Latinos In America

By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

When the oldest members of Generation Y (born roughly 1978 to 1993) began graduating from college several years ago, a collective groan was heard in offices throughout Corporate America.

People said many Gen Y-ers, also called Millennials, had an excess sense of entitlement and were arrogant and lazy. They wanted to do work on their terms and it seemed they wanted feedback on that work every five minutes.

But then the economy tanked. Now, millions of Gen Y-ers are reinventing themselves to show how much, and how quickly, they can add value to their organizations.

The Millennials I’ve met recently are aware of the changes taking place in the work world, and they perceive themselves — and their jobs — as vulnerable. Bruce Tulgan, author of “Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y,” says he has seen the same thing.

“There is a growing sense of casualties, [along with] the fact that you have to work double time to earn the credit and rewards you need,” he says. “Gen Y-ers are thinking it might be a good idea to keep their thoughts, words, and actions a little more cautious, especially since they are facing less support from parents who are busy scrambling to keep their own lives afloat.”

Adding More Value

Holly Hoffman, a 27-year-old market-research manager at a national newspaper corporation in Texas, was accustomed to simply doing the work that was handed to her — until the recession hit. “As the bottom person, I knew that I would be eliminated unless I could directly tie my position to profits,” she says. “So instead of just using the sales program I was given, I interviewed our field reps to see how we could improve it.”

Ms. Hoffman’s revamped sales program was expanded to three additional newspapers, earning her a promotion even as many of her friends were being laid off. Now that she is supporting four times as many people in the advertising and circulation departments, she’s flourishing in the current downturn.

“Instead of looking for what you can get out of your company, focus on what you can put in,” Ms. Hoffman advises fellow Millennials.

‘Good Citizens’

Many Gen Y-ers are also becoming what Mr. Tulgan terms “good workplace citizens.” That is, rather than demanding to be catered to, they’re instead becoming prompt, dressing more appropriately, following up on obligations, and using better judgment. “They’re also shifting their attention from peer relationships to building rapport with managers, customers, vendors, and other decision makers,” says Mr. Tulgan.

Savvy Gen Y-ers are using forums such as social networks, professional associations and company gatherings to gain access to valuable contacts. They are ready and willing to volunteer any assistance they can in exchange for information or mentoring.

Strengthening her ties with other internal departments has been a key element of Ms. Hoffman’s survival strategy. “I found that once I was able to get buy-in for my initiatives, I was applauded and rewarded,” she says.

Please send your career questions to reinvent@wsj.com. Alexandra Levit will answer some in the paper and online at wsj.com/careers
.

Write to Alexandra Levit at reinvent@wsj.com

By DONALD RUMSFELD

At their worst, meetings can be both useless and mind-numbing. It calls to mind an observation made in that endless font of wise management advice, the comic strip Dilbert: “There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we’ll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us.”

David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the White House, Jan. 14, 2002.

Not every meeting has to be a source of dread. If you think about it, a meeting’s function is to pool an organization’s collective wisdom and knowledge in one room, making it easier for a manager to learn what his team knows that he doesn’t, and to provide guidance to all of those involved in one place at one time. Well-managed meetings can be valuable—indeed, indispensable.

The first consideration for meetings is whether to call one at all. The default tendency in any bureaucracy, especially in government, is to substitute discussion for decision-making. If you are the leader of an organization and call a meeting, make sure you have something to communicate or need to learn in a group setting. If the meeting is to be purely informational, without much back and forth, that information could probably be as easily relayed in a memo or email. One of the reasons President Nixon preferred to have important proposals put in writing was to ensure that a meeting’s outcome would not be unduly affected by whoever had the more assertive voice.

Second, when you decide to hold a meeting, it is important to avoid meandering sessions. When I moved into my first executive position in government in 1969, I had a stand-up desk. I use it to this day. Aside from the more recently heralded health benefits, standing up while working tends to be an incentive for those who come in for a discussion to say what they need to say, and not linger. I want folks to be comfortable in my office—just not too comfortable.

Third, pay close attention to who is invited and, for goodness’ sake, avoid making meetings so large that it feels you should have rented an amphitheater. During my last tour as secretary of defense, I found it not uncommon to walk into meetings in the White House Situation Room and see more than a dozen people packed in. In previous administrations, a single note-taker sufficed. Who knows exactly how many damaging leaks may have resulted from Hollywood-size entourages sitting in on sensitive high-level sessions.

Fourth, start and end meetings on time. Consider how much time is wasted by starting a meeting 15 minutes late. If 20 people are in attendance, that means that cumulatively you will have wasted five hours of time that could have been spent on something productive.

Fifth, encourage others to give their views, even if it may ruffle some feathers. “Stay in your lane” is not my favorite phrase. Usually it is deployed by those who don’t like other people commenting on their activities. An organization with impenetrable silos is not benefiting from the brains of its people. In meetings, endeavor to foster a culture in which people can comment on anything as long as their comments are relevant and constructive.

Sixth, as the saying goes, “Nothing betrays imbecility so much as insensitivity to it.” During meetings, I confess to being less than patient with folks who bring up irrelevant information or are ill-prepared. I also tend to lack patience with PowerPoint presentations that convey obvious information or slides with grammatical errors and that lack page numbers.

