The Need Satisfying Life

Migrating To Human's Lib Blog

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:45:00 +0000

I have started a new blog, called Human's Lib which will have a very similar focus as this one, so I'm moving my Need Satisfying Life blog posts to Human's Lib. I hope you like the new design and layout.

Good Behavior by Decree? « Sharing thoughts, ideas and suggestions on hardwiring success

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:33:00 +0000

Good Behavior by Decree? « Sharing thoughts, ideas and suggestions on hardwiring success
Quint Studer has some good advice about making a better workplace by establishing a standard of behavior for all, from the CEO on down to the temps. I commented, but those are awaiting moderation. In case they are not approved, here they are in their entirety:

I think the organization needs to agree upon a standard of behavior guideline and then allow departments to create specifics based on the standards. For example, how the Nursing staff implements those standards may look very different than how the IT Department implements them. One works on the floors with direct patient interaction (and public view), the other works in cubicles usually with little interaction with patients or public.

There are many situations where the behavior standards would be exactly the same across the board. For example, knocking before entering applies the same for Nursing as it does for IT. Other things though, like key words, are very different in these departments.

I believe the standard needs to be both rigid and flexible. Rigid in that these are the basic essentials we expect for everyone. Flexible in that each department may customize them differently. Again, some things will be the same across all departments; some will be unique.

Where I see the real problem, and think most people need help… is in implementing these standards in an organization where there have been no hard and fast rules previously. The change management is the difficult part. How do you enforce these things?

Quint Studer's advice is usually worth keeping. I don't know if he follows or understand cognitive behavioral psychology or Dr. William Glasser, but I know many of his ideas have their roots in Dr. Deming's work in Industrial Management. Glasser was a student of Deming, so there is a tie in here.

One of Quint's essential ideas is to create a need-satisfying workplace by promoting "worthwhile work" and the concept that what we do makes a difference in the lives of people. This works because it is need satisfying on many levels: power / significance, belonging and sometimes even freedom and fun.

I think this article works because we need rules to establish the expectations and the parameters within which we will behave. This gives workers their expected behaviors, while giving manager's a tool to work with.

Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:19:00 +0000

Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com
Trolls are scary creatures in fiction and in cyberspace. Some just want to get a reaction and hurt your feelings, but others want much more than that! Ultimately, this is need satisfying behavior to them. It meets their needs for power of course, but also, fun, freedom and even belonging. Since it is so completely need satisfying, we will be hard pressed to help these folks find others ways to meet those psychological needs in a manner that is more acceptable to the norms of society. Clearly, trolling behavior is a strong picture in their Quality Worlds.

The Connection Between Personality and Learning

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:43:00 +0000

Chief Learning Officer magazine - The Connection Between Personality and Learning

Interesting short read from Chief Learning Officer magazine online, auther Brian Summerfield. I agree personality plays a role in learning. It's a question of how we view learning and how it fits into our Quality World. Not all learning has to be "book learning" - which some find extremely boring, yet others find invigorating. So we may have to debate what we mean when we talk about "learning". We don't necessarily mean "formal learning", but even formal learning doesn't have to entail book reading and lectures only. Those who are skilled at Instructional Design can make a learning situation meaningful to the learners, which tends to make it interesting and, I daresay, even fun!

Why Are People Like Sheep? Part Three

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:59:00 +0000

Continued from the previous post, Why Are People Like Sheep?, part two, the question is what happens when our self-identity conflicts with what others think of us, or when we realize we aren't the people we thought we were? One option is: we change ourselves. Another option is...

We Change Our Friends
Another choice we can make when our self-identity is in conflict or others' opinions of us are in conflict: devalue the opinions of those people who don't see us the way we want to be seen. In other words we begin to take those people out of our Quality World. This is commonly called "denial."

If we choose to devalue the opinions of those who are in our Quality Word, we are really choosing to take those people out of our Quality World. Those types of relationships are doomed to eventual failure.

The alcoholic from the previous example can realize that the effort required to make a real change is too great. He can instead choose to say to himself, "those people don't understand me; they don't understand my pressures and stress; if they did, they would understand that its OK for me to drink like I do."

Real Life Example
An example occurred during the presidential race of 2008 when former Hillary Clinton supporter, Paula Abeles, chose to "break ranks" and support the Republican nominee, John McCain, instead of the Democratic nominee, Barak Obama, when Clinton was not chosen as the Democratic nominee.

Paula's self-identity was in conflict because she had thought of herself as a Democrat. But when her chosen nominee was not the Democratic nominee for President, she chose to deal with the identity crisis by switching friends, and learning to accept her new identity (no longer a died in the wool Democrat, but rather a Democrat in some ideology but not everything).

Paula's old "friends" certainly helped her to feel good about that choice when they reacted with hatred and threats. I'm sure Paula took them out of her Quality World as fast as they took her out of theirs.

Why Are People Like Sheep? Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Continued from the previous post, Why Are People Like Sheep?, the question is what happens when our self-identity conflicts with what others think of us, or when we realize we aren't the people we thought we were?

We Change Ourselves
We change ourselves by changing our total behaviors so that our behaviors align more closely to our expectations or the perceptions of the other people (whose opinion is so important to us for whatever reason). This choice requires real work and effort on our part; a commitment many people are not prepared to make.

