Designer Culture vs. Haphazard Culture - Talk 7 of 25

Topic: Designer Culture vs. Haphazard Culture

Theme: Designer Culture

Author: Barry Sweet

Date: January 7, 2018

Video Production by Tim & Karen Morse. Morsephotography.com

Music: Strolling by Brad Fitch. Cowboybrad.com

So we've talked about the Community Pool and once you sort of get the feeling for what the Community Pool is… how it's cultivated, then we get the chance to decide if we're going to have a Designer Culture or a Haphazard Culture. And here it is… I learned from Faith Evans this concept of Chocolate. Vanilla. Choose.  It's Chocolate or Vanilla. Choose. You can't have Twist… Chocolate or Vanilla. Choose. Which one do you want? And here's what happens. We will have Haphazard Culture if we do not choose to cultivate a Designer Culture. It's all that happens, it happens like a spontaneous combustion and you'll get whatever you get, and if you have low level contributions you're gonna have a low level culture. If you have high level contributions, you're going to have a high level culture. And so we're aiming for Designer Culture if we can make this thing anything we want… then let's just absolutely make it exactly like we want.  

[To digress a tiny bit, when my staff come and there they are comprised of some younger people that are still starting their careers whereas others have had careers for a while.] I say that there is a designer tombstone and a haphazard tombstone. This is not morbid so take the morbid out of it for a second. 

If you don't do resume designing you're going to have a haphazard resume. 

It will be whatever you end up with. 

But what I try to do is provide opportunities in my office for you to build your resume and have its say on it what you want it to say. Sit down think about what you want your resume to say and then let's make it happen. If you want to have it say that “I know Adobe Photoshop” then I'm going to give you some hours of training and Adobe Photoshop. On your next resume, you'll be able to say not only do I know Word but I know Adobe Photoshop whereas your competitor will say “I know Microsoft Word.” 

Here's where you build your resume and make it better. It's a designer resume vs haphazard resume. A designer tombstone versus a non-designer tombstone and you can think about your life and make your tombstone say whatever you want it to say by thinking about it in advance and living the way that you want to live, not just letting it be… but by being intentional about how you want to live your life and then what people will say about you when you're gone.  And a lot of this has to do with the nature of ego in the Community Pool. 

I read a book years ago called Leadership and Self-deception and it basically says “If you think you're a good leader. That should be the very first sign that you're not, because a good leader would never think they're a good leader.” They'll always say “Ooo, I got a long way to go”. And in Search and Rescue in the National Parks, ego kills. You've got chopping helicopter blades above your head. your staff, your colleagues are dangling from an end of a rope and if your ego seizes the whole Search and Rescue operation, you are no longer a team looking out for each other but you're trying to do something about you? Or do something for heroism? Now this is about saving lives, it's about doing it together as a team so that everybody's safe. And so we say that ego kills. 

There was a boardroom at a Fortune 500 company that I was told had a little plaque before that boardroom door. You know that had the cherry wood table, and the cherry wood chairs, and the cherry wood cabinets and it just simply was eye level before you'd go in, and it just simply said: “Leave egos at the door”. These are the powerful things that we need to remind each other of, that ego should always be kept an eye on, in community, because the community doesn't thrive on ego and actually dies at the hands of ego and we've got to be mutual and reciprocal and sharing with one another. That's how the best communities work. Ego gets a lot done in life. I do not mean to imply that ego is all bad. I am simply suggesting that we need to always keep an eye on it should it decide to go sideways.

And on the topic of the Community Pool. In the National Park we have a twofold mission that is preservation and recreation and you're not supposed to do one more than the other. You have to do them both simultaneously, exactly at the same time. And we call it the twofold mission. When our new Superintendent came she said “Barry tell me about you”. and I said “No-o, tell me about you…”. And she told me about her. Then she said “OK now Barry tell me about you”.  And I said “ No-o, tell me a little bit more about you”. And she told me about her. Then she said, OK you know tell me about you. And I said “Well, I don't believe in the twofold mission”. Well that's (you know) not good to say to your new boss. And she said “Oka-a-y…” Meaning…

“Tell me what you do believe…” And I said “I believe that we're here to preserve a world treasure with our lives and help humans be at their best by giving them time to reflect in nature and wilderness (which is basically a summary of the twofold mission is preservation and recreation)”. And I said “But I also believe that as managers we need to cultivate… a happy, healthy culture, where people love to come to rather than dread coming to. Because if you take the 24 hour day and divide it into three eight hour sections… you work one, you play one and you sleep one… and the insidious part about the work one, is that it tends to be bigger than the other two because you spend time getting ready for work…. You spend time coming down off of work… 

And if the largest part of your day is work, and your work is unhappy… then the largest part of your life is unhappy. And so we make work the happiest place we can. We actually say we want to cultivate a happy, healthy work culture that people love to come to. Notice that I don't stay healthy, happy. I'm not P.C. here. I'm going to aim for the highest star and aim for happiness. So what I said to my new Superintendent was so I believe in a tri-fold mission…” 

“I don't believe in a two-fold mission…”  and she's she went dead silent… and I said “But that's not the heresy”. 

And she said “Oka-a-y…” meaning “Well what is the heresy then…” I said “I'm taking the trifold mission and I'm moving the third one into first place and saying that it's more important than the other two. Here's where she went dead silent for 15 seconds. And I thought “Yeah… there goes my job…” and then she said “You know… I believe that too…”  And we both went on to agree that when you take care of your people… then they take care of the mission.   And so that's a lot about who we are. We want to just have a place that we enjoy and get energized by at work. Not to a place that drains us… and we're willing to do what it takes to have everybody reach that level. And a lot of it is about altruism and our Daily Contributions to the Community Pool. 

One of my staff people went to the refrigerator this summer. She opened the fridge, which is a community fridge, and there was a fresh carton of cream. We’ve got tons of coffee drinkers in the office and taped to the carton of cream, was a little note that said “For Everyone” and she said “I stood there and stared at it and then I thought when do you ever see this?? You always see ‘Mary's cream’,  ‘Bob’s cream’. You don't ever see a note that says ‘For Everyone’ and that's what we're talking about is Mindful, Positive, Daily, Contributions to the Community Pool which makes the Community Pool a marvelous place to swim.

In this part forgive me for reading to you but I feel like I need to...

This thing we need to keep in check. 

This Hubris that poisons the Community Pool… the definitions from the dictionaries: excessive pride or self-confidence, arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, pride, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, superiority, big-headedness, cockiness. It's offensive, it's it takes up all the air in the room. 

The opposite I guess… would be having a searching spirit, being deferential to your colleagues, listening and being a healthy contributor to the Community pool.

 “Not Fair” is a sign in our office the International “Not” Symbol with the word “Fair” in it… and right next to it… is the International “Go” Symbol (which is the green circle with no line through it) that just simply says “Generous”. If you try to make a “Fair Culture” there's scrapping and biting and clawing and scratching for “Fair”. But if you make a “Generous Culture”(where people are pouring so much that you can almost drown in the kindness) there is no scrapping and fighting and clawing. It's just overflowing…. And that's the kind of culture that we're trying to develop when we're trying to aim for a Designer Culture. Not Fair… Generous.