There were occasions when I abruptly ended a meeting in progress and advised the participants that we would reconvene when everyone had had time to fully prepare. The response was usually surprised looks all around. In my experience some leaders don’t end meetings when it’s clear they’ve become a waste of time. Instead they sit there and let the meeting experience a slow, painful death.

Seventh, keep in mind that when new ideas are broached in a meeting, there is often an instinctive and immediate opposition. Large bureaucracies can be masterful at creating an insular and self-serving culture in which people reinforce each other and become captive to what becomes the conventional wisdom. Meetings are a good place to discover whether an organization might be suffering from groupthink. If everyone in the room seems convinced of the brilliance of an idea, it may be a sign that the organization would benefit from more dissent and debate.

Finally, when ending a meeting, make a practice of summarizing the salient points and take-aways, making sure that all participants know precisely what actions you intend to be taken and by whom. I’ve found it can also be helpful to offer a last opportunity for anyone in the room to speak up by my asking, “Is there anything else?” or “What have we missed?” There often is something important that someone was thinking of saying and never found the opportunity for.

Hopefully, when a meeting does end, it has been valuable enough that people look forward to the next one. But then again, that’s probably too much to ask.

—Adapted from “Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War and Life,” which will be published Tuesday by Broadside Books. Copyright © 2013 by Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld served as U.S. secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 and from 2001 to 2006, and as the chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies.

A version of this article appeared May 11, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rumsfeld’s Rules For Meetings.

Por NICHOLAS HASTINGS

La confianza de los inversionistas en el euro finalmente podría ceder ahora.

Durante meses, la moneda única recibió el respaldo internacional de las inversiones en bonos de los países altamente endeudados de la zona euro, lo que redujo los rendimientos de sus bonos y les permitió endeudarse una vez más a tasas razonables.

El deteriorado estado de la economía de la eurozona ha sido largamente ignorado y el euro se ha mostrado resistente.

En las últimas semanas, por ejemplo, cualquier debilidad del euro frente al dólar se debió principalmente por la fortaleza de la moneda estadounidense más que por otros factores.

Las esperanzas de que lo peor de la crisis de la deuda de la zona euro había pasado se vieron fortalecidas esta semana por las noticias de que los ministros de finanzas de la eurozona estimaban que Grecia y Chipre eran elegibles para sus últimos tramos de rescate.

La decisión de Fitch de elevar la calificación crediticia de Grecia, a “B-” desde “CCC”, hizo caer los rendimientos de los bonos griegos a 10 años a su nivel más bajo desde junio de 2010.

Y esta sensación de alivio también es evidente en los mercados europeos de acciones, donde el índice DAX de Alemania está alcanzando máximos récord.

Pero es discutible si todo esto se debe a que realmente está regresando la confianza de los inversionistas en la zona euro, o si solo se debe a los altos niveles de liquidez mundial.

La verdadera razón podría revelarse pronto, especialmente si, pese a la euforia en otras partes, la economía de la zona euro continúa mostrando pocas señales de recuperación.

De hecho, nuevos datos de crecimiento para el primer trimestre sugieren que la región se está desempeñando incluso peor de lo esperado, con una contracción de 0,2% en vez de la caída de 0,1% que se anticipaba.

El crecimiento alemán, en particular, ha sido inquietantemente lento, con su economía expandiéndose solo 0,1% en los tres primeros meses del año.

Aunque algunos analistas han culpado a las malas condiciones meteorológicas por la debilidad alemana, esto no significa que la región será capaz de protagonizar un repunte en el corto plazo.

Ben May, economista europeo de Capital Economics, lo resume de la siguiente manera: “Aún creemos que las proyecciones de consenso de un retroceso de 0,4% en el PIB de la eurozona para este año son demasiado optimistas, y esperamos algo más cercano a -2%”.

En el más largo plazo, esto no será una buena noticia para el euro por más de una razón.

Para comenzar, los datos incrementarán la presión sobre el Banco Central Europeo para volver a reducir las tasas de interés, una medida que bien podría implicar llevar la tasa de los depósitos hacia territorio negativo a medida que el banco central trata de estimular el crecimiento.

Debido a que las cifras de inflación en Alemania fueron revisados a la baja a comienzos de esta semana, el banco central difícilmente pueda usar la inflación como excusa para no relajar aún más su política.

El otro aspecto negativo de los datos para el euro es la sugerencia de que pese a todos los esfuerzos del BCE para fomentar los créditos bancarios, el mecanismo de transmisión para ayudar a las empresas más pequeñas y los consumidores de muchas de las naciones deudoras está fallando. Si ese es el caso, las posibilidades de una recuperación anticipada de la eurozona se harán mucho más remotas.

Otro foco de preocupación para la moneda única fue el fracaso esta semana de los ministros de finanzas de la región para alcanzar algún progreso significativo en las negociaciones sobre una unión bancaria.

La creación de un organismo regulador para promover la uniformidad sigue siendo vital para la seguridad del sistema financiero de la eurozona en el más largo plazo, y mientras más tiempo tome su conformación, más tiempo el sistema permanecerá vulnerable a contagios.

Pero, en lo que respecta al euro, muchas de estas cosas aún no lo han afectado.

