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Shelf Esteem

Because a lot of you have emailed and asked, I thought I'd share just a few notes today about how GUST - The "Tale" Wind of Office Politics has been doing.

There have been some wonderful and very flattering blog reviews in the past few days by some highly esteemed professionals:

All three gave their own personal takes on the book and all three gave it a rousing thumbs up, for which I am grateful and honored.  Thanks to each of you!

I have been invited to my next book signing on Friday, July 6, at Beaverdale Books from 6-8 PM as they celebrate their first anniversary in business with a wine and cheese event.  Even if you don't come out to buy a copy of GUST, come out to tell Alice "Congratulations!" on her first year of business.  Starting a bookstore isn't easy, and she has found a wonderful market in the Beaverdale area and is flourishing.

As if all of this isn't exciting enough, Borders in Des Moines has sold out of GUST not once, but twice.  We are starting talks about taking it to other Borders stores outside of the Des Moines area.  Stay tuned for more news about that.

I've been overwhelmed by all of the wonderful feedback I've received from people who have read the book and found it a valuable resource in helping them deal with their office politics situations or have purchased it for or recommended it to a friend who is experiencing office politics challenges.

Thanks for helping to make it a success.

The Every Day and Seemingly Mundane

The other night, Mitch Matthews and I were playing his game, Q-Friends, and discussing on which movie set we would have enjoyed being present.  For both of us, the default was Star Wars.  We discussed all of the little details about this movie and wondered where and how the creators, primarily George Lucas, came up with the inspiration that made this film icon.

Well, I doubt that this is how it really happened but I ran across this short clip on YouTube:

While it is a parody, it does bring up some great points.  Great inspiration and creativity are all around us.  From the annoying cubicle-dweller down the aisle who makes unpleasant noises to the weird thing your dog does when he's begging to go outside... it's all there... just waiting to be captured.

May the (carpe factum) force be with you!

Most Post: Most Fun

A while back, I started a new series which I'll run occasionally entitled MOST.  It's your chance as my readers to share the extremes of your career/life with me and the rest of the world (or at leat the few hundred who read this blog.

FunworksThis MOST POST question comes from a book I recently received from Leslie Yerkes:  Fun Works - Creating Places where People Love to Work (Second Edition).  While the book was given to me, I still thought it was a very enjoyable and relevant read.  Ms. Yerkes' premise is an evaluation of 11 different company cultures to see what they do to make their work fun.  Companies such as Pike Place Fish Market, Southwest Airlines, and Harvard University Dining Services are dissected for how they make work fun.  Don't be mistaken; each is an accomplishment-driven organization.  The key here is what the author terms the Fun/Work Fusion... Fun and Work do not have to be mutually exclusive.  Some of the key principles shared include (among others):

  • Give permission to perform
  • Capitalize on the spontaneous
  • Value a diversity of fun styles
  • Be authentic
  • Hire good people and get out of their way

As somebody whose mantra has always been, "If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right," I really appreciated the observations that Ms. Yerkes makes in her book.  It is easily structured to put it down and pick it up without a loss of continuity.  Great quotes, thought questions, and exercises make it a very practical guide.  I'm seriously considering using it as a text for a leadership development course I'll be teaching this fall at Drake.  And while they book came from her publicist, if I didn't like it that much, I wouldn't be writing about it, let alone considering whether to use it as an MBA text.

Which leads me to the MOST POST for today:  What project, activity, event or person has been the MOST FUN in your career?  What did they do (or you do) that earned this title?  Was "fun" a conscious decision or did it happen by accident?  And is "fun" an occasional event that shows up in your career or do you fuse fun into everything you do?

Fav_momentThe most fun I've ever had on a project?  That's easy.  Creating a HIPAA compliance training video and making it look like an episode of COPS.  My energy level was through the roof as we handled scripting, casting, shooting, editing, props, etc.  It required my full attention and enthusiasm for three straight months of fusing left brain processes and procedures with right brain fun and creativity.  The client still talks about that video to this day.

