Feedback and Volunteering in Organizations (with the Muppets)

Maybe if I type up all of these research-oriented thoughts in my head, then I'll be able to assemble them a little more clearly. On the other hand, even if it doesn't help with my research, it might ease my guilt over not blogging lately. So let's kill two birds with one stone. Unless of course you like birds, gentle reader, in which case I will be doing no bird killing today. In that case, we will be... ummm... hitting two... targets?... with one... ummm... you know what? I'm no good with metaphors. Asking me to write a good metaphor is like asking Kenny Chesney to be a decent human being. Wait, that was a decent metaphor, wasn't it? Never mind.

In modern workplaces, whether they be offices, retail stores, schools, small businesses, large firms, or non-profits, the concept of "going above and beyond" is becoming increasingly important. There's research backing that statement up, and plenty of it. Organizations expect their team members and employees to not just do what is explicitly listed on their job descriptions, but also to do other things that benefit the organization, the people who work there, and the customers they serve. Many organizations even manage to work these "things-that-are-not-in-the-job-description" into the job description itself, oddly enough. They do this by including a line at the end of the official list of duties that says something like: "Employee shall also perform other duties beneficial to the company outside those listed here, as determined by management." When I was in the corporate world, I called that "The Auschwitz Clause," because under language like that, the company could direct you to do just about anything, from killing innocent people to selling yourself into slavery to buying Kenny Chesney albums.

Introductory Organizational Theory (and the Muppets)

So I've said something shocking several times recently, in public, in private, but never on this blog. So let me say it here as well: as far as new programs and presentations are concerned, the Muppets are dead to me. I was willing to overlook all of those supposedly heartwarming musical guest appearances with up-and-coming Disney Channel stars - Disney owns them now, so sure, I have to expect they'll use Kermit and pals to promote their more fashionable drek. I gave them a pass for the Muppet Wizard of Oz, which abandoned the franchise's normally adult-oriented humor to instead pursue silly songs, the two-year-old market, and a sad attempt to bolster the sagging career of an R&B singer with dubious acting qualities. I even got excited about the new Muppet special, "Letters to Santa", two Christmases ago. I reasoned that any new Muppet show couldn't be all that bad. But then within the first five minutes the Muppets were singing a silly song about how wonderful the United States Post Office is, in a show sponsored by the United States Post Office. Is this really what the home of Beaker and Animal has sunk to?

An Unreasonable Quantity of Snow Days in Atlanta

And now, a blog about snow.

It's 5:43 pm on a lovely Wednesday afternoon in Sandy Springs, Georgia, where we've been snowed- and iced- in for the past few days. Last Monday was supposed to be my return to Georgia Tech, research, and classes, but instead I've been here ever since, spending plenty of time with the wife and kids while getting really, really sick of the available convenience foods. I got very excited about the possibility of walking down to Panda Express this evening for some real grub, but alas that my giftcard will go as yet unspent: they closed two hours ago due to a lack of customers braving the treacherous roads for quality Chinese. Heavy sigh.

It Comes Before a Fall

The beginning of a recent Facebook chat:

"Hey. Did you and Debby have twins?"

"Hold on, let me check."

"Yeah, I think we did."

***

And so, here we are. I'm surrounded by three computers in my apartment sunroom/office, uploading pictures to Facebook, chatting with well-wishers demanding updates, and fielding multiple requests for a new post to the NeverTown. Meanwhile, Kristopher James Lemoine (the middle name is for my father, not me!) is nestled in a baby swing to my immediate left, undoubtedly confused by the blinking screens, furious typing, and cacophonic gothic rock emanating from my speakers. He's stirring a bit right now... stretching his arms and hands out as best he can from his nest within that Classic Winnie the Pooh blanket.

Wait, he's asleep again. Back to typing.

