You should know who Ray Oldenburg is. Way back in 1991, he wrote "The Great Good Place" and it's there that we see one of the first descriptions of how society falling down as retail rose. There's a lot in there about community planning and suburban development. Bedroom communities, for example, are entire neighborhoods where people retreat to sleep at the end of a workday - and then leave again in the morning for work and school.
Oldenburg identified some ways in which changes in the ways we live impact the quality of life we have. The big one is the disappearance of social structures -the formal and informal community groups people used to belong to. I realize this is a broad description, but it used to be a big category. You'd find everything in it from church membership to participation in your kids' PTA. Some social structures were organized for very serious purposes - think of your volunteer fire department - while others were more fun, such as the community softball team.
Some Quotes from Roy Oldenburg
In the absence of informal public life, living becomes more expensive.
Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not
publicly shared, they become the objects of private ownership and
consumption.
Life without community has produced, for many, a life style consisting
mainly of a home-to-work-and-back-again shuttle. Social well-being and
psychological health depend upon community. It is no coincidence that
the ‘helping professions’ became a major industry in the United States
as suburban planning helped destroy local public life and the community
support it once lent.
Totally unlike Main Street, the shopping mall is populated by strangers.
As people circulate about in the constant, monotonous flow of mall
pedestrian traffic, their eyes do not cast about for familiar faces, for
the chance of seeing one is small. That is not part of what one expects
there. The reason is simple. The mall is centrally located to serve the
multitudes from a number of outlying developments within its region.
There is little acquaintance between these developments and not much
more within them. Most of them lack focal points or core settings and,
as a result, people are not widely known to one another, even in their
own neighborhoods, and their neighborhood is only a minority portion of
the mall’s clientele.
The Rise of Retail
Nature abhors a vacuum, but nature's got nothing on a brand manager desperate to keep their job. It's not rocket science to see that people have a deep-seated need for community. If the community is no longer there, people will seek out the connection and purpose that community provided somewhere else. Retailers have stepped in to fill that gap.
Think about the classes offered at home improvement stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. In some measure, people take these classes because they want to learn how to accomplish a specific task, such as installing closet dividers or replacing a toilet. But there's something deeper going on here. When people gather, with like minded individuals, who all have a common challenge, they're forming a community. Some of the need that would have once been filled by the casual sideline conversations that take place while parents watch their kids' soccer games, for example, has now been moved into the retail environment.
We Lost Home, Too
Other thought leaders, such as Jean Zimmerman, in Making Scratch: Rediscovering The Pleasures of the American Hearth, and Shannon Hayes, in Radical Homemakers, have detailed how the erosion of community structures Oldenburg documented has extended even further.
Home, which has traditionally been the center of all human endeavors, has evolved into a place to be avoided or escaped. It's very weird: as houses get larger and larger - Bloomberg News reports that
the median new
house built in the U.S. is now about 50 percent larger than its
counterpart from 30 years ago - people are spending less and less time in them.
Part of this is economic. Large homes are expensive to acquire and maintain. You generally need at least 2 incomes to keep the household going. When everyone is working outside the home, there's no one left inside the home.
When there's no one left inside the home, the home becomes no more than a house -and a house as it stands is not an exceptionally compelling place to be. Retail and the entertainment industry provide an attractive alternative. For a few - or not so few- dollars, you can have an experience designed to delight you, or at least satisfy you, and don't you deserve it? After all, you've worked so hard this week, paying for the house you don't want to be in.
It's a vicious cycle. We have to be willing to look at it critically, examine our role in it, and finally, if we're going to change our lives, step off of it. I think it starts with taking home back, but it can't stop there. Isolation within the home is part of the root of this problem. We need to build communities and connections with people, both online and in real spaces, if we want things to change. We need Oldenburg's Third Spaces, free from the influence of commerce.
