It Is Good To Have A Son

It was cold Sunday
afternoon in downtown Dallas. I met my son, James, in
the lobby of a favorite hotel where we would later watch
Katy, my eldest daughter and James' sister, get married.
We sat in the lobby and our conversation wandered from
the wedding to the weather and then to America, our
country that leads the world in rate of divorce, teenage
pregnancy, rate of incarceration, and boasts the highest
crime rate of any industrialized nation in the world.
James knows America is a nation where the poor are
getting poorer relative to the rich who enjoy an ever
growing and massively disproportionate share of wealth.
He knows because I remind him.

It is good to have
son you can talk to about things that
matter.

We'd had the conversation many times,
perhaps too many times, but James was raised to be
socially conscious, aware, and empathatic to the plight
of those who struggle, to include the 840 million people
who will go to bed hungry tonight on our
planet.

It is good to have a son who
listens.

"Dad," James interrupted my litany of
numbers and comparisons. "It is all true, but we can't
change it. All any of us can do is a little something to
make it better. That's what I want to talk about. I saw
something today that reminded me of how random kindness
can be, how you can just stop and make something
happen."

I listened while my son recounted
standing on the balcony outside his room on the third
floor. "I was just looking down at the street and I
noticed two guys across the street -- one was in a
wheelchair and the other was standing beside him wearing
nothing but a t-shirt. They were both pretty ragged,
homeless I suspect and I just stood there and watched
them for a few minutes. Suddenly, the traffic in one
lane stopped. A guy in a Jeep stopped right in front of
these two, put on his flashers, and got out. The car
behind him started honking but he ignored it and walked
over to the two homeless men. He asked the guy in the
t-shirt something, but I couldn't make out what it was,
and then he took off his leather coat and gave it to
him. Without saying another word, he pulled out his
wallet and I could see him peeling bills off and he
stuffed them into the hand of each man. Then he walked
back and opened the rearend of his Jeep and pulled out a
big blanket which he gave to the guy in the wheelchair.
He walked back to his door reached into the Jeep and I
could see he came out with something else in his hand.
It was a couple of packs of cigarettes and he gave them
each a pack, leaned down and whispered something to the
man in the wheelchair, shaked the other guy's hand, got
into the Jeep and was gone. I watched the two men on the
sidewalk and even from where I was standing I could see
they were stunned, talking excitedly, both animated, the
one looking down at his new coat smiling, and helping
wrap the blanket around his buddy in the wheelchair.
After not too many minutes, they began moving down the
street, one pushing himself along in the chair and the
other walking beside him."

James' eyes were wet
and a tear ran down my cheek.

It is good to be
able to cry with your son and feel no
embarassment.

"I tell you this story, Dad,
because it strikes me that we can't change the
statistics we always discuss. America is, indeed, in
trouble. But, what we can change is one life, maybe two,
maybe ten. It depends on how much opportunity we have,
but mostly how much opportunity we'll take. In the end,
it is a small percentage of the whole that any one
person can help, but it is a 100% of the lives you
change. That's the way I see it."

It is also good
to have a son from whom you learn.

It Is Good To Have A Son

It was cold Sunday
afternoon in downtown Dallas. I met my son, James, in
the lobby of a favorite hotel where we would later watch
Katy, my eldest daughter and James' sister, get married.
We sat in the lobby and our conversation wandered from
the wedding to the weather and then to America, our
country that leads the world in rate of divorce, teenage
pregnancy, rate of incarceration, and boasts the highest
crime rate of any industrialized nation in the world.
James knows America is a nation where the poor are
getting poorer relative to the rich who enjoy an ever
growing and massively disproportionate share of wealth.
He knows because I remind him.

It is good to have
son you can talk to about things that
matter.

We'd had the conversation many times,
perhaps too many times, but James was raised to be
socially conscious, aware, and empathatic to the plight
of those who struggle, to include the 840 million people
who will go to bed hungry tonight on our
planet.

It is good to have a son who
listens.

"Dad," James interrupted my litany of
numbers and comparisons. "It is all true, but we can't
change it. All any of us can do is a little something to
make it better. That's what I want to talk about. I saw
something today that reminded me of how random kindness
can be, how you can just stop and make something
happen."