Accomplice-ment

FisherpricephoneI've been saying all along that accomplishment - in its various forms - is a team sport.  Rarely does any individual who accomplishes something great operate in a vacuum.  Sure, there are some egos out there who think they do, but there's always somebody behind the scenes who is helping them along.  You can't Carpe Factum alone.

In that same vein, there are some tools I've been exploring recently in my quest for building relationships that can help achieve mutually beneficial accomplishments.  While I was at the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference last month, I met Derrick Sorles, who has become an excellent (and that's being mild - if there was an adjective beyond excellent to describe his help, I'd use it) mentor in managing LinkedIn.  I'm still getting my arms around what networking through this form of social medium can can do, but it has been almost as fascinating as blogging as I've been building my network.  The tool I've found most fascinating and useful has been the Questions & Answers section.  Through it, I've been able to meet some great individuals I would never have met otherwise.

Recently, Rodney Rumford, that sage of social media and prince of the platform, has persuaded me (as well as other bloggers) to set up profiles on Facebook.  Now I know what some of you are thinking:  "Facebook is to networking what Myspace is to blogging:  A teenage fun fest."  Rodney claims that there is benefit behind the acne-and-hormone-laden facade of Facebook, so I'm going to take him at his word.

However, while we were having this discussion at Liz Strauss's open mic night a couple of weeks ago (OK, OK, ignore the jokes about pirates and the horrible pun about cats), folks like Mike Dewitt and Chris Cree were voicing what I was thinking:  blogs (for some of us, multiple blogs), LinkedIn, Facebook, multiple email accounts... where does it all end?  How much can one person manage?  I'm not sure what the breaking point is.  I think the issue here is that there is a much larger world out there for bringing out thoughts and ideas together.  The tools are there for us to make this a truly phenomenal world to live in.

This leads me to three questions:

  1. Whom can you leverage to accomplish something great?
  2. What tools can you use to build that relationship?
  3. How can we manage all of these tools without letting them overwhelm us?

Show Me the Monet

Phone the authorities!  Call the ASPCA!  I believe that someone in my neighborhood is torturing a cat.  It sounds like they've strung him between a car's engine and exhuast and turned on the ignition.  The sound is frightening.

Actually, before we pull the police and the animal control into this, I think the reality of the source of the sound is far scarier and much more heinous.  What has really happened is that some nearby 10-year-old has acquired her first flute and her parents have banished her to practice outside.

Hey... it's an honest mistake.

Lepeintreclaudemonet29306Learning creativity is messy.  Implementing creativity is also messy.  Very messy.  Many times, the start of creative impulses can make those around us cringe.  It's been that way since the beginning of history.  Think about how many people lost their lives because they dared to challenge the traditional wisdom of the day.  I had lunch with Mike Wagner and Delaney Kirk the other day, and Mike was sharing a story he'd read about the beginnings of French Impressionism, and how people like Manet and Monet were ridiculed, harrassed and vandalized for daring to challenge L'Acadamie.

Have we improved all that much in the past several decades (or centuries)?  Companies and managers still throw out lines like:

  • I want you to think outside the box, but check with me before you do anything
  • Take risks, but just don't screw up
  • If it were that great of an idea, wouldn't our R&D department already thought of it?

Each year, 2-3 dozen MBA students show up in my classroom to learn creativity.  (The reality is that they don't learn it at all; they rediscover what's already inside.)  At first, many of them are petrified of the thought.  By the end of the semester, many are feeling a heck of a lot more empowered.  I'm always curious to hear how well they're doing at implementing their creative impulses after they've left my classroom.  Sure, there's the occasional email or phone call, but I really want to know what each one is doing to change the world... at least his or her corner of it.

Are they creating their own brand of impressionism in a world that's not ready for it yet?

Are you?

Prince Daddy

19991210_laurenIt's Father's Day weekend.  This is a holiday of mixed emotions for me.  First, I am so blessed to have two of the most wonderful girls in the universe as my daughters.  They bring me more joy than one person should be allowed to have.  To balance it out, I also feel a twinge of melancholy this weekend as well.  It's been 15 years since my own father passed away from a battle with cancer.  They say that eventually the strong grief goes away, but the reality is that it just loses the frequency with which it shows up.

