http://blog.lubans.org/ John Lubans en-us Nucleus CMS v3.51 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://blog.lubans.org//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://blog.lubans.org/ xml-rss2.php?itemid=1836&catid=1
Caption: Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant’s 2012 movie, Thunderstruck, was originally titled, Switch!

Frank Deford writes in his essay, “The Ultimate Contradiction”, that basketball is: …the most intimate — even organic — of all the team games, with its players more fundamentally involved with one another.” That’s an illuminating observation, even to me since I am no stranger to transferring insights from the hardwood to the workplace.
Chapter 8 in Leading from the Middle is “More Than a Game: A Season with a Women’s Basketball Team,” about how a team met challenges and displayed the finest kind of transcendent teamwork.
Besides noting that all players touch the ball and play both offense and defense – no platooning and specializing - Deford gives us two basketball terms to consider. The first is “Switch” in which a screened or blocked player calls for help and literally switches his role with another player.
His second is “Give and go," a basic play where after passing – giving up the ball - to a team-mate, the passer quickly cuts toward the basket, and receives the return pass back from his team-mate for the score.
I would add a third, the “Assist.” It’s the end result of the “cut and go” and other strategems in which a player creates a scoring opportunity by giving up the ball. Blocked inside, a player “kicks out” the ball to an open player – she scores. That’s an assist, and a perfect metaphor for the workplace where what you do directly helps another succeed.
While I was dwelling on Deford, my nephew posted or “facebooked” his experience with an on-line-class project:

“Professor says: "I want your mini-essays to be 300-500 words"
Team gives: 3 short paragraphs totally MAYBE 200 words.
Professor says: "You must cite at least one peer-reviewed journal in each mini-essay"
Team gives: Only cites the textbook
In other words, guess who gets to rewrite the team's mini-essay that's due at midnight? Wheeeeeeeeeeee!”

No give and go, no switch, and no assist. He’s not the first or the last to encounter dysfunctional teams in class or the office. Yet, some teams, somehow, become high performing. How does that happen? Luck? In my nephew’s case, I doubt if the professor explained what was expected from each team member. He probably left it open on how they would go about doing their work. And, I doubt if the project teams established any guidelines on how to work together. For many team projects, everything is assumed and nothing is agreed. The same happens in the work place when we create teams and provide them with little guidance.

Basketball, like all team sports, can help us understand why some teams click and why many fail. The best teams communicate, all the time. In basketball, a team that chatters, signals, and talks through each play will disconcert a silent opponent – the opponent does not know what to make of it. Nor can the switch or the give and go be done in communicative silence. When screened or blocked, the player calls out, “Help, help, switch” and as Deford says, “At least for a while, you must become me, and me you.” That’s extraordinary teamwork. Not only does the player know what to do, how to switch, he willingly does so, replacing you so you can get free to shut down an otherwise easy goal by the opposition. How often do you hear, “Help, help, switch” in the office?

Players on the best teams help each other. It is an accepted norm and behavior. It is what you do. In my chapter, “The Unstodgy Airline” I explain how ramp agents – the ground crew - help each other out; indeed, switching is part of their game plan.
“Southwest is resourceful. Ramp agents know to plan ahead, to anticipate. … “Our turnaround time (the best in the business) is not the result of tricks,” CEO Kelleher says, “but the result of our dedicated employees, who have the willpower and pride to do whatever it takes.” On an occasion, pilots have helped empty luggage bins. I asked a supervisor if “whatever it takes” was indeed widely practiced at Southwest? The answer: “Some people help so much they miss their lunch.”
And, the training coordinator told me.” It’s common sense to help each other out. Not helping is rare; you know if you are helped, you help in return.”