A perfect stereotypical example of this is when an alcoholic is confronted by his closest friends and family members in an "intervention." Then the alcoholic chooses to take control of his problem and change his behavior patterns. He does this because the people confronting him are in his Quality World; their opinions of him are important and he wants their opinion of him to closely match his own self-identity.

Perhaps he has always thought of himself in a certain way (his self-identity does not include being an alcoholic). Now his self-identity is in conflict with what others think of him, as well as what he thinks of himself. This conflict is usually an emotionally painful event causing great frustration. The frustration is usually sufficient motivation to create a change in behavior, e.g., the alcoholic promises to change.

I'll explore the others options in the next post...

Why Are People Like Sheep?

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:28:00 +0000

Penn and Teller point out (in the video below) the reality of the cult of personality and the fickle nature of humans desiring to be a part of a "Cause" for which they must stand up and defend. This simply validates Dr. Glasser's ideas on The Identity Society.

The Identity Society
Dr. William Glasser says we are an "Identity Society." We constantly strive to conform to the identity of ourselves which we have created in our own minds, in our "Quality World". We tend to see ourselves the way we wish to be (we're very optimistic), and not necessarily the way we truly are. We see ourselves the way we want others to see us, and when that reality and our own self-identity are in agreement (or close to agreement), then we are pretty happy.

But what about when our self-created identity and other people's perceptions of us are in conflict? We tend to all follow one of a few established behavioral patterns:

We change our behaviors.
We change our friends.
We change our self-identity.

More about each of these choices in another post...

Bob Hoglund's August Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 03:23:00 +0000

I think the link to this article from Bob will change each time Bob updates it... so you better read it now before it changes into a new article for next month!

This month's thought has to do with Lead Management vs Boss Management. Nice article reminding us to get back to the roots of Reality Therapy when thinking about how to address issues from a Lead Management point of view.

Thanks Bob Hoglund!

The article is located here.

From CLO: Connection Cultures Keep Workers Engaged

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:52:00 +0000

A nice article about learning, but also about creating a need-satisfying workplace. From Chief Learning Officer magazine online, written by Lindsay Edmonds Wickman, published July 2008.

Connection Cultures Keep Workers Engaged

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman. Executive Briefings. July 2008.

As much as we want to take emotions out of the equation in the workplace, they are what make employees feel engaged. So corporations should cultivate a culture of connection, where employees feel connected to their work, their co-workers and their organization’s identity.

“Emotional factors are on average four times as important as rational factors when it comes to the amount of effort that people put into their work,” said Michael Lee Stallard, co-founder, president and CEO of E Pluribus Partners and the primary author of Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity, and Productivity.

“Emotional factors are how [employees] feel about the mission and values of the business, how they feel about the people they work with and whether or not they feel like they’re in the loop. Rational factors are compensation level [and] job title. It just goes to show how important feelings are in the workplace, and when you think about it, being fired up or burned out are really emotional states.”

The learning function can help create a connection culture, as Stallard calls it, by promoting the values that increase connection through training and coaching. And employee engagement surveys can be used to gauge connection in an organization, as it is an apt tool for taking the emotional pulse of the workforce.

Fostering a connection culture also helps develop a dynamic of learning and information sharing.

“When people feel connected to the organization, its identity, the people they work with [and] their work, they’re more likely to take an active position in proactively thinking about the business, looking for threats and opportunities in the external environment and also sharing information on a day-to-day basis that may be relevant to new process [and] new product innovation,” Stallard said.

By failing to foster a connection culture, organizations can create knowledge traps, in which communication is suffocated because people don’t feel comfortable in expressing themselves or sharing information.

“When you look at the evolution of organizations, if people are not kept in the loop, if they don’t feel connected, if they don’t feel informed, [if they don’t feel] they have a voice, then they become disengaged,” Stallard said. “And that’s when knowledge traps start to set in. For example, if there’s a change in the external environment and people who are out on the frontlines of the organization are not engaged, they may be aware of the change but they won’t communicate it up through the organization — especially if it goes against the current direction, because it’s a risk to communicate information that may not be accepted. Only when they care enough about the business are they willing to take that risk.”

Because Andy Grove helped to break the knowledge trap at Intel Corp. by encouraging “helpful Cassandras” to share their insights, he made the wildly successful decision to get out of the memory business and focus on microprocessors, according to Stallard, which illustrates that a connection culture leads to better business decisions.

The learning organization plays a role in helping to facilitate this type of communication, as it has a direct impact on learning.

“If you don’t have an organization that promotes knowledge flow and a connection culture, then it’s going to impair the organization’s ability to learn,” Stallard said.

He recommends using knowledge-flow sessions, in which decision-makers meet with small groups of people throughout the organization to create a culture of connection and communication.

“We have three questions: what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing from my thinking?” Stallard said. “In other words, you’re asking them to express their voice about your vision. You’re creating a safe environment for them to share their knowledge. Then you as a decision maker will make better decisions because you’re going to be more fully informed, and inevitably, you will discover things that you [were] not aware of.&rdquo

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

Leadership Models Changing?

