Up to Speed

The Titanic

(Article originally published in the Escanaba Daily Press, October 3, 2009)

On October 1st, I officially became Director of the Delta County Economic Development Alliance. Preparing for this first day on the job reminded me of a story about another first day.

Some years ago I was a middle school English teacher living in Minneapolis. One of my first jobs, fresh out of college, was taking over a classroom for a teacher who left mid-year. The odds were against me. I had more students than desks. I looked so young the school nurse couldn’t tell me apart from the 7th graders. The job was way bigger than me. But I’ve always been an achiever, and I wanted to do well.

So I read this book called The First Days of School about how to waltz into the classroom on Day One and whip those kids into shape. The book had instructions for launching the perfect discipline system with warnings, names on the board, and detention. I did everything the author advised to prepare for the perfect first day. I was sure I couldn’t fail.

You’re probably shocked that my first day wasn’t quite what the book promised. Those kids looked at my nervous smile, my navy blue stewardess suit and matching pumps, and smelled fresh meat. I literally fell on my backside that day: I was tripped by a big, mean girl named Latrice whose foot shot out into the aisle like a booby trap in the jungle. (Latrice was eventually expelled for stealing from the teacher’s lounge.) The only butt that got whipped on Day One was mine.

My book-learned, guaranteed-to-succeed approach failed miserably. That book gave me the blueprints for the Titanic — the perfect, unsinkable ship that hit an iceberg and sank.

As a naive new teacher I thought for sure that if I did all the right things and followed all the right steps, I’d be awesome at my job right out of the gate. What I refused to accept was that it takes time to learn how to teach.

When I found out I got the job as Economic Development Director for Delta County, my initial response was the same: “I need to read the right books, do all the right things, and come up with the right plan so I can be wildly successful and brilliant on Day One.” I obsessed over how to formulate a perfect economic development plan, how to sound knowledgeable, and how to inspire confidence in the people I will serve.

Thankfully, a small voice said, “Don’t you remember what happened on that other first day? Don’t build the Titanic. Start with a little boat.”

Captain Greg and Eli, Summer 2009

The little boat was inspired by my friend Greg, a sailor. When he was still a kid, Greg bought a little beat up sailboat, the kind where you get really wet. He spent a lot of time fixing it up and learning how to sail it. Greg sailed with older guys who were good at it. They taught him what they knew.

When Greg got more skilled, he saved up his money and bought a bigger boat — one where you still get wet, but not quite as much. Greg fixed up the bigger boat, joined racing crews, and got really good.

When he became an adult, Greg wanted to really go places. So he saved up and bought a bigger boat yet. The boat he has now. He takes it on cool family trips, and races it on Wednesdays in the summer, and sometimes he’s really nice and takes his friends out for a cruise.  You don’t generally get wet on Greg’s current boat (unless you’re me).

Greg is happy with this boat. He found a little beat-up boat for his daughter. They’re fixing it up, and she’s learning how to sail just as her dad did.

One thing I discovered as a teacher was that often the lessons you teach are the ones you yourself most need to learn. The things I write and talk about in my role as EDA director will likely be things I’m trying to learn myself.

Lesson one: When you start a new job, don’t build the Titanic. Go find yourself a little boat. And some guys who know how to sail.

In the weeks and months to come, I’m going to be starting small. I don’t want to, but I know it’s necessary. I’d like to say I’m going to launch some big, fail-safe economic development plan that will transform Delta County overnight. Realistically, I will strive for small successes early on to build momentum and get the ball rolling. Then, slowly, thoughtfully, we will work together to build something bigger, something sustainable. A plan that will — five years from now, ten years from now — bring us the abundance of good paying jobs, the opportunities for our children, and the thriving local economy we all want.

I will also be talking to a lot of people who know more about our wonderful patch of the U.P. than I probably ever will. Just as Greg sails with all the teachers he ever had, even when he sails alone, I know any success I have in this job will come from the brains, generosity, and passion of many others. I can’t wait to get wet!

If you liked this post, you might also like, A Tale of Two C’s or My Life as a Trailing Spouse.

