Quick Ones: Three for the Road
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Caption: "Hey, Mister, throw me something!".
Speaking of the road, a 1933 espionage thriller, “The Two Undertakers" features a bit of unexpected, if twisted humor. The quote occurs with the bad guys in hot pursuit of the 2 good guys, both British Secret Service, who are in an open, horse-drawn wagon.
The villains are in a motorized Maybach (think Mercedes) sedan.
Ever resourceful, one of the good guys, Ronald Briercliffe, is inspired by a case of bottled beer in the back of the wagon.
As for the other spy, Granby by name,
“He was still tugging at the galloping horse, assisted not unskilfully by the horse's driver, who had at last begun to grasp the fact that the animal was trying to run away.
"But we might break the bottles on the road," I suggested.
"Good lad," answered Granby.
I crawled over the back of the seat, reached for the bottles, and dropped them one by one from the tailboard.
I had once read a story of a Russian family pursued in their sledge by a pack of wolves, and how the father threw his children overboard one by one to delay pursuit. I knew now how the poor man must have felt.”
Saying No.
The reader may remember a January story about a terrorist holding 3 hostages in a Texas synagogue. The Wall Street Journal editorialized on what happened:
One of the hostages, “Jeffrey R. Cohen, wrote … that at one point during the siege, the gunman (Akram) ordered the trio to their knees….
Instead of kneeling as … ordered…, Cohen, 57, said he defied the attacker’s demand. He stood up and mouthed the word ‘no,’ looking Akram straight in the eyes.
‘I was not going to let him assassinate us,’ Cohen said. ‘I was not going to beg for my life and just have him kill us.’
Rather than shooting Cohen, Akram backed down.
He turned around and put his gun down to pour some soda, Cohen said. Cytron-Walker, the rabbi, seized on the moment, yelling ‘run’ and throwing a chair at Akram as the three hostages ran out.”
The FBI surged in and brought the stand-off to an end, an unfortunate one for Mr. Akram.
Are you as impressed as I am with Mr. Cohen's astonishing courage?
Saying No in the office is usually not a capital offense; yet we hesitate when our higher ups and/or work colleagues are rushing head-long into a mistake. Instead of saying No! we sit silent.
Next time you find yourself accommodating a bad decision, think of that Tall Texan, Jeffrey Cohen.
Eternal Truths in the Workplace.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Lady Fortune
and her whimsical ways and I quoted some advice from Mistress Philosophy: While “Fortune rules the world and that the wise person ignores her ever-shifting ways, preferring eternal truths.”
The puzzle is knowing what’s an eternal truth.
Well, we are told there are mathematical rules that might qualify, e.g. Euclid’s “All right angles are equal.”
No doubt there is some Euclidian link to the modern office, but it seems that there may be other “truths” more appropriate and applicable. I refer to “Open Systems Theory” in which several biological constants appear to hold for any organization and, if that is so, every leader and effective follower should keep in mind.
Messrs Katz and Kahn “note 10 characteristics (each of which is worthy of lengthy discussion) of open systems:
1. Importation of energy from the environment (resources, people, etc.)
2. Throughput (transform resources available to them).
3. Output (export some resources to the environment).
4. Systems as cycles of events
5. Negative entropy, to keep the organization viable (through input of energy/resources)
6. Information input, negative feedback, and a coding process (to maintain steady state).
7. The steady state and dynamic homeostasis (and a tendency toward growth to ensure survival).
8. Differentiation and specialization.
9 Integration and coordination
10. Equifinality (many paths to same end).”
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And, don’t forget Lubans' book on democratic workplaces, Leading from the Middle
© Copyright text by John Lubans 2022
John Lubans - portrait by WSJ