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:05:00 +0000

An editor's note from Graphic Design USA's newsletter. I think the editor's insight and experience with "bad" managers is great! I'll repost some of it here:

I have had some truly horrible bosses in my time. Mostly they were children in grown-ups clothing, confusing the exercise of raw power, with what it means to be a real leader. A rogue's gallery of screamers, tantrum throwers, spirit breakers, micromanagers, pencil tossers (pencils are little wood-and-lead instruments that people used to write with), credit hoarders, non-communicators, non-listeners, disrespectful of those who reported to them and obsequious to whom they reported. I consider myself a loving and forgiving person but, in truth, I continue to harbor dark fantasies of revenge for acts and omissions dating back two decades. Of course, being a lawyer in the early years of my career, I was managed by lawyer/managers, which is a lower form of life than regular human beings. But you get the point. With this as background, I was especially pleased that GDUSA is co-sponsoring — along with staffing experts at The Creative Group — an original survey of the winners of the American Inhouse Design Awards regarding the traits of a successful creative manager. Excerpts from the "Creative Leadership" study will be published in our Inhouse Design Annual, which hits the streets next week, and more comprehensively in a white paper available to GDUSA readers in the fall. Among the results: our audience feels generally more positive about the current crop of leaders than I did about mine; they sense a transition from traditional command-and-control types to a more open-minded, sensitive and flexible style of leadership; and they are hungry for more formal business and management training at school and work. Please make a note to read the new survey; it is time better spent than crafting little voodoo dolls of, or scanning obituaries, for past employers. Trust me. -- Gordon Kaye

I like that it appears leadership is transitioning from the "power mongers" into a better model.

Improving Systems Via Systems Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:42:00 +0000

Thanks Dr. W. Edwards Deming for making systems thinking a normal part of management vocabulary. Thanks Dr. William Glasser for understanding the psychology behind successful implementations of systems thinking and organizational reform, via Choice Theory and Lead Management. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has a nice summary of systems thinking and implementation of organizational reform projects.

Broken Systems Are Need Satisfying ... To Someone!

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:23:00 +0000

I work in healthcare and I'm fascinated with "systems" thinking (e.g., Dr. Deming, Lean, Six Sigma, etc.). For me it meets my need to feel significant if I can be a part of a positive organizational change which I know will be need satisfying for the long term for all people involved with the organization. If I can help make things better for the staff, the patients, the physicians, etc... it's a "power" trip for me!

As an educator I feel one of the best ways to make positive organizational changes is through training. Systems thinkers look for ways to reduce waste, remove variances, improve efficiencies. "Dr. Glasser" thinkers look for ways to make things more need-satisfying within an organization. I think its possible to all of these things when you consider that everything we do in an organization is need satisfying for someone... even things which seem assinine.

This is why the article in CNN about the woman dying because she was ignored in the waiting room of Kings County Hospital in New York is so appalling to me. I would like to believe something like this could never happen in my organization. I understand that several of the blamed employees have been fired - which is probably fitting in this case. However, I know enough about systems thinking to tell you that firing those employees isn't going to make things any better at that hospital. They were fired as scapegoats (but perhaps rightly so!).

Scapegoat Firing is a Distraction Tactic
This is not a new strategy. Old school leadership tactics have used scapegoat firing as the mainstay of the leadership diet of fear and power. You fire a few key people and get the media coverage and attention focused on those things, and you point to that as your way to resolve the issue. "I fired the ones who caused this problem, see? Everything will be better now." But the reality is that the system in which the problem was created is still broken - which means the problem still exists!

There is a broken system in place at that hospital and the finger of blame must be pointed at the leadership. Obviously complancency and apathy are a part of the organizational culture, but the question is: how high up does this go? Is it only at the psychicatric unit or does it go higher? And more importantly, how did this culture come to exist, and how do we eliminate it?

[Note: Kings County was named the first level one trauma center in the U.S.! That is quite an accomplishment! How can such a great organization have allowed such a terrible culture? Read more about it at wikipedia]

How Did It Get This Bad? How Does It Get Better?
I don't know how high up the leadership ladder this culture of complancency goes at Kings County because I'm not a part of that organization. But I do know how such cultures come to exist and tend to perpetuate themselves. I also know how we rid ourselves of such things.

To oversimplify it: a culture of complacency exists because it is need satisfying to someone (perhaps many people). It is perpetuated because it is need satisfying to someone. And you won't be rid of it until a newer, better organizational culture is more need satisfying than the current one. If the internal motivation to change is not great enough, external sources of motivation can be found: such as public outcry thanks to media coverage.

on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:24:00 +0000

A picture is worth... well you've just gotta see this one... on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Animals are not concerned with the laws and rules of the strange creatures called humans.

NY Times: Working Life (High and Low)

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:17:00 +0000

The New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse titled Working Life (High and Low) is a great illustration between companies which create need satisfying work places and those that do not.

Working Life (High and Low)

Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

Stricken with cancer, Jean Capobianco asked for a leave of absence. FedEx terminated her.