Organizations and Organizing (and the Muppets, of course)

People ask me, "How's grad school going?" and I wonder how to reply.  As I'm only two days in as of this writing, that's somewhat like asking someone how a cake tastes when they've only begun to cook it (assuming the cake itself is not a lie to begin with).  I'm not really sure what to say.  I'm tired, but it's a good tired.  I'm learning, and it's a good learning.  I'm spending far too much money on vastly overpriced textbooks, and wishing I could get away with selling BD for $90, since it's about as many pages as some of these hundred dollar books.  Mostly I'm just listening. Asking questions, and listening.  So in a big way, it's not that different from normal life for me.

I find myself curious as to how much effort I'll put into having good grades, as opposed to the effort I put into research, concept-building, and general learning (because yes, there can be a difference between good grades and real learning, especially at this level).  I've been told repeatedly that grades don't really matter in the slightest as far as getting a post-doctoral job: what matters is your published research and, to a lesser extent, teaching bonafides. I had very respectable grades in high school and college, but that was a long, long time ago.  And back then, to be honest, I was mostly just concerned with getting good grades and getting out. Here I'm more concerned about learning.  Will different priorities result in a different GPA?

On the Last Week in Louisiana - Part Three

I'm sitting now in what tomorrow will not be my home, surrounded by an insane number of small brown boxes... mostly because I own an insane number of books.  It's a depressing feeling as I look around.  Usually I'm the first to remind people that we have to give up the lives we have, to have the lives we want... but this house has been more important to me than I'd realized. I don't think I've ever lived in any one place longer than I lived here.  I've moved about an average of every three years for my entire life, so there are few specific buildings that I actually feel any home-like connection with (although McVoy Hall at LSU, and the Loranger High Auditorium and Ag Shop are three).

This is the largest and nicest place I've ever lived, and this is where I've been both happiest and saddest, I think.  I lived here when an evil man destroyed my life as I knew it and threatened all I had.  I lived here while I recovered, readjusted my priorities, and learned to be happy with who, what, and where I am.  I lived here when I reconnected with countless friends, and finally made the effort to actually do as much community service as people seemed to assume I did.  I lived here when I finally got the Milton Berle episode of the Muppet Show on DVD, when I played Rock Band for the first time, and when I stayed up half the night with Debby and my three godsons sharing our imaginary friends' names, biographies, and current activities.  I used my imaginary friend from third grade, Bullwinkle the Very Hungry Bison. 

Does Anybody Know What Leadership Is? Strikes Back

A couple of months ago in these very pages I shared my frustration with our inability to determine what leadership actually is, with the "our" in that sentence being the academic and business body public.  Apparently the question stumped my massive readership, since there were no comments to the post.  I'm still about four weeks away from starting my organizational behavior studies at Georgia Tech, but as I've trained leadership at a few events recently, I've continued to ponder the topic.  And I've been approached with a possible answer to the question of why we don't know what leadership is:  because there is no answer.


I do a workshop in which I ask my audience to tell me which of the five members of the Scooby-Doo gang were the leader of the group: Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, or Scooby himself.  Sometimes a participant raises his or her hand and tells me shyly that there was no one leader; they were all leaders.  Since this doesn't play into the structure of the seminar and the path I want to lead my audience down, I usually raise an eyebrow and give the cocky answer, "You know, we have a word for answers like that back home in Louisiana.  We call them 'cop-outs'." (for more on the Scooby topic, click here)  I believe this statement, that perhaps there is no definition of leadership, is a cop-out.  Let me try to prove it.

Today is Not my Unbirthday...

... which is odd, given the fact that I have three hundred and sixty three more Unbirthdays than I do Birthdays, which in turn makes me much more used to Unbirthdays than I am to Birthdays.  I love celebrating my Unbirthday, and I try to do it as much as possible.  In fact, that celebration often spills out, as I'm constantly learning of other people who share one Unbirthday or another with me.  Perhaps that's why I like Unbirthdays so much as opposed to Birthdays; it's a lot easier to share your Unbirthday.

(And lest you're thinking that my preference for the Unbirthday is driven by some kind of insecurity in my advancing age... well, think that if you want, I don't care, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I can't even remember how old I am half the time, which means (a) it really doesn't matter to me, (b) I'm really old, or (c) both.  I'll leave it to you to pick the correct multiple choice.)

