All I want for Xmax (sic)

For those who love me and\ feel obliged to do the President's evil bidding by buying gifts this holiday season, consider these:

USB Infrared link (to communicate between my phone and computer) $40. This is one of those, don't really need but would totally love gifts.

Charcoal starter chimney for grill (range of prices; Weber offers a highly engineered, expensive one. Simple and inexpensive is perfectly fine with me).

Ski gloves (Probably best to give these in the form of a gift certificate to REI. I don't know what I want.)

Books, music, movies found here.

The future is digital, so gift certificates from this hateful store. Think in modest denominations.

Ask yourself: WWJD? What would John do?

With Feeling

For everything John-, John-and-movie-, and John-and-screenwriting-related, go to Darkness Visible. As the museum audio guides say, "I'll meet you there."

Flyover: The Left Coast trip

Screenwriting Expo: Whoa, dude!

A week in Santa Monica: Excellent!

Thanksgiving in Cornville, AZ: You can't choose your family. You convince yourself that you can choose the person you love. But you can't choose her family either. Nevertheless, the turkey was mah-velous.

Folks, it seems a little crazy to keep two blogs. Henceforth, go to Darkness Visible for everything writing and John-the-Edutainer related.

L.A.g

...jet-wise. A couple quick notes after touchdown.

The most important thing to report is that Internet access is limited until I sniff around and find a jumping on point.

Last night made a breathtaking night to arrive. The moon shone onto a scrim of clouds. Searchlights played against them from below. The city spread out like big flat city. Why does it look so good on film? Michael Mann, David Lynch, how’d you do that?

By the time I reached my downtown hotel, I found myself asking questions about people on foot, who look odder than two people sighted beside cars engaged in conversation on the shoulder of the 110 freeway. “I wonder what’s wrong with that guy’s car?” You never know where that kind of reverie will lead!

Meet with Next Generation of Screenwriting Heavyweights

Aren't we? Until further notice, you're damned right we are.

It's official. The Scribosphere (blogging screenwriters) will gather at the Veranda bar at the Figueroa Hotel on Sunday night, November 13th and dare to look at each other's god-given faces in three dimensions.

The idea for a live, in-person meeting of screenwriters from the blogosphere to coincide with the Screenwriting Expo started at Dave's site, and quickly took flight thanks to L.A. local men Warren and Fun Joel. Illustrations and other particulars can be found at Warren and Joel's sites.

Warren promises to buy drinks if he wins the Creative Screenwriting Open scene competition. The gauntlet is down. Single-malts at dusk!

L.A.nticipation

I'm a big believer in working and hoping. Working hard (and selling cleverly) and hoping to be the person who gets the surprising break. So I'm writing screenplays. One drama done. One comedy in the early outline stage. So far it's like trying to learn the craft as if it had never been practiced before.

Next week I go to Screenwriters' Expo to mingle with hundreds of other strivers, hope-junkies, delusional types, and some real, skilled - hell, employed - writers. Could change my life. More likely, I'll meet some good company and learn stuff. That's great. And California, I'll be making a small contribution - but only by some measures - to your economy. Throw me a bone, will ya?

My Wildest Dreams: to return from L.A. with a mentor in the person of a known, working writer. Realistic goal: meet a bunch of people more advanced than me who are willing to use the web to keep on meeting and teaching each other through good criticism.

As in an earlier year, Jay Leno and the Tonight Show will tape story pitches by Expo participants (It's "Toy Story" meets "Romeo is Dying"). Word is, the studio audience votes on whether the story is sold or not. And then the sale/no sale is revealed. I'll keep you informed about where and when to see this segment, but do not - I repeat - do not look for this guy on-camera.

In the meantime, it's great to be home. The Woman I Love (TWIL) is even happier than me. Does it have to do with my compulsive tidiness, my cooking skills, my svelte form? Doubtful. She unaccountably likes me; it's the core of her considerable charm.

[Swiped the photo from a Hollywood fan. Click on the title to go to the source. Apologies/thanks.]

Case Closed

What's that? The state capital building, an erection of Huey Long, as I understandt it. Farewell Baton Rouge!

