Monthly Archives: December 2004

“Sleigh bells ring — are you listening?”

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The moment you heard your first Christmas song this year while in a store, you probably gritted your teeth and thought, “Oh, no! Not already!” or even, “Not again!” Is it because you dislike being reminded that your Christmas shopping time is running out before it began? That you face two months of heavy traffic, crowded stores, family anxieties and squabbling, irritable tempers, the dredging of awful childhood memories, and/or soaring credit card debt? Or is it simply that you can listen to Feliz Navidad only so many times before screaming, “Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!” Perhaps it’s a little of all these.

“Christmas is too commercial!” someone said to me many years ago. “What I want is a traditional Christmas.” I told her that it’s easy enough to forego the commercialism of Christmas and to pioneer one’s own traditions that have nothing to do with what others do and that have personal meaning. For example, if putting up a tree, real or artificial, is too much work or too stressful, why not fill the house with colourful or fragrant plants instead? If it isn’t Christmas to you without a tree, then instead of buying manufactured ornaments that have no significance at a faceless chain store, make your own (with your children if you have any). Not only will you have the satisfaction of having a unique collection of decorations, but you’ll be able to explore your creative side while engaging your kids in a family activity.

If the usual Christmas tunes you’ve heard performed by the same people over and over again have become associated with stress and anxiety or seared your nerves through decades of repetition, perhaps it’s time to expand your musical tastes at home (since you can’t avoid what the stores broadcast). For example, I have Anonymous 4’s On Yoolis Night, the Baltimore Consort’s Bright Day Star, Robin Petrie’s Victorian Christmas and Victorian Noël, Renaissance Holiday, and other assorted and uncommon collections of Christmas music you won’t hear at Target. There’s also The Soul of Christmas, with author Thomas Moore, the late Johnny Cunningham, and a group of talented Celtic performers telling stories, sharing thoughts, and singing and playing spiritual songs in a spiritual way.

I pointed this type of idea out to the “Christmas is too commercial!” individual, but by then she was focused on trying to find a relative a gift that would cost at least $80. “Maybe a designer cologne?” she suggested hopefully.

Whether you’re a devout Christian, a follower of another faith, or a committed atheist, you can appreciate that Christ (prophet, messiah, or myth) never endorsed the idea of commemorating his birth date (unknown) with spending competitions and oneupmanship or through bestowing such gifts as violent video games on 12-year-olds. A history textbook I’m reading notes that, economically and socially, shepherds were the lowest of the low, spending much of their time outside the protection of civilization. To whom were tidings of great joy brought? To whom does Jesus repeatedly compare himself? To shepherds. To the humblest members of society — to people who can’t spend $80 on a gift to impress someone. To people for whom any comfort or small luxury is a simple pleasure.

If so many of us hate the madness of the bustle, the crass commercialism, and the oneupmanship game that gift giving can become, why don’t we stop? Why don’t we listen to one of the most popular, enduring television specials — A Charlie Brown Christmas? Or the words of Jesus himself? Don’t wait for the world to stop. Be brave. Be the first. Set a new standard. Celebrate simply. And rediscover what Christmas means to you.

Teamwork

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During the second half of 1998, I underwent a spell of self-employment. It seems like a recent period, but it was more than a quarter of my working life ago. I left a very hierarchical organization — partners oversaw client relationships and pursued new business; senior consultants managed their areas of expertise; consultants and associates crunched numbers and drafted documents. You knew who did what and why, even if you didn’t always agree with it. More importantly, even if you thought a particular person was unpleasant or difficult or a poor project manager, you knew that at the very least they could claim professional credentials, for example, a law degree, or progress toward associate or fellow status in the Society of Actuaries or toward Certified Employee Benefits Specialist status. They would also have some experience to achieve a higher position in the hierarchy. You can’t review and sign off on valuations or allocations without the credentials or the background.

