Archive for the ‘philosophy of work’ Category
Writing with Sheet Metal (ShopTalk #2)
The Pull of the Factory Floor
As a copywriter I spend my days in front of a pair of computer screens. Writing. Yes, I have meetings with clients and colleagues, brainstorming sessions and updates and phone calls. But mostly I remain planted before my computer, sorting through masses of information, ordering data that came with competing priorities and generally figuring out new ways to present the right facts to the right people in a way that causes a reaction.
Then there are days I visit a particular client’s factory. It’s a factory with a whistle that blows, union members who take 15-minute breaks, safety glasses and focused workers at benches doing macro and micro tasks. It’s a factory that stamps and welds metal, where electricians wire metal carcasses as long and tall as a semi-trailer. This factory is lit so everything is visible and produces a hum of activity across the concrete floor, which is the size of several football fields.
Why give so much detail? Because many who read this—myself included—spend our days in offices. But a factory floor is a different sort of place—a different world, with a different set of priorities and where production is king but craft sits near the throne.
I like this factory floor because it is different from an operating room, different from a cath lab, different from a conference room during an endless PowerPoint presentation, different from a row of cubicles and different from the Livingston Communication Tower (high over St. Paul). There is an irresistible, energizing activity on this factory floor that flows out of the scores of workers. But maybe that energy also comes from my past, because I grew up watching my dad craft furniture from oak and walnut. Maybe that’s where I absorbed the notion that producing a solid piece someone might actually use is a great way to spend your time and a fulfilling thing to do.
In this ongoing discussion of what makes for fulfilling work, I want to trace fulfillment down a different thread. This thread places the writer in a team with a goal of productivity. The writer and the team are focused on this goal of shipping something real and substantial. At the same time this team is also sort of doing life together—because in the middle of work there are the discussions about the rest of life. For a writer, this team-ness is a different way of spending the day and not to be missed.
Don’t take this as a romantic view of factory work. Instead, see it as the reality of the life situations where your craft takes you to meet a need.
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Image credit: Yael Frankel via 2headedsnake
The Tradeoffs in Selling Your Craft
Make a living while making a life
Teaching in a college English department, I come in contact with lots of people who want to express themselves. They have things to say and they want to say those things through poetry, fiction and all manner of creative writing. The typical line of thinking goes that the best and highest fulfillment comes from putting words around those things that compel us. The process of searching out those compelling things involves regularly plunging deep inside to pull stories and impressions up to the surface to slice and dice for delivery. This is good and useful work and has, or course, resulted in the poems and works of fiction and symphonies and songs celebrated worldwide.
This work of surfacing our deepest thoughts and emotions and capturing them for delivery is important work in which each of us must continue. I want to do this as well and regularly set aside time for it. But is this highly internal work the only route to fulfillment? Answer “Yes!” and you shortchange the rest of life.
I want to argue in a few posts that we make some of our best and most meaningful contributions when three streams collide:
- Faith: what we believe
- Talents: what we are gifted at
- Service: as we focus on needs outside of us, how can we use our faith and talents and imagination to solve those needs?
I want to argue the junction of craft and faith and need is the locus of true fulfillment. When we plumb our depths for words or impressions that solve a need our organization or community has identified, well then we’ve done a good thing and a highly fulfilling thing. I might further argue that much of our greatest art and literature has come from that junction of craft, faith and need.
Writing ad copy or technical specs is not the route to personal fulfillment. But neither is a self-focus that never reaches out.
There’s lots more to say about this.
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Image credit: frenchtwist via 2headedsnake
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Keep an Eye on Your Vision Gauge
A conversation over the weekend reminded me of how vision works in my life. As long as I have vision for the organization and my role in the organization, work moves forward. But if vision quavers, all sorts of rocky stuff starts happening. I get itchy for purpose.
For me vision is like the gas gauge: I can (nearly) see it as it maintains or slowly drops. And if nothing replenishes vision, movement slows to a stop.
But what is vision? For me it is seeing a longer term role or impact. It is also recognizing my organization has a larger purpose and how I fit that purpose. Vision gets personal.
After a couple years at a large industrial company—early in my career—I recognized the growth paths presented by the manager led nowhere I wanted to go. Not long after that pep talk the company’s mission and purpose started seeming pretty stale. In fact, I could not see anything in the organization I wanted to do. So I started knocking on different doors. The doors that eventually opened helped me sort out my direction.