Caption: Switching at Southwest.
While I was on the tarmac observing the ramp team’s work, I saw switching in action. When the provisioner’s job was done inside the plane, he dropped down to the tarmac – in the wind and rain - to help hoist luggage onto a belt-loader. I’d score him an “assist!”.
Becoming a good team takes work. I have held for a long time that a team itself has to figure out most of its working dynamics – a coach’s or supervisor’s assigning roles, at best a first step, is not the same nor as effective. It is best for the team to take the time to decide who is going to do what and when and why. The team has to answer these questions: What happens when one or more of us slack off? How will we disagree? How will we confront each other when things are not going well? How will we ask each other for help? Will we give help when asked?
My nephew’s group project team is going the way of too many teams; one or two people will do the work, while others appear to be content to coast along and accept credit for non-work. No one takes on the risk of calling the behavior and confronting the team. You’re left with a tacit, shrugging acceptance – it is what it is - instead of a spirited questioning and a fair and trustful resolution. In sports, when a team is struggling, the coach will often ask for help from the captains – or, better, the captains will intervene on their own. These peers are expected to confront the team, away from management, away from the coach and to help get the team back on track. When I asked about the three captains on the women’s team I studied, a player told me, “Anytime we aren’t playing focused or hard, our captains are always the 1st people to say something to try and pull us together again. They keep us from being down on ourselves and help us to play as a team.”
I do not think we have anything like elected captains on our work teams, perhaps we should – they might get us past the inevitable “being down on ourselves” and to “help us to play as a team”.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1836&catid=1 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:58:31 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1833&catid=1 Then the upright brother came along. And the apes asked how the members of the their community appeared to him. He responded by saying, ‘ I have never seen a congregation so unsightly, so foul.’ As a result, the enraged apes gave him an incredible beating – one so bad that he barely escaped.’

‘And sometimes it is perilous to utter words completely true.’”


Caption: “He who has the sack of gold will always have flatterers.” 1592. Circle of BRUEGHEL Pieter, the Younger, (d'Enfer).

We know from research on effective followers – self-starters who do not have to be led – a willingness to tell the truth can be dangerous to one’s health, particularly with an apish audience. About half the time, effective followers are punished for doing a really good job.
While screen-writing in the Hollywood of the 1930s, P. G. Wodehouse, saw a lot of another type of follower/flatterer: The Yes Man. His short story** “The Nodder” explains:
“A Nodder is something like a Yes-man, only lower in the social scale. A Yes-Man’s duty is to attend conferences and say ‘Yes.’ A Nodder’s, as the name implies, is to nod. The chief executive throws some statement of opinion and looks about him expectantly. This is the cue for the senior Yes-Man to say yes. He is followed, in order of precedence, by the second Yes-Man - or Vice-Yesser -, as he sometimes is called- and the junior Yes-Man. Only when all the Yes-Men have yessed, do the Nodders begin to function. They nod.”

*Source: “The Fables of Odo of Cheriton”, translated by John C. Jacobs. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1985. Pp. 100-101.
** Wodehouse, P. G. “The Nodder”, in Blandings Castle. Woodstock NY: Overlook Press 2002. pp. 214-234.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1833&catid=1 Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:08:07 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1827&catid=1
Caption: Everyman a Plutocrat.

Before any HR types hyperventilate, let me dispense a little oxygen. Most salaries are already “set” for employees. Industries like libraries, or most not-for-profits, already have general guidelines for pay scales. These scales reflect, for the most part, the value society and the organization place on that type of work. As long as one’s salary stays in a “range” there is usually little resentment.
Of course, secrecy and minimal oversight can lead to excesses not only for private CEOs but also for overly handsome paydays in the not-for-profit sector. Once exposed, at least in the latter, taxpayers, board members, and voters can punish the greedy.

But back to Rich Uncle Pennybags, our fantasy spendthrift poster child. “SEMCO” is a for-profit organization that’s on record for allowing employees to set their own salaries.
Hardly a Marxist fantasy come true, Ricardo Semler’s SEMCO’s 3000 employees went at it in a rational manner:
“This was a … complex process, which involved hiring an analyst to benchmark pay levels across multiple positions at 35 different companies. Average pay scales were established for comparable companies, to which SEMCO added 10 percent to help reduce employee turnover. And everyone’s salaries, from that of the security guard at the factory entrance to Mr. Semler’s own, were published for all to see. Peer pressure provided an efficient leveling mechanism. “

Not much of a raised fist and red banners unfurled struggle there. It appears that fairness prevailed. Probably a tiny percentage - even at SEMCO - remains unhappy but the company’s considerable success suggests a vast, content majority. This blissful state is probably more ascribable to the leadership’s openness and fairness then it is to having a say on one’s salary. What do I mean? Salary simply is not the great motivator many believe it is. Most people are satisfied with what they believe is a fair salary. Once achieved, fair pay neither motivates nor demotivates. It is akin to air conditioning. If off on a hot day, all hell breaks lose in the office; if the ACs on, no one notices.

