Screw the Zombies. Literally: With Scruggs Patented Screw-in Coffin.
Something even an undead engineer could love
Inventor Donald Scruggs and his self-boring coffin present the perfect solution for post-apocalyptic burial. This tidy invention does double-duty: get a solid workout as you protect against zombies. Given the expected power outages and chronic fuel shortages, this do-it-yourself burial vessel allows you and another survivor a good 2-3 hours cardio and upper body workout (depending on ground conditions) as you grieve.
Plus—a recent study in the Journal of Undead Ergonomics (2011Oct; 1132(10):112-20. Lazarus R, Elijah P, Wernick P, et al. Diminished lifting capacity in the recently undead) shows just how difficult overhead lifts are for zombies. So—keep it vertical!
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Image credit: Scruggs Patent Application via treehugger
How to Talk About Stuff That Matters
2 Places to Begin
We’re at a restaurant, my friend and I. We have not seen each other for a while and I am eager to hear what is going on—really going on. Not just work. Not just hobbies or movies or other distractions. But what is the stuff touching my friend’s soul?
With some friends, a movie watched or a book read or a work assignment is the gateway to a conversation that opens up the irritations and joys, the tough marriage or relational issues we’re going through and the spiritual questions and self-doubts we’re currently entertaining. Maybe some ancient text seems to have pointed the way forward or that inveterate letter writer has provoked a response in us that looked like this set of actions last week. Those are conversations to cherish. They can fill a person up for long time—not with information but with connection and ideas and forward-motion.
With other friends, our work is the only topic and we don’t venture far from that. Rather than opening up, the conversation seems to circle the wagons and becomes something less. Probing is not part of this communication event. I leave somewhat disappointed.
Why is that? How can conversation be so different? I’ve often puzzled through this. Both conversations can happen with friends old and new. Maybe introvert/extrovert/personality type has something to do with it. Maybe trust has not built or has been destroyed. Or maybe we don’t have the language to adequately express what is going on or maybe the last time we were honest with someone they shot us down.
Conversation has so many variables that direct cause and effect is impossible to pin down. And there are no formulas or road maps. But two things are certain:
- Engaging in direct conversation is profitable. If not today, then tomorrow. Or next Tuesday. Or in a month/year. Engaging in conversation is a gift we give to each other, and sometimes it takes time to explore the topic and trust that has risen between us. Our conversation says we value someone.
- Our own willingness to share the deep stuff in us has a direct effect on opening the talk and life of our conversation partner. This is scary: what if someone doesn’t respond? What if they put me down? Trust and boldness help answer that question.
With whom will you talk about what matters today?
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Image credit: fer1972 via 2headedsnake
Work isn’t what it used to be
But was it ever?
Yesterday I ran into a friend and colleague from a medical device company we both worked at. He’s still there but said 70 percent of his staff was recently laid off, which mirrors what I had heard from other parts of the company. My friend surprised me by saying most of the jobs had gone overseas. He also said the expertise of the replacements was noticeably sub-par.
Sour grapes? Maybe. Maybe not. We already know that people with experience cost more to hire and keep then people without experience. This is good news for people wanting into an industry. This is not-so-good news for those invested in life with one company. But life in one company—was that ever a realistic expectation? I grew up thinking that was the norm. Dad worked for IBM and IBM never laid people off. Until they did.
My own decades of work experience show companies large and small shucking employees as a natural part of the business cycle. It came to be an expected—if morose—part of all my generation’s experience. Without exception. Human capital is still, well, capital.
From all our political talk about “Jobs!” you might expect the return of those old high-paying jobs you stay at until you wake up dead at your desk one day. Those days are gone. Today the best offense and defense are the same: anticipate change. Build bridges with people. Sharpen skills.
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Image Credit: Never Rider via 2headedsnake
There Is No Litmus Test for President
There is only conviction and thinking and prayer and conversation.
And even that conversation will vary within your community.
I’m reminded of the paradoxes of the old culture wars. A couple decades ago when politics were just as heated and dialogue just as rare, Mrs. Kirkistan and I lived in a rough section of South Minneapolis. People of faith in our community—I’ll call them Christians—routinely voted “for” Democrats. Given the particular demographic quirks of the area, it was easy to understand why those candidates did better. For a variety of reasons (economic, housing, vision, spiritual) we ended up moving miles away. We eventually found ourselves at a large suburban church where the assumption was that everyone voted “for” Republicans. Mind you, much of this was never said aloud. It was all just assumed.
