"There's a LOT of boxes...."

Tragedy and comedy swirl together in our lives like brackish and clear water mixing together at the mouth of a river. Sometimes they exist in frighteningly close proximity.

A friend's mother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly right before Christmas. The father passed away just this past Thanksgiving. The family is, of course quite devastated.

I called soon after I received word and offered to do ANYTHING - especially since we live very close to their house.

"We do have some furniture boxes that need to be taken to the front of the house for trash pickup"

"DONE" I said. "I will make sure it's taken care of". I was talking to the wife on the cell phone in the car as they were headed out of town to the airport. I heard the husband say in the background "tell him there's a LOT of boxes....".

Later that day, I started to leave my house at 4 PM to move the boxes - prior to the evening's social engagement. As soon as the door closed, I realized that I locked myself out of the house. I started reviewing options. I had no cell phone, no car keys. I had plenty of options for getting into the house, all of which involved a subsequent home repair. "Well, Kevin is coming here in 1 hour. I can clean up the garage and enjoy the afternoon air" - which was quite lovely for December. I also was able to spend time working out plot issues for a short story I am writing.

Kevin showed up right on time. We went to pick up Jared at his office. Fortunately, Jared still had the key to my house in his drawer I had given him before our trip to Italy. Providence....

We had a delightful time at the Flying Saucer and were blessed with the presence of Rev Al. A great time was had by all.

On the way home, I asked Kevin and Jared "How would you boys like to help me? We have a service project to perform". We were pretty mellow at that point. Sure, why not?

So we went to the house with the boxes, since they had to be on the street before the next morning. When we got there, there were 7 or 8 VERY VERY LARGE boxes, all FILLED with cardboard and styrofoam packing material. We stand there and look at each other. Holy shit.

"Options?"

Can't put it on the street like this. Must cut boxes down and put packing in bags. Where to get bags? I have contractor bags at my house. NO - KROGERS is virtually across the street!

So, we get back in Kevin's truck and roll over to Krogers. Bag aisle, bag aisle - where's the bag aisle? Oooh, beer aisle. No, stay focused, people.

We find a box of fourteen 45 gallon contrator bags. "This BETTER be enough."

So we go back and Kevin starts cutting and Jared and I start stuffing and stuffing and stuffing.

"Is this stuff reproducing in the back yard??" I ask as I flop open the 9th 45 gallon bag.

I can't exactly remember the dialogue, but I just remember laughing a lot - rather loudly - and wondering how long it was going to be until the neighbors called the police to come see what the HELL was going on at this house. At the time, I actually looked forward to saying "Officer, we're on a mission from God..."

It turns out that we filled all 14 of the contractor bags - well, there was some room left in the last one.

As I look back, I see a mini-parable of life. Tragedy and comedy in such close juxtaposition. Stopping at nothing to serve friends we dearly love. Plans thwarted that led to a much better result. Working together with friends FAR better than working alone. God looking at us and shaking His head, but smiling nonetheless.

Speaking of Righteous Indignation...

A life lesson is that just because is something is going well, it does not mean that well-meaning people are not going to come in and screw it all up. I really learned this as director of a development program at a former company. The program was running better than it ever had, and some execs came in and started screwing with it. Before you knew it, we were out of business. It can happen in any organization. Any.

Best/Worst Leader Series - Mr P

My friend Jared told me he checks for a new post from me every day, so I need to get on the stick and be productive.

A few years ago, a retired Marine and I talked about collaborating on a book about the best and worst leaders we had known. I made notes from my own personal experience and never went much further. Now that I have a blog with which to publish my observations, I will do so.

Today, I begin with Mr P, a mid-level executive in a large company I worked for. He tried to convert me to his way of thinking, which I increasingly resisted and ultimately rejected. Mr P came to represent for me a form of corrupt corporate "conventional wisdom" that I am afraid still prevails in too many organizations.

The company had an open door policy: i.e. any employee that had a legitimate need could approach anyone in the company at any leadership level with a concern or a business opportunity. Mr P told me that the open door policy was a sham. He used it as a way to identify "trouble-makers" and then eventually find a way to fire them.

He counseled me to stay in overhead support areas where the pay was pretty good and the heat was a lot less intense than the front lines where the real action was. He, of course, was a manager of overhead areas.

He made judgements about people based on perception instead of actual abilities. He would "blackball" people from promotion because of one thing that happened in one meeting. He would recommend people for promotion if he "liked" them - even though they were highly unqualified - I personally had to promote a person under me that he liked - who was not qualified and we all suffered for it. He, of course, would never admit that he was wrong. He blocked my attempt to promote a highly qualified and brilliant young woman that he thought "acted silly" in a meeting - fortunately I was able to get her promoted by another manager.

He advocated taking care of leaders first and people second.

Mr P did not think that an "executive" should even own a computer. He, of course, grew up prior to the age of PCs. He said "you have people working for you who work on computers".

His behavior in meeting was classic. He clearly tried to justify his own existence by criticizing the work of others. He felt that he was creating value by finding faults in the work of others - whether his comments had merit or not. Usually, I thought his criticism was without merit and solely intended to demonstrate that he had value because he had a position. In fact, he specifically told me that I should "bullshit" people in meetings - that I should take a strong position especially when I had no idea what I was talking about! Yes, he said that! In his experience, if you said it strongly enough, no one else would challenge you and it would make you be perceived as a strong and wise leader. He liked his own managers to be aggressive and challenge each other - even (especially) when they did not know what they were talking about. I assure you I am not making this up...