The pleasant part is that all of the memories of my dad are great.  He was a man who loved.  He loved fishing and baseball.  He loved to laugh and to make others laugh.  He loved church and serving.  More than anything, he loved his family.  He came from a family of two older sisters and three younger brothers, and the legacy of that family torch has been passed down his children.  I was once in a Bible Study with a guy whose father was still alive... and his dad was a manipulative, mean-spirited, demanding, substance-abusing blight on his life (more his words than mine).  For years, I felt robbed that I had only been able to spend 25 years of my life with my dad.  At that point, my thinking changed.  I really was the fortunate one.  I became very grateful that my dad had not only been a great dad, he had already given me the best Father's Day gift ever:  he had taught me how to be a great dad as well.

CrownNow, I have two little girls of my own.  We laugh.  We love.  We play on the swing set.  We build in the sand box.  We read.  We have tea parties.  We do daddy-daughter dates.  We hold sleep-overs in the "man room."  And... every once in a while, they invite me into their world of kings-and-queens make-believe, we get dressed up in our royal garb, I slay a dragon or two (OK, so it's just a stuffed alligator), and they hug me and tell me how grateful they are that "Prince Daddy" saved them.

Yeah, life is pretty darn special.

Happy Father's Day (especially to all you "real men" out there with daughters).

Seizing the Lawpportunity

I hope you've all had fun playing Verbotomy this week.  I've had a blast reading everybody's entries into the game.

LawpportunitiesJust a quick note to remind all of you to register for the upcoming Lawpportunities Seminar on July 20.  Rush Nigut and Brett Trout are hosting a full-day seminar entitled, "Secrets of Successful Professionals Revealed."  I'm humbled to be included with an amazing group of presenters talking about a wide variety of topics:

Kevin O’Keefe
Drew McLellan
Mike Sansone
Adam Steen
Jim Goodman
Shirley Poertner
Tre Critelli
Victoria Herring
Mitch Matthews

So get your registration in today.  You'll be glad you did!

Full Frontal Verbotomy

Verbotomy_logoOK, if a so-called reporter like John Naish of The Times wants to make a game out of my book, why shouldn't others join in the fun?

The James Gang runs an awesome site called Verbotomy, an online game/contest for those who love words and word play.  Each weekday, they post a new definition, and your job is to come up with the most creative word to fit that definition.  For example, Friday's definition was "an invented language similar to baby talk, used by pet owners to communicate with their pets or to speak to an animal using such a language."  My personal favorite submission was "furnacular."  As if the word play isn't fun enough, the James Gang produces their own cartoons to accompany each day's contest, and they are a riot.

They will be featuring GUST and office politics all week.  So be sure to play along.  It promises to be a fun time.  And the best pick of the week will win a copy of GUST - The "Tale" Wind of Office Politics.  Put your creative side of playing the game of office politics to work, and see what you can generate!

The Man Behind The Blog

It appears that weekends are my chance to get caught up on the questions that other bloggers pose.  As promised last weekend, I said I would share a little bit more about myself.  Phil Gerbyshak simply asked me to cover some things that you may not already know.  However, I've been relatively transparent over the past year of blogging.  You've learned a thing or two about me and my family (and even my dog) through my posts.  Therefore, I wanted to invite you to join me at a very important place.

ManroomAbout four years ago, I asked for (and received) permission from my wife to gut and remodel our 3-season porch.  It was really not much more than an overglorified storage room at the time, and it was barely protected from the elements.  Surprisingly, Shannon gave me a thumbs up after receiving not much more than a brief description of my plans.  One of my goals has always been to have a cabin in the woods, so the design of the new sunroom was set:  northwoods cabin/lodge theme.  It's now been affectionately termed "the man room" since it is my sanctuary and refuge in a house dominated by females (which, by the way, I wouldn't have any other way).  No detail was overlooked in creating this cabin (including a screen door that does that CREEEAAAAK - BANG sound when it opens and closes).