In the 1960 summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games, despite running on a sprained ankle. She was nicknamed the “Tornado” the fastest woman on earth, and the Black Gazelle. 

By all accounts, Wilma Rudolph was a master at track and field. Some called her a “natural athlete.” But if you know Wilma Rudolph’s story, you’ll know the truth is that Wilma wasn’t a born athlete. She was a sickly, crippled child who turned herself into a world-class runner through tremendous determination and discipline.

Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 lbs., the 20^th of 22 siblings born into a black family in the South in 1940. She was struck with polio as a very young child, leaving her with a twisted foot and leg. She wore a brace and her family drove her to Nashville regularly for treatments. By the time she was 12 years old, Wilma had also survived scarlet fever, whooping cough, chicken pox, and measles.

Wilma was determined to overcome her physical challenges and become an athlete like her older siblings. Eventually she left the leg braces behind and became a star on her high school basketball team. Wilma was discovered by Tennessee State track coach Ed Temple, the man who prepared her to win Olympic gold in the 100 and 200-meter dash and the 400-meter relay.

What would YOU like to become a master of? If you’re in the work force, you may wish to become a master at your job. If you’re retired, maybe you would like to achieve mastery at a hobby - become a master gardener, or a master fisherman. Or we could apply mastery to people and relationships – becoming the best in the world at being a parent, or a spouse, or a friend to those in need. But what does it take to truly achieve mastery in any area of our life? Why do only a select few ever become great at what they do?

It is a common myth that talent is what makes some people great. From an early age we’re taught that some of us just have a natural aptitude for athletics, or managing companies, or playing an instrument. God given talent is what makes some people masters. So if we try something and discover we’re not all that great at it, or if we experience initial success only to hit a plateau, we give up on mastery, thinking we just weren’t cut out for it. We become a hacker, content with average performance or we give up entirely.

In his book, Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin points out that research conducted in the past 30 years or so has proven this idea of inherent talent false. Studies of a variety of subjects - violin players, chess champions, golf pros, etc. - all indicate that the difference between great performers and average performers is hard work and practice, not natural talent. Masters in a given field did not show unusual giftedness, but rather logged many more hours of practice time than their peers and engaged in “deliberate practice” - systematic practice of techniques involving specific goals and regular feedback to improve performance.

George Leonard wrote an inspiring little book called Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-term Fulfillment. Leonard identifies 5 principles that can help you achieve mastery in any area of your life. 

1. Instruction

There are some things you can learn on your own, but if you really want to be a master in your field you must find a good teacher or coach to guide your efforts. It’s no accident that Bela Karolyi’s gym produced so many Olympic gymnasts or that Meisner, Adler, and Strasberg taught so many great actors - including Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman. Find someone whose students are performing with excellence and learn your craft at their feet.

2. Practice

This weekend I watched my friend, Jeff, play his acoustic guitar so beautifully and masterfully it seemed effortless. But I know that Jeff goes home every night after work and practices his guitar for at least two hours. Deliberate practice is the key to mastery. We have to learn to love to practice in order to become great. You have to love playing scales on your instrument as much or more than you love performing in the concert hall. An old martial arts saying goes, “The master is the one who stays on the mat five minutes longer every day than anybody else.” Be that guy.

3. Surrender.

The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. To your teacher. To the constant routine of hard work to become better. And sometimes we must surrender our own expert status and become beginners again in order to reach the next level of achievement. Tiger Woods famously remade his golf swing AFTER he had already achieved tremendous success in his sport. For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.

4. Intentionality

Intentionality is mindfulness, mental practice, having a vision of what you want to accomplish. Arnold Schwarzenneger argued that pumping a weight one time with full consciousness was worth ten without mental awareness. Average distance runners let their minds wander during a race in order to forget about the pain. Master runners focus on their bodies the whole time in order to perform to the best of their ability with every stride.

Cognitive psychology has discovered that visualizing an activity triggers the same parts of the brain as if we were actually DOING that activity. Mental practice can be as effective as actual practice in achieving mastery. 

5. The Edge.

The edge is the point where the master takes a flying leap. It seems to be a contradiction of what got the expert performer to the height of their field in the first place. After dedication to the fundamentals of their discipline and years of small, incremental steps forward there comes a point where these masters take a leap off the edge. “They challenge previous limits, they break the rules they’ve worked so hard to learn, they take risks for the sake of higher performance.”