Birthdays really have little true significance besides an anniversary in an arbitrary human calendar system - it's not like some lever gets switched in our bodies that makes us instantly older, wiser, or more wrinkled.  You are as old as you believe you are, I think.  I know several sixty-year-olds who are younger than most thirty-year-olds I've met (here's looking at you, Doc!).  I was wished a happy twenty-sixth birthday at lunch today, after which the well-wisher hoped that she hadn't pegged me as older than I actually was.  Life remains good.

I Can't Believe I'm Blogging About the Golden Girls

Hey, two followers! I've doubled my following!! Woo-hoo!!!

I've noted that most of my recent posts have been of a rather serious nature, so instead I thought I'd ramble a bit.

A very unfortunate side effect of my wife's pregnancy has been her fascination (one is tempted to use the word 'fetish') with pregnancy shows on the various offshoots of the Discovery Channel.  For those lucky souls who've never been forced to watch them, these 30-minute shows follow a reality-show documentary-format in introducing us to a pregnant young lass and her loving husband/boyfriend/one-night-stand-partner. After attempting to humanize the subject (she loves exercising!), we get to hear how excited she is to be pregnant. And then we find out that there's a terrible problem that endangers the life of the mother/baby/both. And then after some dramatic music plays, we see a tremendously disgusting birth scene, and then the money shot: happy, makeup-running, sweaty mother and usually-ugly, slimy child are united.

Then the show ends and the next one starts. And the exact same thing happens again.  And 30 minutes later, again.  And 30 minutes later, again.  And 30 minutes later, again.  Ad infinitum, on and on, the exact same plot, the exact same facial expressions, the exact same body parts getting cut open, the exact same music.

I counted thirty-two installments of these shows on my DVR last week, nestled amongst the chick flicks and the reruns of Shaun the Sheep (of which I heartily approve). I'm sure hormones are at work here, but I just can't understand the appeal. You know, maybe it was nice the first time... but after twenty or so identical happy-to-be-pregnant/health-problem/emergency-medical-activity/healthy-but-disgusting-birth cycles, it really starts to get old to me.

Every time I ask my wife if she's sick of it yet, or when I ask her if she's noticed the utter predictability of it, or when I point out that that baby on the screen is absolutely the opposite of cute, or when I start predicting what the doctors will say before they say it... she just tells me to go away.  She offered to change the channel once, and she turned it to... a Kenny Chesney concert. How well my wife knows me.

When she's not watching the nonstop birthing parade on Discovery Health, she invariably finds a Golden Girls marathon on some other channel (which I can only assume is the Lifetime network).  No red-blooded man could be expected to retain his masculinity while having to decide between the Golden Girls and pregnancy surgeries, but whenever offered any kind of choice, the intelligent human must vote with whichever side includes Betty White. I never understood the universal appeal of Bea Arthur (in fact, I must admit that there have been nightmares), but Betty, Rue, and Estelle were comedic masterminds.

I hope that I didn't lose any manhood points for that comment.

I always likened the Golden Girls to the Muppets (but then, I've likened most everything I've encountered to the Muppets).  The character of Blanche, the sexually liberated Southern Belle, was just like Miss Piggy - a tough, independent woman who was very secure in her femininity, but probably ate a bit too much cheesecake.  The character of Dorothy, the more mature and sensible grounded woman, had a lot in common with my childhood idol Kermit the Frog (and I hope Kermit will forgive me for the comparison) - they both seemed to be the only sane characters on their respective shows, and didn't have much luck with significant others.  The character of Rose, the sweet but not altogether intelligent girl from St. Olaf, was just like Gonzo - a devil-may-care optimist whose ideas would be limited by neither taste, likelihood, nor good sense.