La fortaleza del dólar, así como algunas preocupaciones iniciales sobre la eurozona, tal vez hayan ayudado a que la moneda única se debilitara a un mínimo de cinco semanas frente al dólar esta semana.

No obstante, con el fin en los próximos días de la reciente caída de los rendimientos de los bonos de los países deudores, la confianza de los inversionistas tal vez comience a disminuir, y la moneda única podría comenzar a sufrir las consecuencias del débil estado económico de la región.

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Entrepreneur Rob Israel believes he has found a winning recipe.

The founder of Doc Popcorn, which sells fresh-popped snacks in flavors such as “sinfully cinnamon” and “hoppin’ jalapeno,” has supervised the opening of 54 franchise outlets in five years and says he is working with another 200 in development.

Matt Nager for The Wall Street Journal

Doc Popcorn franchisees can open full-scale stores, mall kiosks or mobile carts. Above, founder Rob Israel in Denver on Tuesday.

Mr. Israel would like to credit his product’s popularity for the steady growth. But he also attributes his success to a flexible franchise system that allows local entrepreneurs to buy into the brand at a level that fits their budget. Franchisees can open a full-scale store for an investment of up to $150,000, or they can opt for a mall kiosk at a cost of about $100,000. A mobile cart requires an initial investment of about $70,000.

“It’s efficient, very simple and affordable,” Mr. Israel says.

It’s also a fast-growing trend in the franchise world.

Franchise consultants say they are seeing more corporations offering potential investors an array of business models, at different price points. In an era where credit is tight and investors are cautious, both franchisers and franchisees say this type of flexibility is the key to expansion.

“Many investors have difficulty finding credit to build out full-size stores,” says Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, a trade group. “There has been an explosion of different franchise models within the same brand.”

Huntington Learning Center, a tutoring service, recently began offering prospective franchisees two tiers of investment. For a franchise fee of $10,000 (plus build-out expenses and a 9.5% royalty fee), investors could open a “standard” tutoring center in a retail space of about 1,200 square feet. For a franchise fee of $59,000—and a lower, 8% royalty—they could open an “expanded” center, with more room to tutor not just in the traditional subjects of math and reading, but also in science and other academic fields.

“This has not been a strong year for us in terms of new sales,” says Raymond Huntington, the company’s chairman, who attributes the slump to tough competition in the tutoring industry, tight credit and the shaky economy. He hopes the lower up-front costs of the standard option will encourage more entrepreneurs to give the Huntington brand a try.

For franchisers, one risk of the tiered model is losing control of the brand image. A successful company will take the time to spell out precise standards for customer interaction, product presentation and corporate oversight—and do this well before launching a new business model, says Benjamin Litalien, who runs the consulting firm Franchise Well LLC.

Franchisers likely already have detailed standards for lighting, signage, product display and sales patter in a traditional store, but those rules don’t necessarily translate well to a mall kiosk or a food truck, Mr. Litalien says.

When the truck is emblazoned with the brand name, everything from how the driver navigates traffic to where he pulls over to sell his wares can affect the product’s image.

Mr. Litalien also warns franchisers to think through the implications of new formats on loyal, long-time franchisees. Someone who has invested $500,000 in building a standalone donut shop may not be pleased to see a rival selling the same brand from an inexpensive mobile cart, especially if they compete for the same customer base.

Prospective franchisees, meanwhile, should take a hard look at whether corporate executives have the expertise to help them pioneer a new means of reaching customers, Mr. Litalien says. “They may not have the field support,” he says.

Nazrul Islam says he recognizes the risks but was still happy to hear that a food vendor he enjoys, BannaStrow’s Crepes and Coffee, was offering a tiered franchise system that let him choose whether to launch with a food truck, a kiosk, a food-court counter or a traditional restaurant.

Mr. Islam found a location he liked at the entrance to a mall food court in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., invested more than $200,000 and recently opened for business. “In the economic downturn, I thought it was better to open in a mall,” at a location with heavy foot traffic, he says.

Doc Popcorn franchisee Nate Godo also started small, with a mobile cart that he wheeled to events at the convention center in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., in 2010. Retail sales were new to Mr. Godo; he had spent his career up to that point managing an automotive business. So he wasn’t about to invest a fortune in popcorn without first testing out the viability on a small scale, he says.

Mr. Godo’s mobile cart did so well that he moved into the popcorn business full-time a year ago; he recently stationed a second cart in a local mall.

He likes the way the tiered system “allows me to gradually ramp up,” he says.

Write to
Smalltalk@wsj.com

By JESSICA C. WAKEMAN

While talk of employment growth has been circulating for the last several months and experts expect Friday’s unemployment report to show job gains for the second month in a row, another group of key players say they plan to add jobs in 2010.

According to the Society for Human Resources Management, 35% of the 1,625 employers who responded to a March survey say they expect to add full-time workers in 2010, more than double last year’s 16% of respondents who said their firms would add staff.

The increase might be a reflection of a renewed sense of calm about the business climate, experts say.

“Many organizations have a sense that the market is improving, giving them the confidence they need to start rebuilding,” said John Dooney, SHRM’s manager of strategic research.

One firm adding employees now is Bank of America

which has 6,000 open positions spanning human resources to investment banking, says Kelly E. Sapp, a spokeswoman for Bank of America. She says that the company has more than doubled the size of its intern program and also doubled graduate hiring over 2009, a shift she attributes to business need and growth from acquisitions.

iStock Photo

Friday’s job report is expected to show job growth.

