I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
- Steven Wright
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Bon Jour to "Old School" Courtesy
Rowan Manahan, whose blog Fortify Your Oasis is essential reading, has hit a grand slam home run with this post on courtesy.
It is an always timely reminder of how the little things count and how we tend to remember them.
I'm putting together a weekly "People to Remember" list in my calendar in order to shame myself into acknowledging and remembering folks who deserve more attention. It's far too easy to get busy with projects and forget people.
Rowan's post nudged me into some notes and calls.
Recovering the Wounded
An executive once summed up his organization to me by noting, "We don't recover our wounded."
There was a lot of meaning contained in those words.
On the surface, he was observing that if anyone got into trouble with the Powers That Be, no aid would be coming from upper management.
But, of course, he was also saying far more than that. He was revealing that upper management is so lacking in courage and basic decency that the team - including himself - was into a "Save your own skin" mode.
It is one of the most demoralizing statements I've ever heard.
The executive is a good and highly competent man. Most people would say he is a strong man. His organization is well regarded in its industry. That did not keep him, however, from joining his colleagues in an ethical sin of omission. He, and most of his colleagues, would not needlessly seek to wound - in a career damaging sense - one of their co-workers but they can easily sit by and ignore someone who could be comforted or saved by their assistance.
Ethicist Michael Josephson and others have proposed that one reason why people behave unethically is they overestimate the potential danger that could come from doing the right thing and underestimate the cost of not doing so.
I don't believe that any serious harm would come to any of those executives if they behaved in a decent, caring manner toward their "wounded." On the other hand, I have no doubt that each has been harmed, deep inside, by the failure to do so.
There was a lot of meaning contained in those words.
On the surface, he was observing that if anyone got into trouble with the Powers That Be, no aid would be coming from upper management.
But, of course, he was also saying far more than that. He was revealing that upper management is so lacking in courage and basic decency that the team - including himself - was into a "Save your own skin" mode.
It is one of the most demoralizing statements I've ever heard.
The executive is a good and highly competent man. Most people would say he is a strong man. His organization is well regarded in its industry. That did not keep him, however, from joining his colleagues in an ethical sin of omission. He, and most of his colleagues, would not needlessly seek to wound - in a career damaging sense - one of their co-workers but they can easily sit by and ignore someone who could be comforted or saved by their assistance.
Ethicist Michael Josephson and others have proposed that one reason why people behave unethically is they overestimate the potential danger that could come from doing the right thing and underestimate the cost of not doing so.
I don't believe that any serious harm would come to any of those executives if they behaved in a decent, caring manner toward their "wounded." On the other hand, I have no doubt that each has been harmed, deep inside, by the failure to do so.
Scribblers
Scott Simon gives his top five list of books on journalism.
[One of my favorite books by a journalist is The Earl of Louisiana by A.J. Liebling. Liebling's description of a true wild man, Governor Earl Long of Louisiana, is captivating and often hilarious. It remains one of the best examinations of Louisiana's red-blooded form of politics.]
[One of my favorite books by a journalist is The Earl of Louisiana by A.J. Liebling. Liebling's description of a true wild man, Governor Earl Long of Louisiana, is captivating and often hilarious. It remains one of the best examinations of Louisiana's red-blooded form of politics.]
Rex
I'll call him Rex.
He arrived shortly before the class started and grabbed a seat in the back of the room. A large, muscular man, he resembled a shaggy cross between a biker and a pirate.
I was teaching Equal Employment Opportunity, a topic that can spark some controversy as the class tackles case examples on quotas, harassment, and investigations. The audience was composed of supervisors from public and private employers and had the usual mixture of talkers and silent types. Rex was one of the latter.
I always encourage questions and told the class to feel free to interrupt and not sit on their questions. Rex didn't ask a thing, but his body language was expressive. He sat with both arms folded and either stared off into the distance or hit me with a look that indicated I wasn't high on his list. Normally, I would have gone over to talk with him during one of the breaks in order to see what he was thinking, but each time I was intercepted by other students who had questions they didn't want to surface in front of the others.