What's the verdict? Well, it's the wrong question. The question is whether you have any regrets, whether you wasted your time, whether you worked hard and well but accomplished nothing. No. To all three. I paid with frustration and missed opportunities by being away from The Woman I Love (TWIL) for the greatest part of the last ten months. I have come to dismay over miserable cellphone service that interrupts us twice each evening. I have come to appreciate how greatthe effect of her love and respect is. And I'm grateful for her patience. I've also recalled how much I enjoy an evening to myself, a Saturday without plans, a day filled with movies.

I rewrote a movie script of my own creation, I shot part of a DV movie that may yet acquire a story to go with that footage, I gave what advice I had to the trainer I worked with most closely, I played well with others. And I'm exhausted with the effort of leaving.

I suffer leaving as if it were a physical wound. That's why I did not visit home more often. TWIL was always glad to have me visit, for however short a time. But between the fatigue of arriving (six hours aloft) and the distress of leaving, it offered me real frustration in the 40 hours I was home. I know what you're thinking. I mean psychic frustration.

Even leaving Louisiana was not easy. People were warm and I was appreciated. I will miss is the daily sense of direction and progress that work offers, the pleasure of reliable human contact on a wider scope than home, and the opportunity to influence people.

I will not miss C.M. (See a previous post.) Finally, at the urging of the project leader, I talked with C.M. about our disagreements. We made a lot of progress, but I'd be a simpleton to think it changed her, or me. It comes down to this, in my biased interpretation: C.M. wielded the authority of her office to engineer the perception of success in everything she does. The effect is poor, but the story it allows her to tell is a good one.

Like a camel through the eye of a needle, so are the days of our lives

What's a training pilot look like? Or first, what is it? You take the course materials you've been creating and improving and you teach them to the audience they're intended for.

What it looks like is three weeks of standing in a windowless room for eight hours a day, fielding questions that you may or may not know the answer to. It nearly always requires four to six hours of preparation between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. I'm not complaining, just reporting. As to what happens, you aim to hit the target: participants grow confident using new skills and generally have a good feeling about the experience. You want to know how close to center of the target you struck. The first requires learning objectives (for you training types out there). The second requires evaluation.

In practice, the success of a pilot depends to some extent on the facilitator. When materials aren't quite right, the pace is slow, the activity crashes and burns, you want someone in front of the room who can pull a rabbit out of his or her ... hat. Our pilot went well. We saw our share of rabbits. Most lived through the experience of being yanked by the ears.

I mentioned internal political ructions in my last post. They continued, but aren't worth mentioning now. On that note, a truism: everyone chooses to involve themselves with co-workers based on a set of pre-requisites: commitment (how much do I respect this person), pragmatism (how will this help or hurt a relationship that may be tested in similar ways in the future), and neurosis (You can't push me around, I'm afraid of conflict, She got this attitude, etc. Insert yours here.). Here's my litmus-test question before giving feedback: Are we going to work together again and do I want it to work better next time? And that's all I need to say about that.

With one week left to go before my Rapture-by-jetliner, one thing I feel strongly as I look back over ten months is that people have been individually very warm to me. I'm grateful. Working with the same people all the time provides a lot of social support, even when it leads to conflict. And once you've earned a little respect, you begin to have the power of influence. Always less than you'd hope. But it's real. I have an undying hope to do good, make people better for having had to do with me. It's a little crazy (See above, re: neurosis). I'm very grateful for genuine kindness I've been offered here. I hope that my influence and the genuine kindness I returned totes up in the "good effect" column.

The End is Near

The end, that is, of two things. My stint in Louisiana, which ends October 29. I began working here last December (2004) on a four-month contract. Project problems - or challenges or opportunities - postponed the first big deadline twice. I agreed to stay on. But I made it clear that after Halloween I had other commitments that I could not change.

That first big deadline is changing again. Rumors have one or two months from the most recently agreed upon date. The rationale lies entirely on the technical side: getting software to address business issues as desired, anticipated, and needed. Training can always be ready, almost whenever the starting gun fires. And training can always be made better. We serve at the pleasure of the business.

Also at an end is the preparation for training. We have materials, policies, a training system (a model of the working system), and we nearly have an instructional design. We could use a lot more examples and exercises. We're training experienced employees. In other classes for other business units, they're learning quickly. They're getting it. This is likely to mean that we start training well before participants will begin to use new skills, and that we'll wrap up early.

