Better Than You Found It

When I worked at EDS, the local managers had (for a while) a drive to make things better. It was well-intentioned, but poorly executed.

A major part was putting a slogan in big letters on a wall, saying something like Working Today For A Better Tomorrow. When I would see that sign, I occasionally wondered why it was never a better today. One of the managers tried to promote the slogan 'Make It Better Than You Found It', which is an admirable goal, though that effort bogged down, too. In fact, the whole experience was a microcosm of something that I've noticed before -- when you read about things like that working elsewhere, it almost seems pre-ordained. Of course it will work, of course we will join together in common purpose. Its when you get up close and personal, trying to do it yourself, that you find the grottiness of it - find that, for example, that while the guy who's the facilities manager is in favor of improving the availability of conference rooms by keeping a master schedule, and not allowing reservations more than a week in advance, he's also in favor of keeping one room off the schedule -- which room just happens to be right next to his office; when you find that while one guy is in favor of removing hassles in the workplace, his idea of hassles are 'things that bother him', whether others are troubled by them or not. All that people seemed to really care about were the things that affected them. It was very difficult to get a unifying vision, to think past the daily routine.

One thing that I took away from that period, though, in readings that I found, was the idea that it is possible to do things better, even in places where you might assume that the way things are is the way things are. When I read about post offices where they occasionally decorate the building, or put out cookies for customers, I think Gee, what a nice idea. When I read about school district offices that make a point to answer the phone cheerfully, I think Gee, I wish ours did that. I don't have a Grand Unified Theory as to why things like that work, though I suspect they're because people at the grunt level, or just above, wanted to do it, not because some pooh-bah up in Corporate said to do it. The grunts came up with the idea, and they made it work.

So when I was thinking the other day about my experience as a Judge of Elections, I found myself wondering: how can I make that a better experience for the people coming? How can I exceed their expectations?

Part of it will be better crowd control: we're going to lay out the tables differently, so that there's only one line, and so that the longer line is in front of the table; if you want to bug out and come back later, you can. But that's really a benefit for us, running the place -- it doesn't make the voter's life any better. So I thought Cookies? Well, yeah, maybe, except that the church that owns the hall sells food -- I don't think they'd look too kindly on the competition. What about information about the ballot and the candidates? The voting office hands those out; so do the political party volunteers. Valet parking? Um...maybe not.

Surely there must be something!