David Cowen, president and managing director of The Cowen Group, runs a staffing and recuiting firm that focuses on litigation support, e-discovery, privacy, security and info gov professionals. I got to know him when I was the Editor-in-Chief at ALM’s Law Technology News (now Legaltech News). Let’s put it this way, he’s not your average head hunter. Cowen has an “organic,” long-term approach with his clients—he’s not a “place ’em once and be done” operator.

 

Rather, Cowen focuses on building long relationships—you don’t just get a job through him, you enter a community. His real magic is when he brings together a room full of people at a breakfast or a dozen people at a dinner—with two agendas: 1) To keep them up to speed on trends in legal and 2) to provide an environment that is safe and confidential, where people can talk candidly and share ideas. It’s all about being with the right people and the right discussions that escalate not just your career, but your life. Cowen has an amazying ability to ask the right questions and fuel the right conversations.

We become close friends over the years—Cowen helped me navigate my retirement from ALM in 2015 and he became one of my freelance clients.

On Jan. 27, Cowen is launching a Book Club that you may find right up your alley. I’ve already signed up, and it’s likely to be a blast. Said Cowen: “I’d love to say something terribly altruistic about why am starting the book club, but the simple truth is that
most of my favorite people (personally and professionally) are avid readers. Now more than ever I want to know what and how they are thinking about the big changes in our world, business and our industry.”

 

 

“The book club is the best way I know how to bring my favorite people from around the country together once a month for a exchange of ideas,” he said. “And since I couldn’t find a book club for like-minded people in our industry, I decided to start one.
My father always told me, ‘Be the change you want to be.'”

The first book on Cowen’s list is GRIT: The Power of Passion and Preserverance, by Angela Duckworth. I’m an addict for audiobooks that I listen to in my car and on trains. I got through about three chapters, but I wasn’t impressed and told that to David. It just felt repetitious and kind of braggy. My initial thought was that it would be great for 20-somethings at the beginning of their careers, but not for veteran workerg

 

But when I looked at the paper book, I instantly saw that the layout (especially the front chapters) had illustrations and charts that were helpful to understanding Duckworth’s premises.

Cowen loved the book. “I find it an invaluable lens through which to see the world these days,” he said. “It’s remarkably valuable for self awareness. Grit has become a valid and undeniable competitive advantage if you can spot it and explain it.”

“For example: hiring managers today of all generations of workforce—baby boomers, gen X, Y Z, millennials—you need to have grit as a top five attribute to screen for. You need to ask questions that will display the grit of the candidate. It also will help you put together a new team of top performers,” said Cowen. “You want to develop a very clear definition of grit and know-how to spot it,  attract it, motivate it, and promote it.”

“One of the significant and valid knocks on millennials is that they jump around, want too much too soon, etc. While this is the fault of the helicopter parent generation, the fact remains that the vast majority of millennial’s lack grit. They are plenty smart and tech savvy etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah but! They lack grit!,” he said.

“It takes passion and perseverance—not just passion,” she said. “So essentially one of the real takeaways of the book is the lens through which you view yourself, the workforce, the world around you, society.”

“Reading is one of the great catalysts for learning and reinventing yourself,” said Cowen.”Now, more than ever, with the accelerating advancement of artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc., we humans, are gonna need to find smooth and seamless ways of reinventing ourselves so that we are augmented by technology and not replaced. You are what you read.”

The first (virtual) Cowen Group Book Club will launch on Jan. 27th, at 1 p.m. Eastern—and continue on the last Friday of every month. It’s free—registration info here: http://bit.ly/2iXSQgv. The mission statement: “To inform, instruct and inspire through an exchange of ideas with peers.”

 

 

★★★★ (David Cowen)
GRIT: The Power of Passion and Preserverance
Author: Angela Duckworth
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN 973-1-5011-1110-5

 

 

More Reading:
• Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times

• Ted Talk: Angela Duckworth.

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @MonicaBay

Cover image: Clipart.com
Duckworth image: Angela Duckworth site.