Free-Range Thinking

I'm fascinated by the hold that the notion of "thinking outside the box" has on business speak.  I wonder if anyone has taken a moment to consider what the converse of that might be. I would imagine that having considered the converse, TOTB would be considered de rigueur and we could, maybe, stop talking about it as though it were some great and wonderful thing instead of the most natural thing in the world.

What is a box? It's a container.  It is a thing limited in size and capacity.  But what is a thought? It's an idea or notion.  It may be transitory or permanent depending on the thinker's evaluation of the idea.  It is as wide or as narrow as the mind that thinks it.  It can be unlimited in size and capacity depending on how much energy its 'owner' gives it.  So here's my question: why in the world, would I squeeze that which is, by nature boundless into any container that is by its nature, bounded and therefore constricting?

Humans seem to like little sayings that embody general truths or perhaps it is tag lines that we like as they help us better understand the world.  TOTB has become a favorite tag line, a hot phrase that folks use when the limitedness of limited thinking is finally beginning to show in business and organizational performance. So here's my big idea: why not start with unbounded thinking? Why not start discouraging boxed thinking and start encouraging free-thinking, in all times and all places?  Why don't we all just start thinking freely and letting others do the same?

It occurs to me that the idea of thinking outside the box is at its core, about empowerment.  Empowered folk naturally think outside the box because they're free.  They are free to do and be whomever it is they are.  Boxed folk, on the other hand, have to be encouraged to think freely.  So here's my advice: get a box cutter, cut the box to shreds and then just think. And don't be afraid to share the thought.  Waste little time dissecting the thought down to nothing.  Just think.  It's quite liberating.

If free-range chicken is good, can you even imagine how good free-range thinking might be?  Try it some time. That's what I'm going to be doing (more of) for the New Year: Free-range thinking. Now go on and open up that box.

Allergy Season

I have allergies.  There are trees and grasses to which I'm allergic and a few foods as well, most notably crab, which is especially unfortunate.  More than food and flora though, I'm allergic to fast meaningless talk.  Fast talk and fast talkers,  bring on the vapid empty smile and the loud self-talk that keeps me from saying out loud, "For goodness sake, what are you really trying to say?"

The other day, someone reached out to me on a professional social networking site.  This individual started her interaction by referring to me as an A+ professional (what is that exactly?) and going on to say that she was looking to build a team of A+ professionals for a business with which she works.  OK.  So far so good.

Being (i) polite and (ii) mildly interested in the opportunity she was selling, I responded asking for further information. What I got in return was a lot of words, words full of sound and fury, as Shakespeare would say, but signifying nothing.   It took me a couple of reads but I really couldn't figure out what the angle of this *business* was.  Her email was either deliberately vague or just unfortunately obtuse.  Either way, a very bad sign. At any rate, I didn't have sufficient information to make the decision to take time away from the things I must do, to go and find out more about something I might do.  I said, "No thank you".  I assumed that was the end of that.  Wrong!

Consider my horror then, when she writes me back this mildly insulting note in which she asserts that "We can not promise anyone anything who are not at least willing to meet our team, for we can afford to be very selected [I think she meant 'selective'] as to whomever we want to bring aboard."  She went on to say that "[t]he information and mechanics to our firm can be given out at anytime [so why then would you not give me proper information when I asked for it?] and most preferred, through the interview process.  We feel that if the candidate is not willing to meet our team [did I indicate unwillingness or did I simply request more complete information?], and/or does not interact well with our team, then, there is no need to waste time giving out our information to the wrong candidate." Well, let me not "waste your time" then.

I'm so fascinated by people who, when they don't get what they want, can find no other response than to denigrate that which they cannot have. What's that about?  Don't I get a choice?  And having made a choice, what right have you to insult me for choosing other than you? I mean come on, can we try to be adults? Please? Just for a minute maybe?  This all reminds me of a guy I met some time ago.  Things were proceeding rather slowly and laboriously, so I suggested that we weren't a good match.  His response, "That's right cause you are one boring a@# b*tch!" (clearly he hasn't read my blog!).  Because I like to poke wild animals, I responded, "Clearly I was right in my assessment.  No man I would date would speak to a woman that way."  I think I wished him the peace of God after that. 

