Top Takes: The Chief Detail Officer

Take another look at the post that, as of this writing, has the seventh most pageviews on this entire blog:

The Chief Detail Officer

In a linked TED talk, Rory Sutherland persuasively makes the case that organizations don't spend enough time working on the small stuff. That, in fact, there is a bias in most organizations that big problems have to be met with big solutions--solutions that have to be conceptualized by powerful people and executed with lots and lots of money.

Sutherland doesn't claim that approach won't work in some situations, but he comes out stridently for a different approach, embodied by something he calls the Chief Detail Officer, the CDO. This isn't the person responsible for coordinating all the details. It is the person responsible for finding small things that cost little that have tremendous impact and making sure they are done right and consistently.

I've seen the need for such an approach myself, and can cite at least one circumstance when some small detail meant a great deal to one of my association members.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

Because some other projects got in the way, I am composing this post about Small Gods approximately fifteen weeks after I finished reading it. And I have to admit, coming back to it after such a delay, I’m hard pressed to remember much about the experience.

Mostly I remember its satiric tone. On the cover, the Houston Chronicle is quoted as saying “Think J. R. R. Tolkien with a sharper, more satiric edge,” and that’s a fair enough description. But in the realm of fantasy and science fiction, I’d personally peg Pratchett somewhere between Piers Anthony and Douglas Adams.

I only dogeared one page, and it leads me now to one short highlighted paragraph; something, I think, I marked more because I liked its turn of phrase than its connection to Pratchett’s theme or plot.

Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

Although, now that I reflect on it, I at least remember that the book is about gods, faith, and dogma -- and the strange effects that they often have on people, their fates, and the ways in which they accept or reject them. And in that context, perhaps this lone highlighted snippet does make some contextual sense.

Sorry. I can’t offer you much else.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Top Takes: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Take another look at the post that, as of this writing, has the sixth most pageviews on this entire blog:

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

It's one of the many "mini term papers" I tend to offer up, free of charge, to desperate freshman English majors the world over.

My overall theses: This is a story of a boy becoming a man, and the changes he has to go through in order to make that transformation. The boy is named John Grady, and there is an exchange between him and a criminal in a Mexican prison that pretty well describes the difference between boys and men,

Where did you learn to fight? he said.

John Grady took a deep pull on the cigarette and leaned back.

What do you want to know? he said.

Only what the world wants to know.

What does the world want to know.

The world wants to know if you have cojones. If you are brave.

And that’s the essence. The world does not often test the bravery of a young boy. But as he grows and begins to make his way in it, it will test him, and if the boy passes the test, he will no longer be a boy. Regardless of his age—and John Grady is sixteen—if he can stand up to world and hold his own, he is a man.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 21 (DRAFT)

That weekend we had a family gathering to go to. One of Jenny’s cousins was getting married and they were throwing a big party to celebrate. It wasn’t the wedding reception—wasn’t even the rehearsal dinner—just a party to celebrate. Jenny’s family was like that. They’d get together for any reason or for no reason at all, and everyone would get hugged, once when they arrived and again when they left. It was weird.

It was at Jenny’s aunt’s house, a sprawling, palatial thing down by the lakefront with stucco walls and angular lines. It was a split-level, with a pool and a four-bay garage, each one with its own cedar wood door and Frank Lloyd Wright windows. We had just come in from the obligatory tour—Jenny’s uncle was rebuilding a 1963 Aston Martin in the far bay. Every time we went there we had to go see what small amounts of progress he was making. I was standing in one corner of the kitchen with a beer in my hand talking to one of the brothers of the groom-to-be. There were a lot of brothers in that family—six or seven, at least—I was never really sure. This one was named Tom.

“How’s work going?” Tom asked.

“Okay,” I said. It’s pretty much what I always said whenever someone asked me that question. It was simpler that way. But Tom was sort of family, and he knew what I did for a living, so I added, “Some days are better than others.”

Tom stopped himself in mid-sip of his Bacardi and Coke. “Didn’t Jenny tell me you were looking for something new?”

It was an interesting way of asking the question. It was entirely possible—likely even—but how was I supposed to know what Jenny told him? Jenny was always telling people something—quietly, and in confidence, as if setting traps for me to stumble into. Telling Pamela Thornsby about her pregnancy was a good example. I was still mad at her about that. I looked out into the great room and saw her in animated conversation with her Mom and two of her aunts. I had told her the night before that I was upset about how she had put me on the spot with Pamela, but she had just brushed it off, her tone practically indicating that I should really be thanking her for all the work she was doing on my job search.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “We’ve started looking.”

