Action Figure Daniel

Category: Writing

  • The Floor’s Non-Original Coloring

    (If the following paragraph seems a little out of place, it is. It originally came much later in the document, but after realizing that you are not required to read any, much less all of my blog as my teachers are, I thought it best to use the paragraph as a hook to explain why you should continue reading.)

    Why does any of this matter? Each of us will at some point will, and most probably already have, socially interact with other people. Each of the people we interact with has a varied potential for dysfunction, dysfunctions that may have a great impact on the quality of our interactions. Understanding where the dysfunction, the dirt and oil, come from can greatly improve the social interaction and also help the person to release some of the dysfunctions and become clean from them (if they choose to, of course).

    (I now return to the original document)

    Saturday was a busy day for cleaning. I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. My roommates made some baked beans (literally, baked beans) and had managed to get traces of the beans from one end of the kitchen to the other. I had cleaned the dishes and the fridge and moved on to the floor. As I scrubbed the bean patches off the floor I made a startling discovery: our fake wood floor was no brown with specks of dark gray as I had long assumed, but rather brown with no specks in it at all. I realized that the gray specks were really dirt that was wedged into the tiny crevices of the boards and it had built up over the years until they were semi permanent coloring.

    The Dirty Floor. (Note the darkness of the grain, that is not the original coloring.)

    As I began to scrub the floor my mind began to wonder and having the random thinking that I have, my mind began to drift to the recent Conflict Management portion of my Communications class. Conflict resolution steps are few but critical. One of the most critical is to understand the view of the other party. This translates to a solid listening skill.

    Over time relationship dysfunctions (we can call them “little packets of dirt”) are tracked across the floor of a person’s life. Some of this dirt is brought in by the person themselves, others come from parents, friends, spouses, children, basically everyone and anyone that crosses our life. The dirt also comes from just being in a normal environment. As we settle into our work, play, relaxation or any other aspect of life, so too does dust and debris settle with us.

    The dirt itself is not the problem but is in fact a normal part of life on earth. It only takes sweeping and other basic maintenance to remove. The problem comes from memory (we can call it “natural oils that are emitted from our bodies and are around us everywhere”) which collects, stores and preserves the dirt in the tiny crevices of the floor. This oil and dirt storage issue is compounded by pressure (we can call it “outside forces of pressure, whether for good or bad”) from people walking on them, thus layer upon layer our commingled dirt and oil until enough is gathered to be noticeable to the naked eye.

    While these dysfunctions can be noticed, they are often not. This can be due to several reasons, one of the biggest is that those who come in contact with the dysfunctions assume (for varies reasons) that the floor is the way it was meant to be, it is its natural color. Only when closely examining the floor, at much closer levels than most ever care to get, does it become evident that the floor should be a different color. The issue of color frequently comes when we have not associated with a particular person for long (in comparison to the longevity of their life).

    Even for those who grew up with or around a person it can be hard to notice the often slow and methodical accumulation of the dirt, oil and pressure. The change happens so slowly that it is hard to remember back to a time when the dysfunctions weren’t there. Even then, the changes are still so subtle they can’t always be certain that the color was different, it could just be a glitch in memory.

    My personal favorite is: the comparison. A visitor comes over and notices the floor, it seems permanently dirty but they can’t remember their own floor clearly enough to be sure. After the visit is over, the guest returns home and analyzes their own floor to find that it is similarly marked but they can’t remember their friends floor clearly enough to be sure. Not wanting to make a big fuss over nothing, nor wanting to realize that their own floor is dirtied with dysfunctions and certainly not wanting to find out that their floor is dirtier than most, they continue to journey and make notes of comparison between their own floor and the floors of the various houses they visit. Due to a faulty memory (on purpose or not) and a lack of thorough comparison the observer never determines what the ‘normal’ state of the floor is or should be.

    Why does any of this matter? Each of us will at some point will, and most probably already have, socially interact with other people. Each of the people we interact with has a varied potential for dysfunction, dysfunctions that may have a great impact on the quality of our interactions. Understanding where the dysfunction, the dirt and oil, come from can greatly improve the social interaction and also help the person to release some of the dysfunctions and become clean from them (if they choose to, of course).

