the Estée Lauder brand for the United States and Canada and an icon in the industry. She offered me a choice of marketing and sales positions. I asked if she’d create another opportunity, and she did. I became vice president of business and development for the Estée Lauder brand.

I worked with her for five years; she pushed me beyond what I thought my capabilities were. Once, when I was negotiating a beauty license, which I had never done before, she said, “You’re smart; you’ll figure it out.” She was great at sending notes of appreciation. I still have them. I learned the importance of cultivating loyalty.

Robin became C.E.O. and president of Victoria’s Secret Beauty in 1998, and I soon joined her there as executive vice president/chief administrative officer. When she retired, I was promoted to president and chief operating officer.

In August 2006, I joined Liz Claiborne Inc. as group president of retail and e-commerce, and within a year was promoted to executive vice president of direct brands, which included the Lucky Brand Jeans and Juicy Couture labels.

I was at Kennedy Airport in early 2008, getting ready to fly to Los Angeles, when my cellphone rang. The voice on the other end said, “Hi, this is Kenneth Cole.” I said, the Kenneth Cole? He asked if I wanted to get a cup of coffee when I returned from my trip.

If a headhunter had called me, I don’t know if I would have taken the call. The fact that Kenneth himself called spoke volumes about the company he had built. I met with him about 10 times in the next three months and joined as C.E.O. in May of last year.

My husband and two sons agree that it was a great decision. After all, this is a company that makes products they can wear.

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal has a heart warming tale tracing Tuesday, a Golden, from a lovable puppy to an indispensable companion for a returned vet suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. Maybe it’s a stretch to say there’s a lesson here for people about transferable skills. You can decide for yourself but either way, it’s a great story.

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN

NEW YORK — Like any other golden retriever seeking a treat, Tuesday nudged his owner’s hand with his snout one recent morning and waited expectantly.

Luis Carlos Montalvan got up from a chair in his small Brooklyn apartment and walked to the kitchen. Tuesday followed close behind, eyes fixed on a white cabinet. The retriever sat alertly as Mr. Montalvan, an Iraq war veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, reached for a vial of pills, lined a half-dozen on the table and took them one by one.

The dog had gotten what he wanted: When the last pill was swallowed, he got up and followed his master out of the kitchen, tail wagging.

Tuesday is a so-called psychiatric-service dog, a new generation of animals trained to help people whose suffering is not physical, but emotional. They are, effectively, Seeing Eye dogs for the mind.

Tuesday is with Mr. Montalvan at all hours. Taught to recognize changes in a person’s breathing, perspiration or scent that can indicate an imminent panic attack, Tuesday can keep Mr. Montalvan buffered from crowds or deliver a calming nuzzle. Other dogs, typically golden retrievers, Labradors or Labrador retriever blends, are trained to wake masters from debilitating nightmares and to help patients differentiate between hallucinations and reality by barking if a real person is nearby.

“Tuesday is just extraordinarily empathetic,” said Mr. Montalvan, 36 years old, a retired Army captain who received a Purple Heart for wounds he suffered in Iraq. “In bad moments, he’ll lay his head on my leg, and it’ll be like he’s saying, ‘You’re OK. You’re not alone.’”

Seeing Eye dogs were first systematically trained in Germany during World War I to aid blinded veterans. Today, psychiatric-service dogs are being trained to help veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan battles.

The federal government has given the dogs the same legal protections as other service animals, so Tuesday can ride the subway with Mr. Montalvan and accompany him to restaurants and theaters. But few of the dogs are available to former troops like Mr. Montalvan, one of the estimated 300,000 veterans of the two wars who will ultimately develop PTSD.

When Luis Montalvan was an Army Captain stationed in Iraq, he suffered serious injuries in an ambush. Back in the States, he’s finding comfort from a service dog that tends to his injuries, both physical and emotional.

Puppies Behind Bars Inc., a New York-based nonprofit that uses prisoners to train animals, has placed psychiatric-service dogs with 11 veterans and hopes to provide 14 more this year. Gloria Gilbert Stoga, the charity’s president, said it is difficult to raise the $26,000 needed to train each dog. “We’re just scratching the surface,” she said.

Tuesday was born on the upstate New York farm of Lu Picard, who runs East Coast Assistance Dogs Inc., a nonprofit that trains dogs to assist masters ranging from mentally handicapped children to stroke victims and quadriplegics.

Tuesday was eight weeks old when he and five siblings were turned over to Puppies Behind Bars, who moved them to New York’s Fishkill Correctional Facility. The pup shared a cell with John Pucci, a convicted killer who assumed primary responsibility for molding Tuesday into a service dog.

“No one thought he would make it,” said Mr. Pucci, explaining that Tuesday would fall asleep in other prisoners’ laps as they watched television and would sometimes hide under Mr. Pucci’s bed and refuse to leave the cell. Inmates bet Mr. Pucci some cigarettes that Tuesday was too affectionate to be a service dog.