There is a different team model in which everyone is equal, and qualifications are nearly irrelevant. There is a group leader, whose function seems to be to call and sit at lengthy meetings where even relatively simple decisions are made by the group. The leader may try to skew the decision toward his or her preference, but if the group disagrees he or she may go along with the group’s will. The advantage is that there’s team buy-in to decisions, which may inspire members to work harder to achieve the consensus goals. The downside, aside from the disproportionate amount of time spent coming to the decision, is that, paradoxically, there may be little motivation for an individual to work hard or perform well. After all, earning a degree or professional accreditation or having deep or broad work experience means no more than that you will be a more knowledgeable, experienced yet equally faceless member of the team.

The concept of teamwork seems empowering on the surface; everyone has the opportunity to contribute (even if individuals are not skilled enough to contribute wisely. “No idea is a bad idea.”). The team also devalues the individual because the individual’s attributes become irrelevant. Knowledge, experience, and strategic ability can easily succumb to the will of the team, which may aspire to feel good about its decisions rather than to make the right ones. The vocal or persuasive majority can easily outshout and overrule the wiser minority.

The result is often wasted effort as time is spent on pursuing pointless goals in a way that some members of the team know is doomed at conception. If it fails, the team will regroup. One of the original good ideas will arise, and the team may treat it as though they had never heard it before. If it should succeed, they will be quick to take credit as a team, leaving individual contributors not only unnoticed, but unrewarded and therefore unmotivated.

More importantly, individual team members usually don’t have the opportunity to benefit from one-on-one mentoring — a method I found useful when I was learning from my senior consultant and when I was bringing up new associates.

I feel very odd that a committed individualist like me would consider for even a moment the superiority of a hierarchical system, where only individuals of the right type are favoured and where less aggressive, adviser types have fewer opportunities and play a limited role.

The team system is no better in the long run, however. Those who speak loudest, whether they know what they’re talking about, still tend to be the most successful, often to the detriment of achieving the team’s goals and objectives. If one or two individuals dissent, they are perceived as impeding progress rather than adding value. Rarely does the team reevaluate the prevailing inclination based on the dissenting voices of the troublesome minority.

Interestingly, the hierarchical system may be better at arriving at the best answer simply because the responsibility is clear, and it’s in the best interest of the decision maker to make good choices and recommendations.

As with anything else, neither system works perfectly or even well. The team system, if not managed well, favours mediocre results; both the worst and best options are sometimes disregarded, forcing all team members to support and promote a recommendation many of them may not believe in. They and the client may feel frustrated by the wasted effort and time.

In the hierarchical system, too much pressure is placed on the decision maker. At the same time, if he or she is a poor leader and/or mentor, the individual team members may never learn the skills and discretion they need to grow, and the leader may not be adept at drawing out ideas from others that he or she may not have considered otherwise.

I don’t have the solution. I suspect smaller teams, well balanced between experienced people and novices, where the latter can learn from the former and the former can be inspired by the latter, led by individuals who are truly good leaders rather than simply strong personalities, would be an improvement for the people, the product, and the results. I wonder if there are teams that have achieved this level — and how.

Dream: Death and tearoom

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I’m running toward a great red brick edifice that I know is a concentration camp. I’m not sure whether it’s voluntary or involuntary — whether I’m choosing to go there or I’m being driven there.

Suddenly, there’s a manhole in the ground before me, and somehow I’m being beckoned to escape underground into a dark unknown.

I’m afraid because I don’t know if I’m being tricked and trapped. What if I don’t fit and get stuck in the tunnel? What if I’m shut in to suffocate in darkness? What if there are worms everywhere?

I don’t trust the beckoning. My inclination is to choose the edifice — equally unknown, and possibly behind the beckoning. At least it appears to be above ground and not as stifling — although I can’t be sure.

I pull my hand out of the hole and find a rice-like speck on it. It’s a worm. I run toward the edifice.

I go with a friend to a tearoom. No one is there except guests, so we go to one of the private rooms with two ornate, overstuffed, red, patterned chairs with a matching ottoman between. Everything is enormous, and the entire place looks like a bawdy house. I don’t understand why as all we want is tea, and it seems overdone for such a simple want.