HammockThis room has a very special meaning to me on many levels.  It's my stress vacuum on days when life seems to throw more curve balls than the rule book allows.  It's my muse for providing me with inspiration to get me through writing two books (and on to more).  It's my favorite form of transportation when reading about other people, times, and places.  It's very simple and utilitarian.  A futon, a small dining set for family dinners in the summer, and (my favorite) the hammock.

Beardance_2A while after the room was complete, I noticed a very strange pattern about the design and decoration of the room.  I'm not sure if my subconscious took over in some sort of feng shui sort of way, but the four walls actually reflect my values as a person.  If you think of moving to east to west as a metaphor of moving from past to future, the east wall is filled with old family photos to remind me of those important in my life and those who got me to where I am today.  The west wall backs up to the house and is brick.  How many of us view our futures as facing a brick wall of the unknown?  However, on this brick wall, I have my hammock hanging and one of my favorite prints, William Holbrook's "The Bear Dance."  These remind me that no matter what lies ahead, I need to relax and have fun.  If you think of moving from south to north as reflecting one's values (remember how we refer to one's core values as their "true north"?), on the south wall, there is a restored clock.  Time is important to a project manager, but in the end, we're given the same bank account of 24 hours each day; time is the last great equalizer.  On the north wall (my true north) I see three words posted above the window whenever I enter the room:  Dream, Create, Imagine.

DciCoincidence or synchronicity?  Hmmm... I'll leave that for you all to decide.  Many of my fondest memories about time in our house center around this room.  There's no television out here, only a CD player and a lot of books and games.  It's the place where I'm most likely to be found when I need to recharge my batteries.  It's the one place in the house where the best conversations seem to take place.  It's a place of hugs and of love.  In short, it's my "happy place."  And it's a huge part of the secret to the "man behind the blog."

Wicked Good Spin Doctoring

Tom Haskins has to quit reading my mind.  After all, I have a sort of quasi-schedule to my blog posts, and it never ceases to amaze me how he can leave a comment on one post that acts as a natural segue to my next post.  He just left an insightful comment to my recent book reviews:

Your addition of the adverb "genuine" got me thinking. I wonder if people who are "nice with a side order of backstabbing" are conscious of being nice, but unaware of their dark side? I wonder if genuinely nice people are born genuine (genetics), raised by genuinely nice parents, or it's a trait they acquired later in life. I wonder if a backstabber can change to genuine? I wonder what that change would involve: feedback, practicing skills, problem solving, therapy...? I wonder if the backstabber is merely confused, damaged by abuse, lacking goals to be genuine or lazy about improving his/her character?

DefyingwickedWhich brings me to my planned post.  A couple of months ago, my wife and I were able to see the musical Wicked while we were in southern Florida over spring break.  For those of you not familiar with this musical, it is the "story behind the story" of The Wizard of Oz.  While the musical hardly follows the book at all, I actually like it better because it meshes well with the familiar movie that we all know and love.  Besides the fact that it was one of the best musicals I've ever seen (I would rank it above Les Mis and Phantom), there was something that Wicked accomplished that no other broadway musical has up to this point:  it really made me think.

Submitted for your consideration:  Suppose everything you accepted as truth were suddenly turned on its ear and spun around about a zillion times?  We sometimes experience this with our office politics situations.  Without giving away too much of the plot, how would your thinking about The Wizard of Oz change if you knew that:

  • Glinda and Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) were roommates (and good friends) at school?
  • Elphaba was not so much of a wicked witch as she was an animal rights activist who fell victim to bad spin doctoring?
  • The pointy hat that the witch wears was actually a malicious regifting from Glinda?
  • All of the characters that Dorothy (who is barely a footnote in the musical) meets in her journey actually knew each other quite well long before she arrived in Oz?

Recently, I had to face a situation where somebody I had perceived as a snake politician was one of the "good guys," and somebody else I had previously trusted was really a snake.  My perceptions were allowed to persist because of spin doctoring (rather effectively executed, considering that I've always prided myself on having a rather keen BS-o-meter).  I began to wonder what it was about this newly discovered snake which made them behave as such.  Then Tom's comment came up, and it brought to mind part of Glinda's dialogue at the beginning of Wicked:

Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?  After all, she had a father, she had a mother, as so many of us do.... And, like any family, they had their secrets.