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: April 20, 2008

WHEN Jean Capobianco was diagnosed for the second time with breast cancer, her doctors ordered a mastectomy. She first contracted the disease three years earlier and suffered through seven months of chemotherapy. After her cancer came back, her husband walked out on her. “He told me he wasn’t sexually attracted to me anymore,” she said.

Skip to next paragraph

Chapter One: Worked Over and Overworked (April 20, 2008)

Times Topics: FedEx Corporation

Enlarge This Image

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Patagonia’s headquarters in Ventura, Calif., has storage space for surfboards so employees can take a break and hit the waves.

Enlarge This Image

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

The company also provides a child care center at the site.

For more than a decade, Jean and her husband had been a truck-driving team, driving hazardous waste. Now, with husband and truck gone, her career as a long-haul driver was gone as well.

After she recovered, Jean started looking for work. She spotted a help-wanted ad from Roadway Package Systems, which said it was looking for independent contractors to deliver packages.

“I needed a job,” said Jean. “They tell you, ‘You’ll make all this money working for yourself.’ ”

She soon discovered that her new employer had embraced a controversial strategy to squeeze down costs by millions of dollars each year: it insisted that Jean and the other drivers were independent contractors, not employees. The I.R.S., New York and many other states are investigating this strategy, convinced that many companies use it to cheat their workers and cheat on taxes.

Jean arrived at the Roadway terminal in Brockton, Mass., at 6 each morning and spent the next 90 minutes loading 100 to 140 packages into her truck. She usually left the terminal around 7:30 a.m. and returned after 6 p.m.

Jean had to leave her job for two years when she suffered a severe back injury while lifting a package. Before she could return to work, FedEx Ground, which had acquired Roadway, required her to purchase a truck. The list price was $37,800, with Jean having to make 60 monthly installments of $781.12 and a final, one-time payment of $8,000.

In Jean’s view, it was ludicrous for Roadway and FedEx to call the drivers independent contractors.

“We’re told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to take time off,” Jean said. “You have to wear their uniform. You can’t wear your hair certain ways. You have to deliver every single thing they put on the truck.”

Jean called it “a great deal for FedEx. They don’t have to pay for trucks, for the insurance, for fuel, for maintenance, for tires,” she said. “We have to pay for all those things. And they don’t have to pay our Social Security.”

By some estimates, this arrangement saves FedEx $400 million a year, giving it a significant cost advantage over U.P.S., which treats its drivers as regular employees. Moreover, FedEx Ground has sought to rebuff a Teamster organizing drive by arguing that its 15,000 drivers have no right to unionize because they are independent contractors.

“These drivers are more like business people,” said Perry Colosimo, a FedEx Ground spokesman. “They can set their own hours. They can buy routes. They can develop their business.”

In 30 lawsuits, FedEx Ground drivers have argued that they are employees, not independent contractors, and that the company should therefore pay for their trucks, insurance, repairs, gas and tires. In one lawsuit, a California judge ruled that FedEx Ground was engaged in an elaborate ruse in which FedEx “has close to absolute control” over the drivers. Last December, FedEx acknowledged another setback: the I.R.S. ordered it to pay $319 million in taxes and penalties for 2002 for misclassifying employees as independent contractors. FedEx could face similar I.R.S. penalties for subsequent years. FedEx said it would appeal.

To attract drivers, FedEx Ground often runs ads claiming that its drivers earn $60,000 to $80,000 a year. Many drivers say those ads are deceiving. Gross income can exceed $60,000, but Jean, echoing many drivers, said she had to pay nearly $800 a month for her truck, $125 a week for gas, $55 a week for business equipment, $4,000 a year for insurance policies, plus outlays for tires, maintenance and repairs. Some years, Jean calculated, her net pay was just $32,000, amounting to $10.25 an hour.

Many drivers find it hard to walk away because they have invested so much in their trucks. If they leave, they might still be stuck with years of monthly payments and the final payment of $8,000.

One morning in August 2004, Jean doubled over in pain. Three days later, her doctor informed her she had ovarian cancer.

“The doctor told me to stop working immediately,” Jean said. She not only finished her route that Friday but worked the following Monday and Tuesday as she struggled to find someone to cover her route. Her terminal’s two replacement drivers demanded unrealistic amounts, she said. “They knew they had me over a barrel.”

On Aug. 21, 2004, surgeons removed a large, malignant tumor and did a hysterectomy. The next week the doctors told her she had Stage 4 cancer that had spread to her lungs. She would need chemotherapy through late December.

Jean had twice beaten breast cancer, and she was intent on beating this, too. She fully expected to return to her job in January, and called FedEx Ground’s headquarters to request a leave of absence. Weeks later, a letter arrived saying she was terminated.

“I was crazy with anger,” she said.

Fired and with no income, Jean stopped making payments on her truck. She had already paid more than $40,000 on it, but now she was powerless to prevent it from being repossessed.

“Ten years of beating my brains out for them, and they throw me away like I was a piece of garbage,” Jean said.

FedEx Ground officials said they had sympathy for Jean but had to terminate her under company rules, because she was no longer covering her route and she hadn’t found a replacement driver.

Company officials said they were free to terminate her because in FedEx’s view she was an independent contractor and therefore not protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act. That law requires companies to make reasonable accommodations to keep employees who have cancer or other disabilities. Jean has sued FedEx, asserting that it violated the act.

