Friday I was studying my scriptures and notes that the binding, which has been disintegrating for some time, was about ready to let go of the cover altogether. More than a year ago I had saved money to buy a new set of scriptures and I finely bought them. It is a little odd studying out of my new scriptures, good and bad. I miss many of my old notes and writings but it is also good to have a fresh start and not be reminded of my juvenile writing, comments and highlights. Farewell to the old and hello to the new.
Author: Daniel
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The great Customer Service ‘Come to Jesus’ Meeting
In my communications class we were talking about barriers to effective communications. One of the most prevalent barriers to communications that my work experienced early in its life was being too nice. I remembered a classic Customer Service ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting.
The problem was that we had good Customer Service staff. They were really good, so good in fact that they handled much work that belonged to other people. We found that they did other’s work so well that the others couldn’t do their own work, partly out of laziness and partly out of inexperience.
In the ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting we changed that we discussed the difference of being helpful and being really helpful. The difference in longevity. To be helpful, to do things for other people that they can handle themselves on a permanent basis, helps that person for a time. The downside is that they then become dependent and are indeed handicapped by the help. Without the continued effort and knowledge that is gained by experience over time you lose the ability to handle new events and even old events that should be routine. In life this can be seen by observing teenagers and young adults whose parents have coddled them their whole like. Then when they leave their parents they are incapable of handling real-life events (e.g. working for an employer, dealing with a parking ticket, having to be a real friend).
Instead of a helpful staff, we wanted a really helpful staff. To be really helpful is to teach people how to do things and then after a reasonable amount of training to stop helping the, thus making them do when they should have learned to do. To work with an old analogy: you need to teach a man to fish, but if you keep feeding him while he is learning then he has little incentive to become good at fishing. There was a marked difference after the ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting in the performance of the other workers. For a time, a painful time, the Customer Service staff helped train and explain how to do things and why they needed to be done but eventually they stopped assisting with the work and expected it to be done.
Over time performance was dramatically in almost every department. Further, people become smarter because they were able to gain experience through continued effort and thus expand their skill set. Over time, a painful time, we as an organization became stronger and more agile.
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Linguistics in Culture
Take one: In my Eastern European Studies class we were recently talking about how myths, legends and superstitions impact the local. A girl in my group commented that already Slovakia has already started to check their language after only 16 years away from the Czech Republic. Previously we had identified that language was a key factors in establishing identity.
Add in two: In my Communications class we talked about how cultures are formed in organizations.
Blend them together: Cultures, in and out of organizations, often form their own languages, or at least their own sayings and lingo. This language helps to strengthen the bond of the culture and creates a sense of belonging.
Take a step back: I recently called our corporate office about an issue with our order processing. During the conversation I blurted out an acronym we use to describe the order process. The corporate guy didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I said it again thinking I misspoke. I hadn’t. We had in our short four years of existence created a unique diction that even our corporate office didn’t understand. Result: Cultures develop their own unique diction to protect their unique identity, identify outsiders and insiders, feel special and communicate quickly about things important to the culture.
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From a certain point of view…
When I got back in Rexburg I was just a little bored so I borrowed AJ’s 1984 by George Orwell and gave it a read. AJ, the Covalent Roommate had read it over the summer and had something of a debate about what truth is. The Covalent Roommate recapped the discussion and asked me what I thought. I had to agree with the 1984 view of truth, sort of. In 1984 truth is described as what is true in the present was true in the past because They go back and change all tangible evidence of the past to match the present. Therefore truth is defined by the past and the past is edited by They.
My ideas of truth actually date back farther and are a little different from 1984. My views are much more inline with something from 1983: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. In the scene where Luke is on Dagobah and Yoda has just “passed in The Force”. Luke is feeling all alone and says…
- Luke Skywalker: I can’t do it, R2. I can’t go on alone.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: [voice emanates from nowhere] Yoda will always be with you. [reveals himself as a spirit walking nearby]
- Luke Skywalker: Obi-Wan! Why didn’t you tell me?! You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father!
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Your father was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.
- Luke Skywalker: [incredulously] A certain point of view?
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Luke, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Anakin was a good friend. When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.