It's not going to be easy, but essential things never are.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
Transitions
I quit one of my jobs today. It wasn't a bad job, as ghostwriting gigs go: the clients are pleasant, knowledgeable people; the money decent and always paid promptly. But I just couldn't do it anymore. Here's why:
It's no secret that the world's best brands are successful because they do a great job of meeting their customers' needs. That's Marketing 101, right there. But what isn't so well understood is that human needs are incredibly complex. They have both tangible and intangible components.
That's why when winter rolls around and you go coat shopping, you're not just looking for a coat that's warm, weatherproof, and affordable. You want a coat that's stylish as your community of choice defines stylish, so you can feel good about yourself and your place in society.
My now-former clients do a great job educating business leaders about the complexities of human need and teaching them how to best meet as many of those needs as possible in the retail setting. Better, more comprehensive customer service leads to more sales, greater organizational profitability, increased market share...it all sounds good, right?
Except for one little thing.
I have become increasingly convinced that having too many of our needs - of both the tangible and intangible variety - met by retailers is disastrous. It's a catastrophe on the individual level, and collectively, for our society as a whole, it's a cluster-fuck of truly epic proportions.
People who can buy everything - everything from apples to aspirations, eggs to esteem, chocolate to confidence - are people who don't need to do anything. We don't need to make, manufacture, discover, or create. It all comes from the store. When all of our needs are met for us, we don't even have to think.
People who don't think make bad decisions. When we're not thinking, we make decisions that actually go against our own self-interest and the well-being of the communities we live in. Look around your circle of family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Look at society at large - especially as it's presented to us on the news.
Do you see a lot of good decision making going on?
The other day, I was down at a little local grocery store in my neighborhood. A young couple stopped in. They were in search of hamburger patties.
"We don't sell the pre-made patties," the proprietor told them, "But we do have the meat - we grind it fresh every morning!"
The young woman shuddered, and the young man slid a comforting arm around her shoulders. "No thank you," he said. "We'll just get some someplace else."
That young couple had a twenty mile drive ahead of them, in any direction, before they'd find a store that sold pre-made hamburger patties. There was high quality, freshly ground beef right in front of them. But they were willing to travel a significant distance (and I don't know what gas costs where you are, but it starts at $4/gallon up here) to find hamburger patties already made for them.
Why?
I believe that the narratives we've been given by marketers - stories about what we need and who were are - hold some, if not all, of the answer to that question.
One of the most pervasive marketing messages, delivered daily in dozens of different ways, is "You shouldn't have to work so hard." It's a message that helped spur the public enthusiasm for electricity, with countless labor-saving devices that promised to free women from a lifetime of drudgery at the washboard or slinging sad irons. Decades later, we've internalized the message so completely that no one wants to do anything - even if the task is no more taxing than shaping a few ounces of ground meat into a patty.
This type of thinking is destroying us. I don't want to contribute to the problem. I want to help solve it. We can take our lives and our futures back from the marketers. We just have to remember how to meet our needs without the assistance of retailers.
It's no secret that the world's best brands are successful because they do a great job of meeting their customers' needs. That's Marketing 101, right there. But what isn't so well understood is that human needs are incredibly complex. They have both tangible and intangible components.
That's why when winter rolls around and you go coat shopping, you're not just looking for a coat that's warm, weatherproof, and affordable. You want a coat that's stylish as your community of choice defines stylish, so you can feel good about yourself and your place in society.
My now-former clients do a great job educating business leaders about the complexities of human need and teaching them how to best meet as many of those needs as possible in the retail setting. Better, more comprehensive customer service leads to more sales, greater organizational profitability, increased market share...it all sounds good, right?
Except for one little thing.
I have become increasingly convinced that having too many of our needs - of both the tangible and intangible variety - met by retailers is disastrous. It's a catastrophe on the individual level, and collectively, for our society as a whole, it's a cluster-fuck of truly epic proportions.
People who can buy everything - everything from apples to aspirations, eggs to esteem, chocolate to confidence - are people who don't need to do anything. We don't need to make, manufacture, discover, or create. It all comes from the store. When all of our needs are met for us, we don't even have to think.