“To this day, I still can’t understand how they can get away with it,” Jean said. “You work for a company for 10 years and you give 150 percent. I used to go above and beyond. And then I get sick, something totally out of my control. And then to get fired.”

Her voice dropped off, then tears streamed down her cheeks.

•

Just inside the door of the men’s room was a rack that held sweaty biking shirts, damp bathing suits and clammy running shoes. The aroma seemed to belong more to a high school locker room than to a corporate headquarters. But this was the house of Patagonia, the apparel company that prides itself on letting its employees take their play every bit as seriously as they take their work.

At lunchtime many days, Patagonia employees go surfing for two hours, while a half-dozen others take a 100-minute, 27-mile bike loop in the hills overlooking the Pacific.

One of the sweaty biking shirts belonged to Andy Welling, a sales manager at Patagonia’s headquarters in Ventura, Calif. At 41, Welling is a fiend about staying in shape — he bikes several days a week at lunchtime, and joins Patagonia’s weekly pick-up soccer game. He often makes up for his lunchtime cycling by working a few hours at home in the evening.

Patagonia is so mellow about flextime that the receptionist at headquarters, an 11-time world Frisbee champion, is allowed to take three months off each summer to run a surfing school. “I could make quite a bit more money working somewhere else,” Welling said. “But to have the quality of life and to remain physically fit, by cycling or going surfing, you can’t put a dollar amount on it.”

Welling has taken advantage of another Patagonia offering: the child care center at headquarters. He drops off his two boys, 5 and 3, at 9 and often has lunch with them. “Being able to have my kids a few feet away from me all the time is fantastic,” Welling said. “It is a bonding relationship I never would have had if I were working somewhere else.”

Patagonia is not like anywhere else. With 1,300 workers and $275 million a year in sales, it donates 1 percent of its annual sales to environmental groups. Four days a week at lunchtime, the company offers yoga and Pilates sessions; there are also occasional classes on fly fishing. Each year Patagonia lets 40 employees take paid two-month internships with an environmental group. The best spots in the parking lot are reserved for the most fuel-efficient cars, and above dozens of parking spots are solar panels that supply all the power for one of Patagonia’s administration buildings.

Patagonia has 900 applicants for every job opening at headquarters. It sponsors civil disobedience training for employees who want to participate in environmental protests. Its mission statement calls for making the best outdoor products while doing the least damage to the environment. Its Synchilla fleece vests are made from recycled plastic bottles.

At headquarters, 20 surfboards are tucked under the stairs to the second floor, and employees often work barefoot. “When you walk through the front door, we don’t want you to stop being the person you are,” said Lu Setnicka, Patagonia’s director of training.

This unusual blend of work, play, family and environmentalism grows out of the philosophy of Patagonia’s founder and principal owner, Yvon Chouinard. Born in Maine and raised in Burbank, he felt passionate about just one activity in high school: the Southern California Falconry Club. He learned how to rappel down cliffs to visit falcon nests, and out of that grew a lifelong passion for mountain climbing.

Dissatisfied with the era’s soft-iron pitons — small spikes that climbers drive into rock and attach ropes to — Chouinard set out to produce stronger ones. He bought an anvil, taught himself blacksmithing, and made his first pitons out of an old harvester blade. For several years, he lived on less than a dollar a day, selling pitons out of his car and pursuing his passions by climbing in Yosemite and Wyoming.

As demand for his pitons grew, Chouinard rented a metal shed in Ventura and hired a small staff. By 1970, his company had become the nation’s largest producer of climbing equipment. During an excursion to Scotland, he purchased a rugby shirt and concluded that the thick, sturdy shirt was ideal for rock climbing. When he returned to California, his climbing friends asked for shirts just like it, and soon Chouinard expanded into the apparel business, importing rugby shirts.

As the company grew, it had one unbending rule — the business closed whenever the waves in the Pacific were running six feet high, hot and glassy. “Since none of us wanted to be in business, we wanted to blur the distinctions between work and play,” Chouinard said. “That meant we had to break a lot of rules of business.”

Chouinard often jokes about his M.B.A. philosophy: management by absence. Many years he disappeared for six months to go ice climbing in the Alps or surfing, skiing and climbing in South America. His was the ultimate flextime.

Chouinard has a simple philosophy that he says ensures that employees don’t abuse their flextime. “Hire the people you trust, people who are passionate about their job, passionate about what they’re doing. Just leave them alone, and they’ll get the job done.”

Shannon Ellis, Patagonia’s vice president for human resources, says the unusual flextime policies yield increased productivity. “A lot of people recognize that what they have here is unique, and I don’t think they want to jeopardize that,” she said.

In addition to the child care center, Patagonia offers other family-friendly benefits like eight weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave. It also pays 100 percent of the health insurance premiums for its workers, even part-timers. Chouinard says this helps attract the gung-ho outdoors types Patagonia wants — workers who test the company’s products as they climb and surf and convey their expertise and enthusiasm to customers.

“All of these things I’m doing are not to have a socialist birth-till-death utopia here,” Chouinard said. “Every one of these things is good business.”

