Only the Strong Survive

Which is actually nothing to do with what I was thinking about, but I saw it on a T Shirt -- "New Jersey: Only The Strong Survive" and I thought it was cool. I can see it on a neighboring state: Noo Yawk: Only ..... and so forth. Not sure about what Connecticut's might say. Connecticut all by itself would take up much of the writable area, I'd think.

I was thinking a little bit about the organization for whom I currently work. I really do like it; even as in practice the specific area where I'm employed is a grind and not much fun, so that I'm trying to move to a different part of the empire, the image of being part of this great enterprise is exhilarating (not that I'd ever say that to a co-worker). I like the things that this company is known for, and I shine, just a bit, in their reflected glory. Even when they get it wrong (by my lights), it has a good sound to it.

Take 'PBC', for example. That acronym stands for 'Personal Business Commitment'. When I first heard it, upon initial employment, I thought 'What a great idea'. Companies say that they want their employees to direct their energies in support of the direction where the company is being guided (in theory, this is what a 'mission statement' does, too) but they usually don't provide any guidance as to how you get there. At my former employer, the data center manager was fond of saying that we ought to consider how we spent our money, and use it wisely, yet most of us had no discretionary funds at all, and though monies were effectively spent by us -- for example, when we ran a job twenty times or were on the phone for ten hours -- we had no way of knowing how much we'd 'spent'. We didn't know where the money was going, so we didn't feel that we could control any of it. (Thats not quite true. One fellow went around to empty desks and scavenged the office supplies, putting them in a central place. It was a pathetic little pile, but I liked his effort.)

But at this place, it appeared that they actually had a program to say Here Is How You Can Support Our Efforts. Wow!

Didn't work out that way. The PBCs started from On High -- whats referred to as a fourth or fifth line manager, meaning four or five levels of management structure up from where you are -- as a general statement, and were then acrreted to by each descending level, until when they arrived at your level, they were interesting amalgams such as 'Ensure business continuity by utilization of resources in an efficient yet cost-sensitive manner while maintaining all required standards of business conduct in accordance with organizational and customer service delivery requirements and related deliverables.' Ah....sure. When I first saw those, in my first year, I spent about an hour analyzing the statements -- this one is generally oriented toward saving money, this one is generally oriented toward customer satisfaction, and so forth, trying to tease out the themes. I clustered them by type, then I wrote my 'money saving' idea, and my 'customer satisfaction' idea, and so forth. Which actually worked pretty well until, in a mistaken gesture of collegiality, I told my group's manager what I had done. (I don't have a manager. The group of which I am a part has a manager. Its a subtle distinction, I agree. ) Thinking that I was mocking the effort, or suggesting that the words from On High were less than totally perfect, he was Less Than Amused. I thought I was doing a Good Thing, but apparently not. (I persist in thinking that managers want you to think, want your input. Even as I know that they want it But Only In A Very Constrained Sense, Buddy, I try to enlarge the parameters of the dialogue. Doesn't work. Years ago, Robert Culp, an actor, said about his several failed marriages:. 'After a while, I began to think that maybe its me.' ..Maybe its me. )

But the idea of PBCs is pretty cool, and I honor them for it. And who knows, maybe its a weeding mechanism. Those who can make sense of the PBCs progress through the organization, and those who don't, don't. PBCs: Only the Strong Survive. Now theres a T shirt.....