Mark Anderson, president of ExecuNet, a network for business leaders providing recruiting, research and advice, says that recruiters and companies have been talking about the improving market for the last six months–and now companies are finally acting on those feelings by filling in the talent gaps left behind by layoffs and hiring freezes.

“One thing businesses do not like is uncertainity and now that things are starting to look positive, companies feel that they can add positions instead of trading up,” said Mr. Anderson.

ExecuNet’s own May benchmark Recruiter Confidence Index, a monthly survey that measures the executive job market, shows 65% of 185 responding executive recruiters are “confident” or “very confident” that the executive employment market will improve over the next six months, making May 2010 the second consecutive month that index remained over 60% since June 2008.

The SHRM report showed that 52% of professional, scientific and technical services firms will add jobs, up from 21% in 2009. Some 43% of high-tech companies also plan to add jobs.

And Mr. Dooney says that the report also shows salary freezes are being lifted and fewer employers expect to make layoffs in 2010 than in the last two years. On average across all industries, salaries are expected to rise 2.2 percent in 2010, the report showed.

Por DINNY MCMAHON en Taiyuan, China

Miao Lingquan costumava pagar os agricultores de pimenta que compareciam em massa à frente da sua porta no tempo de colheita com dinheiro guardado em caixas empilhadas até a altura da sua cintura. Mas agora o escritório do empreendedor, que faz pasta de pimenta do tipo malagueta para exportar para o Japão, está surpreendentemente vazio.

No ano passado, Miao começou a comprar todas as pimentas usando uma linha de telefone fixa que o Banco Agrícola da China, o AgBank, deu a ele. O telefone de cor verde garrafa lê cartões de banco e pode processar pagamentos.

“É mais rápido e mais conveniente para os clientes e promove a segurança pública”, disse Miao, observando um fornecedor que tinha dirigido por seis horas para trazer suas pimentas de uma província vizinha passar seu cartão para aprovar a transferência de 70 mil yuans (US$ 11.200) para a sua conta bancária. “Você não corre o risco de ser esfaqueado por causa do seu dinheiro.”

O interior da China carece há muito tempo de serviços financeiros básicos, com os bancos se recusando a construir agências em áreas menos desenvolvidas. A consequência é que os agricultores chineses e os negócios rurais estão famintos por crédito, o que retarda o crescimento econômico das áreas mais pobres da China.

O AgBank, o terceiro maior banco da China em valor de ativos, espera mudar isso colocando em marcha um sistema eletrônico de pagamentos em partes da economia chinesa que são completamente baseadas em dinheiro vivo. A meta é atingir clientes que estão horas de distância da agência bancária mais próxima — e uma vez que estejam conectados ao sistema financeiro, promover a concessão de crédito.

A chave tem sido a distribuição gratuita de “telefones de transferência” nos vilarejos do país, uma inovadora fusão entre um telefone normal e uma máquina de ponto de venda usada para processar pagamentos com cartões de bancos. Eles parecem telefones normais, exceto por um sulco em um dos lados para passar os cartões, o rolo de papel dos recibos empoleirado no topo e a pequena tela de LCD usada para a navegação do processo de transação.

O AgBank começou a provar informalmente seu telefone nas áreas rurais em 2008, cinco anos após ele ter sido originalmente desenvolvido por uma divisão urbana do banco. O banco distribuiu mais de 1,47 milhão de telefones para áreas rurais até o fim de junho do ano passado.

Para empreendedores como Miao, o equipamento permite pagar rapidamente fornecedores e ser pago pelos compradores. Para as famílias rurais, os telefones permitem que os pais remetam fundos para os estudantes que se mudaram para cidades afastadas em busca de educação sem ter de fazer uma viagem até o banco — e para trabalhadores migrantes enviarem regularmente dinheiro para casa. 

Os telefones também permitem que as pessoas acessem seu dinheiro quando for conveniente — estabelecimentos com esses telefones podem oferecer dinheiro de volta como ocorre em qualquer supermercado do ocidente — ao invés de guardá-lo todo debaixo do colchão. 

Outras companhias em economias em desenvolvimento têm evitado a necessidade de instalar infraestrutura física para pagamentos em áreas rurais ao usar SMS, serviços de mensagens curtas, em telefones celulares. Mas o pagamento via celular tem demorado para decolar na China.

Quando o AgBank começou primeiro a instalar sua rede de telefones em áreas rurais, o pagamento bancário via celular estava ainda engatinhando na China e a segurança dos pagamentos era a maior preocupação. A regulamentação chinesa tinha também restringido instituições não financeiras de oferecer serviços bancários, o que significa que companhias como as de telecomunicações — que têm sido fundamentais na condução do serviços bancários móveis em outros países em desenvolvimento — não estavam envolvidas na concepção inicial das soluções financeiras para a zona rural.

A consultoria McKinsey & Co. estimou o volume total bruto das transações na China via pagamentos por celular em cerca de US$ 9 bilhões em 2012, ante US$ 2 bilhões em 2010. É um valor pequenino comparado aos US$ 716 bilhões em transações realizadas via telefone fixo pelo AgBank durante a primeira metade de 2012.

