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Arts & Culture

The Generosity of MCNtalk Readers

Thanks to you, our MCNtalk readers, MCN has  made year end donations to three non-profit organizations you’ve chosen. We recently sponsored a contest wherein new subscribers could select a non-profit organization of their choice to receive a $100 donation.  We’ve listed the organizations below and provided a bit of information about them. All are medically related and two of the three benefit seriously ill and impoverished children, one nationally, one internationally.

At MCNtalk we frequently write about the issues we face in today’s world: the rising cost of medical care, the number of uninsured Americas and attempts to widen coverage, medical challenges faced by everyone. When viewed as a whole, the magnitude of the situation is daunting, perhaps overwhelming, so it is good to have the opportunity to provide some support. As an organization, MCN and our employees are privileged to provide financial support to both the thriving arts community in Seattle as well as umbrella social services organizations such as The United Way.  Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent contest by subscribing to MCNtalk, and thank you to the contest winners for their choices.  

  • Smile Train, Ruth McClurg: Providing free cleft surgery to hundreds of thousands of poor children in developing countries while training doctors and other medical professionals in over 80 countries.
  • The American Chronic Pain Association, Steven D. Feinberg, MD: facilitating peer support and education for individuals with chronic pain and their families so that these individuals may live more fully in spite of their pain.
  • The Thon Foundation, fighting pediatric cancer, Tom Shaffer: the largest student-run philanthropy in the world, benefiting pediatric cancer in conjunction with the Four Diamonds Fund at Penn State Hersey Children’s Hospital.

The Cough That Launched a Hit Movie

And now for something a little different…a movie review. Or, rather, discussion of the new movie Contagion in The New York Times.

As the article notes, “You have to applaud the effort, for the movie does indeed offer a procession of dead-on accurate scenes that not only could happen but, in many cases, have already happened. Still, the whole thing is an improbable caricature, with 100 action-packed Hollywood minutes veering far from reality. You can still be very afraid if you want, if a contagious apocalypse happens to be your thing. But it’s not going to happen this way.” That may sound like good news, but on the other hand The Times piece does walk the reader through how events do play out in widespread contagions. Read more…

The Problem with Memoirs

This critique from the New York Times resonated with us. It speaks to our culture of celebrity, combined with a decreased barrier to entry for those who wish to share. Witness this blog and millions of others, the world of social networking, and of course publishing. The memoirs cited in the article are actually among the more elite and select, in that they have passed muster with publishers, agents and the retail book market.

The writer Neil Genslinger, suggests a few guidelines that we are summarizing here:

– That you had parents and a childhood does not of itself qualify you to write a memoir.

– No one wants to relive your misery.

– If you’re jumping on a bandwagon, make sure you have better credentials than the people already on it.

– If you still must write a memoir, consider making yourself the least important character in it.

and his closing paragraph is a gem: “If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.”

Whether or not his wise thoughts will cause more than one individual to refrain from their own memoir we shall never know. But his wise take on our culture of self-revelation is worth serious consideration.

MCN Reads a Shared Book: “Talent is Overrated”

Many staff at MCN have read and commented on a book. It started with an assignment from Brian Grant, chair and medical director:

I have another book that I am currently reading and think would be great for you personally and for us as a company. It is called Talent is Overrated. The author is Geoff Colvin, a senior writer for Fortune. Here is a the link to general information from Amazon.

And here is one of the reviews that I think summarizes a few key points:

The main premise of the book is that performing at high levels is not a mere function of innate talent, but the results of years of “deliberate practice.” The latter is not what most of us consider “practice ” to be ; indeed , it consists of the following elements: It can be repeated a lot, feedback on results is continuously available, it’s highly demanding mentally, and it isn’t much fun. While this hypothesis may not be earth shattering, its implications and applications in organizations is far reaching. This leads us to rethink the following (as stated by the author):

1 Understand that each person in the organization is not just doing a job, but is also being stretched and grown.

2 Find ways to develop leaders within their jobs.

3 Encourage their leaders to be active in their communities.

4 Understand the critical roles of teachers and feedback.

5 Identify promising performers early.

6 Understand that people development works best through inspiration, not authority.

7 Invest significant time, money, and energy in developing people.

8 Make leadership development part of the culture.

Leading companies are ones that have embedded the above understanding as part of their respective corporate cultures. The author of Talent is Overrated not only focuses on the corporate world, but gives examples from a wide variety of fields to support his hypothesis, such as sports, music, chess etc. He goes on to also discuss what drives us to become great and the elements of passion.

What I particularly like about this book is it’s one that gets you thinking outside the box, and makes you rethink on successful people in your life and their journey to greatness. This book is a must read for any leader to help better unleash the talent within their organization. My only critique about this book is that it does not discuss in any depth some of the cases in our everyday lives where innate talent has played a big role in helping the respective individuals achieve greatness.

 

 

I will end with a quote from the book: “Great performance is not reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.”

The book starts out by talking about individual talent and accomplishment and basically makes the point that practice is important and raw talent is insufficient for success and in fact may not really exist in many cases. Then it moves into organizational and corporate issues that I believe if acted on would make a great difference for our company. But there is something in this for each of you personally I assure you; plus Colvin is a good writer. The book is about 225 pages. Here is a link to the author’s own  site:

http://geoffcolvin.com/books/talent-overrated/

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Well the book was read by a great many, and reviews by staff have been posted for each other to read on our internal Intranet. the reviews were thoughtful and mixed. All in all the experience was a positive one. Hopeful benefits include stimulating discussion on relevant themes for our personal and business lives – as well as letting each other learn a bit more about their coworkers, friends and colleagues.

We look forward to repeating it with other books. If MCNTalk readers have suggestions on books on a business theme that might be enjoyed by a diverse employee base, send us your suggestions.

Music for the Holiday Season


While most articles in MCNTalk are about medical topics, we sometimes want to engage in fun, shameless self-promotion—or in this case, both. MCN’s founder and medical director Brian Grant is a member of a very fine Seattle choir, Seattle Pro Musica.

The choir made a Seattle TV appearance on November 30, 2010, promoting an upcoming set of performances, Nowell: an English Christmas performances. They sang a seasonal carol entitled “Wassail.”

Watch Seattle Pro Musica on New Day Northwest – KING 5 News; you can enjoy this at: http://www.king5.com/new-day-northwest/Seattle-Pro-Musica-Brings–111064284.html

You can see other performance of the choir on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/SeattleProMusica)

Visit the Seattle Pro Musica website, http://seattlepromusica.org where you can learn more, and order recordings and downloads (they make great holiday gifts!)