We hear someone and go to tell her which room we’re in. She tells us everything is taken, makes us leave, and tells never to come back, although I’m not sure why (whether everything is always taken, whether we were never going to be allowed in, or whether we have committed such a serious breach in protocol that we can never return). I am confused and humiliated.

“Sleigh Ride”

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Last night I fell asleep while watching a British sitcom (I’d gotten less than 4 hours of sleep the night before and was sick with fatigue). When I woke up, snow was coming down, and the local PBS station was showing Ed Sullivan Christmas shows, like they did last year. Johnny Mathis was standing up in a thick white sweater singing “Sleigh Ride” (all the verses!). There was something about the combination of the snow outside, my candles that are a substitute for a fireplace, and the simplicity of the song and the presentation of it that evoked what the holidays felt like when I was a kid — the simplicity and the anticipation that comes closer to an ideal of Christmas than adults will let Christmas be.

Sears Maid of Honor timer and memories

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Sears, Roebuck and Co. Maid of Honor timer
Vintage Sears, Roebuck and Co. Maid of Honor timer

One of my favourite possessions is my mother’s Sears Maid of Honor kitchen timer. It’s a wheel that rotates on a pedestal. The numbers are in a Delft-like blue along the sides. The brand name is on the top (and includes Roebuck). You turn the wheel on the pedestal to align the time desired to the pointer. It’s fairly heavy for its size because it has a real bell. If you wind it to 60, it will ring long enough that you can’t miss it. I don’t know how old it is, but I would guess it dates from the 1950s.

I love it because of the vintage design and look. In the 1950s, it may have looked ultramodern, but today it looks classic. I love the color of the numbers and hash marks. I love the fluted rim of the top. Mostly, though, I love it because it was my mother’s, because I remember it perched in the front row of our glass-fronted west kitchen cabinet, until she took it out to time a cake or cookies or perhaps while she was making “Daisy’s fudge” for which she was admired among her friends and family.

Lately it is also a reminder of something my mother always told me — that I don’t take care of my things. One day after I moved to The Flamingo, I left my sacred Sears Maid of Honor timer on the kitchen counter, on top of a coffee can, thinking I would put it away in a few minutes. Then I fell sound asleep. Sure enough, a short time later, I was awakened by a loud crash; my young, inquisitive, and strong cat had knocked the timer to the floor, breaking some pieces off the pedestal. I glued the larger pieces I could find back on, and it works, but it’s not the same. My mother would not have allowed it to be broken through laziness.

For awhile, I looked online for information about the Sears Maid of Honor timer, but couldn’t find any. I gave up and didn’t look again for months. Then one day, probably while tired and bored, I looked again through google.com — and found one in excellent condition for sale. So I bought it. It came complete with the box! It’s brown with built-up dirt, but here’s the copy from the top and sides:

Maid of Honor portable household TIMER
60 minute interval
Alarm clock ring
Winds when you set it
Handsome plastic case
Color: White [stamped]
No. 4658
Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Simpsons-Sears Ltd. Made in U.S.A.

ACCURATE TIMING FOR:
* Cooking and baking
* Baby formulae
* Sun lamp treatments
* Home permanents
* Telephone Calls
* Bleaching

[Cartoon of woman in bikini under sun lamp]
Long alarm rings to remind you that time’s up. Sturdy, heat-resistant plastic case with rubber feet to protect polished surfaces. Modern design . . . fluted rim for firm grip . . . large numerals and extra wide minute intervals for accurate setting.

To set timer
Turn the top clockwise, passing stationary pointer on base. Rotate beyond 6 to activate the timing mechanism. Then timer may be set at any minute interval. The alarm ring gradually increases as you turn the top. It rings for 2 seconds when turned just past 6 minutes, for 14 seconds when moved to 60 minutes. For the longest possible ring, turn to 60 before setting. Timer may be reset forward or back during operation. Never turn past 0 as this damages the movement.