O banco distribui o telefone gratuitamente para os clientes rurais e não cobra pelas transações. O AgBank espera que os telefones ajudem a gerar receita ao fornecer uma base para a concessão de mais crédito para as áreas rurais.

Betty Wilkinson, uma especialista em finanças do departamento da Ásia Oriental do Banco de Desenvolvimento da Ásia, diz que a medida real do sucesso dos telefones será se o volume de empréstimos para as áreas rurais aumentar uma vez que a infra-estrutura seja instalada.

“O que o AgBank está fazendo não é um pré-requisito para o sucesso das atividades bancárias [na China] rural, mas é um passo técnico crítico para a frente”, diz.

(Colaborou Paul Mozur.)

By DIANA MIDDLETON

Since the start of the recession, employees say they are too fearful or too discouraged to seek new opportunities. As a result, they are entrenched in their positions and have given up looking for higher pay or better positions, even within their own firms, according to a study conducted by Towers Watson, a human resources consulting firm. The biennial study, to be released Tuesday, also found that respondents have dramatically lowered their career and retirement aspirations.

“Recession survivors” are a new crop of workers that have restructured their career expectations based on the economy and stagnant work opportunities, Diana Middleton reports on the News Hub.

The findings reflect the attitudes of “recession survivors,” says Max Caldwell, a managing principle at Towers Watson.

Not only are workers cautious about seeking advancement, fewer people are retiring, making any jumps they might want to make more difficult.

The survey polled more than 20,000 employees at midsize and large companies across all industries between November 2009 and January 2010 and asked about everything from their plans to look for other jobs to their retirement expectations.

Some 43% of respondents believe they can only advance if they leave their current job. But 44% say they have no plans to leave their job because stability is more important to them. More than half, 51% felt that there was no clear path toward advancement at their current employer.

Mr. Caldwell says the survey was meant to capture “how the recession impacted employees attitudes.”

That echoes a recent Conference Board report, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households which found only 45% of those people were satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted.

“We’ve found that since the recession, people are ‘burrowing in,’ ” Mr. Caldwell says. “Instead of looking elsewhere for higher pay or the better position, people are craving stability.”

Meg Montford, a Kansas City, Mo., career coach, says people are also more fearful of looking for outside opportunities. While the job market has improved some, potential job hunters are spooked from seeing friends and family lose their jobs, and instead are staying put, she says.

“Employees are overworked and underappreciated,” Ms. Montford says, adding that in gratitude for even having a job, employees are willing to tolerate more workplace discomfort.

That attitude is damaging to the talent pipeline, because young people aren’t gearing up for—or being trained for—promotions, Mr. Caldwell says.

Some 33% of respondents want to work for one company forever, a figure that surprised Mr. Caldwell and is a sea change from the job-hopping that was a hallmark of the early 2000s.

Dan King, a principal of Career Planning and Management Inc. in Boston says he’s seen more people feeling beleaguered and listless about their careers in the past year. Before the recession, most of his clients were unhappy employees who wanted help nabbing better positions tailored to their skills. Now, they are more likely to be hesitant job seekers who cling to jobs they hate, Mr. King says.

“There’s little recognition for the extra load [employees] are carrying,” says Mr. King.

Towers Watson’s Mr. Caldwell also says that even as the recovery continues, it may be harder for employees to get ahead. That’s because companies are focused on managing labor costs and leveraging flexible staffing models, such as utilizing contractors, Mr. Caldwell says.

“Companies are turning a corner toward recovery, but the recession has had a big psychological impact on workers,” he says. “They’re just holding on.”

Write to Diana Middleton at diana.middleton@wsj.com

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

Dallas

The way Robert Edsel tells the story, it all began in 1997 on the Ponte Vecchio. He’d recently sold his oil-and-gas exploration business for $37 million, and moved to Florence with no grand plan except to find a grand passion.

Zina Saunders

“I’d always been interested in art and architecture, but I’d never had any courses. And I thought, ‘Well, I’m in Florence and there are all these art-history professors, so I should go around and learn about the subject.’ I was reading about 10 books a week because I had the time,” said Mr. Edsel, 56, who’s tall and lean (a former nationally ranked tennis player, he still logs regular court time with his good friend Rod Laver) and has a shock of white hair that he keeps futilely shoving back from his forehead. But what you mostly notice is the intensity. That and the apologetically long answers to any and all questions.

At one point in his tutorial, Mr. Edsel became immersed in “The Rape of Europa,” a chronicle of the Nazis’ looting and theft. “I remember standing on the Ponte Vecchio. I knew I wasn’t a World War II historian, but I knew enough to know that Europe had been beaten to pieces,” he said, sitting at a conference table in his downtown office here. “So if the continent was in shambles, how did all these works of art survive? They didn’t have legs. They didn’t go hide on their own. So I started asking people in Florence, and they all said ‘that’s an amazing question.’”

The onetime oil man has been drilling for answers ever since, first with “Rescuing Da Vinci” (2006), a book of photographs, and then with “The Monuments Men” (2009), an account of a special Allied force—museum directors, curators and conservators—who risked their lives to keep the world’s masterpieces from falling into enemy hands.