Mr P counseled me that diversity was an issue for someone else to worry about. I should only focus on hiring white males - let someone else worry about women and minorities.

The relationship with his peer executives was almost feudal. He expected his own people to be loyal to him in exchange for his protection. If you transferred to a rival, you became a "traitor". Several times, the execs over the groups were rotated. It was amazing to see him "purge the heretics" who were loyal to the former leader and see him transfer in his loyal followers and put them in postions of leadership.

Working with Mr P gave me a really good understanding of how middle managers are enemies of change and champions of the status quo when I later started doing reengineering as a consultant. Change is a bad thing for middle managers, because it causes more work, disruption, unhappiness among people, etc. The status quo is a good thing for the opposite reasons. Middle managers are incented to work hard to maintain the status quo because it means they will have less work, less pain, less unpleasant interaction with employees who are upset by the change. Change in an organization tends to open up all the closets and dredge up all the things that people don't like and puts them back on the table. It helped me see WHY it takes a senior exec who has vision and courage to overpower the laggard middle managers who just want an easy life.

And being an overhead manager, he counseled me to align myself with an operations person and to do whatever I could to ingratiate myself to him (yes, it would be a man....). Then I should do ANYTHING to support him, right or wrong. If it involved stretching the truth on the accounting records, then all the better. Just become a "whore" and do whatever the ops manager wants in exchange for good pay, good bonuses and a reasonably good life.

As I listened to all these things I was hearing, I came to the conclusion that I could not live this way. I decided to move from middle management into management consulting as an individual performer. For me, it was a really good decision.

The Best and Worst Day I Have Ever Had

When I was in seminary, I took up duck hunting. There was quite a nice reservoir about 30 miles north of town where a group of us went. We would leave about midnight and stop for breakfast. We would arrive and head out into the water about 2 AM. We did not have boats, rather we waded through sunken timber in chest high water for several hundred yards to reach an island where we would base. As you might guess, wading through sunken timber is a VERY slow process. It would take us over an hour to get to our appointed location. Often, we would stand in the water in camo just off the island to do our hunting.

On the last day I ever went duck hunting, it was very a very cold night. We stopped at a Waffle House on the way out of town and I remember eating my fried eggs in a hurry. As we were driving on the road out to our hunting spot, I remember thinking that this was the definition of a "hostile environment". I was getting ready to spend several hours in some very cold water well out of reach of land. Well, I was doing this by choice, I told myself.

I had a friend's borrowed Browning autoloader shotgun - the kind with the hump at the back of the barrell. The entire barrell would recoil when fired, so the gun had very little kick to it. A VERY nice gun for duck hunting.

I am guessing that the water was just above freezing. As we were on the way out, just a few yards from shore, I felt something cold on my right ankle. I looked down, and my INSULATED chest waders caught on a stick and tore a 3 inch gash on top of the ankle. Of course, nothing was going to deter me, so I continued without another thought.

As I stood in the cold water and gradually filled my waders, I became progressively colder. I am not quite sure how I survived, because I really could not feel anything below my waist for hours.

As sunrise approached and we could see ducks, I started shooting. I must say that it was the best day of my duck hunting career. Maybe it was the gun and maybe it was the cold focusing my attention, but I was bringing down the ducks. Of course, when I shot one, I had to wade through sunken timber to get it - a VERY slow and cold process. I am sure the movement kept me from succumbing to hypothermia.

As I was standing in the water looking for my next target, I felt great inner rumblings within - the fried eggs. I was at least 45 minutes from the island - which was just bare dirt sticking up out of the water. The rumblings became greater and greater until I knew the time had come. I yielded to my biological needs and the cold chest waders became filled with something that was quite warm - at least for a while. I was quite surprised how much there really was. Over twenty years later, I remember exactly how it felt. I was just not really sure what else to do. I was feeling much, much better - and was having a great day hunting. I would figure out how to deal with my other problems later.

Later that morning, three ducks were gliding in for a landing right in front of me - my first triple! I raised my gun and aimed at the lead duck - and click! The gun would not fire! The ducks of course saw me and flew off - about 6 feet over my head, I might add. Later, I would discover that the firing pin had broken - doh! So my great hunting day was over by definition.

So, now I could add a broken shotgun to warm poop in my chest waders to make a really lovely day. For some reason, I stayed out in the water for a while. Then I started the long, laborious trek back to dry land.

When I got back to the car and related what had happened, some of the group thought it was really funny and at least one was rather disgusted. We debated whether I should take the waders off or just leave them on. There was nowhere to clean up if I took them off. So, reason dictated that I leave them on. I remember sitting in the back seat of a Volkswagon beetle on the way home. It was cold out, but the driver opened the window and kept his head as far outside the car as possible as he drove home. I did not think it was that bad.

When I got back to the apartment, my wife was very understanding. She laid out newspapers from the front door to the shower, where I turned on the blessed warm water and dismantled my soiled battle gear. It was so joyous being warm and being clean. I never went duck hunting and/or waded in sunken timber again.