The Clash was singing about romance. But work is also a kind of romance—a dance of loyalty and engagement—far from the purely transactional presentation your HR officer lays out the day you get laid off. And that is true for more than work: any and every company, volunteer opportunity, or gathering that attracts us does so because of purpose and mission. At least that’s true for me.
What does your vision gauge read today?
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If I Had a Parking Lot (The Parking Lot Movie)
That’s Fecund Ground for a Philosopher
If I told you there was a documentary about a parking lot and that you would not be able to stop watching it, you might disbelieve me. And yet. There is. And you can’t. It’s called, The Parking Lot Movie.
You can’t stop watching because of the cast of characters who each take their turn tending the unheated little hut that serves as the outpost for payment. They charge people 40 cents, or a dollar, or eight bucks and the world of the parking lot revolves around this simple transaction. The attendants are students, and recent grads and grad students. They are philosophers and professors and musicians and slackers and bikers and skateboarders. What they share in common is lots of reflection about the transactions they have with the public. These guys have lots of time to think.
This overeducated bunch connects the dots of culture from the seeming-lowest point on the food chain of work. They think about how people park and about how the car make and model and even the license plate reflect on the driver. They think about the irony of having to pay to park that lumbering, expensive SUV. They think about what it means to be a parking lot attendant, mostly. And the camera catches these comments, along with the transactions and events that drive them to the comments.
The only way to get this parking lot attendant job at the Corner Parking Lot across from the University of Virginia is to know somebody. And that fact is one key to the whole interesting film: it’s the little community of irrepressible attendants trying to sort out life together that turns a mundane job into a joyous window on life. But more than that, the guy who owns the Corner Parking Lot—Chris Farina—has a way of working with people, mentoring actually, that helps each attendant grow into the person they are meant to be. He’s boss, but he’s a parking lot visionary who has figured out how to help each attendant have ownership over the parking lot. And maybe their life.
This is a great film on its own. But I can imagine using it in a class when talking about collaboration or community—it’s a perfect illustration of both. And with the shop talk caught on camera and in context, it is a delightful and an all-too-quick 74 minutes.
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DIY Drama Queen: a Cop, 2 Boots and a Homeless Guy
Tell Your Old Story in Today’s Conversation
Not so many days ago a New York cop bought some boots for a homeless, shoe-less guy. The photo went viral because it was remarkable—stuff like that doesn’t usually happen. The telling of the story warms the heart and we want to share it.
Communication-types talk endlessly about stories and narrative and narrative arc. All this literary-criticism lingo has made its way from academia through the land of communication and advertising and out into mainstream speech of the news anchor, for instance. Behind all this talk is the simple notion that people respond to stories.
Because people respond to stories, we give assignments to our outward facing employees to snag potential customers and engage clients with precisely those stories that feature our product or service in a key role. Maybe the product saves the situation. Maybe the service is a vehicle of freedom. Certainly the product enriches the identity of the people using it.
But what about inside the company? Where are those engaging narratives in our ordinary, daily conversations? Does story have a place in our workdays? Should it?
One medical device company I worked for held a company-wide meeting around this time of year where patients came on stage and told stunning stories of how they could now walk (or stand or eat or breathe) again. They talked about how their lives were changed by the very products we all worked on.
And we all got weepy.
But ordinary, daily conversations produce no such tears—how could they? We’re all about work and getting stuff done, after all. We’re not here to tell stories. But some smart bosses are telling larger stories. Some meeting leaders are starting with the narrative arc that includes patients being healed and lives restored. Some team members are embedding in their discussion how their product makes it easier to turn solar energy to electricity—and why that has meaning for today’s work. Bringing those stories to the mundane conversations can seem like a cynical, manipulative ploy—but only to those intent on cynicism and manipulation.
It’s time to bring those stories back into our conversations. Not as ploys. Not as manipulative levers. But because of our universal need to make meaning. Especially to make meaning of our daily work.
We’re moving into a season where we tell lots of old stories: When I was a kid Christmas looked like this. When we were first married, we did this for the holiday. Way back when a virgin had a baby. In a stable. And everything changed.
Be the drama queen in your part of your company or organization. Take center stage and demand attention. And tell the remarkable story you heard.
Stories help us make meaning and are worth passing on.