“How’s the job market look these days?”

Tom worked in the financial sector—doing what I’m not even sure. He seemed to get a new job every two years or so, hopping from one unheard of financial services firm to another, and always for an impressive step up, according to the family gossip.

I shrugged. “Hard to tell, we just started. I’ve got an interview on Tuesday.”

“Great!” Tom said with a wide smile. “Good luck with that.”

“It’s for a job in Boston.”

Tom gave me a strange look, prompted probably by my tone of voice. “Don’t want to move to Boston, eh?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” Tom said. “You might want to work on that before Tuesday. How long have you been at your current place?”

“Twelve years.”

Tom whistled. “Well, even if you don’t want to move to Boston, you should go into the interview like it’s the only job there is. You could probably use the practice.”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing he was right but not liking being told. Suddenly my phone started buzzing in my pocket.

“Is it a phone interview?” Tom asked.

I nodded, fishing my phone out and turning it so I could see its screen.

“All the more reason to work on your tone. Your voice is all they’re going to hear.”

I couldn’t make sense out of what the phone was telling me. I wasn’t getting a call, and the thing had stopped buzzing, but the red light was blinking as if I had gotten a voicemail and there was a strange icon I had never seen before on the screen.

“Excuse me,” I told Tom and began moving away from him as I flipped the phone open. I had one new text message.

Text message? I thought. Who was sending me a text message? I had never even used that function before.

I pushed the button to open the message and was greeted with: WHAT R U DOING?

What am I doing? Who was sending me this? There was a phone number listed in the “From” box, but I didn’t recognize it.

I decided to go into one of the bathrooms. The bride-to-be was just coming out and she smiled at me as I slinked past her and shut the door. Sitting down on the closed toilet I began trying to figure out how to respond to this message.

WHO IS THIS? I finally managed to type and then send.

I sat waiting, looking down at my phone as if it would start speaking to me. I was beginning to think that it was a fluke, a texted wrong number, if such a thing was possible, when it began vibrating in my hands, almost making me drop it. It was a new text from the same phone number. I pushed the button.

IT’S BETHANY. WHAT R U DOING?

Bethany. Why the hell was she texting me on a Saturday? Why was she texting me at all? I sat there a looked at the message for a minute, trying to wrap my mind around what it might mean. Should I respond? I didn’t have to, did I? What if I just ignored it?

The phone buzzed again. R U THERE?

Maybe I should tell her to stop texting me?

YES. I sent back.

WHAT R U DOING?

I took me a while to punch out my reply, my thumbs not used to the exercise.

I’M AT A FAMILY GET-TOGETHER. JENNY’S COUSIN IS GETTING MARRIED. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I thought mentioning my wife might be a good idea. But I was curious. As I waited for the reply to come back I could feel my heart beating in my chest. It felt illicit, having this conversation with someone else’s wife when she wasn’t really there.

I’M HOME ALONE. THINKING OF U. THOUGHT I’D SEE WHAT U WERE UP 2.

Thinking of me? What in God’s name did that mean? The little glowing letters gave me no other clues. There was no body language to read, no real context to put it in. Was she flirting with me?

DO YOU THINK OF ME OFTEN?

I was imagining what Bethany might be wearing when I heard a child scream. My heart in my throat, I stood up to look out the window and saw Jacob and four of his cousins, running around in the backyard, laughing and shouting at each other.

The phone buzzed in my hand.

STARTING 2.

This should stop. I knew that and, as if to confirm it, just then there came a knock on the bathroom door.

“Is someone in there?” a woman’s voice called out.

“Just a minute!” I said, thinking wildly that it was Jenny, coming to catch me.

“No problem,” the voice said loudly, clearly now not Jenny, and then more softly, as if to a child, “come on, honey, let’s go find another potty.”

My thumbs went to work, my chest pounding now, the fear that I would be caught edging out the thrill that Bethany might send me something even more provocative.

GOT TO GO. SEE YOU MONDAY.