I'm not sure how many of Tom's questions I can answer... can you?  Sometimes reality, like spin doctoring, is very situational.  Perception is a prickly ally.  I do believe that every situation is capable of a happy ending, and that the "bad guys" eventually get theirs in the end.  We may never get to witness it, but it does happen... somewhere over the rainbow.

Turn The Page!

Book20dog"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."  -Groucho Marx.

That's one of my favorite quotes of all time.  I have a dog, and I have books.  If my dog is curled up napping on my stomach while I'm reading a book, I'm in heaven.  Summer is my favorite time to get caught up on reading.  The pace slows down, and the stack of books that beckons throughout the frantic pace of fall-winter-spring is finally given the attention it so rightly deserves.  Besides a couple of enjoyable novels, I tend to pick a "theme" for my professional reading list each summer.  Last summer, I indulged in books about story-telling because I wanted to become a better story-teller.  We all tell stories, whether we know it or not.  Every time we lead a PowerPoint presentation (if we're doing it right), we're telling a story.

This year, the chosen theme is workplace civility and organizational culture.  Having just released a book on office politics, it seemed only fitting.  Another thing about me that you should know is that I never just read one book at a time.  I like to read concurrently two or three books which complement each other.  Then I play off the authors' words in my mind, as if they were in the room with me having a conversation.  My first two books for this summer's list are two sides of the same coin:

The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, PhD

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval

Wow!  If the three of them ever went on a speaking circuit together, I could only imagine the number of workplaces and lives they could transform.  The basic premise of both of their books is the same:  "Mean people suck, so why not be genuinely nice?"  (Notice the adverb I added; I've not forgotten my earlier post on the subject.)  Both books do a wonderful job of mixing personal anecdotal evidence with scientific studies, with a healthy side of stories of media stars to support their approaches.

There were some recurring themes that permeated both books that deserve highlighting:

  • Power is not a dictator of treatment.  Dr. Sutton uses power in his definition of assholes, stating that to qualify as one, the "alleged asshole aims his or her venom at people who are less powerful."  Ms. Kaplan Thaler and Ms. Koval share, among six principles of being nice, that #2 is "you never know."  Those who are less powerful today may be more powerful tomorrow.  Given the flattening of power and rank by social media, that holds especially true in this day and age.  I like Liz Strauss's only rule on her Tuesday open mic nights:  Be nice.  It doesn't matter how popular your blog is; in her eyes, we're all equals.
  • Cooperation beats competition any day.  Both books mention the prisoners' dilemma, which states that over the long haul, it always pays to cooperate with your fellow prisoners than to cheat on them and rat them out.  It's certainly been true of the blogosphere.  Where Technorati makes it very hard not to pay attention to your "authority" and your "rank" among the tens of millions of blogs out there, almost all of the bloggers I've met have been warm, caring, and helpful people.  It's almost overwhelming how much bloggers help each other.  I feel like I've been blessed by dozens of "fairy god-bloggers" looking over my shoulder to grant my wish, and I feel privileged to return the favor to them whenever they ask and however I'm able.
  • "Asshole" and "Nice" are both contageous.  Acts of kindness and acts of cruelty both seem to perpetuate throughout an organization.  A smile or nice note or hug can make somebody's day, giving them to energy to share that kindness with others.  An insult, being flipped off in traffic, or a flaming email drains energy and makes people more prone to treat others poorly.
  • We're all still human.  All three of them do a wonderful job of sharing their personal triumphs and pitfalls on their continuum journey.  It's something I work on as well, as I'm sure you do.

There are many other gems and nuggets resting in the pages of both books, and I'll let you discover them for yourself.  Each book stands alone in its merits and either one is a good investment of your time; however, reading these two books TOGETHER is a great experience I would recommend to anyone.  And to be genuinely nice by sharing some link love, I need to thank Bob McIlree for recommending Sutton's book to me, and I give a nod to Franke James for indirectly introducing me to Linda Kaplan Thaler.