Today, the plan is to deliver the four weeks of training, wait three to eight weeks, provide a largely unstructured refresher, and drop people into the hot water of the new job. I think it's irresponsible. I'm going to argue that the training design must be changed to keep participants learning from any given starting point until production begins. The horse-pill of new policies can be swallowed, but only if live ammo drill and practice follow the hothouse practice in the classroom. And I bet I'll lose the argument. But as I said weeks ago, you hope to show clients new ways of doing things and enable them to succeed. You try to tell them the truth.

Finally, my consultant manager has been virtually AWOL. Let's call her the C.M. You try to tell the truth. We'll see where that gets me.

Low and dry

I fled Baton Rouge on Friday in spite of having planned to stay the weekend. That is, a few days ago I was unwilling to spring an extra $600 to change my ticket from Boston to NYC, where my girlfriend has been working for the past four days. But as the women I work with tracked Rita, it moved North, slowed down, got stronger, and generally looked like the source of a week of electric-free living. That means food gets scarce, except for what you grill, which is in too great a supply - where do you keep it when the fire goes out? And a cheaper ticket popped up on my travel site. So I took off.

New York had perfect weather for walking the city. We did. Between fits of TV watching and web surfing to find out whether the South central US would shut down again for a few days. I'm glad that so few people were hurt during Rita and that it didn't hit property harder. But I'd have been very glad for a couple of days working from a NY hotel room. Besides the kind of typical incompetence one expects from airlines, the return at o'dark thirty Sunday morning was uneventful.

Baton Rouge gasped with traffic. And like Katrina, God's own leaf bag was shaken out everywhere. Here and there a downed tree. From those who stayed, the report comes that power was on and off for a twelve-hour period. The freezer stayed cold. Humidity soared yesterday afternoon, or maybe that's just the contrast to the Northeast. By five it felt normal again.

This week I relocate my cubicle to the building about six miles down the highway where the training rooms and staff are located. One week until the start of classroom training.

I gotta go

Rita's coming and I'm going. More when I get to a really safe place.

(Thank noaa.gov for the photo.)

Volunteer Training

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) set up a Find Family national call center and asked for volunteers to help staff the phones. On Tuesday night I went for a one-hour training session that consisted of how to fill out forms for callers reporting people missing or known to be dead.

We learned not to give moral advice ("You have to be strong for your family.") or religious sentiment ("It's God's will that...."). We learned to try to offer compassion or at least sympathy ("I can't imagine how hard this must be." "I'm here. I'll stay on the line as long as we need to.")

I say we haven't been answering phones. Call volumes are low, and today it appears that calls weren't rolling to available phones down the banquet tables set up in a hotel ballroom near here. But on Thursday night I sat across from a woman who evacuated from Jefferson parish. She's staying with family. Her son's house in the capitol city is full. There are six families sleeping on air mattresses in every room of the house, so she went to a cousin's house instead. She can't find an apartment, her job has disappeared, and she cannot find out whether she can return to collect her stuff.

She'd consider moving, she said, but she'd need a job, which would cost her all of the years of service here, with all it's implications for pension and retirement. She told me she felt fortunate to have gotten food stamps, though she showed up at 4:00 a.m. to get in a line that was already long. The doors opened at 6:00 a.m. and she walked out the exit at 11:30 a.m. And she was pretty cheery as she waited for calls from other evacuees, getting paid a temp's $8.00/hour thanks to FEMA. "At least it's something," she said.

Last night, the local station broadcast a message that many shelters have a full supply of evacuees needs and that cash contributions should be made to the Red Cross instead. Now's the time to start thinking about concrete help beyond keeping body and soul together: jobs, housing, skill training, child care, and the list goes on.

Think hard about where to contribute again. The government is not going to take care of everyone. Given what we've seen lately, it makes sense for communities, businesses, and service agencies to collaborate to help give people new lives with possibilities, not just a trailer and a handout.

(Photo: Another beauty by an unknown photography from, I presume, Sunday, August 28.)

Twister

Here is the first of a series of photos that were taken by, well, I don't really know. One of the women I'm working with was so excited that I'd stayed through Katrina, she immediately wanted to share these. "I keep telling my kids, this is history." But what about the damage? As Frou Frou sings, "...there's beauty in breakdown...."

