ramblings – Page 8

Nuggets of Language

Like most people, I read novels and watch movies (films?) for the stories, and for the action. But every once in a while a real nugget of a phrase drops into my lap, and sticks with me…phrases like “along come a stranger and stopped to argue some,” or “lean and sere as a winter wolf.”

I don’t have to dig around in the data banks of my mind for those. The only hitch is finding a way to share them with other readers and writer who might appreciate them as I do.

All of which is preamble to thinking it might be fun to offer a copy of my novel Stone Fly to the first two or three readers who would like to share personal favorites we can post here.

For now I’ll post my disclaimer that I never steal phrases from other writers. This is just for love of the language.

Rod

The Genesis of my Compulsion to Write Stuff

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I hung on the schoolyard fence through most of the fifth year of my life, watching school kids play on the swings, teeter-totters, merry-go-round, or play catch and kick balls.

I really, really wanted to go to school.

And then the first day of the first grade, I discovered a dark-haired little girl named Marion who already knew stuff I didn’t know…and she was only a girl.

I knew stuff all right, like how to chunk a rock, split kindling, pick blackberries, climb trees, ride horses, and catch fish…boy stuff.

But she knew an amazing thing: she could write words on the blackboard. All I could write was “Rod.”

By the end of the first week, I had mastered a short list of words: the, run, and, ball, hat, cat, fat…those first words we learned in first grade way back when. Best of all, I knew I was gaining on Marion when I found a word she didn’t know yet.

To this day, I blame Marion for my compulsion to learn new stuff and to write about it. If she hadn’t walked to the blackboard and written “the,” I might have been content with knowing boy stuff, but I knew I wasn’t going to let a mere slip of a girl child know more than me. (I know. It should be “more than I,” but six year old boys say “me.”)

I’d like to think I outgrew that competitive drive to know more than my classmates and moved on to a higher altruistic level of artistic compulsion, but when I read a really good novel, I’m back at the keyboard wanting to see if I can write a better story than “that.”

How’s Your Book Coming?

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I’ve noticed groups of people in certain venues silently queue up and only speak in hushed tones when circumstances force human interaction. You know what I’m talking about: grocery lines, doctors’ waiting areas, banks…those places in which people try very hard to avoid eye contact. There are times when banks are quieter than a mortuary.

I also admit I’m one who likes to see if I can squeeze some fun from the tedium of waiting in line. If the queue at the bank is a long one, I’m liable to call out, “Send for more checkers!” and then wait for a reaction…not from the cashiers where I bank…they’ve gotten used to me…but from the queue. (Or should that be queuers? Is queue plural already? Someone should look that up.)

I find mild satisfaction when the line stirs and people make eye contact. Sometimes they smile or frown at the noisy one. Even frowns are better than deadpan faces.

The business of kick starting conversations started for me in the waiting area of a quick-lube. A half dozen people were sitting silently in hard plastic chairs, reading stuff…newspapers, books, grease-smudged car magazines…each trying hard not to touch elbows.

I was working, scribbling notes on a draft manuscript when I caught a man two chairs down trying to sneak a peek. He looked quickly away, trying to pretend he wasn’t being nosy. (I guess he couldn’t help himself because genius was just dripping from the pages.)

The person sitting between us was called to the desk to pay the quick-lube guys, and the empty chair gave me and my nosy neighbor a more comfortable distance.

Just on a whim, I put the manuscript back in its folder (where maybe it should have stayed forever) and asked, “How’s your book coming?” He looked surprised for half a second, and then answered, “Actually, it’s a play.”

Alas, I find only three writers among every five people on whom I spring this question. And the non-writers often respond with, “I don’t write, but Dad (or some other relative…it’s a fill in the blank response) wrote a good book that I’d like to see in print.”

I don’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by the discovery that only sixty percent of the citizens of the country are writing books, but if you want to check my statistics, try asking a fellow passenger or fellow queuer, “How’s your book coming?”

Rod

Friday Chowder

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Failed Meetings

Once, long ago, in days when I practiced the arcane art of managing people and organizations, I was asked to coordinate a meeting among the leaders of the important Natural Resources agencies in Central Oregon.

In our minds that was the Deschutes National Forest, the Ochoco National Forest, and the Prineville District of the Bureau of Land Management.

That perception would change, but more about that in a minute.

I’m good at this kind of thing, but it still took a full year to coordinate the calendars of 40 or so senior leaders and to set a meeting date.

At the end of a day long agenda- driven gathering, those who were there agreed that it had been a good meeting, that it was too bad so many senior leaders had to send their trusted deputies, and wasn’t it too bad we couldn’t get closure on any important issues. And let’s not let so much time go by before the next meeting. Thanks to Rod for coordinating.