Lisa Pike, who oversees Patagonia’s environmental grants, said: “He’s proving Wall Street wrong. You can do the right thing and still have an extremely profitable company.”

This article is adapted from "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker," by Steven Greenhouse, a reporter for The New York Times. The book, published by Knopf last week, examines difficulties faced by workers at companies like Fed Ex and Wal-Mart, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models for corporate America.

Read Chapter One of the book.

94% of College Professors are above average

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:36:00 +0000

I found this in my RSS Reader today and found it both insightful and humorous about the human need to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. This exemplifies the type of thinking which leads people to drive recklessly, thinking that others will be hurt, but not themselves because they are above average drivers.

94% of College Professors are above average

via Healthcare Economist by Jason Shafrin on 4/11/08

The average person believes that they are above average in almost all respects. This phenomenon is often called the Lake Wobegon effect after Garrison Keillor's fictitious town in which all people are above average.

A paper by Dunning, Heath and Suls (2004) gives some great examples of Lake Wobegon in action.

"Motorcyclists believe they are less likely to cause an accident than is the typical biker (Rutter, Quine, & Albery, 1998). Business leaders believe their company is more likely to succeed than is the average firm in their industry (Cooper, Woo, & Dunkelberg, 1988; Larwood & Whittaker, 1977). People think they are less susceptible to the flu than their contemporaries, and as a result avoid getting flu shots (Larwood, 1978). Of college professors, 94% say they do above-average work (Cross, 1977). People signing up to bungee jump believe they are more likely to avoid injury than the average bungee jumper, although their friends and family do not share this impression (Middleton, Harris, & Surman, 1996). Ironically, people even state that they are more likely than their peers to provide accurate self-assessments that are uncontaminated by bias (Friedrich, 1996; Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002)."

…Surgical trainees place too much confidence in their diagnoses after looking at X-ray evidence (Oksam, Kingma, & Klasen, 2000). After looking over a client's case materials, clinical psychologists overestimate the chance that their predictions will prove accurate (Oskamp, 1965).

Despite the prevalence of overconfident self-assessment, I suffer from no such problem. That is of course because I am an above-average blogger.

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Summary: How To Be A Star At Work

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:13:00 +0000

If you find you have work-related relationship issues (and who doesn't on occasion?), this may spark some ideas for improving things. It is a nice summary by Matt Vance of the book, How To Be A Star At Work.

Simple Ways to Be Happy at Work

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:53:00 +0000

Simple Ways to Be Happy at Work

via Vital Votes - Natural Health Articles by Dr. Joseph Mercola by Dr. Mercola on 4/15/08

A 2007 UK survey last year found that almost 2 out of 3 people are dissatisfied with their jobs. No matter how good things are in other parts of your life, work is a major part of your life and should not be neglected.

Here are some simple tips for getting to enjoy your current job:

Keep your work in perspective. Consider the bigger picture. Do some voluntary work to gain a broader outlook.

Remember that you are more than your work. Do not have your identity too strongly tied to the job you do.

Concentrate on the task at hand. Do not let yourself be distracted by worrying about all the other things to be done.

Delegate wherever appropriate. Always remember the "3D" rule -- do it, dump it or delegate it -- and never handle a piece of paper twice.

Have regular breaks. Get away from your normal workplace even if only for five minutes.

Switch off once you leave work. Mentally say good bye to your work space the moment you leave for home.

For more great tips, click the link below.

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Using The Human Touch To Solve Workplace Problems

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:51:00 +0000

A friend and co-worked recently brought my attention to this news article. From a Choice Theory / Lead Management perspective, what this company, Vurv, did was very need satisfying for all parties involved. It makes sense to the bottom line to retain your valuable employees. It makes sense from a Lead Management perspective to support your employees by giving them the tools necessary to be successful, in this case a used car to get to work. It makes sense from a Choice Theory perspective to get into your employees' Quality Worlds by being a need satisfying manager with a need satisfying organization.

I'm sure the first thought of many managers at reading this article would be "tough luck if you can't make it to work; you'll have to get a new vehicle or a new job." But upon further investigation the smart people at this company realized the initial knee-jerk reaction (old school, Stimulus-Response type psychology) would put them on a path to many disappointments.

the company would lose money on finding and training a new employee (latest statistics estimate at least $5000 are lost each time this happens)
the company might potentially lose customers because of the relationships built by these employees
customer service would suffer during the training time for a new employee, which might result in irreparable damage
the sense of team at the organization would suffer; morale would be impacted;
other employees would begin to wonder about the company's committment to its employees

Instead of the knee jerk reaction, Vurv made a great decision which has paid off for them. This was good leadership and good management.

Summary Of Glasser's Theories

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:47:00 +0000

I've been a student of cognitive behavioral pyschology for over 20 years. During that time, the work of Dr. William Glasser, MD has intrigued me the most as being the "best" framework for understanding and explaining human behavior. With this framework in place, people can begin to make better decisions for their personal and professional lives.

Here are links to summaries of each of these topics (from The William Glasser Institute):

Here is a link to a summary of Choice Theory that I also found helpful and interesting.