Mr. Pucci discovered that Tuesday loved the jail’s small inflatable pool and would run through commands perfectly if he was in the water. In nine months, Mr. Pucci taught Tuesday to respond to 82 commands geared mainly toward helping the physically disabled — turning on lights with his nose, retrieving food from shelves, helping load washing machines.

“I got released before I could collect the cigarettes,” said Mr. Pucci, 64 years old, who served 29 years and now lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he continues to train dogs.

Tuesday returned to Ms. Picard’s farm, where his skills were fine-tuned for another 18 months. Ms. Picard taught him to respond to signs of anxiety and commands tailored to veterans with PTSD: “block,” which tells the dog to create space for an owner who fears crowds, “my lap” and “snuggle.”

Mr. Montalvan grew up in Potomac, Md., a wealthy suburb of Washington, where he played war games with friends. He enlisted at 17, spent a decade in the Army and enrolled in college to pursue a career as an officer.

In the summer of 2003, newly commissioned as a second lieutenant, he left for Iraq. Photos from the time show a square-jawed man with bulging muscles. Comrades jokingly called him the “Terminator.”

That changed in December 2003. Mr. Montalvan was walking in a compound on Iraq’s border with Syria at around 9:30 p.m. when a man leaped out of the darkness and started slashing at him with a knife.

He pulled out his Beretta and shot the man, wounding him. Another soldier killed the attacker, according to Army records and several soldiers who served in the unit. Mr. Montalvan was thrown into a truck, fracturing three vertebrae.

Tall with long hair and broad shoulders, Mr. Montalvan now walks with a cane. But his biggest problems, he says, are emotional. “Sometimes my mind goes jumbled,” he said one afternoon as he struggled to remember which subway line to take home. “Everything just gets kind of cloudy.”

His marriage fell apart in late 2005. He left the Army two years later and severed many friendships. He began to fear crowds and drink himself to sleep. He regularly considered suicide, he says. A local Veterans Affairs medical facility has prescribed painkillers for his back, migraine pills for brain injury, and drugs for anxiety and depression.

By last summer, Mr. Montalvan was living alone in a small apartment in Brooklyn. He was surfing the Web in July when he saw a mass email about free trained service dogs for veterans with physical or psychological wounds — the “Dog Tags” program of Puppies Behind Bars.

He submitted a formal application. By early November, he joined a group of veterans at Ms. Picard’s farm in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., for two weeks of training with their new dogs.

Mr. Montalvan says he initially didn’t feel much of a connection to Tuesday. The dog licked other people’s faces, but not his. For the first four months they lived together in Brooklyn, Tuesday was obedient but not particularly affectionate.

“I guess it just took us a while to adjust to each other,” he says.

They did. Tuesday, now 3 years old, listens to the daily alarm on Mr. Montalvan’s wristwatch, his cue to make sure he takes his pills. Wearing the red harness of a work dog, he accompanies Mr. Montalvan to Dunkin’ Donuts and the movie theater, to Veterans Administration group counseling sessions in Manhattan, and to Columbia University, where Mr. Montalvan is studying journalism and communication.

At Mr. Montalvan’s apartment — decorated with his Purple Heart and Bronze Star certificates, and pictures and paintings of Tuesday — they sleep in the same wooden sleigh bed.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Montalvan and Tuesday walked to a nearby subway station. The platform was crowded. Mr. Montalvan began to look agitated. Tuesday, who had been lying at his feet, jumped up and stood between his master and the nearest cluster of people, creating a buffer. Mr. Montalvan’s breathing noticeably stabilized.

The train approached. Mr. Montalvan bent down to tie his Army combat boots, scratched Tuesday behind the ears, and they made their way aboard.

Photo by Leslie Granda-Hill for the WSJ.

Here’s hoping you had a fun and firework-filled holiday.

“I wish they would call me back.”

Written by Michael Fairhaven (pseudonym)

A few weeks ago I was flipping through the dial and saw that there was going to be a story on 60 Minutes about Millenials. You know. Millenials. They’re the 20-something generation that has entered the work force and caused managers everywhere to drop their jaws in shock and disbelief. I was looking forward to having such a coveted and well decorated news program and organization provide the background and perspective I’d need to help me understand and manage this generation.

After the 20 minute segment, (which you can watch belowl) the only advice they could give me was…are you sitting down?….live with it. They’re here to stay.

Unbelievable. I’ve been in the business world for twenty years fostering relationships across the media industry based on communication and respect and these Millenials just get to go through their day ignoring phone calls, emails and meeting requests? To be fair, I’m generalizing, but the one complaint that is consistent across nearly every salesforce is that it’s incredibly frustrating to have to deal with these people. Someone needs to teach them the proper way.

So what can we do? How do we try to make it right? As managers we have a responsibility to teach entry level people the proper etiquette of business communication. But I think it goes further than that. It’s not teachers, or professors who need to teach these kids. It goes further. To quote the venerable Charles Barkley – “I am not a role model.” Charles said that it was the responsibility of the parents to be role models. To teach their children the difference between right and wrong.

