The
Drama of Work
by John Lehman
When I ask people how their work might be like a movie or TV drama, I’m uniformly met with the heated reply: I don’t like your question and I’m not going to answer it. Perhaps they don’t like the comparison between the repetitive routine of their lives and watching attractive actors playing lawyers, doctors and police detectives whose professions seem to have a built in excitement we may not experience as administrative assistants or when teaching middle school students (though shows like “The Office” may be changing that). No, I think it’s something deeper than this. Drama and life both have casts of characters, conflict, complication, setting, dramatic tension and even occasional show-stopping climaxes. Why do people feel strongly about not examining that portion of their lives which consumes most of their time and energy?
As a writer I’ve often wondered that so few books address the significance of work in our lives. The last one I read was Studs Terkel’s Working, and before that Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in which he says, “In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely… It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.”
Is it that today we don’t seem to have any choice? Not only has the 35 hour work week disappeared, but now each member of a married couple must work 40 plus hours per week to afford the housing, car, education for their kids, etc. that our parents somehow achieved on one income. A recent survey of Madison area executives reveals men work an average of 60 hours per week, women 57.
Let me answer the question about work and drama, myself, because I think at its heart lies our dissatisfaction with work (and the reason for “lives of quiet desperation” Thoreau accuses us of living). I also believe there’s something we can do to change this right here, right now.
For many of my generation our parents provided the model for business success that we either subscribed to or rebelled against. I know that’s why I dedicated my recent business book, Everything Is Changing—a zentrepreneurial approach to sales and marketing—to my father. Let me ask you to stop for a minute and think about four things from your own life: 1) Who is your model for business success and why is what that person represents important to you. 2) Now identify your model for personal non-business success. 3) Try to reconcile the two. What qualities do they share, how are they different? And finally, 4) What would be some tangible benefits of having a unified model for business/personal success?
Often we look for things in life that mirror how we already feel, and by changing our attitude we start to find reflections that support a new attitude. Change takes place, not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what’s not working. You can then release yourself from an old pattern and assume one that does work to accomplish what you want. This much I know: If you’re critical of yourself, others will be critical of you. If you don’t listen to your feelings, no one will listen to your feelings. If you show yourself compassion and understanding, others will treat you with compassion and understanding too. If you appreciate yourself, others will appreciate you. And, if you enjoy your life, you’ll find there is always plenty in life to enjoy.
With an artistic drama we empathize with one or more of its characters, but there’s also a distance between us and their situation—a safety valve that allows us to express a range of emotions, but also to say, “It’s only a movie,” “It’s only a play,” “It’s only a novel.” Work is based upon problem solving, how to eliminate conflict and get the job done. Episodic is fine for work. We want day-by-day not confrontational trauma—even if it would lead to life-changing revelation. But drama exaggerates conflict, pushes situations to their extreme and leads us to a big turning point.
At work we are active participants, but what bothers us most is that someone else is writing the script. There’s no safety valve. We’re never certain that someone better couldn’t easily be cast in our role. I remember as a child sitting around the dinner table how my father would recount his workday to us. He was a natural storyteller so I was enthralled by his adventures. My mother, on the other hand, who depended upon his salary for our family’s security, was uneasy. In reality she had a better head form business than Dad—though at the time a woman was expected to be home with her children—and her responses took the form of sound business advice. It was lost upon him. My father’s way of coping was to turn the raw material of the day’s experiences into audience pleasing anecdotes. Years later, as a business owner I was to see things from yet another perspective.
The two best pieces of business advice I ever received were from rather unlikely sources. The first came on the roof of an Ann Arbor motel where I was working my way through graduate school as a janitor. An air-conditioning repairman told me he believed we should each maintain both a vocation and an avocation: for example, paying the bills by working in a rundown motel during the day and writing the great American novel late at night and on weekends. At one time we make our living with the vocation, at another we may do it through the avocation (but hang on to the skills from the day job so you never feel desperate or threatened). Be happy with both, but don’t be so fully invested in one that you entirely sacrifice the other. Six years ago BusinessFirst ran a profile on me with the headline, “He Only Does What He Loves.” The Carrier Air Conditioner mechanic would have approved.
