Avoid Busy Work and Do Productive Work

Many employees are much busier at work these days yet may be much less productive—in terms of adding real value to company, client, and employee.  Obviously it’s a mistake to equate busyness with real productivity.  But it’s done all the time.  Merely being busy only leads to burn out and frustration.  It also results in feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, and low self-esteem.  Likewise, a busy, busy professional is often not only a less productive one but a very frustrated one at that.

What’s the difference between real productivity and busyness?  Think of a painter’s goal of painting a room the color blue.  The actual job’s goal, painting the room blue, is relatively easy to do.  But the hard part, the real pain of the job, is the prep and setup work, as well as the take-down and clean-up work, that must be done before and after the room is actually painted.  Old rotten wallpaper may have to come down, holes may have to be covered, water damage from old leaks may have to be repaired, and so-on and so-forth.  Suddenly merely painting a room blue is not as simple as it sounds.

One should adjust time allotment for a job, by the task(s) required to do the job right, not the other way around.  That is, cutting quality in order to get the job done faster and cheaper, usually leads to long-term waste, unnecessary redo’s, unhappy clients and workers, and disastrous bottom lines.  Yet this seems to be the prevailing focus these days—cheap fast work, rather than solid, quality work done within a reasonable amount of time.  Cutting corners (and therefor value) is always a mistake.

And so (given our example of painting a room blue) because prep work, take-down and setup, etc. is a necessary integral part of the job, it must be included as part of the overall job estimate and analysis.  It’s the real dirty work of the job, the unpleasant part.  Yet it must not be confused with the actual job’s goal or purpose, which is nothing more than getting the walls painted blue.  Nevertheless, it’s in the difficult details of a job where “busyness” can take over.  Busyness can often simply be a means of avoiding the real dirty work, that unpleasant side of working toward a job’s real intended outcome.

Avoidance of real work is often a failure to see its value or purpose and one’s personal role in adding value to that purpose.  It is a failure to see the good that one can bring to others by doing one’s job well—in a timely fashion and with quality.  In that sense it helps for an employee to see that prep work, set-up and take-down etc. is in fact as significant as the job’s goal itself—so long as it is efficiently and effectively done to actually reach the intended goal.

The bottom line is that though people obviously are working for MONEY, money will never fully satisfy as much as knowing that one is adding value and goodness to the world by the work one is doing.  A job’s real purpose is to add value to humanity and humanity’s wellbeing.  In that sense, no job is too low or demeaning to do if one considers the benefit or value it adds to others.  Where would we be, for example, if we didn’t have someone picking up our trash on a weekly basis?  Now there is an example of a significant worker that adds value to our way of living to whom little appreciation is given.

Anyway, the point is that we must not lose sight of the end-goal of a job, the final outcome for which we are working: adding value to our lives with intended outcomes that are to benefit all stakeholders.

One last thing, the thing about time is that time is both within and beyond our control.  And so, neither take shortcuts to save time or money, nor become so tediously busy that you lose sight of the job’s intended outcome.  Rather, respect both time and money by working efficiently and rhythmically, if you will, which is to say consistently, persistently, and purposefully—with a determined focus on the job’s goal, which is a quality product, accomplished in a timely manner, with superb results, benefitting all—clients, company, and employees.

Boehner’s “Fought the Good Fight” Comment Says a Lot!

Admitting defeat, House Speaker, John Boehner, summarized it this way: “We fought the good fight.  We just didn’t win.”  This is very telling.  How so?

First, it conveys the fact that he and the extremist minority rightwing group within the Republican Party (Tea Party, et. el.) see themselves as morally superior to all their opponents.  This phrase, “I have fought the good fight…,” is from the New Testament, found in the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:7).  In other words, they see themselves as fighting a moral cause.

Believing that they are entrenched in a moral battle, they have little or no interest in actually negotiating with their opponents.  For them, it is an all-out battle against the forces of darkness, goodness verses evil.  Furthermore, as such, they see themselves not as one of two opposing but legitimate parties, that is, two opposing sides that still have a unified foundation with a unified overarching purpose and set of values; rather, they believe themselves to be the only true and legitimate side for all America.

Thus, totally one sided, they attack the other party as if it has no legitimacy to exist at all, wanting to annihilate, nullify and make void, anything and everything their opponents aim at and hope to accomplish.  For them, this is what it means to be in a moral battle against their opponents, taking their so-called good fight towards total victory and total repudiation of their enemy—no compromising ever!

Secondly, it conveys the fact that they approach the political negotiating table in terms of war.  For them, it’s always: “This means war!”  A warlike mentality presumes that there is to be only one victor; therefore, combatants must aim to win at all cost.  Furthermore, engaging in war is always for total victory, that is, total control: winners take all!  And losers are to lose everything.  Indeed, this very attitude was reflected in Boehner’s willingness to drive the whole country off the economic cliff vis-à-vis the government shutdown; and, on top of that, to also threaten to refuse raising the Debt Ceiling as well.

Thirdly, it sadly reflects a presumptuous attitude that they actually believe themselves to be speaking for, and taking action in behalf of, and protecting the concerns of, the majority of Americans.  Or worse, knowing that they are an extreme minority group, they still aim to control all of America with their own narrow ideology, despite their minority status.