People who don't think make bad decisions. When we're not thinking, we make decisions that actually go against our own self-interest and the well-being of the communities we live in. Look around your circle of family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Look at society at large - especially as it's presented to us on the news.
Do you see a lot of good decision making going on?
The other day, I was down at a little local grocery store in my neighborhood. A young couple stopped in. They were in search of hamburger patties.
"We don't sell the pre-made patties," the proprietor told them, "But we do have the meat - we grind it fresh every morning!"
The young woman shuddered, and the young man slid a comforting arm around her shoulders. "No thank you," he said. "We'll just get some someplace else."
That young couple had a twenty mile drive ahead of them, in any direction, before they'd find a store that sold pre-made hamburger patties. There was high quality, freshly ground beef right in front of them. But they were willing to travel a significant distance (and I don't know what gas costs where you are, but it starts at $4/gallon up here) to find hamburger patties already made for them.
Why?
I believe that the narratives we've been given by marketers - stories about what we need and who were are - hold some, if not all, of the answer to that question.
One of the most pervasive marketing messages, delivered daily in dozens of different ways, is "You shouldn't have to work so hard." It's a message that helped spur the public enthusiasm for electricity, with countless labor-saving devices that promised to free women from a lifetime of drudgery at the washboard or slinging sad irons. Decades later, we've internalized the message so completely that no one wants to do anything - even if the task is no more taxing than shaping a few ounces of ground meat into a patty.
This type of thinking is destroying us. I don't want to contribute to the problem. I want to help solve it. We can take our lives and our futures back from the marketers. We just have to remember how to meet our needs without the assistance of retailers.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Motivation Monday: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
The stories we tell ourselves about our lives dictate the type of life
we're going to have. This is really important to understand, especially
if you're in a place where you don't have a lot of financial resources.
The one thing that you really can't afford when you're poor is believing
everything people tell you about who you are and what your life is
going to be like and most importantly, what you should want.
Oh I was just about to tell you a lie. I was going to say it doesn't cost anything to think for yourself. But oh baby, my sweet darling, it will cost you so much to think for yourself. You will lose things; I have lost things and sometimes this loss hurts an awful lot. You will lose the comfort of the herd. You will lose sweet oblivion. You will lose the intoxicating fever of experience without context; the blissful heady rush that comes from not thinking things through. You will lose regard and relationships. It is a painful thing at times to see things as they most likely are, rather than how they are presented.
There is a price for the path I'm recommending, and it's not a small price. But I think it well-worth it, all these years on, and perhaps you will too.
The stories we tell ourselves about our lives dictate the type of life we're going to have.
Every day we wake up in relationship with Story. We tell ourselves, continually and subconsciously, a very powerful narrative. We tell ourselves if we're happy or not. We tell ourselves if we're competent. We tell ourselves if we're strong. We tell ourselves if we are healthy. We tell ourselves if we are beautiful. We tell ourselves if we are loved. We tell ourselves if we love others. We tell ourselves if we are masters of our fate or if we are helpless leaves in a hurricane. We tell ourselves if we trust our own selves, our own voice, our own experience, our own perception of the world.
We are not the only ones telling stories to us. Now, more than at any other point in human history, we are awash in a sea of messaging. We are bombarded by Stories. These stories tell us many things. They tell us first and foremost that we're not happy. That we're incomplete. That we're not good enough. We're not beautiful enough. We're certainly not healthy enough. These stories tell us that we are unworthy of regard, that we are managing our lives badly, that we are incompetent - unless, of course, we buy the right things. Given the right makeup, prescription medications, and phenomenally expensive college education we can buy our way into worthiness. That is how the story goes.
All I'm asking you this morning - and every morning - is to consider critically whether these stories we're being told are actually true. Consider how much you're exposing yourself to the narratives. You may think that these stories are not touching you, but as a marketer of some experience here, let me assure you of this: if I can tell you several times an hour, every single day, that there is something wrong with you and that you need medication to fix it, eventually you will believe you are sick.