A film adaptation of “Monuments Men,” co-written, produced and directed by George Clooney, who also stars with Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett, is due out in December; Mr. Edsel is confident that the movie will give a nice lift to the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, the nonprofit he established half a dozen years ago to safeguard the legacy of his “protagonists” and to help complete their mission of returning stolen treasures to their owners.

And now Mr. Edsel has a new book, “Saving Italy,” a companion volume of sorts to “The Monuments Men.” His original plan was to tell both stories between a single set of covers, “but when I was writing ‘Monuments Men’ and it got to 500, 600, 700 pages it was clear that something had to go.

“By then I understood a lot better the distinction between what the Nazis did in [the rest of] Western Europe—where there were the more targeted thefts from Jews and other collectors—and what they did in Italy. There wasn’t the same mass premeditated looting going on there. But there were severe threats to the art,” he said, among them the Allied bomb that almost destroyed “The Last Supper.”

“In Italy you turn left and you turn right; there’s usually something very old and very important wherever you go.”

Mr. Edsel almost went bankrupt twice in his previous career. Thus, he wasn’t one to be daunted by the historians who initially dismissed him as a rich dilettante, and the publishers who simply dismissed him. “They said: ‘Nobody is going to be interested. It’s an old story.’ And I said, ‘I really think you’re wrong,’” he recalled. Then they said, ‘It’s already been done.’ And I said: ‘Hey, save me from myself. Tell me the name of the book and I’ll stop.’ And of course nobody could.

“I’ve made the mistake many times in my life, in the midst of my exuberance and passion, of thinking because I love something everybody will love it. But from the time I got interested in this over a four- or five-year period, I’d go to lunch or dinner with people and they’d say, ‘What are you working on?’ and I’d tell them for two minutes, and then I’d say, ‘What’s happening with you?’ And they’d say: ‘Forget what’s happening with me. Go back to that story about the salt mines,’ he said, referring to the Nazi repositories for the safekeeping of stolen treasures by the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens and Vermeer.

“I believe everyone has a connection to this story,” said Mr. Edsel, who lectures frequently, customizing his talks for the occasion. When, for example, he’s addressing Jewish audiences, he’ll mention the hundreds of Torahs collected by the Nazis, then found and repatriated by the Monuments Men. Veterans will hear the tale told in military terms—which Army units had which Monuments officers.

“I once challenged a group of middle-school students to name a subject of interest to them, and I told them I could put up an image that would show their connection to the story,” he recalled. “One boy yelled ‘sports,’ so I put up a picture of Hitler standing in front of the Discobolus, which he illegally removed from Italy.”

The refusal of most museums to publicize their own link to the story is an endless source of frustration to Mr. Edsel. “The Kimball, the Meadows, the Dallas Museum of Art—those are our three main museums here,” he said. “I can take you and show you the pictures that have ERR codes”—the Nazis’ inventory system—”that were properly restituted. There’s the connection to the Monuments Men.”

The eldest of three children, Mr. Edsel was born in Oak Park, Ill., and raised in Dallas, which remains his base of operations. Headquarters for the Monuments Men Foundation, a converted warehouse with exposed brick walls, is lined with photographs—Florence’s Accademia where Michelangelo’s David was entombed in brick to protect it from bombing strikes by the Allied forces; Gens. Omar Bradley, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton surrounded by Nazi plunder inside the Merkers, German salt mines.

Here, Mr. Edsel works the phones, appealing to the better angels of veterans who are holding on to spoils of war, perhaps even trying to sell them. One victory: He convinced a veteran to give up a leather souvenir album he’d picked up when his unit took over Hitler’s house, one of the long-missing volumes cataloging the never-built Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. Now, see it at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

“The final chapter of World War II is just now being written,” he said. “In the next five or 10 years the remainder of that generation—whether they were veterans, displaced persons, American, French, Soviet—are going to pass, and the things that are in attics and hanging on walls are going to have new owners. My concern is that if it’s documents or books and they’re in a foreign language, the heirs won’t know what they are and may just toss them.

“Nobody can go find everything that was taken during the war,” Mr. Edsel said. “But what we can do by raising awareness is to let people know where they can find us.”

Ms. Kaufman writes about culture for the Journal.

A version of this article appeared May 2, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: He Drills for Answers.

By LINDSAY GELLMAN

Many college graduates won’t be scrolling through Craigslist ads and Facebook

posts for new roommates this spring. That’s because they already know theirs—Mom and Dad.

Although the economy is on the mend, a still-tight job market in many areas and a load of student debt will force many 20-somethings to move back home this spring—and stay for a while. And they’ll be joining plenty of last year’s graduates who still can’t afford to move out on their own.

But financial experts say young adults can use a return to the family nest as an opportunity to focus on paying off debt and start a savings plan for both the short and long term.

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“Because you’re not paying rent [or are paying low rent to your parents], it’s a chance to make sure you quickly get on the right financial foot,” says Alexa von Tobel, founder of LearnVest.com, an online provider of financial-planning services and education for young adults.

The first thing you should do is sit down with your parents and discuss what will be expected of you—financially or otherwise, says Meg Jay, a psychologist in Charlottesville, Va., and author of “The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter, and How to Make the Most of Them.” You need to agree on which bills you’ll pay, how you’ll handle any debt (say, student loans and credit cards), how much you’ll set aside for savings and, of course, a timetable for when you will eventually move out. This allows you to take ownership of your finances and develop responsible habits even if you’re not yet financially independent. Plus, being on the same page as your parents will help minimize any household tension.