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Image Credit: Politix
Your Cubicle Neighbor’s Bold Reveal May Be Your Salvation
One Lesson from Office Space
In Office Space, as Peter Gibbons descended down the dark tunnel searching out meaning in his work, he maintained friendships with other like-minded/cynical employees, Michael Bolton (no, not that Michael Bolton) and Samir N. And then there was Lawrence who heard everything about Peter’s life through the thin walls of the apartment next door. Together these friends reveal more and more to each other as the film progresses.
I’ve been blessed with great work friendships over the years. I believe the shared experience of dealing with the despot in the corner office and the silly conundrums she or he introduces can have a binding influence on co-laborers. Plus, the work of finding or making meaning in work often happens at the collegial level: the expertise, instincts and humor with which we approach our work has a way of rubbing off on those around us and vice versa. These friendships can and have lasted for years through changed jobs and kids and sickness and all manner of life change.
Not long ago I wondered aloud what would happen if God showed up at work. To that list I might add the people around us with whom we connect. These people in our shared work experience are way more than companions in misery—they may be part of your job’s salvation. Part of that has to do with what we reveal of ourselves to each other. And maybe the hope is that we share the stuff that matters with these people with whom we spend our days.
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Image Credit: IMDB
Shop Talk Creates Remarkable Moments
Does God show up in shop talk?
I wondered aloud what it would look like if God showed up at work. I thought it would not look like church but instead might resemble acts of excellent service, possibly offered anonymously. I argued such service might flow from a deeper dedication than winning points with the boss. I also speculated that if God showed up, He might bring with him a sense of the larger purpose to our work.
One medical device company I worked for the CEO would routinely travel with sales reps to visit physicians. When the CEO showed up, the tenor of the conversation changed. Suddenly it was not about just product benefits and features, but it was about the surgeon’s particular need with the kinds of patients she was seeing. Or what the cardiologist was noticing about how this technology helped his patients and where there could be improvements. The conversations broadened out beyond technology, and then broadened out beyond that particular physician to all surgeons or all cardiologists or all patients with this particular pathology.
Shop talk—the conversations we have with colleagues—can be a rich source of practical help. It can also be utterly engaging. It’s the details we notice and sharing the things that work (and noting those that don’t) and the funny stories of different personalities and their ways of approaching work. Shop talk is all about what we find remarkable, what we find stimulating or workable. Or amazing. Or meaningful. But shop talk can never be created by a computer—it is always about a human response to a shared situation.
It’s Monday, that day of the week when our work can feel particularly mundane or stale. Hearing our colleague explain why our shared work helps people can be refreshing. It can help reframe today’s tasks. Sometimes it takes great courage to explain to our jaded, cynical colleagues why we continue to move forward and why this work has meaning. My favorite leaders have shop-talked their way into answering the meaning question—and today I’m grateful for their acts of revelatory courage.
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Image credit: surrealmagicalism via 2headedsnake
Never Say This To Your Boss On A Monday
“Easy, Peterson. We’re in mixed company.”
Unless your employee figures “Why” for themselves
Certain words and phrases race from useful to cliché within an hour-long meeting. Just check out this list of 89 clichés, many of which you’ll likely hear today. Other words carry so much heavy baggage that when your VP says them, the air in the room suddenly seems carbon monoxide-heavy and people start to drift.
This word is among those problematic words.
It’s a common word. So common, in fact, that when uttered aloud it brings to mind exactly…nothing. This word is invisible.
“Strategy.”
Three of us have been talking about why it is so many clients see strategy as something hammered out by a few bosses in the back room—or simply as a complete waste of time. These organizations reward a “bias toward action,” which looks like lots of activity, lots of people staying late, lots of emails on Saturday and Sunday, without lots of results. Too often all that activity is at cross-purposes across an entire organization eager to prove their bias toward action.
The three of us would like to rehab the concept, but not the word itself. Our rehab efforts consist of breaking the concept into component parts that become as sticky as a five-year-old’s wonderment: What? Why? How? Simple stuff. But when approached directly, these words become profoundly effective tools for guiding teams and organizations and, especially brands. Incredibly useful words not just for giving instructions, but for engaging someone’s emotion and intellect. The first order of rehab is to include all three components. The second order of rehab is tell the straight story about each—without cliché, with clear endpoints. And that means end points that others can see if they get done (or not).
We’re starting to believe that managers who major on the “What” or “How” without telling “Why” are getting employees to feel OK running about on impulse drive without ever taking their work to warp speed. Of course, it is possible the manager still feels knowledge is power and to withhold the “Why” is a way to maintain that power. Impulse drive is all they’ll ever get.