And we're back

Returned to Baton Rouge today through Houston, where I saw or heard:

"Expect to be there six months. That's what they told me." Overheard; a ServiceMaster employee, wearing a brand-proud tee shirt and that read "Disaster Recovery" on the back. These are the people that suck water out of carpet, but tarps over open roofs, and do a thousand things that insurance companies agree to pay for.

"Those four guys in Slidell? We're going to get them out of there. One of them got really bad infection." Overheard; first class passenger on his cell phone.

Seen: A man carrying a deep underwater diving helmet. A woman in a yellow tee shirt and matching yellow and black back pack. Her shirt read "Volunteer Minister," and on each sleeve, "Church of Scientology" and a crest. And on the airport tarmac, about thirty military helicopters, a trailer-office of the Texas National Guard, sixty pallettes of bottled water.

In Baton Rouge, after the high state of worry and outrage that struck us who are not in New Orleans, I expected shock and dismay to have marked the city somehow. It appears unchanged: Lots of billboards for personal injury lawyers, college students in my apartment complex sunning by the pool, pork on sale at the Albertson's.

Photo: The negligible disaster refrozen in the top third of my refrigerator. Note the block of melted ice cubes transformed into a frozen block.

Baton Rouge update

Word is that the city is returning to something like normal. After five days, the power was restored to the corporate apartment where I stay in East Baton Rouge parish. So everthing that thawed will freeze again while I spend this week working at home.

Gas is available but lines are long and prices are high, I hear. Grocery stores are getting deliveries regularly, though many are closing early. I continue to hear rumors of lawlessness, but few or none of these are confirmed. Safe, yes, but the advice we're getting is not to take chances by going out alone before dawn and late at night. One of my colleagues emailed to say she's back to work today after ten days out: family and house intact, six trees down.

(Photo: Bluebonnet Road, Monday, August 29, 2005)

Kat no kitty: Hurricane Katrina

Even in this very active storm season, it’s a crap shoot whether a storm will grow enough and throw a threat your way. I’d planned to be in Baton Rouge this past weekend (8/27-28/05), and it was a beautiful one until 6 p.m. on Sunday. The sky lowered gun-metal clouds and the spinning storm raked them into furrows. The rain started. The rain stopped. I came away from the grocery story after an hour and a half wait with water, batteries, charcoal, sausage, beans, and buns believing I would not need them. Hoping I would not have to light the last candles to be had: Moonlight Sighs votives.

I woke up Monday morning to the sound of jetliners low overhead. The power flickered off about 5 a.m. Then flickered on. Then off, and as far as I know, it stayed that way. The dawn brought a yellow-brown sky to light the trees bending in a vacuuming wind from all directions. As a lifelong Yankee, I was afraid. Nor’easters blow. This sucked. Those were no jetliners; that was the storm wind. The question that eats at you the way the pressure stabs your sinuses is, if this is the beginning, how can it end?

For me, it ended in an airport in Houston the following day. Late Monday in BTR I saw some roof shingles flung around, a few signs and fences down, a half-dozen trees tipped over, and all of nature’s leaf bag shaken out by Katrina. I was without power, so you knew more about the storm than I did. Local radio, which I tuned to, relayed questions and spotty answers from people with cell phones standing on their porches. “Clarence, [the host’s real name] I’ve got a sister in Kenner and all I hear is bad news out of there. Can you tell me what’s happening in Kenner, near Thibodeaux Road, and in LaPlace where my MawMaw’s kin live?”

Power was coming back on in West Baton Rouge, someone said, but the utility warned it could be five days or more before the entire city was restored. Without air conditioning, news, refrigerator, internet, or air conditioning (emphasis mine), it seemed a good time to accept my girlfriend’s urging and come home. Thirteen hours of Tuesday later, I was there.

I was always safe but for three hours I was scared I wasn’t. Remind me to tell you about the books I read before the sun went down. There was no moonlight. But there were Moonlight Sighs.

Thanks for all your benevolent thoughts, prayers, fretting, nail-biting, and railing at the storm. Assume the picture above, tells you nothing. In the future, my storm strategy is plan, prepare, then RUN AWAY EARLY.