And of course, the crotchety old Sophia was just like Statler and Waldorf, always ready to put a negative spin on any success with a carefully placed one-liner, or delight with childish glee in any failure.  Just as the two old men in the balcony enjoyed tormenting Fozzie and the rest of the Muppets with their nonstop heckling, Sophia could always be trusted to make everyone around her look even more foolish. And if there's one thing the modern television viewer enjoys watching, it's someone being made to look foolish.

This is, after all, why reality TV shows are so popular.

Yes, it had sappy plots that made me change the channel, and yes, I hated the theme song, and yes, Bea Arthur still scares me a bit... but I've got to admit, there were five to ten minutes of comedy gold in any given Golden Girls episode. And how many TV shows out there in the last sixty years have dared to star an ensemble of four grandmothers?

It's Twin Boys!!!

And well-endowed ones, too!  (Don't worry, you can't see that in the ultrasounds....)

That's their two heads right there, I'm told.  I don't get it... I just figured they were practicing their basic math skills in the womb by sketching an 8 in Debby's side.


Everybody says that now we really can call our kids Nathaniel and Superfly, which Debby doesn't seem too keen on. She suggested Kenny and Ches to me, which I wasn't too keen on either (besides, Kenny would die every 30 minutes).  Now taking suggestions.

Next step: buy one of those in-utero maternity MP3 players, lock it on Debby's belly, and have it blast Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Muppet Show reruns 24/7!

This is Why

I recently discovered a great blog called PhD 2015 (you can find it in my Links section on the right side of the page), which I've found, among other things, to be a thoughtful initial approach to Organizational Behavior study.  I envy the author's ability to stay on one professional track, as opposed to my own tendency to branch out from a serious topic to things like Muppets, video games, and Kenny Chesney (after all, just a couple of weeks ago you were reading one of my posts explaining social metaphysics, llamas, and Mr. Peanut).  The author of this blog has written a few posts lately that seem to establish her own motivation for studying Organizational Behavior which I found myself very... what's the word I'm looking for... moved by? ... identifying with?  I'm not sure how to put it into words.

It's very similar to my own reasoning for embarking upon this course of study, and it motivates me to talk a little bit about it here, as I don't think I ever have.  And as a side note, those original thoughts on PhD 2015 are well worth your read if you've ever worked in a business team, or if you ever plan to.

I am pursuing a doctorate in Organizational Behavior, intending to specialize in business leadership. I am leaving behind a lucrative career or two, a comfortable lifestyle, and a large house to do this.  I am, in many ways, sacrificing the life I've built for myself over the past ten years in order to start something new and wholly different. Most people would call me a fool (and several have) for going back to school at this point in my life, especially for my audacity of seeking a doctorate when I don't even have a masters or an MBA. They would ask me (and, indeed, have asked me) why I'm throwing away so much to do something so different.

And my answer would be, naturally, because it's what I believe in.

Organizational Behavior is the study of how organizations and teams work, and how they don't.  It's the study of why people are effective and why they aren't.  It's the study of what leadership really is, and what it isn't. It's the study of why people are happy with work, why they enjoy what they do... and why so many don't.

If you think about it, you spend more time in the average day at work, than you do with your family and friends. And for 90% of the world, they hate that time. They find it hostile, they find it unpleasant, they find it undignified. Most of them feel they are led poorly and taken for granted. Many do not use their skills to the fullest because they're not motivated to, or because they don't even know what skills they're supposed to use. They receive feedback that is meaningless, and are told they should be part of an ambiguous team without understanding how or why.

I believe very strongly in a concept that Aristotle called eudaimonia.  It's an old word without a true and precise English translation, but in short it means "the joy of excellence." Aristotle called it the very highest level of human experience, and the greatest form of happiness attainable by mankind. It's the pure joy you feel when you've completed something you enjoyed doing, and that you did very well because you enjoyed doing it. It's the feeling a car hobbyist gets when he finishes restoring that '57 Chevy, or the happiness a dedicated teacher experiences when she sees a once-failing student graduate. It's the very happiest you can possibly be, and better yet, you only experience it when you've contributed something wonderful to the world.  It's a feeling that most people never experience in the modern age.