So, when fairness and openness are the goals, employee involvement is salary setting is more educational than it is insurrectionist.
Another way to involve workers in salary discussions is to tie that discussion to an annual review of everyone’s job performance – now that could get interesting! This is said to happen at the “manager-less”** Morning Star company: “In a company with no promotions, people earn more by getting better at their jobs. Employee-elected compensation committees set pay levels after measuring colleagues' performance against their CLOUs and other metrics.”

The CLOU - Colleague Letter of Understanding - is an employee’s stated commitment to the organization including what the employee will do (as capsulated in “Key Performance Indicators” – KIPs) and with whom he will work to achieve his “Commercial Mission.” The process appears heavily HR-inspired, intensely quantified, convoluted and clumsy – even vaguely Soviet - but is seems to work in spite of itself. I suspect there is a tacit understanding: Produce more, help others produce more, and we’ll all get paid more. “Morning Star can pay 15 percent more in salaries and 35 percent more in benefits than the industry average because it's not paying managers and productivity is so high.” (Emphasis added.)
I’m guessing, but workers may be humoring the leadership’s whims for CLOUs, iPod time clocks, and KIPs because they truly thrive in Morning Star’s freedom-at-work environment.

In library-land (my world of work), managers and administrators - who may take home pay triple or more what line staff do - could be particularly vulnerable in an open discussion about salaries. What’s your response when someone asks “What have you done for me lately?" or "What have you done for the organization?” If your role is to back up a fussbudget boss you might have difficulty explaining how you add value to the organization’s bottom line or purpose, why you are still relevant.
I recall in one free-for-all budget session – we’d opened the library’s budget (salaries and operations) to all staff to find resources to pay for new initiatives – one participant asking a pointed, even personal, question: “Why have assistant directors? (people like yours truly). Why not use the AD salary lines for operational needs?” While I kept my job, it was a difficult moment. Later, I tried to explain to myself why I was worth the extra dollars. It wasn’t easy since I saw that the value I placed on my services might be too vague or irrelevant to staff, or, for that matter to administrative colleagues who often saw (and were rewarded) their roles as keepers-of-the-faith more than my role as questioner-of-the-faith!
Self-delusion and preservation on my part? Maybe, but then I could point to successes that previous incumbents in my position had failed to achieve.
That rankling suggestion that ADs were dispensable – regardless of past achievements – may well have portended a time for me to hie for the distant hills. One’s welcome does wear out.
Objectively, that singular experience does suggest how salaries can be kept in line through public discussion. If your value to the organization is up for discussion and you want to double your take-home pay - you’ll need to demonstrate how you bring more to the table.

*Note: This is the third entry on how democratic workplaces behave. More to come. The first installment was about work schedules.
The second was about making salaries public.

** Chris Rufer, the founder of Morning Star explains managing in a flat organization: “Everyone’s a manager here”, …. “We are manager rich. The job of managing includes planning, organizing, directing, staffing and controlling, and everyone at Morning Star is expected to do these things. Everyone is a manager of their own mission. They are managers of the agreements they make with colleagues, they are managers of the resources they need to get the job done, and they are managers who hold their colleagues accountable.” From Gary Hamel’s, "First, Let's Fire All the Managers", December, 2011 Harvard Business Review, p.58.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1827&catid=1 Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:54:25 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1825&catid=1
Caption: No less than the illustrious impressionist, Paul Cézanne! His “Thieves and the Ass” (I ladri e l'asino), 1869. Findable at Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milano - Italy

“Two thieves, pursuing their profession,
Had of a donkey got possession,
Whereon a strife arose,
Which went from words to blows.
The question was, to sell, or not to sell;
But while our sturdy champions fought it well,
Another thief, who chanced to pass,
With ready wit rode off the ass.

This ass is, by interpretation,
Some province poor, or prostrate nation.
The thieves are princes this and that,
On spoils and plunder prone to fat,--
As those of Austria, Turkey, Hungary.
(Instead of two, I've quoted three--
Enough of such commodity.)
These powers engaged in war all,
Some fourth thief stops the quarrel,
According all to one key,
By riding off the donkey.”