Unless.
Unless their employee figures out the “Why” for themselves. Unless the employee finds a way to put meaning into their work on their own. Unless the employee learns to engage in the kind of dialogue that helps a group move forward.
I hope to write more about this. The topic includes lots of working parts: leading from anywhere in an organization, learning to help a boss ask the bigger questions without disappearing down the rabbit hole of industrial strength strategy/BS sessions, helping each other grow into people who care and do our best. And many more.
Oh—and the third, most important order of rehab: courage. The whole thing needs to be stirred up by people willing to share their dumb ideas. Because sometimes dumb ideas produce solid, cogent, meaningful results, despite the awkward moments along the way.
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Image Credit: 4CP via thisisnthappiness
Joseph, Seth Godin’s Dip and Knowing When to Quit
Practice Your Craft In the Dip Or On The Rise
wait, where is that basket tethered?
It’s funny what ideas collide on any given day. I’ve been re-reading Seth Godin’s The Dip while also re-reading the ancient text Genesis. In Genesis I’m at the point in the story where the Creator needs to clear out his favorite people—the ones He’ll use to help all subsequent generations and peoples—to a foreign land so they’ll survive a famine. The front man is Joseph, sold into economic slavery by his not-so-well-meaning brothers. Joseph winds up as #2 man in Egypt. You know the story. Maybe you are already singing the tune from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
It turns out not just any dream will do, as Mr. Osmond so famously sang, because there were a lot of very big falls and rises in Joseph’s life. And a lot of waiting, which served to focus the dream. Quitting would have been an excellent option for any of the many dips he experienced. Because there were no guarantees the dip would ever end. There were no guarantees he would ever rise out of the slavery/prison. Interestingly, the author of Genesis points out that Joseph continued to work out the processes behind his dream: his gift for organizing people and stuff. His gift of leadership. So that wherever he was, as household slave or in jail, he organized and led using the same skills that would help him manage a nation’s food supply through thick years and thin.
The dream seemed to be about fame at the beginning—that’s what Joseph’s brother’s thought. Maybe Joseph thought that too. But the dream became a byproduct of practicing the gifts given him, even at the lowest points of the dip. To quit would have been to stop practicing the thing he was made for, which would be to give up hope. I think Webber did a good job capturing the optimism that must have been warp and woof of Joseph’s life.
Where does that optimism come from? Maybe from practicing one’s craft when up or when down. Maybe that optimism comes from understanding a much larger plan is in the works and you are in it, whether you on the rise or languishing in the dip.
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Image credit: Scribner’s Monthly Via OBI Scrapbook Blog
Is it Time You Wrote Your Autobiography?
I’m not writing one. Then again, who isn’t adding to their autobiographical material daily, whether with words or deeds?
but surely I am king of something
I’ve been reading the autobiography of R.G Collingwood, an Oxford philosophy professor of the last century. He set out to trace the outline of how he came to think—a kind of personal intellectual history. Early on in his life (at 8 years old) he found himself sitting with a philosophy text (Kant’s Theory of Ethics). And while he did not understand it, he felt an intense excitement as he read it. “I felt that things of the highest importance were being said about matters of the utmost urgency: things which at all costs I must understand.” (3) That reading set one course for his life.
One thing that makes this book worth reading is his notion of how questions and answers frame our production of knowledge. Collingwood said he “revolted against the current logical theories.” (30) He rebelled against the tyranny of propositions, judgments and statements as basic units of knowledge. He thought that you cannot come to understand what another person means by simply studying his or her spoken or written words. Instead, you need to know what question that person was asking. Because what that person speaks or writes will be directly related to the question she or he has in mind. This is incredibly useful when studying ancient texts—like a letter from the Apostle Paul, for instance. It’s also incredibly useful when listening to one’s wife (ahem), or a student or to anyone we come in contact with.
Another thing that recommends this book is hearing him tell about his main hobby: archaeology. Collingwood was the opposite of a couch potato. He spent a lot of times in digs around the UK, unearthing old Roman structures and then writing about them. Here too, he explained that while some archaeologists just set out to dig, he only set out to dig when he had formed a precise question to answer. His digging (tools, methods, approach) were all shaped by this question. By starting with a question, he came to very specific answers and, of course, other brand new questions.
Questions begat answers. And more questions.
What question is your life answering?
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Image credit: J-J. Grandville via OBI Scrapbook Blog
conversation is an engine 