We’ll Be All Right

     Long ago and far away, I once wrote a newspaper commentary about a single corn plant that had popped up in our front-yard flower garden. It was for me a visual parable, a symbol of practicality elbowing its way above mere prettiness.

     To  tell the truth, it looked kind of ugly, looming over the pretty petunias or whatever. I didn’t care about that. I just really liked its assertion of raw individuality.

     The point was not well made in the column, and no one expressed agreement. The article was not particularly memorable; I can’t tell you today what it actually said. But it did make an impression on one editorial writer, who frequently addressed me in the office afterward as “Cornstalk”. I suspected he was doing it in mockery, but I never got around to asking before he died a little later.

     The corn kernel that seeded the plant probably came from scattered bird food or dog food that had been swept off the porch floor. The event reminded me at the time of the pop song “I’m a Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch, and All I Do Is Cry All Day”.

    

     The cornstalk memory is served up in response to a piece on the Press Herald editorial page Feb. 4 that gave a number of reasons to be depressed about the present state of our world and its prospects.

     I don’t agree with such a worldview. Never have.

     Then I also saw  a report in the paper about a guy who had just visited with a bunch of school kids, and was really upbeat about a future to be managed by such cheery and vigorous people. Him I agreed with.

     We’re not talking about cluelessness. The adult positive attitude fully accounts for the barriers and pitfalls out there. You just know they can be avoided or overcome. They don’t define your world, and you intend to take care of them.

     Over a few days, varying new inputs settle and mature in your thoughts, eventually resulting in a glow of optimism and confidence. Even if the rest of the world is draped in gloom, we of the cornstalk persuasion are optimistic. We’ll be all right.

      As a general thing, after all, there is good reason to accentuate the positive in whatever situation. Doing so reassures you that you’re not a helpless victim. It gives you something to work with. It asks, “What are you going to do about it?”

 

     There’s good reason to ask yourself such a question. When the negative view rules the process, the only meaningful question is, “Oh, Lord – what will become of me?” You don’t have to do anything. You can’t. You’re a victim.

     Not so when you accentuate the positive. In response to opportunity or danger, you ask:  “What am I going to do about it?”  That demands a response. It presses you to do something.

     So you do something. If you have an off-the-shelf response, this matter is pretty easily taken care of. You take care of it and we don’t have this conversation.

     But say you don’t have that handy solution. You don’t know what to do. So now we must figure out what to do when we don’t know what to do.

     We have a process – as simple or as complex as it needs to be – called problem solving. Doing it right requires a positive mindset, a solutions attitude.

 

     The solutions attitude is essential to problem solving. No matter how daunting the situation, however “hopeless,” you have to decide. You have to prepare to act, then launch action with strength and vigor. It works. Wondering, worrying and brooding do not work.

     The lesson of the cornstalk in the petunia patch is that of courage and originality. Your solution may not be supported by others. It may look strange --never tried before. But if you believe in your process, you apply it. You stick with it. Make it work.

     In Super Bowl LI in February 2017, the New England Patriots were down 28-3 in the third quarter . . . and came back to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28. Athletic competition at that level is so intense that such a comeback was inconceivable. But it happened.

     We are struck by the appearance of a cornstalk in a petunia patch.

     We admire the confidence and dedication that wins a football championship against huge  odds.

     Highly unlikely, both of them. But they actually happened. If we keep our eyes open  -- and our minds -- we’ll be all right.

Patience & Tolerance. And Confidence

     For most of us, the towering challenge in building management competence is at the very beginning. There is a fundamental contradiction imprinted on our workplace behavior by our beginner experience.  It makes Square One so difficult that some people never fully get through it. And, for those who do, applying its lessons can block further growth.

     This is how it works: 

     We first must learn the skills and practices of personal productivity. That means we work on how to order our days through time and priority management while we're learning how to do the job. If you don't get this right, you can never do anything well -- especially    leadership. 

     But, at the same time we must learn as managers when and how to suspend certain of the personal skills in order to handle responsibility for the output and skills development of others. That requires concentrating our attention outwards, working to understand and influence others. For example, building effective working relationships is not at base a matter of efficiency.

     So, we must focus intensely on identifying, defining and perfecting our own personal activities at the same time as we're doing the same for others. Contradictory activities.

     The first step, personal productivity, is very difficult to even understand, then to learn. It requires a lot of practice, and trial and error. 

I Didn't Retire. I Just Quit.

     My Dad worked at his hometown newspaper for his entire career, from 1923 until his sudden death (by heart attack?) in 1956 at the age of 55. He was telegraph editor and news editor at The Elmira Star-Gazette for much of that time.

     He must have been good at it, because I understand he had a number of opportunities to transfer to other papers in the Gannett Company. He never left Elmira and The Star-Gazette because, I was told, he didn't want to disrupt the family. He was busy fathering 14 of us during those years. 

     I remember Dad talking about retirement in his early 50s. I have never thought of retirement for myself. I just up and quit working a couple of years ago (age 84).

Listening, Seeing and Persuading

     Shut up and listen.

     Simple to say; not always easy to do, and quite a complex challenge when properly understood.   
     We need to remind ourselves that this process is about the other person as well as ourselves. Any time we're in a conversation, there's something we want from that process -- and we believe the other person has it. 