One can think of political examples much like La Fontaine did. As I write this from Riga, Latvia - a Baltic country not long free of communist rule – the 1945 Yalta conference comes to mind.
And so it might go at work. In my realm of libraries, I did see struggles between the print and the digital partisans in the library that raised a more than casual interest in a third party. I refer to IT (Information Technology) departments that were looking to consolidate their empires. Some (like La Fontaine’s “third thief” riding off with the donkey) orchestrated mergers with libraries and the resultant mis-match resulted in a lose/lose for the print and the digital groups.
Many of the mergers backfired, with IT blaming the fuddy-duddy librarians and the librarians blaming ITs poor customer service culture. Whatever the cause, library users were not well served.

*Source: THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE Translated From The French by Elizur Wright. [original place and date: Boston, U.S.A., 1841.] A New
Edition, with Notes by J. W. M. Gibbs,1882.


]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1825&catid=1 Thu, 6 Jun 2013 20:56:11 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1823&catid=1
I had not meant to overhear. Really. No ear to the keyhole for me, please! Regardless, my executive colleague in the next office with an open door was talking to someone on the phone – maybe an investment firm – about his confidential salary. He mentioned the amount, loudly enough for me to hear. I bolted from my office but not before learning that his salary was about 25% more than mine! I was a recent hire in a position on par with my next-door-colleague. We had similar backgrounds. If anything, I had more experience and professional achievement but somehow I was being paid less and he was being paid more. Ouch!
I was dismayed and unhappy about the apparent inequity. And, I kicked myself for not negotiating more cannily.
Now, many years later, a University of California study about making salaries public provides some rationale for my hurt feelings:
“The results were what you might expect for those whose pay was below average within their peer group: they weren't thrilled. They were more likely to be unsatisfied with their pay/job and search for new work. The worse the individuals' pay was relative to the median, the worse their satisfaction.”

Open books are essential to the democratic workplace. Employees get to see the financials – the budget - and, sometimes they get to see how much people are paid.
(Taking this a step further, a few freed-up organizations allow workers to set their own salaries. But, while many embrace the principles in my DW definition only a few have given workers a salary setting option. More about that in a future essay).
Opening the books – raising the curtain on the operating budget and the payroll, letting people see where the money is going and who is making what - is relatively simple. It can be limited to read-only access. Of course, you could opt for more democracy, like a Vermont town meeting, where people see the budget, debate it and then vote on it!
What’s the worst that can happen by revealing salary lines? Well, probably the worst is the exposure of historical inequities. Lacking those, there may be some initial confusion and gnashing of teeth, but then things will begin to sort out – the less deserving will understand why they are paid less and the more deserving will understand that they are compensated for doing a better job than most. And if wrongs need to be righted, then let’s get to it!
Now, for the faint of heart, you can opt to raise the curtain partially, say ankle height. Not all salaries need to be disclosed. Staff can be given the option to disclose or not.
Why am I so sanguine about making a payroll public? Well, there is the reassuring fact that many public employee salaries (including libraries) are already a matter of public record. With a few e-clicks, you can find out what your nemesis at work is making and whether you are better or worse off than she is. Those open record orgs behave like any other hierarchy – they are no better or worse for salary disclosure; it is simply an accepted tradition. For salary disclosure to really matter, other democratic virtues have to be in place. Salaries are often regarded as motivators; the greater the salary the greater the motivation. Truth is salaries have little to do with motivation. If adequate they are like organizational wallpaper, a reminder of a pleasant working environment. If niggardly, they de-motivate. Most of know the real motivators, respect, achievement, recognition, and camaraderie, along a few others, far outrank salary in an individual’s drive to be the best she can be.
I have worked in both public and private settings. Usually, I kept salaries secret, off limits. “Why, you blasted hypocrite”, you exclaim! Not really. For one thing, secrecy was the rule in those organizations. But, I will confess that confidentiality helped me avoid the hassle and embarrassment of having to explain why Mr. X – often inexplicably - made more than Ms. Y.
I now think that secrecy creates more problems than it avoids. People want to be treated fairly; an open payroll should make fairness manifest. If they are not being treated fairly then people need to know and they can choose to move on or, if there is apparent discrimination, to appeal for adjustment.
However, even some famously liberated workplaces only partially open the books. One of the more progressive companies, New Belgium brewery, plays its cards close to the corporate vest: “The company is earnestly open book--laying out everything but salaries (emphasis added) and providing an exhaustive education in financials.”
It is important to be “earnest”, someone said, but, New Belgium’s not revealing salaries does suggest there are some secrets the Fat Tire Tribe is not ready to deal with, regardless of ceremonial beads and investiture mojos. What is there to hide?
Bottom line, as they say, people desire fairness. Eyeballing salaries helps us make decisions about fairness. If we believe we are being treated fairly, then salary becomes less of a morale buster or fodder for unproductive grousing. A 2011 Atlantic magazine article backs that up, concluding that “knowing how much money other people make would benefit workers and make the labor market more efficient”