After hitting send, I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket. I flushed the toilet for appearance sake and then went to the sink and turned on the water. I was splashing some on my face when I felt the phone start vibrating in my pocket. It created a warm feeling, and I tried not to make a lewd association. I told myself not to look at it, to ignore it and go back to the party, no matter how many more times she texted me, but my curiosity overwhelmed my resolve. I dried my face on one of the guest towels and then clawed the phone out of my pocket. The devilish little red light was flashing. I flipped it open.

BYE.

It was only one word, and hopefully the last one, but the whole record of our preceding conversation was there for anyone to see. I fumbled around with my slippery fingers, trying to figure out how to delete the previous messages. Eventually I succeeded.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

Top Takes: The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Take another look at the post that, as of this writing, has the fifth most pageviews on this entire blog:

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

It's one of the many "mini term papers" I tend to offer up, free of charge, to desperate freshman English majors the world over.

My overall theses: This is a play about the balance between order and freedom, and specifically order’s ultimate triumph over its weaker counterbalance.

The historical setting is, of course, the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. The order is that of the theocratic state, its functionaries able to convict, jail and hang those they determine to be in league with the Devil. The freedom is that of John Proctor, his wife Elizabeth, and their fellow villagers, who are held hostage by the accusations of a group of vengeful teenage girls.

It may seem silly to our modern sensibilities, but these people very much believed in God and the Devil, and the way the two of them battled for people’s souls right here on earth. And Miller paints no one in his drama as a fool, just as people with clashing motivations interpreting the world as they understand it.

It's a great play.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

The Martian by Andy Weir

So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option: I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.

This is perhaps the most famous line in Andy Weir’s 369-page novel about an astronaut getting stranded alone on Mars and having to figure out how he was going to survive and get rescued. And when he says science, he is very much talking about hard sciences like botany, chemistry and physics, and not any of those silly soft sciences like psychology.

Teddy swiveled his chair and looked out the window to the sky beyond. Night was edging in. “What must it be like?” he pondered. “He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?”

He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 61

How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.

Oh, and pop culture references. He’s going to “science the shit” out of those, too.

This is one of those cases where I saw the movie before reading the book. And I remember while watching Matt Damon’s performance, who the hell is this guy? This guy who is stranded on Mars and whose name I can never remember? And consistently, again and again, the movie refused to tell me. He’s an astronaut. He’s stranded on Mars. He’s going to science the shit out it. What else do you need to know? After the movie was over, I decided that the inner life of Mark Watney was something that the film producers had to leave on the cutting room floor in order to bring their project in on budget and at under three hours.

And then I read the book.

Anyway, at this rate it’ll take four more sols of (boring-ass) work to finish the drilling.

I’ve actually exhausted Lewis’s supply of shitty seventies TV. And I’ve read all of Johanssen’s mystery books.

I’ve already rifled through other crewmates’ stuff to find entertainment. But all of Vogel’s stuff is in German, Beck brought nothing but medical journals, and Martinez didn’t bring anything.

I got really bored, so I decided to pick a theme song!

Something appropriate. And naturally, it should be something from Lewis’s godawful seventies collection. It wouldn’t be right any other way.

There are plenty of great candidates: “Life on Mars?” by David Bowie, “Rocket Man” by Elton John, “Alone Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan.

But I settled on “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.

I’ve got a better suggestion. Mark Watney is the ultimate “Nowhere Man.” This is about the fiftieth reference to the media entertainment that the other astronauts -- the ones who inadvertently left him behind on Mars when the mission went wrong -- brought along with them. And never, not once, do we hear what Watney himself brought. We know he hates Lewis’s shitty seventies TV and music, but what does he like? What did he bring with him?

Nothing. Because he is not a real person in any sense of the word. In more ways than one, he is “the Martian.”

Vogel:

Being your backup has backfired.

I guess NASA figured botany and chemistry are similar because they both end in “Y.” One way or another, I ended up being your backup chemist.

Remember when they made you spend a day explaining your experiment to me? I was in the middle of intense mission prep. You may have forgotten.

You started my training by buying me a beer. For breakfast. Germans are awesome.

Anyway, now that I have time to kill, NASA gave me a pile of work. And all your chemistry crap is on the list. So now I have to do boring-ass experiments with test tubes and soil and pH levels and Zzzzzzzzzz….

My life is now a desperate struggle for survival … with occasional titration.

Frankly, I suspect you’re a super-villain. You’re a chemist, you have a German accent, you had a base on Mars … what more can there be?