And herein lies the problem. It’s the parents of the world whose responsibility it is to teach and prepare Millenials for the workforce. But alas parents are failing miserably. The term is “helicopter parents.” Parents nowadays hover over the lives of their children, until something goes wrong, swooping in to influence an outcome that suits their desires. Using every angle, including financial resources to achieve the outcome that their children want.

I’m going to start today with my 11 and 8 year old children. As a parent, I need to look in the mirror and ask myself if I’m raising the next generation of world leaders in business? Can I let my children fail the way I did, so they learn and grow from it? I hope I can. I hope we can. In the meantime, I’m going to go back to racking my brain trying to figure out a clever subject line that might garner a response from a potential client.

Watch CBS Videos Online

“You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed. You’re not going to succeed all the time and I know that. You have to be able to accept failure to get better.” -LeBron James

This week’s 60 Minutes featured an interview with basketball superstar and sports mogul LeBron James.  He’s 24. He was worth $40 million dollars last year alone. And like other eminent professionals we’ve quoted recently, he credits failure as one of the things the has helped lead to his success. Watch the interview below.

Watch CBS Videos Online

“Once upon a time, it was very, very gloomy.  The skies thundered, the economy crumbled, and people only spoke to grumble. Everything looked bleak, bleak, bleak.

Until one day, shortly after a market crash and right before another round of layoffs, a girl named Miss B. came up with a terrifically bright idea.  As she later explained to her friend and business partner, Miss K., their mission would be to scour the world for the best in fashion, design, and décor.  Then, one by one and everyday, they would give it all away to some very lucky people.

This is how The Bright Side Project began on a wintry, gray day in February.”

I stumbled upon The Bright Side Project through Daily Candy this morning and not only found it to offer some really neat give-aways but also to be a lovely anti-Recession-attitude idea. When there doesn’t seem to be a bright side, why not create one? Its creators, two corporate gals, really get the meaning of taking life’s lemons and making some cool, crisp lemonade.

Their mission: “The Bright Side Project is here to bring you sunshine every day with themed, daily giveaways. We hope to inspire you to stop for a second and remember life is (still) beautiful and there is goodness in the world.”

Check out the site and answer questions to win some cool stuff!

“Welcome to the new rules of the job hunt. Gone are the days of simply posting your résumé on CareerBuilder, e-mailing former colleagues and trolling company websites for open slots. These days, if you’re serious about being hired, you really put your computer and PDA to work. That means getting word out on social sites like Facebook and MySpace, sending instant job-search updates via messaging feeds like Twitter, and meeting new people who might be able to lend a hand through Web-networking outfits like LinkedIn and Ryze.”

So says a recent article in Time that details the job hunt of Brian Ward, a software architect. Brian lost his job on a Friday and found a new one in only eleven days.

Eleven days!

And who does Brian have to thank for his speedy success? The old world wide web. And of course, his own perseverance and quick reaction time.

“As the sole breadwinner for his wife and three kids, Ward knew that he had to get a new job quickly. He found himself unemployed at 5 in the afternoon; by 8 that night, he’d called four people he knew in Ohio who did the same sort of computer work he did, as well as his college buddy Lyell, down in North Carolina. “I’d been using Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, but in a very passive, extracurricular way,” says Ward. “I knew Lyell was big into the Twitter scene. He immediately began blasting information out to contacts he had, sending them back my way.” Over the weekend, Ward updated all of his online profiles. He uploaded a fresh résumé to LinkedIn, the professionals’ networking site, and sent out a message to all 200 of his Facebook friends, letting them know he was looking for work.

One of them, a pal from high school, wrote back Sunday night. He now worked for a tech company in Louisiana, and asked if Ward would be interested in being put in touch with the Web-development group. Ward eagerly agreed and had a phone interview the next day. “Here I was four hours into being unemployed and I already had a phone interview,” he recalls. “I was like, Wow, this is going to be impressive.”

Ward didn’t end up with that job and although he did find one soon after, he says it wasn’t easy. Getting laid off still stung and rejection upon rejection wasn’t the best feeling either. But to fight those blues, Ward says the social networks he was tapping into helped him form a support system. Some didn’t turn up any job leads, but he came across a lot of other people in his shoes to commiserate with.

Ward only slept a few hours every night and woke up at 4 or 5 a.m. and tweeted. He joined groups in LinkedIn, many that didn’t even have to do with his industry and soon he had a myriad of different types of people sending out his resume or putting in a good word. In the end, the job came through an old Facebook friend, and get this, it was one he hadn’t imagined would provide any leads. It’s the perfect example of why Facebook can be a valid business tool. Reconnecting with old acquaintances, colleagues, and friends made all the difference for him and it can for you, too.

Ward was also upfront when he got the interview with his soon-to-be employer: “He said he needed to find a new job quickly and was interviewing at other companies, too. The next day, he had an offer. “It’s still all about connections,” says Ward. “What’s changed is how you do it.”

Read the full article here.