With All Your Might

Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 verse 10 says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Like Wilma Rudolph, you don’t need to be limited by challenges or the myth of talent. Whatever you’d like to be a master of, apply these five principles and be satisfied with the slow, steady rewards of deliberate practice.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

On Planning for an Uncertain Future: Will someone please tell me what’s going to be on the test? or

Good to Great Obama Style: Why he won the White House and how it applies to You.

Fuze Tell A Story Contest

SlideShare is sponsoring the Fuze Meeting Tell a Story Contest now until June 19th. Vote for me so Super Apple wins! I adapted the Super Apple Saves the Day blog post into a short 3-minute slidecast (powerpoint + voiceover). Enjoy the show below and then visit SlideShare to vote for me. Use the share/save tool to share this post with a friend! Thanks.

While addressing the 2008 National Symposium on Handgun Violence at Duquesne University, Tom Mauser displays the shoes of his son, Daniel, who was killed at Columbine High School. Mr. Mauser wears the shoes on special occasions. Photo via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It seems like every time you turn around there’s another horrible violent story. The soldier in Iraq who killed five fellow patients at a mental health clinic. Men committing murder-suicides that wipe out their entire family. The teenage swimmers gunned down near Iron Mountain last summer. 

We turn to psychology to try to answer huge questions in the wake of these tragedies. Why do people commit these awful crimes? A bad upbringing?  Victimization at the hands of bullies? Traits they were born with?

The 10th anniversary of Columbine was this April 20, and journalist Dave Cullen published a new book profiling Harris and Klebold. Contrary to popular belief, Cullen found the killers were not unpopular misfits in the Trench Coat Mafia, harrassed by their peers. They were “two good students with lots of friends who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way.” 

So then why did they do it? Read this Slate article Cullen wrote in 2005, “The Depressive and the Psychopath.” It details the conclusions of psychiatrists and psychologists closest to the case.

I’ve been taking Intro to Psych at the local community college as a prerequisite for my grad school program. The author of our textbook (Exploring Psychology in Modules, Myers) advises us to, “bear in mind psychology’s limits. Don’t expect it to answer the ultimate questions, such as those posed by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy: ‘Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?’  Instead, expect that psychology will help you understand why people think, feel, and act as they do. Then you should find the study of psychology fascinating and useful.” (page eight)

Okay, so maybe psychology can’t tell me the meaning of life. But psychology captures my attention, and my imagination, because it offers hints or answers to some vital questions about our humanity.

• What will REALLY make me happy?
• How do I raise my kid so he will be successful, happy, and not hate me?
• How can I have hard conversations with my husband without ending up unhappily married or headed for divorce court?
• What is it that makes some people superstars in their fields, achieving a level of performance far above the rest of us mere mortals?
• Why is it so hard for people to change, or to meet our goals? How do alcoholics get sober, or Biggest Loser contestants become marathon runners?
• What makes people from other countries, other cultures, act the way they do? Welcome strangers into their homes, or blow themselves up in a crowded restaurant?
• When I teach a lesson or write an ad how can I get people to pay attention and remember what I’m saying?
• What can I do and say in a job interview that will get me hired?

These are questions I find useful, that apply to things I care about. I’m not really interested in little questions. I want to talk about big ones. Psychology is an attractive field of study because it addresses so many of my big questions.

I’m not really into basic research - pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base. You’d never catch me in a lab taking notes while people shock each other or rats chase cheese. But the applied research - using psychology to solve practical problems? That’s good stuff. 

And as a teacher, I love finding a good research study in psychology that applies to what I’m teaching. You gain two benefits, really. 1) It’s credible, because research in contemporary psychology is usually every bit as rigorous as that conducted in other scientific and medical fields. 2) People tend to be genuinely interested in hearing about what makes people tick.

I’ll read an article or book about psychology any day if I can see how it applies to me, to people I know, or to scary sensational stuff like psychopaths who go on killing sprees. I’m always on the lookout for more of the cool, crazy, use-it-tomorrow stuff that psychology has to offer.

