The Whistling Vicuna

    In the face of decline it is hard to stay cheerful. My personal work situation is better than most, I believe. I have Part-time work in the early a.m. that is steady and stays steady during times of economic stress, and I have my self employment that keeps me busy, also.  A real estate rental and lots of busy-ness at home fill in the other hours in my day, and a recent political bent will soon be keeping me hopping with campaigning for a seat on the Peoria, AZ City Council.

    It’s in the talking with the people I know that a decided air of dissatisfaction begins to emerge. One fellow has his job in jeopardy because of a gambling owner/boss. A woman I know has her job and, indeed, the company she works for threatened by recent massive cuts in Medicare/Medicaid funding and she expects deeper cuts soon. Churches, existing on tithes and offerings, are facing closure and dissolution as members lose jobs and income and/or move away to look for work. States and cities face monetary bankruptcy. There seems to be no help to be had.

    I am a Christian and an American. The things I say may seem simplistic but I believe these things to be true. Read your bible, the King James Authorized Bible in particular. Read the Declaration of Independence. Read the Constitution of the United States. Read them with the same simplicity with which they were written. They were written to be understood by the people, the common people. There really is nothing too esoteric or too mysterious to be understood. They are the Basics, the Roots, and the Beginning of Wisdom. They are inspiring.

    Human beings have a marked tendency to withdraw in the face of adversity, to hunker down and cease striving. It is in the striving, though, that we grow, indeed, that we live. The challenges of life give us impetus to strive even more. Reading of the challenges of others and how they overcame them gives us the knowledge that we, too, can overcome the challenges in our lives. That is not to say that we will be successful in the way that the world defines, not at all. I am speaking of being cheerful, of having joy – in the LORD, and in the knowing and the doing that which is right.

    Get involved in your life. Find out those things that are detrimental to your self and stop them, change them. Get counseling if needed, and find wise council. Find or read of people you admire, learn their histories, find things in their lives that you can apply to yours, and grow. Seek the LORD, He will be found. Seek His wisdom, He is liberal to supply. Go stand on your front porch and imagine.

I’m a musician, a self employed worker if you will. I have to book my own performances (sales), get myself to the program (transportation), do the gig (manufacture), get the payment (collections) and keep track of income and expenses (accounting). You would think that with all those job skills I would be a pretty decent communicator. And I am, but…

    …I had been talking with a person a few weeks ago about an engagement. The person I spoke with was excited about booking me and wanted me on a monthly basis beginning in January. I quoted my fee and told her what I did and she said, “I’ll get back with you.” Not a problem as most of my first timers need time to mull it over, talk to their supervisors, etc. A week goes by and I haven’t heard back so I make the call and get the answering machine. I leave a message and wait and nothing, so I call one more time. I get an assistant and talk with her.

            “Sure,” she says. “You are coming to play.” Friends, I’ll make a long story short. It took me ten minutes and twenty questions to find out that yes, I had been booked, not just for January as the first part of the conversation sounded like, but for each month through December. I’m not complaining about getting work, but the communication left a bit if an aftertaste. Are all of my dealings with these people going to be this task intensive? Things like this make me remind me that some people don’t pay. At all. I don’t like having “write-offs” on my books any more than other companies do.

            Communication is a two way street. In retrospect, I’m very sure that I could have handled the conversation another way. Instead of trying to politely extract the information I needed, I could have been much more direct with my questions. I could have apprised the assistant of what I knew about the performances and asked if she had the knowledge I needed. But too, I knew at the end of our talk that she did indeed have the information I needed but had no idea how to impart it.

            In business dealings, relationships, friendships, any interactions at all, you need good communication skills. It can be as simple as “I liked your presentation”, or “go to Mr. Does office on the second floor and give him this folder, then come right back.” Depending on your needs you may need to be even more explicit, such as, “I liked your sales presentation. I want you to come back tomorrow and give it again to the inside sales and the shipping and receiving groups”, or “Go to Mr. Does office on the second floor, give him this folder and wait to see if he has anything for me, then come right back.”

            Oddly enough, the part of communication that causes more chaos is assumption. In each of the first two scenarios there are many opportunities for assumption. Don’t believe me? Let’s have at it. You say to a co-worker, “I liked your presentation.” He says, “Liked? I worked for hours on the numbers alone! I couldn’t sleep last night worrying that I would stutter or belch or something. I gave it my absolute best in there, and all you can say is you LIKED it. Gimme a break!”

            Hey, I threw a wrench in that one, emotions. It’s hard enough talking to people without having to deal with their feelings, but, that’s a major part of how we communicate. Emotions are the colors on our word palettes. In the employment environment, we like to say we leave emotions at home, but we don’t. We can’t, they’re a part of us. Sometimes, though, someone we have to deal with takes things too personally. Maybe today it’s your boss. “Boss, I need two more days to finish this report. There was a whole lot more information than I thought and need the extra time to get it organized.” Your boss “goes off” on you saying you are always late with work, never dependable when it counts, forever just adding to his workload, and can’t you, just this once, finish what you started.