I have other timers that I use for baking and for waking me after one-hour naps. I even have an electronic digital timer I used at work for timing client-related jobs. While they are as functional as the Sears Maid of Honor timer (both of which are now safely and permanently stowed away), especially the multi-function electronic one, none is as interesting. They look like something you could get anywhere — because you could. The Sears Maid of Honor timer is unique.

At one time it wasn’t, of course. It appears that Sears Maid of Honor was once a popular line of modestly priced (knowing my parents) household gadgets, presumably designed for young brides.

Like most people, my parents had a lot of mass-produced items, some of which I saved because they hold some special memories or reminders of the security of my home. For example, I have a small, iridescence-coated glass, part of a set, that I used for cut roses from the wild rosebush that my dad salvaged from a low-lying area and planted against a trellis. No large, fancy, overbred rose will ever be as beautiful to me as those small, scented, wild blooms floating in the rainbow glass on my dresser. It’s not the object that matters, but the feelings associated with it. It’s good to have both.

Some of this attachment to objects may come from having grown up in a lower income bracket and having parents who grew up poor during the Great Depression. Our financial situation (or at least my dad’s perception of it) seems to have improved by the time I was a teenager, when he was working more hours at the Ford stamping plant to save for retirement. Until then, however, we did not buy a lot of durable goods unless necessary, nor would my dad throw out anything that could be useful. I suppose that’s part of why my mother used the same old Sears Maid of Honor timer for the duration of her married life (and life).

I sometimes wonder if today’s kids will feel the same way about the things they grew up with. Some women may feel an attachment to a favourite doll or stuffed animal, while men may hang onto and even add to their Hot Wheels collections. But do affluent kids who have so much love their things? It’s hard for me to imagine a lifelong emotional attachment to a mass-produced plastic toy or a modern kitchen timer. Will it someday look vintage? Will it evoke memories of a mother laboring for hours over fudge she wants to be perfect because it’s the one thing for which she is renowned in her small circle, for which she has received countless compliments and comments like, “Mine never turns out as well as yours, Daisy!”?

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the annual Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago. There’s a booth featuring carved wooden frogs and other toys. The frogs have ridged backs and come with a wooden stick. When you run the stick down the ridges, it produces frog-like croaking. The larger the frog, the deeper the croak. They’re charming toys — the kind I see as a precious keepsake in 20 or 30 years. I noticed the little boy next to me found them uninteresting — probably a child used to electronic beeps and flashing lights. His father, however, was sampling the sounds of all the frog sizes nearly obsessively and desperately trying to interest the boy in them. When I turned to look at him, I was surprised to find he was a young man — not the 40-something like myself I expected. He was enchanted with the frogs and hoping his son would be, too.

Twenty years from now, will the son remember that trip to the Christkindlmarket? Will he remember the brisk air, the flushed faces, the buzz of the crowd, the booths with their handmade wares, and the quaint croaking frogs?

I do hope so.

Dream: Royal python

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I was bitten repeatedly by a huge snake. I couldn’t control its head (first rule of snake and any animal handling) for some reason, no matter what I did. I took it somewhere to be identified, and it turned out to be a non-venomous “royal python.” Does this mean I’m feeling oppressed by the ruling classes?

Words are all we have

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Online, kids and computer aficionados are inventing a new language. For example, the now-old term “newbie” has been transformed into “n00b.” Of course, it is an ancient practice for kids to develop their own code to evade their parents’ comprehension, to bond with their peers, and to express their coolness.

The other day at a Web content management conference for business communicators, one of the speakers used the term “prog.” It took a few seconds for my mind to process this as, “You’ll need a program to do this.” Even middle-aged professionals are using the new geek shorthand and jargon, as though it is commonly understood — even if it isn’t.

As Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil noted in The Story of English, language evolves constantly, and every group has contributed to its richness. You cannot imagine American English without its Spanish, French, Italian, German, Native American, Yiddish, and other components. Now the online world has added more. Merriam-Webster, the online dictionary editors rely on, reports that “blog,” short for Web log, has been the most looked-up word in 2004. No one has online journals or diaries; they have blogs.

