I’ve got what?

I like rom coms, the older the better. Put me in front of The African Queen and I practically stop breathing. So it’s no surprise that I was watching the movie “You’ve Got Mail” the other day.

But what did surprise me with “You’ve Got Mail” was how old stuff seemed.  Not the story or the dialogue or even the clothes.  But the technology seemed ancient.  There was that old AOL dial-tone sound I’d forgotten all about.  People were talking about waiting (waiting???!!!) to be connected— And chat rooms! Who even remembers online chat rooms? And suddenly it struck me: in a few years we’ll be talking to a new generation of children who will need to be told not only that a record was something like a CD only bigger and that books used to be made of paper, but that, in the old days your phone, which you had to leave at home, didn’t connect you to the internet and wasn’t also a radio and a dozen other things.

Thomas Wolfe (the older one, not the New Journalism guy) wrote a novel with the title You Can’t Go Home Again.  When I was in my 20’s, I used to believe he was right about that because you outgrew home.  Now I still think he’s right, but for a different reason. I now believe you can’t go home again because it isn’t there anymore.  Home isn’t a place, it’s a place at a particular time with particular people. And over a certain period of time, 5, 10, 20 years, all of that is transformed. And it keeps happening faster.  Or at least that’s what it feels like for me.

Think about it. And try to imagine what someone who’s a child today will be saying about the “old days” to their own kids in 15 or 20 years. I think they’ll be saying something like this: “When I was a young girl life was a lot harder.  People even had to drive their cars themselves.  That’s right, believe it or not, cars weren’t driverless. No, you couldn’t nap and drive, not even for a few minutes. And that’s not all. To send a message we used email. It was so slow! What’s email? Well, I’ll try to explain.  We wrote them on a machine called a computer…”

Pine Trees

Pine Trees

The odor of pine pungent, comforting, distant sachets carry peace

Walking the Walk

If you are passionately committed to a goal, it really focuses your efforts.  My infant son so desperately wanted to walk that even when he crawled it looked like he was impatient to walk--and he managed to at 10 months.  But he didn't do it alone.  He had the very active and vocal support of those around him, especially his family.
Businesses and organizations also require support, both external and internal, to achieve their goals.
I've been doing some reading lately about different organizational models of how to make businesses and other organizations more effective and efficient.  Here too commitment and passion--in this case coming from the leadership-- really count, but so too do mobilizing all levels of the organization involved in achieving that goal.
Doing so effectively depends in large measure on the quality of the relationships within an organization.
Trust, individual accountability and respect are all key components and I believe they depend on the little, everyday things: knowing that the agenda presented to the group is for real and not a pretense: trusting that the communication requested by leadership to accomplish a mission will in fact be welcome, even if some of the content doesn't paint a rosy picture of the current situation; feeling that cross-departmental work groups really exist to provide feedback, not just to comply with some external consultant's recommendations.  Leadership, communication and training can all help ensure the kind of quality I'm talking about.  And while no organization can ever achieve perfection in this regard, this kind of functioning is itself an organizational goal worth striving for.  We can always do better, but that's a reason to try harder, not to give up.

Morning

Morning

Garbage trucks mark dawn.

Eyelids open in dismay.

I just want to sleep.