    Ideally, everyone would recognize their floor is dirty and take the proper actions to clean it. They don’t, not usually anyway. It is much easier to simply sweep the floor clean and maybe wipe it down with something wet every week or two. This was in fact my normal cleaning routine every month I have lived here. That changed this fateful Saturday. I tried three different techniques before finding the most efficient one.

    I started with a wet wash cloth. Some backed beans had stuck to the floor and I was wiping them up. After finally getting the beans off the floor I noticed that there was a ‘hole’ where the beans had been. There wasn’t really a hole, but there was a definite lack of dirt in the floor grain. This is very similar to working to change something in your life, perhaps a bad habit or distancing yourself from a negative influence. The ridding of the related dysfunction was not the intended benefit but rather an unanticipated side effect. This is a common person with a common goal. While this method works, it is a slow and tedious process that may take an entire lifetime to complete.

    My roommate upgraded me to a bathroom scrub brush (the kitchen brush flexed too much) and a bowl of soapy water. This is the method that cleaned most of the floor. It took a long time and a lot of effort. The bristles of the brush moved through the crevices to break apart the compounded dirt and the soap worked its magic to pull the oil away. This is a common person with an uncommon goal: the improve themselves by seeking out and eliminating dysfunctions and neutralizing bad memories. This is a noble and good work for anyone.

    Our brush started to die so I went to the store to get a new one and in so doing found a wonderful “wood floor cleaning solution”. When I got home I applied the solution and marveled at how quickly the solution, in conjunction with the brush, removed the packed in dirt and oil. The last quarter of the floor was done in minutes, not hours. This method is similar to the last, only improved. No longer is it simply a common person but a person with superior reaching and strivings. This is a person who does not simply work to become better, this person uses their intellect, experience and creativity to seek out (or develop as needed) and use new tools to help them become better. They are a better person before they even start working on their actual goal. Their goal becomes a reaching into the deeper possibilities of their humanity. The goal is specifically designed and catered to their exact position, strength and life plan. Though the goal might have been inspired by another, it is their own and they reach into the fathomless depths of personal effort to achieve the goal for their own sake, not because some else told them to. This is an uncommon person with an uncommon goal. When these two mix, limitless potential becomes available as the increase of self betterment and the far reaching goals unlock exponential growth. This is not because the person is a superior being, one set apart from the rest of humanity and destined for greatness. This is because the common person chose to be more and thus did become more.

    Now our kitchen floor is clean and the cleaning detail has been augmented to include the broader and more intensive cleaning that will prevent this buildup from happening, at least as long as I live here.

    The Clean Floor. (Note the absence of dark grain. This is the original coloring.)

  • Don’t Mind the Stains (or Evidences of Organizational Longevity)

    I recently put on my white elastic banded socks and wore them all day. It wasn’t until that evening while visiting some friends that I removed my shoes and realized that I had worn the wrong socks. I have two pairs of white elastic banded socks. This pair was different from the other pair, and indeed all my other socks, in that they were heavily stained. While I was initially embarrassed over having worn stained socks I quickly remembered why they were stained: I had worn this very pair of socks a few years ago while playing football with some friends in muddy field on a wet Oregon day. The stains incurred were and are an ever present reminder of the fun game that was played and the victory that was achieved after much effort. I had kept the socks as something of a trophy from that game.

    These stained socks serve as a reminder of my accomplishment. Other stains do not have such fond memories attached to them. Juice stains in the carpet, oil stains on a favorite shirt or blood stains on pants. In many ways each of these was simply part of my life’s course. Each also has a memory attached to them, some better than others, and though each has a story none of them elicit the pride of my mud stained socks.

    Organizations also have stains. The longer they are around the more they will have. Some of the stains are like giant juice stains on the floor while others are small marks of personal accomplishment like my socks. Each has a story and reason behind it and these reasons have shaped the growth of that organization. Even if the stain is cleaned and is no longer visible, those who knew about the stain will still remember it was there.