If we are going to heal ourselves - if we are going to heal each other, and our communities, and eventually the world - we need to take our stories back. It starts with what you tell yourself about yourself. You are smart, and beautiful, and strong, and capable of making yourself wholly into the person you want to be. You have come this far, and you will go much further yet. Telling yourself this is the first step in making it your own truth.
Onward, upward, forward, y'all. We have toxic prevailing cultural paradigms that need smashing to smithereens. I'm gonna need your help.
Oh I was just about to tell you a lie. I was going to say it doesn't cost anything to think for yourself. But oh baby, my sweet darling, it will cost you so much to think for yourself. You will lose things; I have lost things and sometimes this loss hurts an awful lot. You will lose the comfort of the herd. You will lose sweet oblivion. You will lose the intoxicating fever of experience without context; the blissful heady rush that comes from not thinking things through. You will lose regard and relationships. It is a painful thing at times to see things as they most likely are, rather than how they are presented.
There is a price for the path I'm recommending, and it's not a small price. But I think it well-worth it, all these years on, and perhaps you will too.
The stories we tell ourselves about our lives dictate the type of life we're going to have.
Every day we wake up in relationship with Story. We tell ourselves, continually and subconsciously, a very powerful narrative. We tell ourselves if we're happy or not. We tell ourselves if we're competent. We tell ourselves if we're strong. We tell ourselves if we are healthy. We tell ourselves if we are beautiful. We tell ourselves if we are loved. We tell ourselves if we love others. We tell ourselves if we are masters of our fate or if we are helpless leaves in a hurricane. We tell ourselves if we trust our own selves, our own voice, our own experience, our own perception of the world.
We are not the only ones telling stories to us. Now, more than at any other point in human history, we are awash in a sea of messaging. We are bombarded by Stories. These stories tell us many things. They tell us first and foremost that we're not happy. That we're incomplete. That we're not good enough. We're not beautiful enough. We're certainly not healthy enough. These stories tell us that we are unworthy of regard, that we are managing our lives badly, that we are incompetent - unless, of course, we buy the right things. Given the right makeup, prescription medications, and phenomenally expensive college education we can buy our way into worthiness. That is how the story goes.
All I'm asking you this morning - and every morning - is to consider critically whether these stories we're being told are actually true. Consider how much you're exposing yourself to the narratives. You may think that these stories are not touching you, but as a marketer of some experience here, let me assure you of this: if I can tell you several times an hour, every single day, that there is something wrong with you and that you need medication to fix it, eventually you will believe you are sick.
If we are going to heal ourselves - if we are going to heal each other, and our communities, and eventually the world - we need to take our stories back. It starts with what you tell yourself about yourself. You are smart, and beautiful, and strong, and capable of making yourself wholly into the person you want to be. You have come this far, and you will go much further yet. Telling yourself this is the first step in making it your own truth.
Onward, upward, forward, y'all. We have toxic prevailing cultural paradigms that need smashing to smithereens. I'm gonna need your help.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Are You Making the Effort to Educate Yourself?
I've recently become enamored of Twitter. I was sharing this with a friend, who said, "Oh, it's such a waste of time. There's nothing but garbage on there."
So I asked her who she followed. She rattled off a few "celebrities", sports heroes and her personal friends. "Nothing they say makes my day any better."
Great content is not going to just fall into your lap. If you want to use Twitter and other social media tools as part of your campaign of self-education, it helps to be very deliberate and proactive about following people who post content that will enrich your mind and help you think.
This morning, @KofiAnnan was Tweeting. You know Kofi Annan - former Secretary General of the UN, Nobel Peace Prize winner? This is a person who has something to say, and someone who has been around enough that he knows what he is talking about. Why not follow him?
Follow the thinkers, the dreamers, the poets. Follow scientists and sociologists and researchers. People who are doing great work are willing to share what they've been doing. This is a tremendous gift - but you have to be willing to opt in and listen to the conversation.