Never let it be said that I don't give as good as I get. This time though, I'll leave well enough alone.  Sometimes wild animals can be unpredictable and given that we share the same social space, professionally speaking, I would probably be advised to slink quietly away and give her no reason to slash and burn my professional reputation.  *slink, slink* [the sound of me slinking away]

Sense before Self, Wisdom before Wants

I appreciate that there's a lot of pretty stuff in the stores. I'm partial to Talbot's and Ethan Allen myself.  I imagine, if I spent more time in the world looking at the pretty things out there, I might be drawn to shop til I drop, engage in a little 'retail therapy'.  Fortunately for me, I'm not.  I'm not out there and I'm not drawn in to the endless rounds of shopping.  Not even at Christmastide do I feel a need to be spending wildly, but that's just me.

I do wonder though, the extent to which the crazy 'shop, shop, shop' culture (including the 'shop it's good for the economy' nonsense), plays a role in the tendency of executives of all stripes to make illegal and immoral decisions.  Take for instance, PG County (Maryland's) own Jack Johnson.  It is alleged that Mr. Johnson has had a pay-to-play modus operandi in the county.  It is alleged that if one wanted to build a store, one had to offer tangible financial support to his administration (or to him personally).  It is alleged.

None of this is really surprising in a culture that deifies money and the things it can buy.  As I said, I too would love to spend more on pretty things, but at the end (or perhaps the beginning) of the day, when we replace integrity, honesty and decency with an ends-justify-the-means mindset, trouble surely will follow.  That's not news but clearly, it bears repeating.

As for Jack Johnson (a former state's attorney (the chief prosecutor for his state)) and his wife (herself a former attorney), neither of them even has plausible deniability to fall back upon.  Allegedly, Johnson was heard on a federal wiretap advising his wife to destroy a check in the amount of $100,000 and to hide $80k+ in cash on  her person, even as the FBI was knocking at the door.  Surely one or the other of them knew that they were on the wrong path, well before the FBI was at the door? 

So here's the memo: Jail ain't fun and most of those who land there don't generally return to their earlier lives untainted by the trip.  While Martha Stewart was able to move smoothly back into her empire, Mark Madoff (Bernard Madoff's son), who was never even acccused of any wrongdoing, was not so lucky.  Sometimes even the merest taint of impropriety is enough to completely derail a life.  That should be warning enough for the sensible.  Jack & Leslie Johnson clearly didn't get that memo.

Learning to Roar at Home

Some weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a concert/service at my new church, celebrating the 225th anniversary of the birth of that congregation.  I don't know whether the intent was for the concert to be a spiritual experience but it certainly was for me.

About halfway through the program, a young woman sang Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman", the first line of which goes: "I am woman hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore".  The program had been arranged by historical era, so as they were describing the church during the era of the battle for women's rights, this was the featured song.  In the moment, my sister leaned over and said something to me about our great-grandmother's sister, Texelia Pierre, and it occurred to me that I'm one of the fortunate ones who has lived with roaring women my whole life.  It occurred to me that like a lion cub, I learned to roar at home, from the women in my family.

Sometime in the middle 1800s in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, my great-great aunt Texelia Pierre left her (according to family lore) worthless husband because he wouldn't do right.  What that has meant for the females in succeeding generations is that one doesn't simply have to put up with some do-nothing man, or some go nowhere job, one can simply strike out on one's own.  What a legacy to leave to one's female progeny! Would that I had earlier realized the freedom it gave me in every area of my life.

That a black woman in the late 1800's, in the tiny island of Trinidad, educated only with the power to read and write at Elementary level would have the strength, the intestinal fortitude, to decide that alone was preferable to being married to a dolt still astonishes me today.  Not that I wouldn't do the very same, but I'm much more educated than she was and have options that I know Texie didn't and yet it is she who struck out on her own.  Fearlessly.  Me, I'm not so much fearless as fearful.  The lore, if I recall it correctly, was that she became a merchant of some kind but the details were always a little sketchy and I didn't have the good sense to pump Granny for greater detail before she left us.

So my question is, not what's in your wallet, a la Capitol One, but rather, what's in your being? What's in the fiber of your being, handed down through the generations by your mother and your mother's mother, and your mother's mother's mother (or sister).  Apparently, gumption is in mine.  Gumption. Who knew?