How you go about this will, of course, depend on your employment situation. If you’ve landed a job right after graduation, you should start paying for your personal expenses—cellphone bill, car payment, insurance and gas among them—as well as aggressively paying down any debt.

John Schuller returned home after graduating from Illinois State University in December in order to save money. He started working at a Chicago immigration firm in February and pays for expenses including a gym membership and motorcycle registration and insurance. He will soon start making student-loan payments as well.

Working young adults also should contribute to the household budget in some fashion. Mr. Schuller, 22, says he puts gas in the family car and fixes household appliances that are on the fritz. At a recent family outing for breakfast near his home in Darien, Ill., he picked up the tab.

If you’re moving back home to attend graduate school, the rules should still apply—in some form. Sarah Bialecki moved back home to Monroe, Mich., after graduating from Central Michigan University in spring 2011, to pursue a graduate degree in occupational therapy. The 23-year-old works part-time as a switchboard operator to pay for her personal expenses, such as gas, textbooks, food and tuition, not covered by federal student loans.

And if you’re returning home without a job, your No. 1 task should be to find one. “You need to get a job—any job,” says Harlan Cohen, syndicated advice columnist and author of books for young adults and parents. This includes landing part-time or summer work while you actively network and look for a full-time spot.

Once you have a handle on your expenses, start saving—a lot. Start by building up emergency savings equivalent to three to six months of your take-home pay (or if you’re not working full-time, your expenses), says Kimberly Foss, a wealth adviser in Sacramento, Calif.

Then start thinking long term. If your employer offers a 401(k) retirement saving plan, contribute at least enough to get a company match, if there is one. Also, open up a Roth individual retirement account (maximum contribution for 2013 is $5,500).

And what if you’ve been doing all of these things for a year or so, and still can’t afford to leave the nest? Try an enforced savings plan with your parents, says Ms. Foss. Pay your parents a set amount each month to cover, say, rent, utilities and groceries. Have them set aside the money until there’s enough saved up for you to move out.

—Email: lindsay.gellman@wsj.com

By JAMIE EWBANK

Christian Mueringer / Alamy

Mont Ventoux’s peak

THE BARREN PEAK of Provence’s Mont Ventoux has a fearsome reputation among professional cyclists, but the Giant of Provence is also proof of the great cycling truism: Anyone with a bike can ride the same mountains as cycling’s heroes.

The Tour de France will return to Ventoux for the 15th time this summer, bringing with it enormous crowds. But even outside of those raucous days, the area remains the perfect place to make your own breakaway, offering everything from medieval architecture to mountain-reared pork and lamb, to be washed down, of course, with robust local wine.

Unlike multi-mountain holidays such as the Raid Pyrénéen—the route across the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean—Mont Ventoux is ideally suited to credit-card touring and has enough off-the-bike diversions to be more than just a cycling holiday. Instead of climbing several mountains over several days, moving from hotel to hotel as you go, here you can stay in one location and choose three routes up one mountain.

Professional cyclists can make the ascent in just over an hour of nonstop cycling. Strong club riders will manage it in about double that time, but anyone who is fit and healthy can attempt the climb as long as you allow yourself several hours for rest stops.

Here’s our guide to an ascendant weekend on Mont Ventoux.

Day One

Friday

7:46 p.m. | Arrive at Avignon TGV and head to the small commune of Crillon le Brave, near the foot of Mont Ventoux. Hardened cyclists may want to ride the 40 kilometer journey, or you can take a taxi for around €80.

8:40 p.m. | As well as being a perfect base camp for all three ascents of Ventoux, the Relais & Châteaux’s Hotel Crillon le Brave is a beautiful place to stay. Its guest rooms are spread across several 17th-century houses linked by courtyards and bridges, and set alongside a pool and restaurant area where you can dine on local specialties, including filet d’agneau, and sip Châteauneuf-du-Pape. If you’re traveling without your bike, you can rent one from the hotel, which also has a Coureurs du Ventoux guest book to record your time. Rooms from €280 per night; place de l’Église, crillonlebrave.com

Day Two

Saturday

10 a.m. | Cyclists looking to record a good time for the ascent tend to set off early in the morning to avoid having to ride in the midday sun, but if you’re planning to bike at an unhurried pace, you can afford to leave later. Take the D974 and D164 toward Sault and enjoy a late breakfast at Le Provençal, a courtyard cafe in one of the town’s venerable buildings, where you can enjoy local pâté and lamb dishes for very reasonable prices. rue Porte des Aires; +33 (0)4 90 64 09 09

12 p.m. | Arrive in Sault, often thought of as the gentlest ascent and the most traditionally picturesque route. The town sits on the tip of the Vaucluse plateau, looking west toward Ventoux. Head to its elevated public boules court, from where you can see farmhouses dotted among the vast, blue fields of lavender the city is known for. Everywhere in town you’ll be greeted by the stylized ceramic cicadas designed by Louis Sicard.

From here, ride up the hill into Sault’s winding medieval streets, where you’ll find well-preserved 16th-century houses and a moving Maquis memorial. Grab lunch at one of the numerous cafes and enjoy the laid-back, Gallic culture, with a good view, a strong drink and not a laptop in sight.