Overhearing that my peer was more highly valued than I was did make a difference for me. When a new CEO arrived, I re-negotiated my salary; I knew what to ask for. Did I get it? What do you think?

*Note: This is the second of several blog entries on how democratic workplaces behave. The first installment was about work schedules.

]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1823&catid=1 Wed, 5 Jun 2013 05:58:24 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1821&catid=1 first, “The Weeping Bald Man and Some Partridges”, included historical information about the fabulist and his contribution to the Aesopic tradition.)

“It was a custom among the Athenians that anyone who wanted to be thought of as a philosopher should be flogged, vigorously. And if he bore up patiently, then he would be esteemed a philosopher.
Now one man was being thoroughly whipped. Then before judgment had been pronounced where he should be held a philosopher (indeed, immediately following the whipping), he started shouting. ‘I am more than worthy,’ he exclaimed, ‘to be called Philosopher!’ And another answered him: ‘Brother, you might have been – if you could have kept quiet.’”


I am reminded of the Polish folk saying “Broda nie czyni filozofa.” (“If the beard were all, the goat might philosophize.”) Obviously, the Athenians in this fable have a higher standard for their philosophers. There is something to the notion that if we hold steadfast and silent in the face of adversity, we are better able to say sincerely who we are and what we are about. It is like Mr. Stand-Fast in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress reaching deep into himself to resist the temptress, Madam Bubble.
Or, the moral of this story might be that any one, in declaring himself to be a great leader or great thinker or great writer, confirms the opposite. Often, such declarations of greatness are not explicit, rather implicit in a recounting of accomplishments, a process by which the teller self-leverages onto what he believes is a lofty pedestal.

*Source: The Fables of Odo of Cheriton, translated by John C. Jacobs. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1985 p. 150.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1821&catid=1 Fri, 31 May 2013 10:49:22 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1808&catid=1
Caption: “Hank Drank “ Hank Williams, 1923 – 1953. The song title’s brevity surpasses W. H. Auden’s poem “Fleas”, “Adam Had ’Em”.
This is the second installment of country music titles. The first appears here and is related to my writing on Latvian folk music to be found here, here and here.
As a noted industrialist remarked, “There’s more good sense in this music than in a year’s worth of Harvard Business Review.”
1. Walk out Backwards Slowly So I Think You’re Coming in.
(For the farewell party when your best work buddy on the East coast work decides to go West. Sob!)
2. If You Can’t Bite, Don’t Growl.
(If the organization won’t let you back up your threat to fire a relentless under-performer, then don’t threaten. Just keep on ‘em. One of two things will happen. He will improve or he will leave to get away from the daily pressure of showing up.)
3. All I Want from You (Is Away.)
(Tell me about it! Like the previously listed “Thank God and Greyhound You’re Gone!” But, don’t sing about it until that person is ON THE BUS and THE BUS IS MOVING; fate and her co-conspirators may be lurking in the wings to keep that “irreplaceable” person in place and on your case.)
4. I Ain’t No Cowboy (I Just Found This Hat.)
(The song describes my funny feeling about taking on a new way of managing without much of a clue. I meant well, but at times I was riding bareback on a run away horse.)
5. You’re Going To Ruin My Bad Reputation.
(When my work team had great success and accomplished the “impossible” that confounded my bad reputation among the deniers. But not for long; theirs was a sliding scale!)
6. You Can’t Build a Fire in the Rain.
(If doubters surround you, all eager to stomp on your campfire, you might feel like this. Same effect:, You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.
7. The Bridge Washed out, I Can’t Swim, and My Baby’s on the Other Side.
(Classic. Use it when you need to explain why you are a no show. And for that difficult phone call to the spouse after you’ve gone missing for several days after the out-of-town convention: Don’t Pay the Ransom, Honey, I’ve Escaped.