Lessons From The Zoo

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:47:00 +0000

I found this great article about "training" your spouse today. The point I find interesting for cognitive behavioral psychology, and Glasser's Choice Theory especially, is that she quit nagging and starting praising! This is good advice for all of us. She still hasn't learned that she really can't "control" her husband, but at least she's learned that nagging is definitely not the way to get it done! It reminds me of Glasser's Seven Habits.

About The Need Satisfying Life

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:38:00 +0000

I'm Richard Ingalls and I write The Need Satisfying Life blog to help people make the transition from unhappy & unsatisfied to happy & satisfied. I created The Need Satisfying Life blog to help people with starting a new direction in life, leading to a feeling of satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness.

Prior to starting this blog, I spent over fifteen years as a teacher, corporate trainer and workshop leader helping organizations to equip employees with psychology tips, leadership and interpersonal skills which would improve their daily interactions with clients and other employees. I currently work in the healthcare field using technology to train employees about computer skills, as well as interpersonal, leadership and organizational skills.

I first learned of Dr. Glasser's work my senior year in college (1992) and began to read his book The Quality School. Upon graduation I accepted my first professional teaching position at a school district attempting to become a Quality School District. As a part of the first group of teachers to become certificated by The William Glasser Institute from that school district, I was privileged to be a part of the professional development training for my colleagues.

Years later I have left the field of public education, but continue to study and apply the teachings of Dr. Glasser to my professional and personal life. I hope to help others do the same and live a Need Satisfying Life!

Other Blogs Mentioning Glasser's Work

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:51:00 +0000

I found a few blogs mentioning Glasser's work today while "Googling". Here is one in reference to a Glasser quote about learning. As a professional educator and trainer, and a believer in the power of a good presentation, I found this post to echo the sentiments of many professional trainers and presenters. Nice tie in to Dr. Glasser.

I also found this post as an overview of Glasser's Choice Theory. I've been meaning to type one of these up for my blog. Maybe I'll just link to this one instead - no use in reinventing the wheel!

You Say You Want A Revolution...

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:14:00 +0000

Part One
It was not need-satisfying for me to become a Civil Engineer. That was my parents' desire for me - not my own. As a kid I wanted to be:

trash collector (you get to ride on the back of the truck!)
jet fighter pilot
professional singer / entertainer
cartoonist / graphic designer
architect

As college loomed closer on the horizon, the pressure was on to pursue a career. I wanted to be an architect. Period. Frank Lloyd Wright was a hero to me and an inspiration (he had a song written about him by Simon and Garfunkel, and his buildings were beautiful works of art). What better job could there be than designing fancy buildings for rich clients? I could think of nothing better.

My parents wanted to capitalize on my skills as a science and math student. Yeah, I got good grades in those classes, but that's not where the fun was for me. In fact it was work to do well in the higher math / science classes. Parents pressured me for Engineering school - I wanted an Architecture school. Why did I agree to Engineering - I was paying for the loans - not them?!?

Needless to say, the science and math got to be more work than I wanted to put in. I was not having fun at this. This was not a need-satisfying college choice! I determined to change majors - even schools if necessary.

Part Two
It became necessary - my grade point average put me on academic probation during my 3rd semester. Yikes! I had never been a poor student! Always A's or B's. If I got a C as a kid on anything I would cry! The idea of getting good grades and doing quality work was need satisfying to me then. I needed to make a change so that I could go back to that happy place once again.

After much soul searching, I realized that my time as a teenage runaway living on the streets was a valuable milestone upon which I should build a new life. Who could help make life better for other kids in similar situations? Teachers and Counselors. I chose to become a Teacher so I could change the world; start a revolution; makes things better!

Part Three
I changed schools, changed my major and was on my way to starting a revolution! I learned of Dr. Glasser in 1992 (Junior year of college) as a pre-Teaching student at MSU. I met David Jackson that same year at a Teacher's convention, selling Glasser's books and promoting his work. Two years later, he was my trainer at Marshfield Public Schools. Two years later, in 1996 I became certificated by the William Glasser Institute in Choice Theory, Reality Therapy and Lead Management. The revolution (for me) had begun. My eyes had been opened. My brain enlightened.

I taught for a total of 10 years, then entered the Healthcare field as a technology educator. I was frustrated by the lack of real progress and significant, sustainable changes occurring in public education. I wanted to change the world now - this was too important to wait while bureaucracies debated. In the meantime, millions of students are being "cranked" through a dysfunctional public education system which is failing them and our democracy.

Plus they didn't pay very well! I was not appreciated and not paid well. A bad combination which means not need-satisfying.

Part Four
The local hospital needed a tech-savvy teacher to help them train the employees during the transition to an Electronic Medical Record / Health Information Management system. The Director of IT appreciated my skillsets. He offered me better pay. Done deal! So long to the revolution in Education that I wanted to be a part of.

My first few years of Glasser training really opened my eyes to organizational reform programs (there are so many in Education) and to the works of W. Edwards Deming. Today I still believe that with a foundation in Glasser's work, a person can study / analyze *any* organizational reform program and determine its probability of success; bottom line: is the outcome need satisfying for the stakeholders? Is the process need-satisfying for the stakeholders? Does the leadership fully grasp the "big picture" of what it will take from them to create the conditions necessary for the change to occur?