The class went on and I tried to put Rex out of my mind. I looked at him occasionally, but purposely decided to keep him from throwing me off of my game. The rest of the students were attentive and enthusiastic and deserved an effective presentation. I kept wondering, however, what would cause someone to sit through a class in such a manner. Perhaps he was ordered to attend. There may have been some personal burden completely unrelated to anything - or anyone - in the room. Try as I might, Rex remained in my thoughts. With every case example and every quesion I wondered, "What is he thinking?"
The session finally came to an end. Several students came up and talked to me as they handed in the evaluations. I noticed Rex lingering in the back. After all of the others had departed, he snatched his paperwork and walked up.
Here it comes, I thought.
He towered over me and held out his hand. "I just want you to know," he mumbled, "that I really enjoyed this class. Didn't think I would, but it was really interesting."
Micro-Sleepers Arise!
Rod Satterwhite at Suits in the Workplace blog examines a strange case from Oregon on sleeping in the workplace:
Jon Brown worked as an emergency dispatcher for the City of Salem for almost 25 years. Brown was diagnosed with sleep apnea more than 10 years before he was terminated in 2003. As a result of the sleep apnea, Brown suffered from “micro-sleeps” – involuntarily falling asleep for brief periods of time. (I always thought they were called naps.) Brown acknowledged that the City was initially cooperative in attempting to reasonably accommodate his condition. He was excused from night duty and was provided with a fan after his physician indicated that high temperatures in the workplace might trigger the micro-sleeps. These accommodations failed to completely alleviate Brown’s symptoms, however, and he was ultimately terminated in 2003, at least in part because he fell asleep while on duty.
Jon Brown worked as an emergency dispatcher for the City of Salem for almost 25 years. Brown was diagnosed with sleep apnea more than 10 years before he was terminated in 2003. As a result of the sleep apnea, Brown suffered from “micro-sleeps” – involuntarily falling asleep for brief periods of time. (I always thought they were called naps.) Brown acknowledged that the City was initially cooperative in attempting to reasonably accommodate his condition. He was excused from night duty and was provided with a fan after his physician indicated that high temperatures in the workplace might trigger the micro-sleeps. These accommodations failed to completely alleviate Brown’s symptoms, however, and he was ultimately terminated in 2003, at least in part because he fell asleep while on duty.
Concluding that Brown had presented a prima facie case of disability discrimination under the ADA, the court rejected the City’s motion for summary judgment and ruled that Brown’s claim could proceed to trial. At issue was whether a causal connection existed between the termination and the disability. Brown’s managers knew he suffered from sleep apnea when they terminated him, and they recognized that his sleeping on the job might have been related to that disability. Nevertheless, there were obvious safety concerns relating to a "micro-sleep" happening in the middle of an emergency call. Noting that “conduct resulting from the disability is considered to be part of the disability and that termination based on that conduct is unlawful,” the court denied the City’s motion for summary judgment.
Quote of the Day
Slang is a language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
- Carl Sandburg
- Carl Sandburg
Friday, March 09, 2007
Intellectual Diversity and Making Cars
Chief Executive has an interesting interview with Robert Lutz of General Motors. An excerpt:
How do you induce, manage and then leverage creativity?
How do you induce, manage and then leverage creativity?
Of what use is physical diversity without intellectual diversity? With diversity, we’ve focused on making sure we have a bunch of people who all look different. Not enough attention is paid to making sure that we have people whose brains are wired differently. We now actively recruit people who are well-educated and enthusiastic and conversant with cars, but do not necessarily have a finance or even an engineering background.
The other thing we did was unshackle design. Over the last 20 years, design was compressed into a very narrow box. Other priorities took precedence. How far away is the side glass from the occupants’ head? How much headroom is there? How good is the visibility outside the car? When everybody else had defined the car with these limitations, design was told, okay, now wrap this for us.
You can’t get there from here. You must let designers have a new, off-the-wall idea and then ask, “What is the minimum amount of compromise we have to accept to make this design feasible?” That’s how we run it now, and it makes a huge difference. Just look at the Malibu, the Saturn Aura, our new big crossovers, the GMC Acadia, the Saturn Outlook, the soon-to-be-introduced Buick Enclave. GM is hitting its stride again both in terms of execution but also in terms of creativity.
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