     At the very least we want to earn a favorable impression. It's a form of sales, actually.
     The sales professional bases the pitch on research, observation and analysis, some of it done in advance, some in direct preparation and some while the process is under way.
     For starters, the homework. What evidence is there of the prospect’s history with the subject, and current interest in it? The pro also mines his/her own experience and enhances it with current observation.

     That basic information is used to shape our thinking about how to organize the presentation, however informal it is. Through the initial pleasantries, we don't want to forget our purpose, and the reasons why we think the other person should be interested in it
     Then, as the actual process unfolds, the pro examines and analyzes how the prospective buyer is reacting. On the fly, there are continuous adjustments.

Act Like a Manager

     It’s not public relations exactly, although it’s closely allied. It’s the manner and behavior we instantly associate with The Boss.

     The boss is the person whose directives are to be followed (and, sometimes, the one to be blamed for whatever is disagreeable in our workplace.) 

     “PR” has become something of a familiar cliché in modern America. We toss it out as a verbal sneer at anything we consider phony and hollow in the utterances of prominent people. Too bad, because real PR is an important and valuable element in our public discourse. It’s how we extend the value of good things by telling people about them.

     True, that telling can be exaggerated, distorted or false, but most of what we see and hear in such promotion is reasonably honest and true. Also, our critical thinking skills enable us to sort out the value from the trash – when we exercise our duty to do so.

     So, back to the workplace. You have an opinion of your boss as a manager, the person ultimately responsible for the results of your group's work.

     However, the manager is not solely responsible. In a healthy organization, each of us must carry a share of that responsibility. It is extremely important, vitally important, that the individual and the manager understand and practice their roles in this form of partnership.

     The manager must be personally clear on what the organization is to accomplish and how it is to function . . . and must share with each staff member an equally clear picture of how that person fits. And, of course, what that means for the actions and behavior of that person.

      Each of us staff people must also be clear -- within ourselves and with others -- on the actions and behavior that fulfill our obligations in the organization.

     “Being clear” is an abstract expression for a complex set of communication actions that involve talking, listening, watching and demonstrating for the purpose of equipping the staff member to do certain things, and convincing that staff member to do those things correctly and dependably. If I were to see a video clip of myself on the job, would I see myself doing those things?

     It is incumbent on both parties to set up and conduct the process with the minimally necessary amount of continuing contact between the two. Collaboration and communication are essential, but too much of either wastes the valuable resource of individual contribution.

     The manager sets the tone and carries the major weight. The manager walks and talks with confidence in the relationship of mutual respect and defined responsibility. Just look and listen, and you can tell.

     The manager acts like a manager.

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 SEE ALSO: Management Power, Management Behavior      http://jimmillikenproject.blogspot.com/2018/04/management-power-management-behavior.html

Wisdom, If You're Smart. Or Mom

      "We grow too soon old and too late smart."

     My mother used to say that, in her version of a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. I have never heard an actual practitioner of that vernacular, but I suspect Mom's rendition of it was atrocious. Not that she would have been all that bothered. All she cared about was making the point. And make the point she did. 

     She was, in fact, the very exemplar of the wisdom/wise smarts illuminated by the quote. She knew an awful lot, having produced a lot of smart kids after marrying a wise man. Her own formal education had been stunted by the need to learn and carry adult responsibilities as the oldest child in a family that needed her to do that. But she became a human encyclopedia over decades of conversation as we kids came home from school brimming over with new knowledge.

     In the latter half of her adulthood, as a widow, she made it her business to repair some of the  shortfalls in her formal education. But for me, going back to my earliest memories and continuing through her long life, my mother was unfailingly smart and wise.

     The smart-wise combination is not all that common, you know. Smartness can grind on wisdom, and wisdom tends to suffocate smartness. But the two depend on each other, and in the long run you operate on a dynamic combination. Succeeding at it requires attention.

     As we navigate life, we need to keep learning fresh stuff to deal with new challenges and opportunities. But what to put in, what to leave out? And some of what we already know and do becomes obsolete, sometimes dangerous. What to weed out, what to keep? What to change and how?

     Familiar old skills and practices need tuning and refreshing, trimming and remodeling. Why, when and how to do that?

     The how-to is not particularly easy, and it most definitely is not quick. Earning and applying it calls for conscious. persistent effort. Judgment is the working engine of wise, smart change. Patience is its fuel and discipline is both the gas pedal and the brake. My lifetime is the trip. 

     Thanks, Mom for the roadmap. 

       

     

Language Abuse, Grammar Addiction

     "I'm silently correcting your grammar."

     That's what it says on my new coffee cup, and that’s what I do. Can’t help it. I'm commenting (to myself) about the stylistic quality of what I'm hearing in this conversation we're having. I'm commenting in detail, all in my head.
 

     An obsession with the rules of language arose in me early, and has sent down deep roots over the ensuing decades.

     I'm the son of an editor. I wrote well from an early age. I was successively an English major, a newspaper editor and a management/writing instructor. I designed and delivered a three-day course in Business Writing and a daylong training session for working professionals called “A Grammar Refresher.”

     You don’t easily get over such a history.