This is one of the personal messages that Watney writes to his other crew members -- something the flight psychologist asked him to do, once he and they figured out how to pass communications between Mars, Earth, and the spaceship accelerating in-between. And it was about this time in the novel when I started wondering if Watney was simply an asshole, or if he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome.

But more than that, I think it is symptomatic of the novel’s neglect of the psychological in favor of the hard scientific. There is only one time when the enormity of his situation seems to intrude on Watney’s knee-jerk bravado.

I’m no stranger to Mars. I’ve been here a long time. But I’ve never been out of sight of the Hab before today. You wouldn’t think that would make a difference, but it does.

As I made my way toward the RTG’s burial site, it hit me: Mars is a barren wasteland and I am completely alone here. I already knew that, of course. But there’s a difference between knowing it and really experiencing it. All around me there was nothing but dust, rocks, and endless empty desert in all directions. The planet’s famous red color is from iron oxide coating everything. So it’s not just a desert. It’s a desert so old it’s literally rusting.

The Hab is my only hint of civilization, and seeing it disappear made me way more uncomfortable than I like to admit.

In this moment, and apparently this moment only, Watney is no longer the titular Martian; the alien creature, ready to science the shit out of his surroundings. Here, and only here, he is a simple human being: weak, vulnerable, and afraid.

And, to me at least, far more interesting.

I put those thoughts behind me by concentrating on what was in front of me. I found the RTG right where it was supposed to be, four kilometers due south of the Hab.

Oh well. Back to the “story”.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Top Takes: Membership Sales Is About More Than Just Increasing Membership Numbers

Take another look at the post that, as of this writing, has the fourth most pageviews on this entire blog:

Membership Sales Is About More Than Just Increasing Membership Numbers

It makes the point that selling is always about interacting with the market, and adjusting what you're saying about what you're selling (and sometimes adjusting what you're selling) based on that interaction.

Specific to associations, statements of membership value become most effective when they are tested and developed in discussion with real members and membership prospects. Crafting all your marketing copy in the office and launching it untested on the world is one of the best ways to get it wrong.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 20 (DRAFT)

It’s hard for me to describe the way I felt after that meeting. Confident. Proud. Happy in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the first time since receiving my promotion that I honestly felt like I deserved it. I had actually done something important—adding value and leading the team to an outcome they couldn’t have achieved without me—instead of being just another layer of management, obfuscating what needed to be done.

When I got back to my office I somewhat giddily left Mary a voicemail. She was traveling that week, but I wanted her to know that we had completed our task, that we had a new system for screening talent that I thought she would be pleased with, and that we needed some time on her calendar to present it to her. While I was leaving the message my own voicemail light went on, and I was still feeling strong when I punched in my code to access my mailbox.

“Hi, honey,” my wife’s self-assured voice sounded. “Give me a call when you get this message. The company from Boston just called and they want to set up a phone interview at your earliest availability. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. The woman I spoke to was very nice. Love you.”

I deleted the message and put the phone back in its cradle. It was late in the afternoon and the office was starting to clear out. Even with Mary out of town, I felt a little awkward about following up on another job from my office—from a phone owned by my present employer. I thought about it for a minute or two, turning more considerations over in my mind than the situation really warranted, and eventually convinced myself it would be better to just cut out a few minutes early and talk to Jenny about it at home.

When I got there she was both surprised and disappointed to see me. “Why didn’t you call me? Boston’s an hour ahead of us. They might not be in the office anymore.”

“It didn’t feel right,” I said. “Calling from the office about another job.”

“Oh, Alan, please. You don’t work for the mob. Next time, just close your door.”

I had come in through the garage so Jenny led me to the phone sitting on a small table in our front foyer, directly at the bottom of the house’s main flight of stairs. Her stomach was big enough now that she was wearing maternity clothes, and I watched as the hem of her blouse flounced up and down with her movement. When we got to the foyer she started dialing the number for me.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Who am I calling?”

Instead of answering she simply pointed to the notepad beside the base of the wireless phone. Looking down I saw written in Jenny’s graceful script a woman’s name, the name of the Boston company, and a phone number with a 617 area code. When I looked back up Jenny was holding the receiver out for me and I could hear the distant Boston phone ringing. I quickly put the phone against my ear just as the line picked up.

“Hello, Pamela Thornsby.”

“Hello, Pamela? This is Alan Larson.”

“Alan,” the voice said, sounding relieved. “Thanks for returning my call. You caught me just before I walked out the door.”