Caption: Hank Williams and band in his prime.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1808&catid=1 Wed, 29 May 2013 06:05:32 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1804&catid=1
Caption: Reminiscent of Diogenes abode** this house might have appealed to Socrates.

“A house was built by Socrates
That failed the public taste to please.
Some blamed the inside; some, the out; and all
Agreed that the apartments were too small.
Such rooms for him, the greatest sage of Greece!
'I ask,' said he, 'no greater bliss
Than real friends to fill e'en this.'
And reason had good Socrates
To think his house too large for these.
A crowd to be your friends will claim,
Till some unhandsome test you bring.
There's nothing plentier than the name;
There's nothing rarer than the thing.”

No fool celebrity, Socrates knew about the scarcity and evanescence of true friendship. He built his house for his few “real” friends.
And so it goes at work. If all of our friends are from work, then our retirement may well be a lonely one. A few of those friendships do survive, but most do not. Maintaining relationships is a struggle, to be sure. Once absent, the heart may not grow fonder; instead it may grow forgetful.
And that works both ways. Like my retired university friend responded when I asked him why he had moved to a distant retirement community instead of living in the one preferred by his university colleagues: “I had to work with those bastards for forty years!”

*Source: THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE Translated From The French by Elizur Wright. [original place and date: Boston, U.S.A., 1841.] A New Edition, with Notes by J. W. M. Gibbs,1882.


**Caption: Diongenes who lived in a barrel, is the butt of a practical joke by Max und Moritz (Katzenjammer). The joke backfires, flattening the two mischief makers.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1804&catid=1 Fri, 24 May 2013 09:06:24 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1797&catid=1
Not long ago I happened upon the televised running of the 2013 collegiate indoor men’s mile championship.
The announcer declared that each of the 10 finalists had previously run a sub-4 minute mile! Indeed, the first five finishers of the championship race came in under four minutes! The winning time was 3.54.
Seventy years ago many coaches, runners and writers believed a sub-4 minute mile was humanly not possible. In 1945 a Swede ran the mile in 4.01. His mark stood for nine years, with runners failing to crack the perceived psychological and physiological barriers.
Then on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister, with the help of two pace setters, ran the mile in 3.59.4. In a mere 7 weeks, the Australian John Landy reeled off a mile in 3.58. Over the next few years, numerous runners went below 4 minutes.
What happened to the former psychological and physical barrier? How did the perceived impossible move to the possible?