If your Twitter feed is garbage, you have no one to blame but yourself. Fix it up! When you read an article you enjoy, take note of who the author is. 9 times out of 10 you'll be able to follow them on Twitter. If not them, at least the website or magazine that published their work.
Make Twitter work for you. Set it up to harvest the information that will make you smarter. If you read one article from one smart person each day, by the end of the week, you're going to know more than you did at the beginning.
So I asked her who she followed. She rattled off a few "celebrities", sports heroes and her personal friends. "Nothing they say makes my day any better."
Great content is not going to just fall into your lap. If you want to use Twitter and other social media tools as part of your campaign of self-education, it helps to be very deliberate and proactive about following people who post content that will enrich your mind and help you think.
This morning, @KofiAnnan was Tweeting. You know Kofi Annan - former Secretary General of the UN, Nobel Peace Prize winner? This is a person who has something to say, and someone who has been around enough that he knows what he is talking about. Why not follow him?
Follow the thinkers, the dreamers, the poets. Follow scientists and sociologists and researchers. People who are doing great work are willing to share what they've been doing. This is a tremendous gift - but you have to be willing to opt in and listen to the conversation.
If your Twitter feed is garbage, you have no one to blame but yourself. Fix it up! When you read an article you enjoy, take note of who the author is. 9 times out of 10 you'll be able to follow them on Twitter. If not them, at least the website or magazine that published their work.
Make Twitter work for you. Set it up to harvest the information that will make you smarter. If you read one article from one smart person each day, by the end of the week, you're going to know more than you did at the beginning.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Be A Better Marketer: Do You Have Someone to Tell You No?
I just finished watching a train wreck of a commercial. I'm not going to name names, but let me fill you in on the concept. The owner of a local car dealership is at the wheel of his truck. As he's driving along, he continually looks up at the camera - clearly mounted on the passenger side visor - and in a demanding tone, tells the viewing public that if they're not buying their car from him, he wants to know why. He gives his personal cell number, assures people he'll answer the phone himself, and then we go to the dealership logo. The entire time, his attention is clearly divided between the camera and the highway he's driving on.
Yeah, that's real safe!
Conceptually, there's nothing particularly wrong with this ad - chances are you've seen variations of it thousands of times. But execution really is everything. A noticeably distracted driver is not the best choice to sell cars! This man's tone of voice was aggressive, not inviting. He didn't look good, sound good, or reflect well on his business.
Be A Better Marketer: Looking Bad is Entirely Avoidable!
Advertising is never free. Even in this small market, a television commercial is a significant investment for the small business owner. Before you spend that money, you want to make sure that you're making a wise decision. This requires an essential step: having someone who can tell you "No!"
What this car dealership owner clearly needed was someone on his side to take a look at the commercial - BEFORE IT AIRED - who would say "Dude. You're a great guy, but this commercial's just not working. Why don't we try it again? You'll be just as effective - and a whole lot safer and more focused! - if you're standing in front of one of your trucks instead of driving. If we change a few sentences around, you'll sound friendlier and less scary, too!"
It's important to understand that the TV ad rep is not going to do this for you. Their job is to sell ad time. They don't care if your ads are good, bad, or indifferent: they just want you to buy a bunch of them. The same dynamic is at play when you're buying print advertising, radio advertising, or doing online advertising. Some reps are better than others, but it's always, always, always a bad business decision to leave the responsibility for your company's image in their hands. That's yours, and you need to own it.
Everyone needs a second set of eyes to look at their work. In this instance, it was very clear that this dealership owner was handling production duties on his own, probably to keep costs down. The skills you need to be a great car dealer are not necessarily the same as the ones you need to be a great commercial producer.
Have a trusted employee, colleague, or friend review your all of your advertising before it goes live. This should be someone who is both sensible and confident enough to tell you "No way!" when an ad will make you look bad. It can be hard to hear that the ad you worked so hard on is a stinker, but it's much better to hear that before your market has seen the ad! Money spent on crappy ads is money wasted, and in this economy, who can afford to do that?
Yeah, that's real safe!