Stirs me to the bottom of my TPS reports

What can be said about Office Space that hasn't been said better elsewhere? I'll simply add that I watched Office Space a few weeks ago on my birthday with a couple colleagues who live here three and three quarter days a week. I guarded my birthday as closely as tobacco industry marketing plans because of such scenes as the cake-cutting in the Mike Judge movie. Incredibly, my colleagues had never seen the movie. Quoting favorite lines ensued and continues.

P., whom I met on my first project with this company three years ago in Seattle and is here in Louisiana, gave me a belated birthday gift yesterday (see picture). It's the offical Milton stapler. Neat coincidence: I first saw Office Space in Seattle three years ago.

'Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and blog that for you.'

What I did this week

To learn in detail, see the following forms (an actual tally) I filled out to report my accomplishments:

1. Time sheet
2. Travel and Expenses reimbursement worksheet
3. Tasks and meetings status report
4. Five daily status reports
5. Client time sheet
6. Weekly status report (which neither my consultant-manager, engagement leader, nor the client's project leader knew anything about, though it was the last of these folks who requested we completed it.

Do you get paid for reporting what you should get paid for? Notice that when I earn income for completing forms, I am reinforcing the organization, or two in this case. I'm throwing a sandbag on the bulwarks.

The task is not productive. We could argue about its value. I'm feeding the information beast.

Reminder: Potentially forgotten facts

Gossip is good

Let's put aside for a moment all those forms of lying that go under the heading "gossip." That's largely the stuff of TV shows. In fact, research is uncovering that while gossip is not journalism, a lot of it is based in fact. That's why it's good for us.

"Gossip not only helps clarify and enforce the rules that keep people working well together, studies suggest, but it circulates crucial infomation about the bahavior of others that cannot be published in an office manual." The New York Times (See Link for more.)

Gossip is the other half of spin. Leaders and others in power manage information to have an effect. In fact, we all do, even us individual contributors. Gossip counterbalances that information: personal, where spin is abstract; saucy, where spin is bland; revealing probable motivation, where spin is cloaked in organizational passive voice.

The challenge I've always faced as a consultant is how much is the right amount of gossip. Habit shows that I shy away from the personal; people's emotional lives are inscrutable and two programmers and two business analysts are not going to figure it out. I am willing to listen to and store up the professional: "you'd better have your ducks in a row before that meeting;" "it'll go just fine, but you won't get a word in edgewise;" "She's keen to get promoted." This gossip is based in fact, helps me influence people, and guage some of the obstacles ahead. This is gossip I share with others who are trying to have a positive effect.

Then there's the black and tarry gossip that I hate and do battle with by putting my finger in a dyke holding back a sea bile. "Oh, honey, stick around. That's the kind of good idea sure to get you stomped." "You better cc the world on that, CYA-wise." "She won't do it. You'll learn." This is kind of gossip that comes from having learned the lessons of the organization at the bottom of the sewage sluice. I don't blame people, but the shred of fact in this gossip is, "Nobody gives a damn about my ideas, and nobody is going to give a damn about yours either.

I think consultants have a responsibility to influence people to try to change. Gossip works in our favor. We have to give folks better tools than just saying something can be so, but they haven't even heard that in years. They don't trust us to tell the truth. After all, we're consultants. But we are telling the truth: You can change things. You should make good, hard, big decisions rather than easy, small ones.

Repetition is the purest form of learning, and that's another reason gossip is good.

William Shatner wants a select few companies with $15,850 to spend

First, the show. Keeping America Strong (KAS) features people you have hardly heard of hosting a news-format, talking-heads show that airs very early "for serial entrepreneurs eating their corn flakes," according to field producer Ben Hammer, who showed me a KAS reel on VHS. But the real value, Hammer said, "Is the credibility that comes from getting the show into the hands of your prospects directly."

The host did an adequate job serving up soft-ball questions to a business owner with "an exciting story to tell" about business back here on our planet. I don't know how often they segue from Shatner's intro by intoning his fictional extraplanetary travels, but I saw it twice in the reel.