Caption: Herb Elliott training barefoot on sand dunes led by the legendary coach, Percy Cerutty.
In 1958, my personal hero when I was a high school miler - the Australian Herb Eliott - ran the distance in 3.54.5 “shattering” the then-world record by 2.7 seconds!
In 1999, Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj ran a 3:43 mile, the current world record. Is 3.43 the new psychological and physical barrier? Perhaps.
Why, you may be yawning, is this guy going on about some obscure track and field event?
Well, because I’ve run into parallel perceptions about what was possible/not possible in the workplace. Leading from the Middle discusses at length the challenges faced by an organization in which I worked. This was a large research library and we suffered chronically from vast backlogs and plodding turnaround; instead of new books going to the open shelves the books went into storage. Previous efforts at eliminating backlogs and speeding up production had mostly failed. When extra staff were added, the “experts” implemented even more complicated quality controls that created traffic jams and aggravated backlogs. The experts’ mantra was that “high quality” – never defined - was our quintessential product. And, no, we could not lower quality to improve production!
The general mindset was that unless we got more people and more equipment, we would never achieve our version of a sub-four minute mile: no backlogs and one-day turn around. Within existing resources, these goals were psychologically and physically impossible. Like Bannister, we were in a world that said it could not be done.
Naively enough, I accepted the charge to eliminate bottlenecks and backlogs. I did believe we could achieve these goals but I knew we needed new perspectives and attitudes about our work. We would need to experiment, to make mistakes, and to expect and permit more innovation from our staff, both professional and support. One of my leadership initiatives was to look elsewhere, to see what our 20 or so peer institutions – those with whom we compared ourselves – might offer. I discovered that while most of us - as traditional institutions tend to be - were bogged down in similar ways, a few of the peers were indeed innovating, doing a few things differently, faster and better with fewer people and with less “tradition” than the rest of us. Of necessity, those innovating placed was far less emphasis on tacit standards that, in my opinion, added little value while slowing down our work.
While these innovations were not system-wide, they were useful in two ways. I was encouraged that our work could be done differently – we did not all have to be in lock-step - and that I could bring back new ideas and experiences to my teams to encourage them to try alternative ways. Someone else’s creating a different way (like Bannister) helped change our attitude, gave us permission to look toward what was possible. And, in the best tradition of one-upmanship, I was convinced: “if they can do it, we can do it better!”
So, fresh outside perspectives were good, but best of all, we had our own Roger Bannister. This was a support staff member who, once liberated, could not be held back in setting new production records. She was fearless, curious and playful. She looked at how she worked and how she could tweak what she did to save time and produce more. Her personal success was considerable; if 100 units per month were the so-called norm, she challenged herself to double it. If the “norm” were 200 units, she would come up with ways to produce 400. Shattering the divisive barrier between support staff and professional work, we allowed her to cross the line – to do work once saved only for advanced professionals. While largely accepted now, this was then an organizational taboo.
Her kind of performance is often derided as “rate busting”, but fortunately we were able to keep the naysayers at bay and she freely offered her time saving methods to several others who followed her lead. Her demonstrating that she could indeed work smarter, not harder, made a difference for anyone open to improving his or her workflow. Pretty soon backlogs began to disappear and we found ourselves out pacing our peer group. Of course, we had our critics inside and outside of the organization. Unlike sports where when someone sets a record they are usually praised, bureaucracies tend to find fault and look for ways to denigrate the success of the rate-buster. I think, in retrospect, we actually freed up a lot of workers at other institutions. We had run our own mile faster than ever before and, in so doing, we eliminated perceived barriers. Others could now see their way more clearly to higher levels.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1797&catid=1 Wed, 22 May 2013 05:44:50 -0500 xml-rss2.php?itemid=1790&catid=1 “A bald man, his eyes streaming with tears, was killing partridges. And one partridge said to another: ‘Behold the man – how good and saintly he is.’ And the other asked: ‘Why do you call him good?’ ‘Don’t you see, ‘ replied the first, ‘how he is weeping?’ To this, answered another one back: ‘Don’t you see how he is killing us? This man’s tears are damnable – for while weeping he is annihilating us!’”

Odo’s epimythium: “Thus many … great men seem to pray beautifully and give alms – weeping all the while. Yet they flay and annihilate those who are simple and subject to them. Such men’s prayers and tears are damnable!”


My take: Alice in Wonderland remarked after the Walrus and the Carpenter scarfed up all the little oysters: (Of the two), "I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters."
Odo’s story reminds me of an un-bald boss who fired a worker and then waxed solicitous about the ex-employee’s well being. It was meant to come across as a most magnanimous gesture, shedding rays of empathy and (crocodile) tears upon the displaced and downsized!
It was, instead, all a scam, a persona cultivated for the environment in which this boss worked.
Some people actually regarded this boss as a kind person and a great leader. Like the first partridge said, he was “good and saintly!” A few, especially those that were “flayed and annihilated” by him, penetrated the “good and saintly” veneer and saw the magnanimity for what it was: a politically cultivated strategy for self-advancement.

*Historic note about Odo the Fabulist by Prof. Laura Gibbs: “One of the most famous of … medieval fable collections was written by Odo of Cheriton, a 13th-century English preacher and scholar. Odo’s Latin fables were well known and circulated widely, as evidenced by numerous manuscript copies as well as translations into Spanish, French, and Welsh. Odo was a very learned man for his time, having studied in the schools of Paris, but he was not a high-brow scholar. Instead, he intended for his writings to appeal to a general audience, embracing both the clergy and lay people. Many of the fables evince a strong sympathy for the poor and oppressed, with often sharp criticisms of high-ranking church officials. At the same time, Odo also looked for theological messages in the fables, interpreting the stories of the animals as a symbolic code for the workings of God in the world.”

**Source: The Fables of Odo of Cheriton, translated by John C. Jacobs. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press 1985 pp, 79-80
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=1790&catid=1 Fri, 17 May 2013 07:41:19 -0500