Conceptually, there's nothing particularly wrong with this ad - chances are you've seen variations of it thousands of times. But execution really is everything. A noticeably distracted driver is not the best choice to sell cars! This man's tone of voice was aggressive, not inviting. He didn't look good, sound good, or reflect well on his business.
Be A Better Marketer: Looking Bad is Entirely Avoidable!
Advertising is never free. Even in this small market, a television commercial is a significant investment for the small business owner. Before you spend that money, you want to make sure that you're making a wise decision. This requires an essential step: having someone who can tell you "No!"
What this car dealership owner clearly needed was someone on his side to take a look at the commercial - BEFORE IT AIRED - who would say "Dude. You're a great guy, but this commercial's just not working. Why don't we try it again? You'll be just as effective - and a whole lot safer and more focused! - if you're standing in front of one of your trucks instead of driving. If we change a few sentences around, you'll sound friendlier and less scary, too!"
It's important to understand that the TV ad rep is not going to do this for you. Their job is to sell ad time. They don't care if your ads are good, bad, or indifferent: they just want you to buy a bunch of them. The same dynamic is at play when you're buying print advertising, radio advertising, or doing online advertising. Some reps are better than others, but it's always, always, always a bad business decision to leave the responsibility for your company's image in their hands. That's yours, and you need to own it.
Everyone needs a second set of eyes to look at their work. In this instance, it was very clear that this dealership owner was handling production duties on his own, probably to keep costs down. The skills you need to be a great car dealer are not necessarily the same as the ones you need to be a great commercial producer.
Have a trusted employee, colleague, or friend review your all of your advertising before it goes live. This should be someone who is both sensible and confident enough to tell you "No way!" when an ad will make you look bad. It can be hard to hear that the ad you worked so hard on is a stinker, but it's much better to hear that before your market has seen the ad! Money spent on crappy ads is money wasted, and in this economy, who can afford to do that?
Monday, June 17, 2013
Reading Between the Lines
There's a PSA running on Quebec radio that goes something like this:
"911"
"Yes, my air conditioner is broken."
"Lady, this is 911. For emergencies."
"Yes, my air conditioner is broken and it's getting hotter in here by the minute. My address is 6595 Any Street."
"I understand, Ma'am. We'll send someone over right away."
Then it cuts to a message about you can call for help with domestic violence.
A not-unrelated story: a friend, detailing the physical and emotional abuse that led up to the dissolution of her relationship, shared a story where her partner broke her cat's leg by throwing the cat across the room. She said, "The vet knew. And probably also knew that I was in a DV situation before I did. "She fell" sounds a lot like "I walked into a door" or "I fell down the stairs".
How much of our ability to save each other, to care for each other, to break the cycle of abuse, is dependent on our ability to read between the lines. It's not enough to hear what is said. You have to hear what is meant. Sometimes that means listening for the words that aren't there, the things that aren't said.
There are reasons his is difficult. The first is that we're collectively not in the habit of paying attention at all. Never mind listening to what isn't said, we don't hear what is said. We're not present in our conversations. Sometimes we don't even know who we're talking to at all:
There are reasons we don't pay attention. We're busy. We're overwhelmed. We have places to go, people to see, important things that require our attention more than what or who we're currently engaged with. We live our lives on autopilot: how many times have you driven a familiar route - let's say from home to the office - only to realize you didn't see anything along the way? Our minds are continually occupied and this keeps us from living the lives we're supposed to have.
The 911 dispatcher gets thousands of calls a day - some of them from people who are calling because their air conditioners *are* broken, which is generally outside of 911's scope of service. It takes a cultivated awareness to pause long enough to think "Maybe something else is going on here!" and discern the meaning behind the words.
Vets, like other health care providers, are forced to see more and more patients in less and less time to make their revenue model work. It takes experience, compassion and a cultivated awareness to stop long enough in the normal course of events and say "Cats don't just fall like that. What's really going on here?"