Illustration by Chris Quick 5/6/09

One of my favorite bloggers, Pam Slim, just launched her new book today. In Pam’s honor, I spent the afternoon learning my iMovie software so I could make this little video. Check out the Escape from Cubicle Nation Website and go buy the book.

The Trailing Wives Club

First there was Kristin, the engineer. She toiled in misery as a bank teller for over a year before finally breaking back into her field - as a poorly paid intern.

Kathy left a job she loved at a consulting firm. She was overqualified for every position she applied for, but was never even granted an interview. She’s trying to embrace a new life as a homemaker and stay at home mom, but any time Kathy talks about her old job, she cries.

These ladies and I are part of a class of displaced people known as trailing spouses, working professionals who move for the sake of our partner’s career and then face setbacks or stagnation in our own careers because of it. This scenario is extremely common in my region. If a college-educated couple moves to the Upper Peninsula because one of them landed a great job, chances are good their spouse will be unemployed or underemployed.

Now that women are blazing new career trails, men are joining our ranks. Gary relocated when his wife was promoted to a high-profile position in healthcare. After two years of dead end job searches he has resigned himself to staying at home.

Gary’s wife cheerfully told me he has adjusted to being a house-husband. She’s grateful he’s there to cook and take care of the house while she fights her way up the career ladder. I smiled politely, but thought, ‘Gary’s okay with this? Yeah, right.’  I know firsthand the frustrations of making do while your significant other is busy making progress. Poor Gary’s got the cultural norms of man-as-breadwinner to contend with besides.

My own story isn’t exactly a tragedy, but I wouldn’t classify it as a success story either. We moved to Upper Michigan from Minneapolis in 2003 when my husband, Eric, got a job with the US Forest Service. I searched for a teaching job for a year and a half but never even found an opening to apply for. I worked as a substitute teacher for half the money I made doing the same job in the Twin Cities. I wasn’t alone, either. One intelligent woman with a teaching degree had been stuck in low-wage support positions for more than a decade.

Through a series of fortunate events I stumbled into an entry level position with a local advertising agency. I enjoy the work and my colleagues are like family, but 4 years later I’m ready to move up to new challenges, and a higher salary. Unfortunately job openings are still few and far between and there’s tough competition for the positions that do open up.

My frustrations with this small, blue collar town are mounting as the few doors that open seem to get slammed in my face. I’ve been interviewed and come in “second place” multiple times. Whispered accounts of unspoken “hire locals first” policies poison my thoughts further, leaving me cynical and angry. My poor husband endures constant tearful petitions to move somewhere with more opportunities and a fair playing field for outsiders.

At first Eric resisted my complaints and chalked them up to a bad attitude.  Then one day he softened and showed a new willingness to negotiate. It seems he had conversations with two other guys at the office whose wives were also bugging them to relocate. These ladies were fed up with lousy job prospects, too.

Knowing your circumstances are not unique is helpful, I think. It allows you to step back and examine your situation as evidence of a larger cultural trend, rather than a problem particular to your own life and marriage.

Should I stay or should I go?

I’ve been slowly digesting Richard Florida’s “Who’s Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life“ for several weeks now. I’m not sure whether reading this book should be classified as self-improvement or self-torture for a trailing spouse like me.

Here’s my loose interpretation of Florida’s premise. All the smart, creative, entrepreneurial people in the world are clustering together in hipster mega-regions full of gays, artists, and Internet billionaires. Those of us who live elsewhere will be left in the dark ages. Culturally and financially impoverished. Largely irrelevant.

I like to think of myself as part of the creative class that will drive the new economy, but right now I’m living in one of the places Florida calls, “huge valleys of the spiky world - rural areas and far-flung places that have little concentration of population or economic activity, and little connection to global activity (p. 32). ”  I suspect it’s in these “valleys” that the numbers of trailing spouses like me are reaching epidemic proportions.

This book fuels my current feelings of dissatisfaction and desperation. I live in Michigan, a whirling vortex of economic backsliding with Detroit at the eye of the storm. At times I chastise myself for falling into the “grass is greener” trap and failing to learn the lessons of being in this place, at this time. Other times I regret not trying harder to get the heck out of Dodge.