    Sometimes you can catch the host stealing glances at the now clean carpet patch, or you notice they avoid it by walking around a perceptively good patch of carpet. Organizationally this may take form as employees refusing to do something because a specific person is supposed to handle it, even if that person is on vacation. They may provide excuses such as “I don’t know if I am allowed to do that” or they may lie saying “I’ll take care of it” while they are secretly waiting for the absent person to come back and handle it. Sometimes they will blatantly refuse, “Oh, no I can’t. Carl has to do it.”

    Policy formation can be greatly affected by minor stains like a pair of old pants that you can’t part with, but you never wear because they have a ketchup stain on the thigh. These can be an embarrassing moment the owner had with a customer, a mid-level manager who was publically humiliated by a superior or an employee who said the wrong thing to a customer and was severely disciplined. Each situation can cause new policies that forbid the wearing of the tarnished garment, but not the disposal of it because you never know when you have need a mostly useless policy.

    Behavioral ethics can also be influenced by stains, or rather the threat of new stains. This happens when people are especially careful around certain individuals who sometimes have “accidents” that may cause a spill and subsequent stain. It may be a viscous manager who, upon offense, spreads your shame across the company, a co-worker who is known to spread gossip and rumors to any who will listen or even an accidental run-in that may cause some awkward questions to be asked. This careful avoidance of potential staining is very different from the careful attention given while wearing special clothing.

    Not all stains remain hidden. Some are shown off and even publicly aired. These stains, much like the mud stained socks, are symbols of the organization’s victory, near death experiences and staying power. They are aired in defiance of their competition and their display are a challenge to their opponents. These stains can be more liberal customer return policies put in place after a viscous battle with a competitor, a special greeting among members in honor of a beloved leader or a signature service performed “because that’s way we’ve always done it”. These stains are not always metaphorical, like most of the other organizational stains, but are sometimes literal: burn marks from a fire that nearly destroyed a warehouse or cracks a building’s walls caused by a strong earthquake. Often these stains are glorified and incorporated into the organization’s myths.

    The longer the organization has been around, the more stains it is bound to have. Not all stains are bad, in fact many can lead to improved moral and loyalty, but often these stains lead to the creation and sustaining of policies that don’t really make sense and can be damaging to the organization and those that associate with it.

  • Nobody knows that nobody knows

    “Ohhh,” the tech said over the phone. “I understand now what you’re saying.” I was glad because I was running out of ways to say what I had already said. The buildings location was so clear to me and I thought I had explained clearly where the new building was. Unfortunately, the building was also clear to the tech and my directions did little to clarify the situation.

    Boss had questioned me about the installation of some communications equipment. I deferred to the tech’s judgment, thinking he knew best. He had been out to the site and knew what was needed, right? Boss kept questioning though, so I finally broke down and called the tech. I was wrong; he hadn’t been out to the sight. He was going off his memory of the original installation. He didn’t know that we had added two more buildings after the initial installation, and they were on the opposite side of the pad from what he thought.

    This was a classic example of lateral communication breakdown, mostly because of distance. Boss and I were communicating via email because I was out of state, the tech and I always talked over the phone except when he was on-site doing work. Some important concerns were being lost in the communication methods being used. I didn’t understand from Boss that the tech was convinced that we need to mount communication equipment at the opposite end of the complex, the tech didn’t understand that we had added new buildings in different places and Boss didn’t understand why the tech didn’t want to put the equipment in the logical place.

    It took me several minutes, most of the call, to realize that the tech didn’t know about the new buildings but once he knew about the new buildings he readily agreed that the equipment should be placed where the rest of us thought it should be.

    One intriguing part of lateral communication breakdown is that frequently nobody knows that other people are missing information (often the other people don’t even know that their missing information). Nobody knows that nobody knows because what everyone has makes sense to them even though what everyone else gives them doesn’t fit.

  • Commitment to Intentions

    Some months ago I was involved in a management retreat for work. The retreat’s primary agenda focused on a proposed reorganization of the company. The entire first day discussed the ramifications of the changes and what the company would like after it was complete. As we worked late into the night we started planning the timescale for the reorganization.