- Luke Skywalker: There is still good in him.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: He’s more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
- Luke Skywalker: I can’t do it, Ben.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: You cannot escape your destiny. You must face Darth Vader again.
- Luke Skywalker: I can’t kill my own father!
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: [resigned] Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_VI:_Return_of_the_Jedi
I would like to point out that Luke had a different lens or paradigm than Obi-Wan and was able to see a way to redeem his father, defeat the emperor and restore balance to the Force all without killing his father.To me truth is only truth “…from a certain point of view.” We can twist it and mold it into whatever we want it to me, from our point of view. Even God’s truth is only true from a certain point of view, His. (It just so happens that no opposing view really counts compared to the views of an omniscient being.) Obi-Wan had used Anakin’s dichotomy to describe him as two separate beings to Luke. I doubt that Luke would have been able to accept and handle the “truth” when he first met Obi-Wan. This pattern of receiving truth from a certain point of view and then out growing it and needing a new point of view seems to be a common issue with truth. One size does not fit all.
In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle C.S. Lewis describes a scene that take place after Narnia is destroyed and all the creatures are taken into the after life. In that scene Edmund sees a group of dwarfs who died while sitting in a dark shed. They had convinced themselves that they were still in the dark shed even though, to Edmund and everyone else, they were sitting in an open field under the sun. Edmund talks with Aslan who tells Edmund that the dwarfs are living a form of truth that they have chosen and that none, not even He, the mighty Aslan, can help them see differently. To prove this Edmund takes some of the wonderful banquet that surrounds the dwarfs and presses it to their lips. Immediate the dwarf jump up and begins yelling at the other dwarfs something about “shoving manure” in his face. Aslan reiterates they the dwarfs are so against “being taken it” that they can no longer see the truth that Edmund sees.
Another example is that of Moses. Moses receive a commandment “Thou shalt not kill” in Exodus, but then in Deuteronomy he is command to destroy entire nations. The two commandments show us that the first, given at the beginning of Israel’s journey, was targeted to Israel’s almost child-like maturity (this is the same place where laws are laid down for everything from “Thou shalt not kill” to detailed explanation of what to do if something bad happens to an animal you borrow (seriously, Exodus 22:10-15). The second, given later in Israel’s journey, was an update targeted to Israel’s almost teenager maturity. The revised commandment would be something liken “Thou shalt not kill, unless I command it and I will only command it when it is absolutely necessary.” Both commandments were truth, from a certain point of view.
I will leave one final example. Often we tell little children “don’t talk to strangers”. We give this advice to keep them safe from evil people in the world. The simplistic advice is inherently flawed though. Children will need to talk to a school teacher who is a stranger. We expect them to interact with our friends, because we know them to be safe. They will certainly need to interact with other children that are strangers in order to gain new friends. So really our advice is “Don’t talk to strangers unless they are associated with a reputable organization, someone you know can vouch for them or they are of a like age and sufficient appeal so as to not make you inclined to question there integrity”. If this is the truth from the adults perspective why not tell it to the child? Because the child can’t handle it, no more than Luke Skywalker could have handled know that his dad was the penultimate evil in the galaxy. So we give them a simpler truth. Truth from a different point of view, one that can be more easily handled.
In life I find it important to continually update my point of view to be able to encompass new learnings so as to be able to gather new insights and understandings.
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Some goals just need time
In 2008 I set a somewhat ambitious goal when I went off to school in Idaho. I decided that I would see a moose in the wild. I had heard that they were running around all over in this area so I didn’t think it would be too hard of a goal. I talked to people who knew where to find them, I ventured out frequently, I even arranged some Moose Hunting parties (much like Frog Hunting). All of which failed to produce any sighting of moose.
I had given up on my goal to see a moose and moved on to other things. But today I am proud to say that I can scratch moose off my list of “Animals to see in the Wild”.
I had been out at the Camas National Wildlife Refuge in the afternoon. I went there to go on a hike but it was too hot so I just read a good book instead. Towards the evening I started to get hungry and decided to head back to the apartment for dinner. As I was driving I saw a massive beast rising out of the water and running to the road. It was a moose. I slammed on my brakes and frantically grabbed for my camera. I had enough time to get a few pictures before the moose got too far away for a good picture.