Instead of fighting against my present location-related obstacles, I could invest my energy into moving somewhere else. Sure it would be hard to uproot friendships and routines after nearly 6 years. Yes, it could be tough to sell our house in this real estate market. But if I were willing to endure this pain and stress in the short term, would I reap far greater benefits 6 months or 6 years from now?

Leaving also means giving up some of the great things about living here. Economic issues aside, Escanaba actually has a lot going for it. The natural beauty of Lake Michigan and the surrounding forests and rivers are inspiring.  It’s a fun place if you like cool temperatures and outdoor sports. Housing prices are very reasonable. My husband and I bought a lovely historic 1915 three bedroom home across from Lake Michigan for $165,000. I shudder to think how little house this amount would buy if we moved to a growing market.

Building a Career, vs. Building a Life

Living here has been difficult career-wise, but gave me a tremendous boost creatively. Escanaba has a thriving arts community. We have a fine arts center, some talented artists, an excellent community theatre, and even an Underground Theatre that performs edgy stuff like “The Vagina Monologues” and “The Pillowman.” This rebel theatre crowd raises the ire of more conservative residents (think Footloose), thus ensuring packed editorial space in the local paper and overflow crowds on opening night.

Three weeks after we arrived I auditioned for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and landed the lead role. I gave tours at the art center. I was recruited to serve as acting talent and crew for a collection of short films. I landed a marketing job with zero experience and dove into copywriting, graphic design, presentations, and voiceover acting. I joined Toastmasters. I started a book club.

The theatre was full of my kind of people - creative, eccentric types who love to have fun and make art for its own sake. My husband and I found a wonderful group of friends and performed in several shows. Many of my young talented colleagues talk about running off to the big city to pursue fame and fortune. It’s rare that anyone actually leaves, though.

I can’t imagine myself doing all these things if I had stayed in the Twin Cities. That’s the thing about small towns - opportunities to get involved are more accessible. They’re physically easier to get to, and because there isn’t so much competition you can be kind-of-good at something and still participate. Size is not prescriptive in determining whether a community will be an enjoyable place to live or not. Escanaba is a wonderful place to be an artist. A wonderful place to retire. It’s not necessarily a wonderful place to try to build a career or start a business.

Is happiness dependent on location?

The older ladies in my mentoring group from church encourage us to surrender our own desires, accept what God has for us, and embrace where we are. I do think this is wise advice, but in my heart I’m not ready  to wave the white flag. I’m too ambitious (or perhaps selfish) to let go of my desire to find satisfying work and be well-compensated for it. I can’t help but think I would be happier and more successful in a different place. It also concerns me that the church ladies’ own stories always seem to start with a line like, “I spent the first five years living here depressed and miserable…”

My better self does belive true joy is dependent on attitude, not location or circumstance. And I don’t think this advice to surrender is merely a crutch for Christians. Steve Pavlina has a blog post on “Leveling Up” in which he exhorts readers to look for and master the lessons at their current level of experience in order to move up to the next stage of growth. He writes, “You can’t move forward in life by hating where you are…Resistance is powerlessness. Acceptance is power.”

This seems to resonate with the church ladies’ truth, though Pavlina is passionately opposed to organized religion. (He does advocate talking directly to Jesus, however, which is cool.)

Is happiness dependent on place? Perhaps to some degree. But writers like Victor Frankl or Jean-Dominique Bauby show us that we can choose to live full meaningful lives even when imprisoned by Nazis or our own bodies.

No matter where you live, you always have to do the hard work of carving out a life, playing the hand you’re dealt, finding your identity, and building relationships. Whether you’re privileged to have infinite choices or only one, life presents challenges that require us to adapt and adjust. And maybe, like me,  you have to take a deep breath and admit that a career isn’t the only thing that matters.

This trailing spouse is still desperate to get out of town. I feel like George Bailey with his suitcase packed, circumstances conspiring to keep me off the train. There are no definite plans to move on the horizon. But the verdict is still out on whether my survival and growth depends on moving somewhere else, or finding the place where I can be happy within myself.