Two or three oddities worth mentioning. A big TV sits on the presenters's desk. Not a sleek new TV, but a big rounded model like my grandmother's. Cut from intro on TV, to the studio. A bank of video screens stands just behind Doug Llewellyn obscured by screen of translucent glass. First it looks like breaking news. Then it looks like shelves of TVs behind a shower curtain. Camera two looks across the host's right shoulder toward stage right when he interviews a doctor, entrepreneur, or other self-promoter. After all these years looking at guests in a chair stage left (witness Carson, everyone else), it feels wrong and undercuts the "credibility" message of the program.

The prose is fulsome with assertions provided by the interviewee. The questions are lobbed with enthusiasm. The answers succinct and as colorful as the business owner. Some, not so much.

Second, Bert Tenzer. This guy, in some connection with Shatner, made a deal with studios to get their back list movies onto Betamax (yes, back then) and then showed franchisees how to set up a video store. Concede it: way ahead of his time. No doubt "2000 Years Later" was required inventory, one of only three productions Tenzer created himself. Released in '69, the New York Times called it "perhaps 2000 years too early."

The old guy appears on camera in the reel: white haired, a little Parkinsonian, unctuous about
his show and his resume. It was hard to tell, but he appeared to be wearing a Nehru jacket. Still. He is The Man who got this rolling, but it was difficult to understand how it works.

Third, the business. After 9/11, Shattner, Tenzer and their people - and I'm piecing this together from what the producers have told me - thought that the best way to strike back at terrorism was to promote the small businesses that were hit hard in the economic downturn and would be the next wave of growth and opportunity. They committed three non-profit years to cover these stories, and unexpected revenue keeps it operating today. Apparently big companies call and want to feature a product from one of their innovative divisions. KAS charges a premium and these segments fund a slug of additional shows about companies like mine.

I hate being sold, so I felt I had to give a pretty darn good reasons for not buying. I said that to use these promo pieces you had better have:

• a story that taps into the emotions in the amygdala (the most primitive part of the brain),
• know your buyer (and get this to all of them to get a return on your $15,850)
• ABG (Always Be Growing)

In my case, the story is not emotional; it's tactical. I partner with smart people and good companies. The buyer does not have common characteristics anymore. Finally, the growth that interests me is not in scale and scope, but greater expertise, which translates into more value per dollar billed.

KAS and Heartbeat of America is not shifty-Hollywood, as I thought. If you've got a promotional plan and a clear, single message for all your buyers, this probably isn't a bad way to go. But it's not for the likes of independent consultants. Not this one.

At the world headquarters

Working in my home office this week. This brings freedom (e.g., get a haircut, outline twenty minutes of a movie script) and responsibility (prove your productivity by stacking up accomplishments). After twelve years managing myself, this is a cinch.

Yesterday I offered feedback to one of the business unit managers about proposed training topics. Today, I review the curriculum to edit and develop the testing and remediation methods we're using: self-study quizes, daily in-class knowledge review and skill checks, end-of-training skill assessments, report cards and individual development plans, and a final, go-to-production skill assessment.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about working in a large company setting (in my experience, large means 500 people or more) is when to go slow. Saves time, effort, and money. Doing work that must be done again impresses no one. Even if initiative is good, foresight and judgment are better. But the work on my home office desk is not at issue. Let me get back to it.

Follow up to Fallout

"It's not our fault," my consultant-manager says. That other consulting company has been taking advantage of off-site work time. They're unavailable, they're not getting the work done, and that makes us look good. But client trust remains low, and consultants, in the end, all are painted by the same brush. I'll track and report my work closely this week while I work in my home office.

Long-term consulting poses challenges that are identical to those of permanent staffing. Goals become diffuse and then change, objectives broaden, complexity multiplies, and successes seem incremental. That's just the work. People resist change. If you have an ounce of feeling, when you see the kind of discomfort you're causing and the fight/flight response, you temper the speed of forward movement. Most of us want to lead and recognize it's lonely. But no one wants to turn around to find no one following. That's human, and counterproductive.

To succeed as client partners, to earn our fees, we need to draw clients into commitment, by influence, selling, creative conflict, and by example.

"Relax, Bill. I’m cool with it."

William Shatner’s office called again to follow up on, well, I don’t know what. Turns out, the call came from another associate producer, who put me in touch with C.M., my contact. All of us roundly confused. Then C.M. and I confirmed that the email her “assistant” sent had not arrived. And now I’m supposed to call to confirm I’ve received it. I think, I bet that slips my mind.