    At the beginning of the timescale planning the question was asked, “Do we all agree to do it?” There was a long silence. No one wanted to commit to the process with so many unanswered questions. Slowly a new discussion emerged that was a rehash of an old discussion: We don’t know because we don’t have all our questions answered.

    The discussion was prolonging the issue and allowing us to answer around the important question. Just when we seemed doomed to revisit the entire days meeting Hero raised his hand. He waited for the room to fall silent before speaking.

    “I think we are asking the wrong question,” he said. Then he told the story.

    As a young man he had decided to buy a house. At the time the housing market was ripe with small 2 bedroom houses. Hero didn’t have any need for a bigger house and in fact was quite contend with a small house. The Realtor took Hero to see various houses all of which had the same fatal flaw: they were old. Hero was not a very handyman when it came to fixing up houses. The Realtor pointed out that in order for Hero to sell the house again, at an increased value, work would need to be done.

    Then one day the Realtor took Hero to a small house tucked down a short private street. The house, along with the two others on the street, had been built by the same construction company who had been renting the houses out. Their policy was only to rent for a couple of years then to quickly sell the house. The duplex on the corner had been sold previous, the larger house at the end was too expensive and was already being battled over, but the three bedroom house in the middle was just right.

    There was just one catch. In order to get inside the house to see it Hero would have to put in an offer to buy the house. The Realtor explained that this was not too unusual of a request because it was currently being rented out. The solution was simple: the Realtor would include a clause that the offer was contingent on Hero’s inspection of the inside. He could, for any reason, back out if he didn’t like what he saw on the inside.

    The offer was written and accepted in short order. Hero and the Realtor inspected the inside.

    “I like it,” Hero told the Realtor. “What do we do now?”

    “You buy it,” the Realtor replied.

    “What if the inspection comes back bad?” Hero asked.

    “I’ll put in the contingencies for things like that,” the Realtor assured. “What I need to know now is, barring any major unforeseen issues, do you want to buy this house?”

    Hero thought for several minutes then turned to the Realtor and said, “Yes”. A month later he owned the house and has happily owned it since.

    Back at the retreat, Hero looked across the room. “I think the question we should be asking is the same question my realtor asked me: Barring any major unforeseen issues, is this course of the action the one we want to take?”

    One by one, each member of the Company’s management stated “yes” in agreement with the plan. I pondered on the difference between the questions; they were small differences but had a profound difference. The first was asking for blind commitment, asking if we would all back, no matter what came, the plan that was presented. The second is a question of intention, asking if we are commitment, short of major problems, to see the plan through. The second question is much easier to answer than the first.

    There is an additional benefit to commitment to intentions. By committing the group to its intentions Hero had in a single moment committed the Company to an end goal, not the process that would take it there, another subtle difference. Often in these meetings we decide that something needed to be done and how we would do it. Our commitment was usually to the process, not the end result. So when the process was complete and we didn’t get what we wanted we were left hanging, not sure what to do not. Being committed to the end goal meant that no matter what we were traveling until we got our desired results, or discovered they were unachievable, and we wouldn’t stop until we got there.

    Finally, committing the management team to its intentions, not the process, did much too safe guard the pride and honor of the team. Instead of having attached their name to the process, which may or may not have been the best course, they had attached their names to a carefully analyzed, examined and thought out end goal. Even if the proscribe process as outlined in the retreat were to utterly fail, the team still wouldn’t have failed. Though the process could have been flawed, the goal itself was solid.

    Postmortem: The Company’s reorganization continued, not entirely as planned, but well enough. In hind sight, out commitment to intentions that Hero had gathered proved invaluable when tough decision needed to be made.

    In class we had been talking about barriers to communications and I was reminded by this story. Communications in that retreat and sometimes during the reorganization process began to crumble as the road got harder and, more particularly, when it wasn’t clear where we were headed. Having a clear understanding of the Fathers’ intentions help everyone to back up during high stress times to remind ourselves why we were doing all this work.

  • 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.