Dilbert - the Lighter Side of Cubicle Nation

I’m excited for my pre-ordered copy of the new Escape From Cubicle Nation book to arrive this month. The author, Pam Slim, is an insightful blogger and coach who helps people figure out the purpose of their lives and take steps toward career freedom. My friend Annie is a poster child for Pam’s message.

Toxic Workplaces

Annie’s work environment is challenging, to say the least. The windowless office is honeycombed with gray dividers. Neon lights glare overhead. Large numbers of employees suffer migraines, which Annie suspects is due to a mix of harsh lighting and stress.

The head honchos are workaholics who live at the office nights and weekends. They don’t have families or social lives to speak of. They don’t eat right or take care of themselves. And they expect their underlings to follow suit. Thus, everyone who works with Annie is stressed and unhealthy.

The organization is plagued by customer service problems, as there is a cavernous communication gap between the administrators who make decisions and those who deliver services on the front lines. The programs in place don’t work nearly as effectively as they could. Systems at Annie’s company seem to exist for their own sake, or for the sake of those in authority, rather than for ordinary employees or the customers they serve. Annie is struggling to find a healthier workplace, but in our region in this tough economic environment new openings are few and far between and the competition is stiff.

Bottom Line Marketing - the Happiest Workplace on Earth

Annie was baffled when I told her about my work environment at Bottom Line Marketing. We are a small business with just five employees. My boss Chris Brooks has created the ultimate people-centered workplace.

Our office is in the basement of Brooks’ house. He has four dogs who hang out with us (so perhaps this is really a dog-centered workplace?) and when my own dog Lucy was just a puppy I would often bring her to work with me on Fridays to play with the pack.

Our schedules are flexible, so if we need to run to the doctor or meet a significant other for lunch nobody blinks an eye. Employees are trusted to get their work done. And while we do work crazy-hard sometimes to meet a deadline, the overall mood is calm, creative, friendly, and relaxed.

When I had my first child, I was allowed to move to a part-time schedule and arrange my hours in whatever way was best for me and my family. I work four mornings a week, Monday through Thursday, so afternoons and Fridays I get to be home with my son. I put in some hours evenings and weekends as needed, but again, it’s flexible.

The staff at Bottom Line are like family. We always say, “Good morning” and ask about each others’ weekends. We exchange gifts at Christmas, and Brooks has been known to be incredibly generous toward us employees. In the short UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) summers, he grills lunch for us on the back deck. My co-worker Bekki delivers a cup of freshly-brewed coffee to my desk every morning, with skim milk and Splenda added just the way I like it. We laugh a lot. We help each other out. We cry together when life is hard. Bottom Line isn’t perfect, but it’s a great place to work.

I wish everybody in the world could work in a people-centered workplace like mine. And honestly, I wish I could find another job that would allow me to move up that next-step on the career ladder but not require me to give up the high quality work life I enjoy at Bottom Line.

Freedom of Unrestricted Sitting

I have a room in the office to myself. It includes a lovely gas fireplace, perfect for a heat-seeking missile like me who is currently writing this blog post seated on the heating vent in my dining room. This morning at the office I printed off several pages of research and curled up on the floor by my fireplace to read and take notes. I did feel awkward when the accountant passed through and I was sprawled there like a mermaid, but I’m willing to trade a little dignity for comfort.

In my teacher education program in college we read articles by child development theorists who said children and adolescents should be allowed to read in any position they liked in the classroom - curled up in a corner, on the floor, in a comfy armchair, etc. - to encourage them to engage with their work. I think this theory would be just as beneficial applied to adults, though I suspect it doesn’t happen much outside of progressive start-ups or free agents who work from home. Open seating policies are perhaps not for everyone, everyday. But for those of us who think better while comfy, it’s a blessing to be allowed to work this way.

Freedom From Inhuman Lighting

My father-in-law is a high school math teacher. He read a study that found kids are calmer and learn better when they are not subjected to harsh flourescent lighting. So Bob went to thrift shops and acquired a collection of floor lamps that he placed around the classroom, creating a more homey, calming environment. The students loved the change, and Bob noticed a marked difference in the behavior and attentiveness of his students.