After all, Republicans were anti-abortion and that’s where God hangs out—right?
After all, Democrats cared for the poor and that’s where God hangs out—right?
The danger of litmus-test thinking is that it promises some clear, unassailable answer: the candidate is this or the candidate isn’t this. Case closed.
I argue that leadership is and always has been about more than one thing. There is no litmus test because the human condition is complex and society and culture are exponentially complex. And while I’m certain God is all about creating life, the Creator is also bent on sustaining life, so listening to the poor, the widow and the orphan take up a lot of column-inches in our common, ancient text. But even those are not litmus-like tests, because which party will actually do those things best?
I’m hoping the faith communities around the country will have conversations that help their members vote not according to some mandate from a culture-wars war-room, but instead according their growing convictions from dealing with texts, from conversation and from prayer.
It’s time the church led by being counter-culture.
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Image via thisisn’thappiness
Indiana Wants You
Collaboration as the new metric for evaluating employee success
exactly
A sponsored topic in MedCity News presents the CEO of Eli Lilly and Company as bravely moving forward with emotional intelligence. Dr. John Lechleiter cited the need for more collaboration between universities and industry. Lechleiter sees the “…primary function of Indiana’s great research universities is to assist with tech transfer, to bring products…to the society to which they owe their existence.”
While I disagree with that as the primary function of any university (I’m of that old-fashioned tribe that believes learning and research need not always lead directly to a pot of gold), I respect the impetus to find practical outlets for learning.
The brave bit of emotional intelligence is where Lechleiter says Lilly will use a new metric for gauging employee success:
He called businesspeople to task on the lack of collaboration as well. He said that a new measure of an employee’s accomplishments at Lilly would be how many collaborations the person fostered within the state.
That’s radical stuff—and scary—for managers and employees who know only how to bludgeon underlings with orders and monologue. Success will require a whole new tool set, with dialogue anchoring the daily practice.
Lechleiter’s is an attractive stance for a smart, innovative workforce that has grown up with having their voice heard.
Lord You Can’t Go Back There
Minnesota drug lords/pharma execs, students and medical innovators, please disregard this post.
Minnesota wants you (unless you are an outlaw poet).
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Image Credit: WILFI
How to Blog Your Company’s Top Voice
Your Company’s Outside Voice Must Be Personal & Remarkable
I’ve been helping a few clients think about their outside voice. Blogging has its own peculiar set of requirements that set it apart from the tone of a brochure, say. Or from a corporate press release. That recurring blog voice is related to the messaging identity your company has established. That voice is also related to the design and tone of your corporate website, true, but it is not a one-to-one correspondence.
One primary difference: your blog voice must be personal.
A blog is not a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. It must not deteriorate into a selling monologue. And it is not constantly pointing to benefits and features (which quickly gets tiresome). It’s a different animal—a personal voice. It’s got to be a conversation that takes wide and narrow routes on the way to discussing what is remarkable. The best blogs are smart and timely and pull readers in by offering this personal perspective on things of mutual interest.
Just a bit of practice using the public voice helps clients see why their outside voice must be personal and have a personality behind it (not as redundant as it sounds). It doesn’t take many sample posts to show that customers and potential customers are intrigued by an inside track into the mind of that top voice. And that top voice can pull peripheral topics to the center of discussion to show how they relate, for instance. Or to show how certain a practice will move the industry forward.
And remarkable.
Interestingly, outside voice has a way of trimming and freeing and impacting a company’s inside voice. Outside voice and inside voice are related—how could it be otherwise? What is remarkable (and thus worth blogging about) must also be remarkable on the inside of the company. The top voice blogging about what is remarkable in the industry must also pass the believability test for those inside the company. Because folks inside a company tune their BS meters to High the moment they walk in the door. Remaining personal and true is essential.
So…blogging the top voice is not an easy path. But that has always been the way of relationship-building with peers, employees, clients, customers and potential customers and even congregants. And relationship-building is worth the time and effort.
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Image Credit: We Made This via thisisnthappiness
Minnesota’s Outlaw Poetry Students
Did I mention Coursera is free?
I’m taking a Modern Poetry Class with Coursera. It’s free (which is stunningly amazing), offers no credit. I expect no credit—I’m not working toward a degree.