            We’ve all been there. Boss is having a bad day. Her boss is hounding her for her reports, there’s been complaints, costs are coming in way over budget, why did I ever hire you when I had an MBA, AN MBA wanting your job! Makes you feel like a rodent and pretty soon you are looking for another job. It happens at the other end, too, from your employees. And yes, it goes both ways, you “go off” on them and they “go off” on you. It takes an immense amount of patience and understanding not to take the things that happen at the job personally.

            There are times when personalities and psychoses prohibit you from working with someone. There are times when the employment ethos changes to something you cannot live with. As a rule, though, most workplace confrontations can he headed of with some preemptive anticipation of possible trouble. Self reporting mistakes, initiating the communication, trying to be tuned in to your co-workers, employees, supervisors emotional state, knowing what sets someone off and avoiding that, are examples of preemptive anticipation. Communication is awareness of self and of others. Patience and understanding can be cultivated and nurtured. That’s the hard part.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

    Yes, how does your garden grow? Oftimes we wonder if the things we do are having any effect on those around us. Can we actually affect change in the lives of those we touch? I like to consider my sphere of influence as my garden. 

    A garden does not just happen. Many things have to take place before you can pick a single flower or eat a ripe tomato. You have to find suitable ground. You have to dig the ground and bolster it up with fertilizer. You have to know just what you are going to plant and amend the soil to the plants particular needs. You have to keep the garden weed free and pest free. You have to nurture, protect, and even love your garden and those little living things that are in it.

    Wow, it sounds like a lot of work! That is putting it mildly. Tending your garden is an every day, every way kind of thing. Each task has a purpose, each purpose a goal, each goal an end. It takes firm deliberation of mind and motion to perform those tasks. It takes DELIBERATE ACTION.

    To deliberate is to think deeply on one subject. Action is movement. Deliberate action is motion deeply thought out. It can be a simple thing such as washing clothing. Deliberate action keeps us from putting that bright red cotton sweater in with our white work shirts. It can be as difficult as flying an airplane. Deliberate action allows us to put the landing gear down when we land.

    Deliberate action is not a difficult force to put to work for you. It only requires the breaking of some old thought (or lack of thought) habits and putting into place DELIBERATE ACTION. A short pause to think before you do an easy task can make that task go well. If all of your tasks go well, you may be asked do more tasks, or “harder” tasks. Doing harder tasks increases your value to the workforce. You may even get promoted!

    Beans grow in my earthen garden. Love grows in my family garden. Satisfaction and worth grow in my work garden. Deliberate action is my shovel. How does your garden grow?

The question is, “Is there anything less than great responsibility?” This seems to be one of those seemingly uncomplicated questions that have major ramifications if it is answered honestly. If someone who has authority over me asks me to do a task, however simple, if I give that task anything less than my undivided attention, I have shirked my responsibility. If I do the task to the best of my ability and fall short, I still have not met my responsibility. It is only when my task is completed as directed by the one in authority over me that I have met my responsibility.

             What gives great responsibility inducement is accountability. Accountability is that quality of life that gives people connectedness to each other. Accountability is the quality of living that impels trust. When we sometimes think that we are accountable only to ourselves we are being extraordinarily one-sided in our thinking. Each person having responsibility has accountability.

            Here is another question and a point to be considered. To whom is an employee accountable, too? We, employers and employees, have a tendency to believe that we are accountable to our supervisor, to the person directly above us in the business hierarchy. Consider, does that person, 1) sign your paycheck, 2) create your job description, 3) benefit from your work, 4) depend on you to do your work correctly? A person about whom you can answer yes to these or any other question you might ask is a person to whom you have a responsibility to.

            This means that we can be responsible to someone in a position below ours, too. As a rule, people in leadership believe themselves to be responsible for those working under them. In asking the questions above, though, we find that, yes; those below us benefit from our work and do, indeed, depend on us to do our work correctly. Even more, as we have to know how to do their job tasks, we have to know how to train them in the job tasks, and keep them informed of and trained for any new job tasks they might need to know. While responsibility can seem daunting it helps to remember a something, namely, that you manage things but you lead people.

             Where does this responsibility end? It doesn’t, actually. Think of responsibility as a sphere, a three dimensional circle. Each person we come into contact with comes into our sphere of responsibility, and we into theirs. In a manufacturing arena, riveters, box openers, welders, accountants, human resource developers, salespersons, business owners, all are in each others spheres of responsibility, and all are in the sphere of the consumer of their goods. In the service arena, food preparers, housekeepers, desk clerks, activity professionals, masseuses, managers and executives, all share the spheres pertinent to their responsibilities.

             It comes to this, then, that no person, no job task, no title, is of little importance. Think of what happens if a dishwasher doesn’t wash the dishes, if an accountant doesn’t care where a decimal is placed, or if a business owner is inconsistent with the paychecks. Any of these will make for a dismal work environment. Each of us in a sphere of responsibility needs to know the importance of what we do, and how it affects those around us. Great responsibility comes with the job, any job. Accountability comes with acknowledgement of responsibility. That is the secret of satisfying work.