The Starbucker Inquisition

Mocha_frapStarbucker asked me first.  Then Drew "Bunny Out" McLellan nudged me again.  Now Terry just sent me an email reminding me that he tagged me.  I'm guessing that there are a couple of people wanting my responses.  For those of you who are curious exactly what the heck I'm talking about, here are the questions (and my responses) to the "Glass Half Full" Survey (a metaphor for how I perceive my life).

  1. How full is my glass?  I'd put it at 49.999999999% full.  (In reality it ranges from 85% to 110% full, but I'll explain the disparity in #4, below.)
  2. What's in it?  A Starbucks Java Chip Mocha Frappuccino
  3. What kind of glass is it?  The Frap only comes in the clear disposable containers, so that's what I'm sticking with.
  4. Why did I answer the way I did for 1, 2, and 3?  I'm actually very blessed, so the reality that my life is almost full to overflowing is always there in front of me.  However, I'm a person who always sees the back half of the journey as easier than the front half, so I constantly challenge myself to never believe I'm more than 50% of the way there.  This keeps me on my toes.  I chose a frap because, like my life, it's blended with all sorts of really cool things.  I chose the container for two reasons:  ultimately, it's disposable like all of us are (we're only here on this planet for so much time and we need to fulfill our purpose while we are here) and it's clear (remaining transparent is so much easier than putting up fronts and walls).

So... Terry and Drew, thanks for inviting me to play along.

The rest of you just learned a thing or two about me.

Advanced Warning:  Phil Gerbyshak has also invited me to share some more information, so expect that to come soon.

Last Call

Just a quick reminder... the Brit Lit Wit contest ends in about an hour.  If any of you night owls want to compete against the creatively talented EM Sky, Mike Sansone, or Tom Haskins... here's your chance.

En-GENDER-ing Your Personal Brand

Ada505When discussing office politics, either in class or in the course of professional conversations, I occasionally field the question, "Do men and women play office politics differently?"  Those a little more enlightened modify the question to "HOW do men and women play office politics differently?"

Over the course of two decades of working and over 12 years of teaching, I've made a few observations on the gender front, but they've really solidified over the past couple of years.  My conclusion is that perhaps we've been framing the male-female professional issue inadequately over the years.  We've tried to brush away differences as non-existent or inconsequential, but it doesn't take a lot of research to show that the differences do exist.

The first major observation occurred over the past couple of years for me, once my daughter started school.  Her "playground reports" at the end of the day really put one of my observations in a new light.  She would make statements like:

  • Little Boy 1 pushed so-and-so
  • Little Boy 2 hit so-and-so
  • Little Boy 3 took such-and-such away from so-and-so
  • Little Girl 1 wouldn't talk to so-and-so
  • Little Girl 2 said she wasn't my friend anymore
  • Little Girl 3 said she wouldn't play with me if I played with so-and-so

Is it just me, or do we see a trend here?  At a very early age, boys handle conflict directly and aggressively.  Girls handle conflict passively and emotionally.  When I thought back to many of my own observations from my workplace history, as well as those stories shared by colleagues and studends, it leaves me wondering if we really outgrow these behaviors as adults.

My second observation is that women are their own worst enemy.  Whether the age of political correctness has toned down the male of the species or not, when holding discussions in class or in other professional settings, the women I've encountered are much more open and vocal about criticizing their own.  Many of my female students have been very blunt about saying they'd much rather have a male manager than a female manager.  This one intrigues me, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.

Loveandhate_10 My third and final observation goes to an exercise I've done in class and in workshops numerous times over the years.  I'm kicking myself now that I haven't done a more scientific data collection on it.  When I ask people to rank order their bosses from worst to best and then assign a gender value to them instead of the boss's name, the men come out in an almost perfect bell curve.  In other words, there are a few really great bosses and and a few really bad bosses, but most of us just muddle in the middle.  Women, however, tend to fall on a bi-modal curve; in other words, very few women are in the mediocre middle and instead fall at either end of the spectrum.  Now, if we were to take a page from Kathy Sierra's playbook, perhaps we've been viewing women in the workplace incorrectly all this time.  Have we ever considered the possibility that women brand themselves better than men do in the work place?  After all, good brands are either loved or hated; there's little room for indifference.