I’m going to meet with a field producer named Hammer on August 15th. I only need to put down $5,000 to secure my slot on Keeping America Strong. I’m rubbing my palms together in anticipation of my “meet” with the Hammer.

Fallout: Change without Changing

On Friday, after consultants had all gone home for the weekend, a new 'vendor time-tracking' policy was announced by a senior project manager and delivered by email. The effect is to require us to track not only time spent on activities but daily accomplishments. If one of us plans to work at home, we are required to submit a workplan beforehand, and deliver daily reports describing the work we've completed.

This makes project-management sense. In practice, it indicates that the client doesn't feel they're getting value for the money. Nor getting enough accomplished week by week. No one - client or consulting team - has described the purpose of the new policy. But the level of trust has dropped and recovery will not be easy.

When I joined the project eight months ago, I asked, "How will the structure of the organization change?" The answer was, "That's not on the table." To lead and direct this project, a decision was made (pardon the passive voice) that the first step to a new business processing solution was to keep chaos to a minimum by mirroring existing processes and systems. I lack the information to state it as fact, but my limited experience shows that more organizational change would have made system implementation faster. It's unwise, and apparently costly, to both change and not change.

William Shatner calls back

Well, in fact, his associate producer (AP) calls back. Encourages me to "take a meeting" (sic.) with the producer, who will be in Boston in August.

The production company Heart Beat of America finds and promotes smaller businesses with the show Keeping America Strong. "Mr. Shatner wanted to get behind these companies because so many were hit so hard after 9/11," AP said. What I get is video and CD-ROM of the "full half hour show about your company" to use in whatever ways will build the business - web site, trade shows, copy for sales staff and distributors, mail to client prospects. Theoretically, 11 million viewers of the American Life cable network also could see the show.

"Mr. Shatner waives his six-figure fees," AP explained, "but we ask companies to share production costs in the amount of $15,000. To go into the studio yourself could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But if I feel the company would be right for the show, I recommend they meet with the producer."

I take the meeting.

It is Balloon!

Hot air balloons descend on East Baton Rouge, Thursday morning, 8:00 a.m. It's all balloons all the time this weekend. This crew is aloft over the Mall of Louisiana near the corner of Perkins and Bluebonnet Blvd., not far from my bivouac home. Folks are a-twitter over the dozens seen so far, their size and lumbering lightness making us drive erratically and giggle like kids.

Leadership. Opportunity. Missed.

How do you get people to participate in leadership without starting the speculation engine? Two days ago an executive asked us to shift our paradigm(s). He went to the source (Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). He asked us to take off our shoes. “How does that feel?” It’s a relief, and disconcerting, he said. True. “Try on the shoes of the person next to you.” Good exercise, poor hygiene. “Now that you see how important it is to get out of your ‘comfort zone’ and ‘think outside the box,’ divide into five groups.”

“You’re consulting teams. Find a way to do the remainder of this project better,” he said. “The most radical idea wins a prize.” All of the ideas had potential to save time, money, or work. A few were fresh approaches. We voted, which is to say, we chose the concensus option. And over lunch we asked these questions: How bad are things? Who’s responsible? Why were radical ideas discussed a year ago not on any flipchart? What’s my prize?

His good faith effort to involve the team was poorly conceived. The radical ideas were centrist. And the effect has been the spread a generalized doubt about the manner and results of our work. Regardless what comes next, that whining you hear is the high revs of people asking “What does this mean to me?”

William Shatner wants me on TV

At any rate, his associate producer called to tell me that "while I can't make any promises," she'd like to talk to me about a patriotic (?) program called Keeping America Strong, which Shatner hosts. The show profiles businesses, broadcasts and then packages the shows on video and DVD. I haven't had a chance to talk to her, but I'm accepting suggestions on how to make my business sound fascinating, growing, and spirit-of-capitalism patriotic. Maybe being bigIdea consulting and communications is the "it" of the entrepreneurial '00s.

Apparently they want Canadian companies keeping America strong, too. http://www.laurenwood.org/anyway/archives/2005/03/10/keeping-america-strong/