I listened while my son recounted
standing on the balcony outside his room on the third
floor. "I was just looking down at the street and I
noticed two guys across the street -- one was in a
wheelchair and the other was standing beside him wearing
nothing but a t-shirt. They were both pretty ragged,
homeless I suspect and I just stood there and watched
them for a few minutes. Suddenly, the traffic in one
lane stopped. A guy in a Jeep stopped right in front of
these two, put on his flashers, and got out. The car
behind him started honking but he ignored it and walked
over to the two homeless men. He asked the guy in the
t-shirt something, but I couldn't make out what it was,
and then he took off his leather coat and gave it to
him. Without saying another word, he pulled out his
wallet and I could see him peeling bills off and he
stuffed them into the hand of each man. Then he walked
back and opened the rearend of his Jeep and pulled out a
big blanket which he gave to the guy in the wheelchair.
He walked back to his door reached into the Jeep and I
could see he came out with something else in his hand.
It was a couple of packs of cigarettes and he gave them
each a pack, leaned down and whispered something to the
man in the wheelchair, shaked the other guy's hand, got
into the Jeep and was gone. I watched the two men on the
sidewalk and even from where I was standing I could see
they were stunned, talking excitedly, both animated, the
one looking down at his new coat smiling, and helping
wrap the blanket around his buddy in the wheelchair.
After not too many minutes, they began moving down the
street, one pushing himself along in the chair and the
other walking beside him."

James' eyes were wet
and a tear ran down my cheek.

It is good to be
able to cry with your son and feel no
embarassment.

"I tell you this story, Dad,
because it strikes me that we can't change the
statistics we always discuss. America is, indeed, in
trouble. But, what we can change is one life, maybe two,
maybe ten. It depends on how much opportunity we have,
but mostly how much opportunity we'll take. In the end,
it is a small percentage of the whole that any one
person can help, but it is a 100% of the lives you
change. That's the way I see it."

It is also good
to have a son from whom you learn.

Report From The Front - Reflections On A Dysfunctional Workplace

Some of the most common
questions I hear from managers:

"Is it the same in other workplaces as it
is here?"
"Are other employees as unhappy as our
employees?"
"Did we just draw a bad hand when we
hired? Everyone is so miserable here."

Common questions to be sure, each
reflecting the grim reality that more employees in the
American workplace are unhappy and discontented than
they have been in a half century. In my book, "Why Work
Isn't Working Anymore," slated for publication in March,
some answers to these perplexing questions are posited
to a disease that has debilitated the American
workplace, a disease the symptoms of which include . .
.

• We earn more, yet enjoy it less.
  
• We meet more people, but know fewer of them.
  
• We work with humans, and treat them like human
  resources.
  We strive harder for success, but have
  never felt more like failures.
  
• We call ourselves 'teams,' but when a teammate is
  put on the street most of us do not feel compassion,
  but only relief that it was him, not us.
  
• We pretend to be fearless, yet have never been
  more afraid.
  
• We claim our families are most important, but
  spend more time in our offices than we do with our
  children.
  
• We talk about 'work/life balance,' as if work and
  life were not part of the same experience.
  
• We justify overwork to provide more Stuff for our
  families, when what they need more of is us.
  
• We work for more money, which never becomes enough
  money.
  
• We say 'the customer is always right,' knowing at
  least 50% of the time the customer is dead wrong.
  
• We boast employees are our greatest 'assets,' and
  regrettably, we often mean it.
  
• We say our work is 'meaningful,' but we know we're
  just hucksters selling, insuring, or servicing more
  junk that will one day be fodder for a landfill.
  
• We say we are the 'richest nation in the world,'
  while 30% of us are working ourselves poor.
  
• We mistake egotism, greed, and power, for passion
  and greatness.
  
• We want to be great rather than doing something
  great.
  
• We admire men whose lives are crimes in progress
  because they have more than we do.
  
• We tout change, but are not willing to risk
  security to actually experience it.
  
• We talk about 'doing the right thing,' yet we let
  the end justify the means.

The American
workplace is troubled. What we look for there, and
sometimes find, doesn't make us happy. 2004 brings an
opportunity for all of us not only to become better
managers, but better people, more insightful, more
sensitive, and that requires some introspection, which,
in turn, requires most to reorder priorities, recognize
their lives are more than acts of commerce, that none of
us make it alone, that what we do for a living is not
important, but that what we do for a living gives us
unique opportunities to bring happiness, contentment,
and joy into others' lives, which in turn, brings it
into ours.

No corporate policy or "work-life"
balance program is going to stop the slide of employee
contentment. Indeed, corporate America has been an
accomplice to the problem, pandering to the Myth of
More, that endemic belief that more money and more stuff
will one day become enough money and enough
stuff.

All evidence is to the contrary. It is
other people in our workplaces, and our relationships
with each other that are most relevant and predictive of
our happiness and theirs. Productivity is merely a
byproduct and, ironically, cannot be accessed directly,
but only by creating a culture that promotes close
relationships.

Corporate America can adopt a new
paradigm, one in which employee happiness and
contentment is paid more than lip-service. Or, corporate
America can keep throwing money at the problem,
relegating the whole of workplace experience to
economics. History tells me that most companies will
continue doing the same old things in the same old ways,
and they will continue to fail, experiencing ever lower
morale, contentment, happiness, and in the long term,
increased turnover and the costs attendant with it. A
few will open themselves to new ways of thinking, new
ways of doing, and they will be the leaders, the
employers of choice, in the post-modern workplace.