I want them to. And I believe that improving organizational behavior is the way to make that happen.

In every management position I've held since college, I have attempted to my utmost to bring that feeling of eudaimonia, or at least the possibility of it, to my employees and teams. Although I usually failed, every now and then I'd nail it. The result was happy employees, effective and efficient completion of organization mission, and a real sense that we were all part of a real team... no, more of a family... working together for a goal we all believed in. If you've never felt that way, I feel sorry for you, because it's pretty damned awesome.

I've only scratched the surface, only begun to imagine what organizational psychology can accomplish. I want to be better, and I want to help make the world a better, happier, more effective place through organizational behavior. I want those 8 to 12 hours a day of work we all have to go to, to make more sense, to be something we're proud of, where we hold our head high and feel motivated to accomplish something great. I don't have the power or knowledge to do any of this now... but maybe someday, especially if I can surround myself with people smarter and better than I am.  Hence the doctorate.

I have a world of respect for an Ohio State professor, Dr. Anthony Rucci, who defined this area of study as the enhancement of the dignity and performance of human beings and the organizations they work for.  And it can be. And I want it to be.  Because that's what I'm passionate about, and that's what will bring me that eudaimonia I was just talking about.

In a nutshell, I just want to change the way workplaces operate. I want workplaces to be better, more dignified, more respectful, less conforming, more creative, better led, more motivated, more inspired, more effective, and more efficient. And I think better leadership and management of organizational behavior is the way to do it. I believe we can all be better... myself more than just about anyone. If I can help the world move down that path, even in a very small way, then I'll have a lot I can be proud of.

I've gotta admit, I'm impressed that I made it all the way through this brain-dump without mentioning the Muppets as an ideal organizational team unit, or waxing poetic about Evanescence, or wondering aloud if Roy Clark is the greatest banjo player of all time, or discussing my recent increasing love of cheese. Maybe I can stay focused after all.

Insecurity

Somebody asked me today what would be the best way to get over insecurity (I'm not sure why he asked me... maybe I look insecure?).  I told him that the best way I knew of was to constantly force yourself into positions where you were doing the things you were insecure about.  You'd either succeed or fail: if you failed, you'd learn from the experience and become better at whatever you were doing, and if you succeeded, the experience would make you more confident.  It's a simplistic solution, but it seems to work for me. Of course, the key is self-discipline and not caring if you get embarrassed.  Luckily, I did so many tremendously humiliating things in high school and college, there's very little left that can embarrass me.

For instance, if you're insecure about asking ladies out, the only way you'll get better is to actually give it a try (although I suppose you could read a book or watch a master in action, but I don't know how much better that would make you at your own, convince-a-cute-chick-you're-not-half-as-dorky-as-you-really-are style).  There's no better teacher than failure, and no better confidence-booster than success. Insecure people tend to think things are "not even worth trying"... which is one of the worst and dumbest expressions in the history of human thought.  Is it really better to not do anything and have a 0% success ratio, than it is to give it a try and have even a 10% success ratio?  Which method succeeds more?

The daredevil Muppet Gonzo the Great would absolutely agree with me on this. Sure, he usually crashed and burned... but who cares?  He entertained, his fans loved him, and he learned from every experience (although what he learned was mostly how to set broken bones and how to straighten his nose back to its normal shape). And come on, let's be honest... it's not easy to defuse a highly explosive bomb while reciting the full works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, or to dance "Top Hat" in a vat of oatmeal.

I was further asked, "What if I'm insecure because I deserve to be insecure, because I'm really just not capable of this?" My reply was that the very fact that you thought you were insecure told me that you do have the skills, and somewhere deep in your head you know that.  If you really didn't believe you had the skills to do what you want to do, you wouldn't have called yourself insecure; you would have called yourself realistic. If you think you're insecure, then on some level at least, you believe you have the skills you need!

I'm very disappointed I couldn't figure out a way to work Kenny Chesney into that.