But this year, a new administrator visited his classroom and decided she didn’t like his lighting. Bob told her about his research. She didn’t care. It wasn’t the way things were done. Ms. Principal probably deemed it a fire hazard or some other nonsense. So Bob received a nasty letter advising him he had better remove his lamps from his classroom. He didn’t, so the custodians hauled them out over Christmas break.

How many people in our schools and workplaces are subjected to psychologically hazardous environments because our bureaucratic systems are run by toadies, afraid of change and committed above all to making sure things are done their way? The welfare of the people learning and working under their care is far down the list of priorities, if they think of it at all.

Customer Service is the New Marketing

Today I went shopping at a big box store to buy a wireless router for my new MacBook. (Of course, I need this so I can take my laptop anywhere in the house and get comfy next to a heat source.) Any time I have to shop in the electronics aisle, I am utterly lost. There are too many choices, and not enough information. The gadget-makers and the store don’t do a very good job of giving customers the clear product knowledge they need to make a good buying decision. I don’t know which device goes with my computer (which charger goes with my phone, which ink cartridge goes with my printer) so I usually don’t stand there long before seeking the help of a store employee.

Unfortunately, the lady assigned to help me today knew less about the product than I did. She was nice, but couldn’t do much more than look dumbly over my shoulder while I read the fine print on the package and wondered aloud what it meant. She did point out the generous return policy if it turned out I had chosen unwisely.

Granted, big box stores typically differentiate themselves on price. Customer service? Not so much. The sad thing is that I’ve shopped at countless small businesses who don’t seem to understand that because they typically can’t compete with the big boys on price and selection, their primary point of differentiation should be excellent customer service. They fail to see things from their customer’s point of view. To provide adequate buying information, well-designed signage, or staff who know enough (or care enough) to be helpful.

We have entered an age where consumers have countless options for where to buy products. Social networks and customer rating sites like Yelp allow stories of bad (or good) customer service to spread like wildfire. People don’t care any more what companies say about their products. They care what they do for their customers. Customer service is about companies developing people-centered systems (including policies toward their employees). Customer service is the new marketing.

Freedom to Rest

My pal Jesus gets it. As far as I know he and God were the co-founders of the people-centered system.  When God created the world, he rested on the Seventh day, and decided it would be good for mankind to take a day of rest, too. So he wrote it into his 10 Commandments. And all the hardworking people of the world who followed God’s law were allowed a day of rest.

But of course, people who fancy themselves in charge of things have a knack for coming up with new rules that make life harder for people. The Pharisees and Saducees, the church authorities of Jesus’ day, went around making up their own lists of things people could not do on the Sabbath. It got pretty ridiculous. They called Jesus out for healing people on the Sabbath because it was too much like working.  They didn’t like his disciples picking grain on the Sabbath when they were hungry. So Jesus reminded them of the true purpose of the Sabbath. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  The system wasn’t what was important. The PEOPLE were what was important.

Taking a Sabbath is a fantastic, people-centered idea that isn’t practiced much these days. Imagine how much better the world would be if everyone took a day of rest. True rest. No blackberry. No checking your work email. No homework. Peace. Quiet. Reflection. Time with loved ones. A walk in nature. Prayer. Ah, I feel more relaxed just thinking about it.

Dan Pink talks about Sabbaths in his book A Whole New Mind when discussing applications of the 6th sense practiced by right-brained thinkers - meaning.  In his portfoliio for the chapter (page 239 in my book) he suggests readers “Take a Sabbath.”

“Select one day a week and remove yourself from the maw. Stop working. Don’t answer your email. Ignore your voice mail. Turn off your mobile phone. Most Western religions have established a Sabbath - the seventh day of the week - as a time of peace, reflection, and prayer. Whatever your faith, consider experimenting with this practice. (And it need not be religious at all. Secular Sabbaths can be equally re-energizing.) For guidance, check out Wayne Muller’s book, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives.”

Maybe it’s impossible for you to change the unfriendly environment at your own workplace. Maybe it’s also impossible for you to leave and find a different job.  But you can still give yourself a day of rest this weekend, and take advantage of a people-friendly system that has been around since the beginning of time.