The second piece of advice was from a New Jersey, Army Lieutenant, George Rabito. He’d been aid to the General of the Hospital Command in Germany. George could be overbearing and had sometimes used the authority of his position for personal advantage. Right before General Ursin was to rotate back to San Antonio, Texas, Lt. Rabito, who’d decided to remain in Europe, maneuvered his way into a new position where the people he had offended couldn’t retaliate against him. I was amazed at his foresight and told him so. He advised me, “Everyone should be fired early in his career. Then they’d always keep their eyes and ears open because they’d realize that, no matter who you work for, you’re always working for yourself.”
We seek drama, but in the workplace resent not being the one who writes the script. But why not write the script? If you’re only going to do what you love, learn to love at least two different things you can do concurrently. If you see yourself as VP of Sales and you lose that position you have nothing. Or if you think you are a classical musician and your are not one, it’s nice to take pride in that Vice President job you do have. Equally important, if it is critical for a business to have a mission statement, shouldn’t you have one of your own for your vocation and avocation too? Set a timeline and list the necessary resources to accomplish these personal (measurable and attainable) objectives. Give yourself an annual evaluation to see how much progress you’re making in accomplishing the kind of success you want to achieve.
Is this unfair to the company you work for? No, not at all.
When
someone is cast in a play or a movie it’s because they’re right for the
part. As an advertising agency owner I hired people for the same reason. And
whatever made them the best they could be was good for me and for our business.
Sure, I liked to flatter myself into thinking my leadership was essential, but
the biggest mistake we business owners make, besides hiring the wrong people for
the wrong reasons, is in de-motivating the right people we’ve hired for the
right ones. After ten years my ad business failed, but in my mind and in the
eyes of my employees it will always be a success because of our mutual
collaboration. And each of us went on from that experience to literally work for
ourselves and overcome obstacles in the new dramas we created.
Realize that employers, co-workers, customers, family and friends want to see us succeed because they have aspirations, too, that they want us to recognize and support. We all want life to work! When we seek to understand we’re applying empathy. We are, for a brief time, becoming that other person so we can experience his or her feelings as that individual does. This doesn’t mean we agree with that person, only that we understand their point of view more fully. Once we understand someone we can proceed to the next step, which is having that person understand us. When we seek to understand, other people become less defensive about their positions, and they open up to the question, “How can we both get what we want?” But the key is always to listen with a generous heart.
And how can we change our lives so work has drama and meaning? In Everything Is Changing I identify two ways in which change takes place. The first is by translating the vision we have into tangible benefits we’ll enjoy if the vision is realized. And the second is by employing what the Japanese call kaizen, “a tiny refinement made daily that creates compounding results, or constant improvement at a level beyond what was envisioned.” The easiest way to do this in terms of work is simply answer three questions about your day before going to sleep each night:
Try this for a week and see if you don’t experience a subtle, positive shift in what you gain from your job.
In life we do experience frustration and disillusionment, and it’s not realistic to think we aren’t going to feel bad when those things happen. But we’re more than our emotions. Feelings are just something we have. We should give them voice, hear them out, then let them move on. They’re like our children. We made them. Sometimes they give us joy, sometimes they cause us frustration. We can’t ignore them, but like parents, we can set boundaries—within which these emotions act—to preserve our own mental health. Ignoring feelings gives them power, as does obsessing over them. Experiencing emotions provides us with a chance, not only to be human, but also to be purged of these intense feelings. It also acknowledges that conflicting emotions are part of our internal make-up and questions the idealized model of an untroubled self that our culture proffers as a goal—a paradigm that leads to the erroneous conclusion, “we aren’t good enough.”
If we’re so complete, why do we feel unsure of ourselves? I believe the simple answer is that too often we accept an idealized image of ourselves that benefits others—whether they’re selling fashions, automobiles, corporate culture or religious values—rather than see ourselves as we really are. This air-brushed image is molded by TV, movies, magazines, employers, schools, government, churches and even parents, family and friends. It may be harmless or, in some cases even beneficial to us as individuals. But when it erodes our sense of self-worth, we need to examine its truthfulness.