Maybe, after all these years, instead of getting defensive about gender differences in the workplace, it's time we celebrate them for what they really are:  personal branding success/failure stories.

But I'm just a guy.  Maybe I should ask some of my favorite women bloggers to weigh in on this.  So... Delaney, Liz, Ann, Valeria, Jane, Claire, Connie, Lisa, Franke, Lucia, Wendy, Kammie ... what do you think?

Off The Cuff... Or Else!!

Handcuffs100 Really and honest, I don't make this stuff up.  In yesteday's paper, Marc Hansen reported that a local Sears store told local off-duty policemen to scram.  Why?  Evidently because they were scaring away the shoplifters.  In his own words, Marc summarizes the events:

Please leave. You're scaring away the criminals.

That's what a manager at the Merle Hay Mall Sears store told the uniformed Des Moines cop this week.

Not in those words exactly, but that's the way it came out. And it wasn't the first time.

About three weeks earlier, another Des Moines police officer was ordered to leave the same store.

The police are upset about it. The corporate office is embarrassed and apologetic.

With good reason. It's like telling the fire department to leave because you're expecting an explosion.

I really don't need to rehash the article or the idiocy of the situation.  Mr. Hansen did that brilliantly enough in his trademark sarcastic way.  My purpose for bringing this article to light was to see if you noticed at which mall this occurred.  That's right - Merle Hay Mall.  If you recall my post from a couple of months ago, you'll see that management at this mall seems to have a long-standing reputation of some less-than-brilliant actions.  Some might dismiss this current event and my earlier post as mere coincidence, but let's not be too hasty here.

Organizational culture is very pervasive.  People who dismiss the culture of a company, corporation, organization - or even a mall? - as inconsequential to the bottom line performance are missing something very important.  There is definitely a thread of thuggery, a pattern of punity, and a brand of bullying that appears to be consistent within these two stories.  One cannot isolate bad behavior in one part of an organization and think that it will not affect the other parts.  Corporate culture is systemic.

One of the reasons that I get on my soap box about the effects of culture in an organization is that I've seen this domino effect played out over and over again in the past two decades of my career.  Unfortunately, it's a spiral that tends to drain an organization of its best resources (people and financial).

I've been holding discussions recently with a potential client about some team building seminars.  I was relieved when she put culture at the top of her list for creating a high performing team.  Some companies still pay attention to these things.  Others, like Merle Hay Mall, just don't seem to get it.

My Blogging Metaphor

DrivingglovesRecently, Liz Strauss (the Goddess of the Blogosphere) challenged those of us who blog to generate meaningful metaphors to explain blogging to those who do not blog.

If I had to set up a good analogy, it would be that blogging is like a high quality pair of driving gloves.  Like a good pair of gloves, blogs have many different fingers that can go in multiple directions at will.  We write about drag racing, painting, branding, communication, friendship, life, accomplishment... you name it.  However, just like the fingers of a glove, regardless of what direction our writing takes us, we're still all connected.

I chose driving gloves over "regular" gloves (i.e., those worn for warmth) for a reason.  If you've ever worn a pair, they are generally unlined and ventilated, which helps keep dexterity on the steering wheel and gear shift without compromising comfort for the wearer.  Similarly, blogs are really just a thin veneer of the person "wearing" them.  We use blogs to drive our sense of reality, to steer our perceptions of an ever-changing world, to shift the gears of our paradigms, and (simultaneously) to maintain our own comfort and control during the long road of blogospheric travel.  As a quality pair of leather driving gloves will eventually conform to the hands that wear them, our blogs conform to our "size" as well, reflecting our moods and beliefs as if we've been wearing them for years.

Finally, blogs are like driving gloves for another reason:  they're useless unless they are on somebody's hands.  The blogs that are nameless and faceless generally may get a polite nod, but when they have that human touch inside of them, you can go from zero to 60 in no time flat.

So VROOM, VROOM and Carpe Factum!

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