This is what I learned from my years in Educational reform movements. Organization reform movements come and go like fads. Some are very successful at one organization and fail miserable at another. The problem usually isn't the reform program - its the leadership. If the leadership had an understanding of Deming and Glasser's work, they could determine the likelihood of success of their endeavor; they could successfully "create the conditions for change."

That's what I hope to do now: "create the conditions for change."

Toastmasters From A Choice Theory Lens

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:47:00 +0000

I have not been involved with the Toastmasters organization, but I have heard many people comment on it with enthusiasm; they all tend to say, "I'm glad I was a participant." Upon a little further research on their website, I found out why so many people have positive experiences with Toastmasters: it is a need-satisfying organization!

To oversimplify and summarize, Toastmasters promotes activities which satisfy their members' needs for power/significance and love/belonging (as well as perhaps fun/learning and freedom). What a positive, powerful and effective method for meeting a person's needs - learning to speak well with others in a public setting (belonging) and learning to be a leader within a group or organization (power/significance). Toastmasters promotes the concepts of leadership which are also in agreement with Dr. Glasser's and Dr. Deming's concepts of Lead Management (won't all successful leadership programs have these components in common?). I have begun the process to (hopefully) start a local chapter of Toastmasters in my community and corporation (doing so will most likely satisfy my needs for power/significance and belonging).

I have a vision for making my organization into a place which transforms people; elevates them; takes them further and higher than they were before they came into contact with us. In essence I want to make my organization a need satisfying organization. I believe that by bringing in a Toastmasters club, we will be on the path towards creating the skills necessary for sustained leadership and giving people opportunities to learn how to meet their needs in a positive manner. I'm certain that those involved with Toastmasters will attest to the idea that their membership in this organization is need satisfying. I'd rather see people join Toastmasters than join a local KKK, biker gang or other such group - that's for sure!

If you've had need satisfying relations with Toastmasters or some other similar organization, please let me know by commenting on this blog or emailing me directly (I'd prefer the blog comment so others can benefit from your input).

Until next time in the blogosphere... aloha!

Quality Service

noreply@blogger.com (everdream) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:01:00 +0000

I read some great blogs about customer service here and here. To me, this simply illustrates the concepts that Dr. Deming began discussions about... decades ago! Granted, Dr. Deming applied his work to the manufacturing industry mainly, but later in his career he began to investigate and apply his work to the service industry as well. We would all do well to understand the main ideas - and they're very simple (even common sense to a few)!

Dr. Glasser's work in cognitive behavioral psychology sheds light on Dr. Deming's work, giving supervisors everywhere no excuse for poor quality. Where Deming would tell us that we must work on the system, Glasser has given us tools to enable us to better work on that system - specifically the part of the system which is human. It's much easier to work on the part of the system which is not human, and many new management approaches do this aggressively. But it's much more difficult to work on the part of the system which is human (and therefore it is extremely variable). Glasser's work helps supervisors to make changes on the human part of the system.

I knew when I worked as a teen and young adult in the fast food industry and the grocery store industry, that customer care is what set me apart from my peers (and managers liked having me as an employee). To me, it was need-satisfying to do a good job (met my need for power/significance, and for belonging). One day, one of my best friends (who also worked with me) decided we would reorganize the stock room (the back room warehouse) so we could more easily and quickly find the stock items for the store shelves. Our boss didn't ask us to do it. We took the initiative to do it because it met our need for power/significance and belonging (we worked together as a team).

I quickly figured out that the lowest paid workers have the largest amount of "face time" with customers. It didn't make sense to me then (nor now) that none of us had any specific training on customer service, nor were we paid well for doing that job well. Customer service (or "customer care" as its referred to now) was a hit or miss event. If you had employees that "got it" - great! If not, too bad.

It's a 98% systemic problem (as Deming would say). But, the good news is that we have the tools available to help us resolve this issue (thank to Dr. Glasser). What do you think about this issue?

The Need Satisfying Life

Migrating To Human's Lib Blog

Good Behavior by Decree? « Sharing thoughts, ideas and suggestions on hardwiring success

Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com

The Connection Between Personality and Learning

Why Are People Like Sheep? Part Three

Why Are People Like Sheep? Part Two

Why Are People Like Sheep?

Bob Hoglund's August Thoughts

From CLO: Connection Cultures Keep Workers Engaged

Connection Cultures Keep Workers Engaged

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman. Executive Briefings. July 2008.

Leadership Models Changing?

Improving Systems Via Systems Thinking

Broken Systems Are Need Satisfying ... To Someone!

on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

NY Times: Working Life (High and Low)

Working Life (High and Low)

Related

Chapter One: Worked Over and Overworked (April 20, 2008)

Times Topics: FedEx Corporation

94% of College Professors are above average

Things you can do from here:

Summary: How To Be A Star At Work

Simple Ways to Be Happy at Work

Things you can do from here:

Using The Human Touch To Solve Workplace Problems

Summary Of Glasser's Theories

Lessons From The Zoo

About The Need Satisfying Life

Other Blogs Mentioning Glasser's Work

You Say You Want A Revolution...

Toastmasters From A Choice Theory Lens

Quality Service