In her book, Your Life as Story, Tristine Rainer says, “When I view myself as the hero of my own story, I no longer complain about the conflicts in my life and in myself. I am no longer a victim of circumstances...I am a protagonist in a world of unending dilemmas that contain hidden meaning that is up to me to discover. I am the artist of my life who takes the raw materials given, no matter how bizarre, painful or disappointing and gives them shape and meaning.” She continues, “I am within each scene and each chapter of my life, defining my character through the choices I make. I am on my own side, rooting for myself, aching for myself, celebrating my sensual experiences, marveling in the exquisite subtlety of feeling in my life that novelists have made me aware of in their books. I am as engaged with the ongoing story in my life as is a reader who eagerly turns the page.”
If you were to write a book about yourself, how would it begin? “Someday I’m going to…” or “Today I…”? To live your story means having something to say about yourself right now.
Each of us is the hero of our own story. Let’s act like it.
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Zen
and the Art of Business Success
by John Lehman
There's a Zen saying that sums up the
zentrepreneur sales and marketing approach: “Everything is changing.
Everything is connected. Pay attention.”—Everything
Is Changing: New Ways to Gain Loyal Clients and Customers Quickly
The goal is to be successful and make money. The goal is to stay healthy in body and mind so you can enjoy the success you’ve worked for and the money that you’ve made. But most important the goal is to do this in a way that when you ask “Was it worth it?” “Was it meaningful?” “Was this the best way I could have spent my life?” you can look back and proudly say, “yes.”
"Zentrepreneur"
is a term given to those entrepreneurs who value both business and having
a life. The Zentrepreneur approach provides a very real, very clear, very
attainable answer to how we can make this happen, but to understand this we must
first examine the nature of values. Buddhists believe that actions and things
are neither good nor bad in themselves. It is we who see them as one thing or
the other based upon our past experiences. For example, working over a weekend
is neither positive nor negative in itself. If we felt neglected as a child
because our father was never at home to play with us but spent weekends and
evenings at the office instead, then the value we have imprinted on us is that
working on weekends is bad. On the other hand the owner of a struggling new
business might see his employee’s working on the weekend as a real commitment
to the success of the company, an admirable thing. Perhaps that imprint comes
from an earlier experience he had where family members pitched-in over a weekend
to help a relative renovate part of her house. Imprints are like mental
videotapes from the past that replay when triggered by similar situations in the
present. They cause us to see things—that
are neutral in themselves—as
good or bad.
Now here's an interesting thing about these imprints. They don’t just stagnate in our minds but (even without any outside exacerbation) continually expand. For example, the fear of giving a presentation before a class when we’re in grade school starts to determine what we will or will not feel comfortable doing later in life. That in turn focuses us on situations that tend to confirm and justify that fear. And so we are formed—and so we form our world. However, we can change all of that. All we have to do is to identify the kind of goals we seek, and then generate the kind of imprints that are desirable to achieve them. These are called “correlations.” And how do we create these new, positive imprints? Simply by doing something positive ourselves and experiencing the results.
Here’s an example from the book The Diamond Cutter which recounts the life of a Buddhist monk who became director of a large firm in New York’s diamond district.
Suppose
that your company is struggling in the marketplace, and cash flow has become a
problem. The natural instinct of almost any person or corporation in this
position is to cut back. Corporate giving is an immediate victim, followed by
blatant perks like business-class airline seats for shorter management trips.
Then go the items that are halfway between a perk and salary, say a car service
home for employees who stay late. Next go the holiday bonuses; then raises are
shaved; raises stop completely; and the knife goes to the benefits… And so on.
It’s important, therefore, to be wary of your natural reaction to a problem.
It may simply perpetuate the problem. Each of these reactions plants new
imprints in your mind, negative imprints. Every time you deny funds or help to
those who depend on you you plant an imprint that will make you see yourself and
your own business denied the same funds and help. This phenomenon escalates
because of the way in which negative imprints grow the longer they spend in the
subconscious… The point is that, as a reaction to financial pressures (either
corporate or personal), one must above all avoid a stingy state of mind. It may
well be true that there are no funds available to provide the perks that were
handed out before, and you may in fact have to stop the perks because there is
no money for them right now, but it is vital not to think cheap, not to lose
creativity, not to lose a truly generous outlook within the new limitations of
your financial situation. If you descend to a cheap state of mind, denying
others what you actually could—even
in your current finances—well
afford, then you create powerful imprints that will actually affect whether or
not you are able to bounce back.