There's very little education in our lives about how to develop our awareness, to discern the meaning behind the worlds, to look a little deeper. But that's exactly what we must do if we're going to change the lives we live, the lives other people live. If we're going to build a better world, we need to start paying attention.
"911"
"Yes, my air conditioner is broken."
"Lady, this is 911. For emergencies."
"Yes, my air conditioner is broken and it's getting hotter in here by the minute. My address is 6595 Any Street."
"I understand, Ma'am. We'll send someone over right away."
Then it cuts to a message about you can call for help with domestic violence.
A not-unrelated story: a friend, detailing the physical and emotional abuse that led up to the dissolution of her relationship, shared a story where her partner broke her cat's leg by throwing the cat across the room. She said, "The vet knew. And probably also knew that I was in a DV situation before I did. "She fell" sounds a lot like "I walked into a door" or "I fell down the stairs".
How much of our ability to save each other, to care for each other, to break the cycle of abuse, is dependent on our ability to read between the lines. It's not enough to hear what is said. You have to hear what is meant. Sometimes that means listening for the words that aren't there, the things that aren't said.
There are reasons his is difficult. The first is that we're collectively not in the habit of paying attention at all. Never mind listening to what isn't said, we don't hear what is said. We're not present in our conversations. Sometimes we don't even know who we're talking to at all:
There are reasons we don't pay attention. We're busy. We're overwhelmed. We have places to go, people to see, important things that require our attention more than what or who we're currently engaged with. We live our lives on autopilot: how many times have you driven a familiar route - let's say from home to the office - only to realize you didn't see anything along the way? Our minds are continually occupied and this keeps us from living the lives we're supposed to have.
The 911 dispatcher gets thousands of calls a day - some of them from people who are calling because their air conditioners *are* broken, which is generally outside of 911's scope of service. It takes a cultivated awareness to pause long enough to think "Maybe something else is going on here!" and discern the meaning behind the words.
Vets, like other health care providers, are forced to see more and more patients in less and less time to make their revenue model work. It takes experience, compassion and a cultivated awareness to stop long enough in the normal course of events and say "Cats don't just fall like that. What's really going on here?"
There's very little education in our lives about how to develop our awareness, to discern the meaning behind the worlds, to look a little deeper. But that's exactly what we must do if we're going to change the lives we live, the lives other people live. If we're going to build a better world, we need to start paying attention.
Monday, June 3, 2013
On the Latest IRS Scandal: Do Good Management Practices Apply Only To People We Like?
Right now, on my desk, I've got a notice saying I need to pay the IRS nearly $2,000. The tax man is not my favorite guy right now - I don't think anyone ever likes to pay taxes.
That being said, I'm more than a little uncomfortable with the coverage surrounding the IRS conference expenditures. The agency has reportedly spent $50 million dollars for 220 conferences, over 2 years. That works out to roughly $227,000 per conference, although some conferences cost far more (one is reportedly $4 million!) and some obviously less. The IRS has 106,000 employees, according to Wikipedia.
One piece of information I haven't seen so far is how much is spent on conferences by other government agencies of comparable size over a similar time period. Numbers without context aren't tremendously helpful. I would like to see an agency-by-agency breakout of this information, and I bet other people would too. Just saying "Oh, they spent $50 million!" is good for whipping up the emotion - $50 million being spent by people you don't like just sounds terrible - but we can't forget that ALL of the money the gov't spends is taxpayer money; not just that spent by the IRS.
But that's not even the biggest part of the problem. The troublesome bit is the outrage leveled at the fact that the IRS employees were participating in team building exercises. Some of these exercises were fun! They involved dancing! People were visibly smiling and having a good time!
It would be interesting to have performance assessments of the IRS employees before and after these conferences, both self-assessments and objective third party assessments. Because here's the thing: team building exercises, morale boosting drills and the like are all designed to improve performance. They're a tacit acknowledgement that all work is performed by people, and people have complex emotional and psychological needs. When you take steps to meet those emotional and psychological needs, your employees perform better. This is not rocket science. This is Management 101.