1 p.m. | Begin your 26-kilometer ride from the boules court, dropping down the short, steep road into the valley and heading toward Ventoux on the narrow D164, making long sweeps left and right across the valley before entering the beech forests and starting the climb. The ascent from Sault is the longest of the three, and consequently the gentlest, with the early roads in the forest taking long, straight tilts.

2:30 p.m. | Two-thirds of the way into your climb, approaching the cafe and ski station at Chalet Reynard, the route is almost flat. The easing gradient comes at just the point where the road starts to lift out of the trees, giving you respite and a view to enjoy with it. The crowds—and applause—that greet your arrival at the chalet can be a shock after 15 kilometers of comparative solitude. Eat at the cafe and refill your water bottles before tackling the last leg. +33 (0)4 90 61 84 55; chalet-reynard.fr

3 p.m. | From here, you enter the iconic “moonscape,” where the peak of the mountain, beginning in the 12th century, was deforested to feed the shipyards in distant Toulon. The roads are steeper, and the mistral can be as difficult as the gradients if you’re unfortunate enough to find a headwind.

3:40 p.m. | After a few kilometers on the limestone slopes, stop at the Tom Simpson memorial for a reflective moment, leaving a bottle or cycling cap in tribute to the World Champion who died here during the 1967 Tour de France. This stop is also a useful respite before the final kilometer up to the last hairpin and the tiny, steep ramp to the Ventoux observatory.

4 p.m. | Spend some time getting your breath back and taking in the spectacular views. Despite being a crowded tourist spot, the summit of Ventoux has little more than a gift shop to offer, where you can buy sweets and souvenirs before starting the descent.

The contrast between the hours of ascending and the minutes of descending is striking. Even if you’re riding cautiously, you will be back in Crillon le Brave and taking a dip in the hotel’s pool within the hour. Take the descent cautiously, watching for oncoming cars that have pulled into your lane to overtake ascending riders.

Day Three

Sunday

10 a.m. | Follow the D138 through four kilometers of fields and flatlands from Crillon le Brave to Bédoin and start your morning with a tour of the town.

For cyclists, Bédoin is both Mecca and the Glastonbury festival, a place of solemn pilgrimage, yet so filled with kindred spirits that it is hard to avoid an atmosphere of communal celebration. You cannot take a photograph without a handlebar, a wheel or a Lycra-clad thigh intruding into it.

Fortify yourself for the journey ahead the way professionals did in less scientific days: with steak tartare at a roadside cafe. For something less visceral, lunch at the Hotel des Pins’s restaurant, L’Esprit Jardin, where you can have another Provençal speciality, côte de porc du Ventoux aux girolles. Mains from €15, hotel-des-pins.fr

1 p.m. | From Bédoin, ride gently through the vineyards of St.-Colombe and St.-Estève, spinning a lower gear than you think you need and saving yourself for the beautiful but unrelenting climb through the forest, where you’ll hit stretches of gradients that average 9% and peak at more than 12% along this 21-kilometer route.

2:40 p.m. | Stop at the signpost for Petit Moutet, about 12 kilometers up the climb, and enjoy the vista between two sections of forest. Few other vantage points include so much of Ventoux’s varied terrain. It can be daunting, but keep in mind that the summit isn’t going anywhere: Measure your efforts, take in the lush woodland and rocky passes and work your way up to Chalet Reynard, where you’ll benefit from familiarity with the final kilometers of the route.

4:30 p.m. | On your downhill leg, stop for a cooling demi-pression at Le Guintrand, a quiet cafe bar in St.-Colombe that offers shady outdoor tables and a view of the route without the bustle of Bédoin itself (+33 (0)4 90 37 10 08; leguintrand.com

). Once refreshed, cross the road for dinner beneath the hanging baskets at La Colombe. +33 (0)4 90 65 61 20

Day Four

Monday

9 a.m. | The route along the D13 and D938 to Malaucène is a short but rolling 16 kilometers—just enough to warm up for the final, third ascent. Begin the journey from Malaucène, which has neither Bédoin’s single-mindedness nor the valley vistas of Sault, yet in many ways is the start of the Ventoux legend. It was from Malaucène that the Renaissance poet Petrarch made one of the first ascents of the mountain, albeit on foot rather than on a carbon-fiber wonderbike. It is said that Petrarch’s account of climbing Ventoux popularized Alpinism, and Malaucène remains popular with rock climbers to this day.

11 a.m. | The ascent from Malaucène can be as tough as the climb from Bédoin, but with more shelter from the wind. It will take you three or four hours, depending on how well you have recovered from your previous exertions. While you will spend long spells riding up 9-10% slopes, the steep sections are broken up by gentler pitches of around 3%—and even the odd false-flat. This forces some grueling changes of rhythm, but also allows you some respite.

1:20 p.m. | By the time you reach Mont Serein, you’ve tackled the hardest that the Malaucène ascent has to offer and the final stretch is similar to the Bédoin ascent.

2:20 p.m. | On the descent to Bédoin, stop at Chalet Reynard for one final lunch, before returning to the hotel and departing. Express trains to Paris leave Avignon TGV every hour, and although the distance from Crillon le Brave to Avignon was ridable Friday, no one could fault you for taking a taxi back.