In other words, in order to see yourself as doing well in business, be generous to your customers and employees. In order to see yourself in a world that treats you justly, treat others justly. In order to be a leader, help others attain their goals. In order to see yourself free in a world where things don’t always work out the way you want them to, focus on the hidden potential these situations offer instead. And, most important, in order to see yourself get all that you ever wished for, cultivate an attitude of compassion toward others.
It isn’t just agreeing with these words or deciding to clean-up your attitude toward your fellow man: The most powerful imprints are grounded in action. You have to act. You have to accomplish these things through what you do each day, each week, each month, each year. Just as with a physical exercise program you wouldn’t expect to see results after ten days, so you must set your goals, identify the imprints that reflect them and adopt them for the rest of your life. Planting and tending mental imprints take time and patience. People who fail to succeed with these principles do so because either they don’t follow them over a long enough period of time, or they don’t follow them very well.
I’m not saying that a person will not lie to you if you do not lie to them or not take advantage of you if you don’t take advantage of them. What I am saying is that people will lie to you or take advantage of you because you already have an imprint of this happening. The action itself is being produced by your imprints—the world around you, the people around you and even the way you are yourself, all of these things are a creation of your own past actions, words and thoughts…which you have the ability to change right here, right now through how you act toward others. Nothing is random, nothing is accidental. We have no one outside of ourselves to blame for our own world. Things occur to us in exact accord with how we treat those around us. Which brings us full circle.
To transcend the aloneness of being separate from others and our environment, you must see how things have come about and then, when you are ready, return to the world with new awareness on how to make it what you want. By expanding the way you define who you are to include customers and potential customers, you align their needs with your own, their success with yours. This is done for business reasons, but see why it goes much deeper than that? Our empathetic actions toward them not only create positive imprints for us, but also positive imprints for them and together we are each reaching our full potential. Henry David Thoreau in Walden identified the ultimate failure—to discover when you come to die that you have never lived. But instead we can wake up to our lives. He advised: “Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow...”
To be truly successful you must learn to overcome ways of thinking and behaving that have proven themselves to be either counterproductive or random over your life in producing the results you want. The great people of every age in every part of the world have had to learn to reexamine the beliefs they grew up with and decide from the perspective of adults with increased knowledge and experience whether or not these are productive for their fulfillment today.
Here’s what I like about Dave Bruns, my collaborator on the book Everything Is Changing. We are very different from one another. Yet he has wonderfully positive imprints—whether these came from his years as an athlete, from his corporate success or from his being a great father. His imprints energize those around him. He makes all of us (employees, colleagues and customers) feel as if we can do anything and be whatever we want to be. He will be there to help us succeed. And we do succeed—plus feel great about ourselves in the process. Yes, I have seen Dave in the face of setbacks, but he’s never made me feel that loss or any sense of failure.
Step #1 for you is to make that potential client or customer feel you really want to know his or her needs (beyond the products or services that person wants). Step #2 is to see yourself through that customer’s eyes. What does he or she look to you to provide for them to be successful. And Step #3—this is the big one—is to realize that you and your customer are really one and that we are no longer talking about the world of business, but the world. Happiness isn’t a limited resource that only a few people can have at others’ expense. If we want to succeed on any level, on every level, we must seek to stamp out unhappiness in its every form and within any mind—even in those who compete with us for the next promotion or in the marketplace. You know in your heart that this is right, and that if you spent your whole life working for the good of those around you as hard as you work for yourself, that you could look back on your life with pride, for this is the real significance of everything we do.
So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. —Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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John Lehman is the co-author of Everything Is Changing: How to Gain Loyal Clients and Customers Quickly from Zelda Wilde Publishing. He is also the founder of Rosebud magazine, one of the largest literary journals in the United States, and the poetry editor of Wisconsin People & Ideas. His Madison advertising agency was Lehman Advertising and Marketing. John now makes his living as a writer, publisher, business consultant and public speaker.