Bill De-Blah-sio. There was all that ruckus like a county fair up in New York. Everyone had their say. Every topic and issue was dredged and stages were packed with characters proverbially dressed in r,w,b and all manner of anti-r,w,b. Youth and the still-enchanted with American politics as the be all, end all were really excited. The night of calling winner came like death, inevitably. By just past bedtime but before midnight some microphones re-verbed. Someone tapped on one to speak to the vast faraway adoring fans. And there was tall, sort of loping Bill, Oh, I did?!? Of all the potential for wild change and even independent chaos, the people shuffled through the boxes and picked Bill. Tall, white, Bill. There was really a surprising quiet after all that rile up energy. And a release like asthma spray to tightened chest. Not because tall and white represents every specialization, because the season was over.
I had a beautiful experience at a board meeting in grad school. This was a blink of time after 9112001 and before what was sentimentalized as a time of great change, the 21st century! A lot going on. What was beautiful was the president saying to the board, just to clarify....I'm just the president. Not the board, not the professors, not the students, nor the staff. I have these duties. I've got an outline for my best plan. He was an older white guy. In his time in office he accomplished a lot of listening and mediating and bringing his skills and talents to the job. There was a great picture of him...at a desk with his sneakers at the ready.
Oh look, there's Dad in the photo, holding everyone's bags. That was that vacation where we ate Chex cereal for 2 of 3 meals a day to get flight tickets, and all got to pick a souvenir.
And then there was that professor. He was readjusting too. The first part of just about every sentence when first back was OH MY GOD, you got discipline. OH MY GOD, the flag's still out front. OH MY GOD, that's already a lot of syllabi.
We had some creative solutions even within the confines of Catholic church and Academia.
At one point at university we all, pretty much, agreed that everyone was equal or equally-weighted in tradition anyway. The professors had to take turns being moderator for group discussions...busy schedules, draining on energy, not a natural fit for everyone. One professor didn't really want to moderate at all, but, job requirement so...posted signs to weigh the room: political animals; the more subdued; don't really care; exit. It took up all the discussion time. Job done.
Another professor would make up a poem on the spot based on words and phrases the audience pitched.
Still another got us off our seats by asking us to cross the room if. If you are....If you've known someone who is....If you're interested in learning about....
We've been navigating groups of individuals for a while now. And really, election cycles give space for that to both voters and candidates. Then people see about good fit. Then people vote.
We do similar co-existing in workplaces. To work through how I see it and what I heard we pair and team. It's getting it done, the work, despite difference. Sometimes people can have discussions; sometimes debate; rank and file follows the lead's initiative and directives. It's just function and flow of a business.
Someone gave an example of businessperson in action in a neck-breaking economic movement from stagnant to let's all make some money. The business leader was Sam Walton who said something like...we need to get people out of the stores!
WHAT?
WAIT, WHAT?
Facilitate everyone on the go again.
Middle America doesn't want to be New York, nope. But everybody needs to get what they need and have a life! Your life, the life that works for you!
Companies the world over drove human resources on "work-life-balance" and functionality. It was getting practical and accommodating.
We did. We had a lot of people re-joining and joining workforce at that time. There were phases of adjusting. There were people that had worked through pandemic. There were people retiring. There was a lot of price adjusting going on. There was jumpstart of competition. There'd been an awakening to a human-ness even when people are working with computers. There was movement within as we were moving as a nation in debt into a nation with a fighting chance. We got something going out of what basics weren't disappearing. And we managed to save a bunch of core stuff. Some policy was temporarily slapped with signs like work in progress. But the tandem of business and government kept people in pace. There was overall a renewed sense of freedom, not a dictatorship. Some of us younger people hadn't really felt like that...principles and actions matching up. Some of it was uncomfortable--like knowing someone doesn't really like you but, your both professionals or inheriting responsibilities just maybe out of comfort zone. A lot of comradery was formed between working people. And there was eventually again some social in restaurants. Places of people were participating and that was way better than complacency.
To large extent we were actually in a much more extreme place back then. Crime was not nearly as monitored, businesses were in perpetual response. When some entered private sector from public works they were shocked to get a feel for things. I remember a person crying at what had become almost total nastiness between employees and employers, co-workers, in between rank and file. Getting an overview of what it was going to take to turn things around the person couldn't process it. Seeing footage of people acting like caged animals guarding and stealing caged product was the realism metaphor to work from, the person moderated self to say to all the groups involved. A devil's advocate had pre-pretended a perception of political opponents, enemies coming for our jobs, for our hours. They did this as professional exercise to better guide slight to moderate to extreme makeovers and restructuring. It was in response to a callousness that comes more from not knowing anything but privilege, sales are forgiveness someone had buzzily dismissed the whole company's work. Lists were produced of wrong as hell, they say among decent working poor, not professional attitude, some lines were marked out on a sketchbook next to lists people had generated of offensive/harassing/violent.
Like my Dad seeing us girls working out and getting ready for our work days, the gender divide bridge was being built awkwardly but block by block. Dad didn't really need us to fit-demonstrate how we felt on the inside about the world we were finding, he'd seen it evolve/devolve himself, and the girl aspects terrified him for us. It was "choose your battles" and "work with people for heaven's sake" from Mom. She often encouraged seeing a conflict from the other's point of view...but stand ground when you are right or stick with it if its important.
Sorry only gets your sorryass in front of my desk. So and so blew gaskets on the salesfloor. We were having our butts kicked into gear in all the ways that were about personal improvement professionally. Most everybody in retail had had no voice about anything, from makeup counter people to managers, owners to investors. We fashioned Rude-O-Meters out of recycling bin materials. With customers we didn't keep track on the meters, it was still the customer is always right. And for that we had to polish our ships and do things properly so we and the customers were finding things right. But with co-workers regardless of status we could move the meter which should de-escalate situation into conversation. It was like our nationality had been paralyzed and had to learn how to do everything again. Salesfloors were like mirrors witnessing. Managers could be part of interactions if necessary and/or for professional support. Competitors noticed competitors doing things, accomplishing things, making more money, making better sales possible, having voice in industry, and industry having voice politically. Of course it would be disingenuine to ask salespeople to be superprofessionals, represent the company as professional, sell products and brands and company professionally while some vague upper echelons were not acting so. Doing all this as merchants of products and services didn't have the safety nets of academia. And business can move fast, so we all had to be game on. As professionals there was chance for change(s) that benefit all involved instead of people shutting down because of the scary word "change".
And it moved us as a nation! We were a part of that and to this day carry forth those values as professionals.
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