And finally we all went away vaguely dissatisfied, but not before I was granted the fun of coordinating the next meeting six months downstream. I had a good laugh over that. And I knew we would have another meeting with those who were second in command. Not a good way to do business.

I admit to a second failure. Most of the key leaders, the CEO’s, could meet on such-and-such a date, but the BLM District Manager had to be in Washington DC, or on an alternate date, the Forest Supervisor of the Ochoco would be in Eugene to testify in law suit, etc., etc., etc.

Inspired, I gave the job to my wonderful secretary who worked with the other wonderful secretaries. Nothing matched for the next twelve months. After repeated frustrations, my secretary heaped me with abuse and decried the task as “impossible!

So…I relented and took the job back. And I was trapped once again “inside the box.”

The Power of Non-Agenda Driven, Informal Meetings

In a fit of disgust, frustration, inspiration, desperation, pick a word, I asked myself, “What action do we all take at roughly the same time?” The answer: We all eat lunch! And thus was born Friday Chowder.

I settled on the stratagem of making arrangements with a local restaurant for meeting space, a big pot of clam chowder, a big bowl of salad, soft drinks and coffee, all at a price that was ridiculously cheap. And then I sent out a message to the senior leadership saying there would be a Friday Chowder at the Cinnabar at 11:30 on whatever the date was.

All of my friendly CEO’s showed up, the same CEO’s who missed the “Big” meeting. One of them asked me what was on the agenda. I answered, perversely I seem to remember, “The agenda is to eat lunch together.” And in truth that’s what it was. I counted it a major victory just to have them all together at the same time.

There is Something I’ve Been Wanting To Talk About

There was some grumbling, but about 30 minutes into lunch after the usual chit-chat, the BLM District Manager, a good friend of mine, rocked back in his chair and said, “You know there’s something I’ve been wanting to discuss.”

And so it began. Those monthly Friday Chowders, which sometimes became Chinese Chowder, lasted over three years until the senior leadership had retired or had been promoted out of the area.

During that three year period, decisions were made regarding customer needs, issues of conflicting policies were settled, subordinate careers were planned, inter-agency teams were formed, one of the largest inter-agency emergency dispatch centers in the country became operational with responsibility for fire suppression on over 14 million acres of public land, operational costs went down, and efficiency improved.

Inter-Agency Communication Grew

As important as those gains were to us, perhaps more importantly we discovered there were other natural resources leaders who shared our need for and in fact hungered for some sensible conversation about natural resource management, customer needs, major planning efforts, etc., agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, Oregon Department of Forestry, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the US Soil Conservation Service, etc.

Friday Chowders just blossomed. Inter-agency specialist teams asked for time to talk to the “bosses.” Even our local County Judge, the CEO of Crook County, came and shared chowder with us.

And it was a wonderful time for our part of the national bureaucracy.

So what’s the moral of the story?

There may be several:

Some of our most important conversations never take place in agenda driven settings
The social lubrication necessary for cooperative action may never happen in an agenda setting
It is easier to invite partners into an informal setting
Hallway conversations become open discussions
Courage and candor become commonplace
Creativity becomes commonplace
Good ideas flourish
Continuous mentoring takes place
Senior managers have a forum for sharing “street wisdom”

Agenda Driven Meetings

This doesn’t mean agenda driven settings have no place in the pantheon of management tools. Training is agenda driven; financial reporting is agenda driven; long-range planning is agenda driven, and I’m sure you can identify other uses for agenda driven meetings.

All I’m really saying is tremendous power can be found in informality, recurrent face to face communication, and in making room for those, “I’ve been thinking,” conversations.

Besides, everyone eats lunch.

Customers

Two stories illustrate the change:

First one: The archaeologists from the BLM, the Forest Service and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs decided it made sense to work together on geographic areas without reference to organizational boundaries. They put a proposal together, asked to come to a Friday chowder, made their pitch and got the nod to proceed right on the spot.

Second one: The BLM, the Ochoco National Forest, and the Deschutes National Forest each charged a different amount per cord to woodcutters, much to the frustration and disgust of the woodcutters. With the exception of commercial firewood companies, most of our customers were simply wanting a few cords of wood for personal use. The CEO’s listened to a group of clerks who sold the permits, decided there should be one permit at one price for Central Oregon available from any federal office. And yes, it was okay to work out arrangements with Bi-Mart, GI Joes and other outlets to sell firewood permits. Result: happy customers and happy employees.

Rod

For more about my experiences with management issues, see my book “What Do I Do When I Get There?“