And with each close reading of Dickinson and Kerouac, each synapses that fires, I am violating state law.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported Friday on a story from Salon that Coursera heard from my (uptight) state, to wit:
Notice for Minnesota Users
Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.
To Summarize: my state won’t let me take a free course because I might lose money. Did I mention the course is free?
I am baffled. I think the roots of this odd quasi-enforcement have to do with Minnesotans wasting their time and money (and state funding) on for-profit schools that offer little chance of graduating. But here the fear has been applied in broad brush strokes, since there was no promise of credit or degrees. Minnesota’s one-size-fits-all solution does not fit. That needs revisiting.
But I’m OK. Because every time I read my readings and watch the lectures, I find myself back at UW Madison law library with the chain smokers and worried scribblers. Or back in Iowa next to the Des Moines River. Or back anywhere that isn’t Minnesota. Because Minnesota’s dream of enforcement is about that likely, and much less credible.
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Addendum: It looks like my state found a finer brush to paint our laws: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/19/minnesota_coursera_ban_state_won_t_crack_down_on_free_online_courses_after.html
Ginsberg’s “tanked-up clatter” vs. the Gray Flannel Suit vs. a Third Way
Peace for the Listening Lurking Capitalist
We’re at the Beats and Allen Ginsberg and Howl now in our march through modern poetry. A recent discussion took in a stanza that seems relatively autobiographical, describing Ginsberg’s failed flirtation with advertising:
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
There is lots to talk about in this section (indeed, the entirety of Howl begs for response and discussion), including “leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter” and the irresistible “nitroglycerine shrieks.”
Of particular interest to me was the quickness with which our TA/discussion buddies blasted the hackiness of advertising copy. Of course the poets are right (and anybody actually creating ads readily confesses to their role in purveying crass capitalism), still…not everything is “clumsy, tacky copywriting.” That knee-jerk reaction to advertising covers a lot of ground well. But the comment misses the diabolical under-the-skin genius of the copy that got through and has already been ingested and now guides our subconscious. Professor Al hit closer to home when brought up “very slick” old slogans that remain memorable. Ginsberg’s insights at that point are perceptive and well-wrought, but I cannot help but insist on seeing the beauty of some advertising. The turn of a phrase that attaches (yes, at times parasitically to a target brain) is, well, amazing. It’s a kind of poetry let loose among today’s pages and screens and whispers.
There is a way to be at peace with using creativity to solve business problems. The way of peace wanders alongside the grove of manipulation without wandering in. This path follows a course of respectful persuasion, with nods to the “I and Thou” while resolutely trimming and toning messages for real-life use.
There is a way between “clumsy, tacky” and slick manipulation. That is a way of service that can be beautiful in its workmanlike portrayal of practical truths.
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Image Credit: marcedith via 2headedsnake
Juxtapose: Alongside is the New Black
Confession from a monochrome space
Putting like and unlike next to each other can have unanticipated results. Chefs know this and routinely put tastes together that “should” never go together to create things that are suddenly wildly tasty (dumb example: salsa on scrambled eggs shattered the sheltered world of my taste buds. So did Chicken Tikka Masala). As a copywriter I pull from poetry and technology and design and even theology and philosophy to place a disparate idea next to my client’s problem to see what may result. It is tried and true method for breaking out of the invisible constraints we didn’t even know held us back.
Yesterday I talked with a friend about a Respectful Conversation Project she had been involved with concerning the upcoming state vote on the marriage amendment. She described the training in dialogue and how so few of us know the difference between dialogue and debate. Debate is our knee-jerk response to different.
And that’s too bad.
Because just a few honest questions about the story behind a conviction, for instance, can do a lot to grow understanding and empathy. It turns out there are academic groups dedicated to this notion of appreciative inquiry as a management tool and a method of organization development. And there are resources like the Respectful Conversation Project moving toward the same end in our communities.
“Alongside” is an effective, creative tool that can build understanding and empathy and solve problems.
I’m still new to this generous notion of “alongside.” My formative years were spent in a land of black and white, where good was good and bad was bad and any fool could distinguish between. This monochrome way of life instilled deep revulsion (yes, that is the word) toward any pursuit of naming the shades of color between the usual poles. It’s taken years and questions and lots of discussion with patient friends but I still find myself curiously uninformed about all the places “alongside” can appear.
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Image via 2headedsnake
conversation is an engine 