That being the case, it shows that they are sorely out of touch with contemporary America as a whole.  Fighting this so-called good fight of theirs, they arrogantly and presumptuously sacrificed many average Americans and their precious paychecks, apparently caring very little for the harmful collateral damage done to many vulnerable American citizens.  Which says that they really only care about themselves and their own precious agenda.

Summing them up:

First, they are absolutist in their attitude; having an all or nothing attitude, they take action accordingly and sweepingly denounce everyone that does not line up with their agenda.  As we’ve seen, they are even willing to hold the whole country hostage in order to get their way and only their way.

Secondly, they are militant in their political spirit and approach, believing that it’s an all-out fight for absolute and total control—take no captives.  This prevents them from seriously engaging in real negotiations, in the true sense of the word.

Thirdly, they are purists in their belief.  They think of themselves as elite, morally superior, and high and mighty, compared to everyone else, especially as compared to their opponents.

And finally they are exclusivists.  Theirs is the only true way, the only real party of value and worth, and the only ideal for the American way.  This is what makes them both obnoxious as well as dangerous to the rest of America—whether left, left of center, center, right of center, or normal right.

Republican Power Move—Holding the U.S. Government Hostage—Did NOT Work. No Surprise!

It is a power move, short and simple—minority, right wing, Republican Extremists holding the government hostage to try to force Obama to negotiate on their terms.  It’s not working.  And it won’t work.  This is no way to run a nation.  It is no way to negotiate with an opposing party.  And it is no way to serve the American people—right, left, or center.

It is selfish, myopic, and childish, and very arrogant on their part.  Their defenders try to ward off accusations that they are holding the government hostage.  But that is exactly what it is. And they are desperately trying to place the blame on Obama.  Americans know better.  American voters are not that stupid.  Most Americans see it for what it is, political maneuvering, a last ditch effort to get their way using the only weapon, club, force, or leverage that they have at their disposal—shut down the government.  And so they did!

What petty nonsense!  The government should never have been shut down in the first place—not for the reasons that the Republican extremist group give (which of course keep changing now).  Obama was and is right to resist efforts to negotiate under such conditions.

And Americans are right to hold the Republican Party responsible for the Government shut down.  Especially blameworthy are the extremist rightwing, self-righteous, holier-than-thou subgroup within the Republican Party, who act as if they are God’s gift to America, as if they are the only right and true representatives of American values, practices, and virtues.  They are not!  And they are wrong for presuming as much.

And now comes the Debt Ceiling threat!

A word to Congress: Quit stalling!  Quit negotiating for short term fixes and long term postponements.  We’re right here where we are, because you’ve been kicking the can down the road all along, creating these artificial deadlines and due dates and refusing to soundly deal with the issues forthrightly for fear of not getting everything you want and demand.  Quit cow-towing to a talk-to-my-hand, hardnosed, recalcitrant and fractious minority group; go to work for the good of ALL of America.  Oh wait!  You can’t do that, can you—because your re-election coffers are being filled by big-pocket minority special interest groups!  Is that it?

Do You Work for a Dehumanizing Corporation?

No one likes to work for work’s sake.  Work is work after all, as opposed to fun and games.  But work can be rewarding, even pleasurable at times, if it is done in the right spirit and with the right attitude and gives more than monetary payoff.  But work cannot be done in the right spirit with the right attitude if the corporation for which you work is constantly minimizing, trivializing, or otherwise dissing your worth as a person.

People are not machines and that is a good thing.  And though work may be hard, tiresome and irksome at times, that is not always a bad thing.  Work is about making, producing, building, and growing things.  And that is what we humans are about.  We want to build, grow, and produce.  We want to add value to our lives.  We want to be valuable to others.  We want to be part of something meaningful.  Corporations that understand this life principle treat their employees very well and have very happy clients and customers.

However, many dehumanizing corporations are solely task-oriented in their approach to reaching their financial goals.  They distribute their goals from the top down, without ever inviting, including, or involving input from their employees in the lower ranks.  Indeed, they tend to treat their lower ranking employees as usable and expendable objects.  Thus, key players in their company may lack ownership as to company quality, may become resistant as to company processes, and worse, may end up having no interest at all as to the company’s overall success.

A robotic, dehumanizing, task-oriented corporation begins with the bottom line and ends with the bottom line, measuring productivity by dollars and profits and evaluates success on the basis of profit margin only.  Everything is about the dollar.  Such an approach to business not only appears reasonable but seems necessary for a company’s success, if not survival.  Nevertheless, it is misdirected.

A people-oriented company, on the other hand, measures its success by the actual value it adds or service it provides to others that require, need or want its product, providing that product to its clients as equitably and reasonably as possible in a way that brings “profit” to all—owner, employee, and client.  It is not that it has no interest in the bottom line or the profit factor; it’s that it puts it in the right perspective.  Its first goal is to meet human needs in a humanizing way, adding to humanity’s overall prosperity in life so that everyone benefits and profits from its product and business.  That is, its reason for being is more than the making of money.

Too many corporations devalue their employees by treating them as cogs in a machine.  The idea is that the more you can make a human like a machine, the more productive he/she will be—if only humans were more like robots.  Companies with this kind of attitude toward their work force tend to dehumanize their employees.  In the short run, it looks as if it works.  In the long run, they lose dollars and profit, productivity slackens, and good employees are wasted.  Bottom line, it is not in the best interest of a company to dehumanize its employees.  What kind of company do you work for?