Recently, I have been thinking about how words have lost their power because they have been disconnected from their original meaning, context, or symbolism. If I say “glade” to you, you’re as likely to think of an air freshener as a clearing in the forest — and you probably haven’t really thought about what the brand name is intended to evoke. If I mention “Ajax,” you’d probably think first of the cleaning product before remembering that Ajax was a Greek hero of the Trojan War. Dawn, tide, joy, crest — all simple words so associated with brands and so little used in everyday conversation that their power to evoke an image or a meaning has been diluted. When was the last time you described the dawn to a friend? Talked about the tides? Shared your joy in so many words? Admired a cardinal’s crest? (Or thought about why the bird is called a cardinal?) Do you know the origin of any of these words?

I’m reading a history textbook, The Mainstream of Civilization to 1715 by Stanley Chodorow, MacGregor Knox, Conrad Schirokauer, Joseph R. Strayer, and Hans W. Gatzke. The authors mention Vandals — and they don’t mean mischievous teenagers drawing graffiti with markers. When you visit a museum, do you contemplate the origin of the word? It’s from the Greek Muses, the goddesses who inspire such arts as poetry and music. Politics comes from the Greek polis, or city-state. Indeed, if you look at the origins of many of our most common words, you’ll discover the richness of their origins and the way that language has evolved during the thousands of years of written history — and even how some words have not changed much in the course of time.

Pick your favourite words and explore their etymology. You’ll not only restore their original meaning and symbolism, but you’ll also learn about history (such as Vandals), natural history, the arts, and more. And you’ll find out that Latin is not such a dead language after all. It lives on in the very word computer.

Dream: Living meltdown

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I was a snowman and found a slope near a running brook, where I lay down to die. Downstream, I heard a waterfall, where I knew it was even warmer. I did not want to go there; I did not want to feel myself die. I disappeared slowly down the hill, into the stream — so slowly that it was beyond my ability to feel and comprehend. It was like living.

One hell of an entry

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Maybe it began with business casual dress, a development I didn’t mind as I’ve always loathed wearing dresses and panty hose. Or the democratization of the workplace, which promotes endless meetings so the “team” can come to a consensus about the plan or idea that the supervisor, manager, or executive wanted to implement in the first place. Democratization that encourages employees to write blogs to put a human face on the company — a human face the company wouldn’t hesitate to fire or “rightsize.”

What I mean is the use of what Star Trek writers called “colorful metaphors” by people at all levels in their written business communications.

It’s one thing to say to Bob in the hallway, “You did a hell of a job in that meeting.” It’s another to send an e-mail saying, “Damn, what the hell were they thinking?” Or so I thought, until I started receiving e-mails with the occasional salty and usually unnecessary expletive. At first I thought the senders were simply young and inexperienced and didn’t know that this was not appropriate in a corporate environment, but now I’ve realised it is I who am out of touch. After all, advertising now uses expletives and metaphors that, not so long ago, would have tarnished a company’s wholesome reputation. Today, however, words that were once impolite in polite society are even used as brands — Fat Bastard wines, for example.

I was thinking about this at the 2004 Web Content Management Conference cosponsored by IABC and Ragan Communications. One session description, with the precious and pass — title of “The mother of all intranets,” used the expression, “you better [sic] have one hell of an intranet.” Even business communicators have resorted to using (admittedly mild) “colorful metaphors” in print.

What strikes me is not simply the use of language that once would have been reserved for only dire circumstances (“What the hell do you mean, Mike Wallace is in reception?”). It’s also that professional communicators, creative people who should command the language, not pander to the populace, can’t think of a more descriptive expression than “one hell of an _,” a descriptor that is about as descriptive and useful as “nice” and that any grade school graduate could have produced. So much for “crafting” (a word I hate) copy.

If this is the future of business communications, who the hell needs business communicators?