For example, let's look at police officers. Due to the nature of their work, police officers are regularly exposed to traumatic events. That's why good police departments make sure there's counseling & support services available for their teams. Healthy, strong bonds between police officers not only provide for better law enforcement, they keep every one safer.
IRS employees are probably among the most hated professionals in the country. They have a thankless task that is complicated and ever changing. The tax code is more that 73,000 pages long. And budget crunches (believe it or not in the context of this story)mean that there are fewer employees doing more and more work. This is not a recipe designed to deliver top performance. In fact it is the opposite: put people in a difficult, high-stress job that everyone hates them for having.
Every single IRS employee is a person. Is it such a stretch to see that these people might need some emotional support? That their morale might be impacted by having everyone hate them?
If we agree that the IRS employee teams are performing a needed function, aren't these employees entitled to the same management tools and techniques people in other industries use to get top performance from their teams? Or is good management something we reserve only for the people we like?
We can argue about the amount of money spent all day, and somewhere, someone probably is. But let's stop the discussion about whether or not it's appropriate that the IRS employees have access to the type of team building, morale building exercises that are common practice to provide employee support and boost performance in many industries. People who are treated well do better work. Retaining skilled IRS employees is always going to be more cost-effective than attracting and training new employees. If that takes a little dancing and some cupcakes, so be it.
That being said, I'm more than a little uncomfortable with the coverage surrounding the IRS conference expenditures. The agency has reportedly spent $50 million dollars for 220 conferences, over 2 years. That works out to roughly $227,000 per conference, although some conferences cost far more (one is reportedly $4 million!) and some obviously less. The IRS has 106,000 employees, according to Wikipedia.
One piece of information I haven't seen so far is how much is spent on conferences by other government agencies of comparable size over a similar time period. Numbers without context aren't tremendously helpful. I would like to see an agency-by-agency breakout of this information, and I bet other people would too. Just saying "Oh, they spent $50 million!" is good for whipping up the emotion - $50 million being spent by people you don't like just sounds terrible - but we can't forget that ALL of the money the gov't spends is taxpayer money; not just that spent by the IRS.
But that's not even the biggest part of the problem. The troublesome bit is the outrage leveled at the fact that the IRS employees were participating in team building exercises. Some of these exercises were fun! They involved dancing! People were visibly smiling and having a good time!
It would be interesting to have performance assessments of the IRS employees before and after these conferences, both self-assessments and objective third party assessments. Because here's the thing: team building exercises, morale boosting drills and the like are all designed to improve performance. They're a tacit acknowledgement that all work is performed by people, and people have complex emotional and psychological needs. When you take steps to meet those emotional and psychological needs, your employees perform better. This is not rocket science. This is Management 101.
For example, let's look at police officers. Due to the nature of their work, police officers are regularly exposed to traumatic events. That's why good police departments make sure there's counseling & support services available for their teams. Healthy, strong bonds between police officers not only provide for better law enforcement, they keep every one safer.
IRS employees are probably among the most hated professionals in the country. They have a thankless task that is complicated and ever changing. The tax code is more that 73,000 pages long. And budget crunches (believe it or not in the context of this story)mean that there are fewer employees doing more and more work. This is not a recipe designed to deliver top performance. In fact it is the opposite: put people in a difficult, high-stress job that everyone hates them for having.
Every single IRS employee is a person. Is it such a stretch to see that these people might need some emotional support? That their morale might be impacted by having everyone hate them?
If we agree that the IRS employee teams are performing a needed function, aren't these employees entitled to the same management tools and techniques people in other industries use to get top performance from their teams? Or is good management something we reserve only for the people we like?
We can argue about the amount of money spent all day, and somewhere, someone probably is. But let's stop the discussion about whether or not it's appropriate that the IRS employees have access to the type of team building, morale building exercises that are common practice to provide employee support and boost performance in many industries. People who are treated well do better work. Retaining skilled IRS employees is always going to be more cost-effective than attracting and training new employees. If that takes a little dancing and some cupcakes, so be it.
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