I gave Jenny a stern look. “Is it a bad time? Should I call back tomorrow?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Pamela said. “It’s actually better that we touch base now.”

I heard the shuffling of some papers from Pamela’s end of the line and then she quickly resumed. “I’m the human resources director for Quest Partners, and we received…yes, here it is, we received your resume and application for the account executive position we have open. We’d like to set up a telephone interview for sometime next week, if that will work in your schedule.”

Jenny moved closer to me and I knew she was trying to hear what Pamela was saying.
“That’s great,” I said, pushing Jenny gently away. “Can you hold a minute while I grab my calendar?”

“Absolutely.”

I put the phone down and went to retrieve my calendar from my briefcase. As I was doing so Jacob appeared at the top of the stairs and began calling down for Jenny.

“Mommy!”

“Shhh!” Jenny hissed, springing up a few of the steps and motioning for Jacob to quiet down. “Daddy’s on an important phone call, honey.”

Calendar in hand, I picked up the phone again. “Okay, next week,” I said as calmly as I could. “Earlier in the week is better than later for me.”

“But, Mommy!” Jacob cried, if anything, louder than before. “I need your help!”

“How about Tuesday?” Pamela asked in one ear.

“One minute, honey,” Jenny’s voice echoed in the other. “After Daddy finishes his call.”

Now my mind was racing. I knew Mary was back in the office next week but I didn’t know what was on her calendar. I didn’t want to schedule this interview for a time she might later choose for our meeting on the staff qualities. Figuring she would want at least a day to catch up before meeting with us, I said, “That could work. But Monday might be better.”

“Mommy! I need you RIGHT NOW!”

“I’m sorry,” Pamela said. “I’m booking all the phone interviews for next week and Monday is full up. I do have a spot on Tuesday morning. Will that work?”

I looked up at Jenny. She was halfway up the stairs now, crouching like a bloated crab to keep both me and Jacob in her sights. She had one arm extended towards Jacob with a cautionary finger raised, but her face was turned back towards me, her ear cocked as if still trying to listen in on my telephone conversation. “Just a minute, honey,” she said.

I waved my hand at her violently, trying to shoo her the rest of the way up the stairs and keep Jacob quiet. “Yes, what time?” I said into the phone and then clamped my hand over the mouthpiece so I could shout-whisper at my wife. “Go deal with him!”

“Ten o’clock?”

Jenny looked about ready to start an argument but Jacob began bellowing Mommy again and that got her moving finally up the stairs.

“Yes,” I said, watching Jenny turn Jacob by his slender shoulders and begin marching him down the upstairs hallway towards him room. “That would be fine.”

“What number should I call you on?”

Jacob was still babbling, going on and on about something missing from his train set and Jenny needing to find it for him, with Jenny hushing him the entire time. She eventually got him behind his closed bedroom door, and that muffled him enough that I thought I could concentrate again.

“Uh, would it be all right if I called you?” I asked, realizing I wouldn’t want to take the call at home or at the office.

“Yes,” Pamela said. “Just use the same number you called today. I’ll be here.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Was that your son?”

My mind was wandering, thinking about quiet places I could go to make the call on Tuesday—a coffee shop, the library, my car in a corner of the parking structure.

“Excuse me?”

“In the background, was that your son? When I spoke to your wife earlier she said you had a four-year-old.”

“She did?”

“Yes. He sounds a lot like mine. And Jenny said she was expecting your second in a few months. Congratulations.”

In the silence of my own response I could hear my wife’s muffled voice coming through the floorboards, chiding Jacob for needing to be quiet while Mommy or Daddy was on the phone, and Jacob still pleading with her to help him.

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said eventually. “The ultrasound says this one’s going to be a girl. I hope she’s quieter than her brother.”

Pamela chuckled. “Don’t bet on it,” she said. “I’ll talk to you on Tuesday, Alan.”

“Ten o’clock,” I confirmed.

We said our goodbyes and the line clicked off, but I was still turning her last few comments over in my mind. Why, I wondered, would Jenny share such personal details with a prospective employer? Couldn’t she just take a message? How on earth did such a subject even come up? Hello, is Alan there? I don’t know, let me move my pregnant belly out of the way and see if I can find him.

Jenny and Jacob still embroiled in their discussion above me, I put the phone back on its charging pad and began walking up the stairs to find out.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/