Assorted Zingers: Poems and Cartoons to Take a Bite
Transcription
Assorted Zingers: Poems and Cartoons to Take a Bite
A Assorted Zingers Poems and cartoons to take a bite out of work By David Zinger with John Junson I Acclaim for Assorted Zingers David Zinger and John Junson’s new book, “Assorted Zingers” is a new and innovative portal into the way we think about our work and workplaces. Its construct and context transports us to a place that is at times breathtaking, insightful, instructive, humorous and most of all hopeful. In a way that only David and John can do, their book tells the truth about what is and is not happening in our workplace. It also offers the invitation and a confident pathway to transforming our workplaces from a place of artificial limitations and contraction to a place of engagement, community, and real expansion. It is a portal worth entering and it is an important book worth reading. Thank you David and John, for your gift of this book to us. It’s fabulous. Once read, you can never go back to the old ways. Gail Pischak Shared Visions Inc. This unlikely combination of cartoons and poetry will bring a smile to your face. More importantly Assorted Zingers will make you think. These are zingers that zing. Richard Axelrod Author, Terms of Engagement: New Ways of Leading and Changing Organizations II Glad to know that everyone can now enjoy the witty zingers that David has been sharing with us via email. They keep our workplace smilingly engaged. Steve Roesler CEO Roesler Consulting Group You’ll cry, you’ll laugh, your life will be forever changed. And then you’ll crack open this book. And all that will happen again. Mr. Simplicity, Bill Jensen Author, Simplicity and Hacking Work A reflective mental breather. This book creates space to think anew. Thank you. S. Max Brown VP Org. Learning, Recognition Management Institute III Copyright © 2011 by David Zinger This book is copyrighted material. All rights reserved. Assorted Zingers Published 2011 by David Zinger Design, layout, and production: John B. Junson IV Dedication This book is dedicated to my family for giving purpose and encouragement to my work. It is also dedicated to my mother for always believing I was going to be a writer. ~ David Zinger This book is gratefully dedicated to Pauline and to my parents, Noreen and Jack Junson. ~ John Junson V Foreword Rarely do we meet the writer who is as shrewd and astute with his insights as he is poetic and creative in expressing them. Welcome to the world of David Zinger, the person who has put a new face on the world of employee engagement through his popular network. With the publishing of this gem, David now offers us inspiration for deepening our personal engagement at work. As his friend and colleague, I have had the distinct pleasure of being witness to David’s unique brand of genius on many occasions. It astounds me how he continuously finds new ways of generously sharing his wisdom and humor, and with this book, his giftedness as a poet. There is nowhere like the workplace to play out the wide spectrum of our human frailty and foolishness, our wisdom and wise-cracking, our smallmindedness and meaning-making. Like fish unable to recognize water, we often cannot see the full folly of our ways as we become accustomed to and part of the larger culture we work in. Thus the need to stand back, pull focus and gain perspective. If, as G.K. Chesterton asserts, “There is a road from the eye to the heart of things that does not go through the intellect”, this small book provides such a path. Brimming with surprise and revelation, David Zinger and John Junson offer a potpourri of creative, joyful and luminous snapshots into our everyday work life with fresh and, often, breathtaking suggestions of ways in which we might respond. VI Through colorful caricatures and the spare lines of poetic conciseness, we are drawn in to ponder what is real and what is ridiculous, what is hilarious and what is holy, what is simply absurd and what should be absurdly simple. Within these pages you will experience a breath of fresh air, ample belly laughs, several wake-up calls, and even a few slaps upside the head. Poetry and humor are reputed as menaces to conformity, and they do not break with tradition here. All in all, they are invitations to shake off our cynicism, to embrace our humanity, and to inspire a bias towards action rather than apathy. For those who care to take the road less traveled in the day to day journey of life at work – you have found a fitting guidebook! Happy Trails! Denise Bissonnette Author, Trainer, Keynote Speaker Diversity World www.diversityworld.com VII Acknowledgements This book would not be without John Junson and his work on design. Obviously John contributed the cartoons but he also contributed so much more. I acknowledge Denise Bissonnette, not only for the foreword to the book, but for our conversations that lead to the idea of the poet and pragmatist at work. I’d like to thank Barbara Edie for her editorial assistance. I also acknowledge the over 3600 members of the Employee Engagement Network for contributing to my thinking about engagement. ~ David Zinger First of all, I need to thank David Zinger for many, many years of friendship and encouragement, and more recently for giving me the opportunity to work with him on exciting new projects including this book. Looking back to my years in Toronto, I need to acknowledge my late friend, Evan Godt, for teaching me so much about leadership and communication, and Derek Gillingham for inspiring me to push creative boundaries. I certainly need to thank my parents for all they’ve done for me throughout my life. Most of all I need to thank my partner, Pauline Greenhill, for her love, support and patience. ~ John Junson VIII Introduction Welcome to Assorted Zingers a book to tweak and alter your thinking about work and the workplace. Each poem or cartoon has a zinger inside the words or images to encourage you to observe work around you and your relationship to work and your coworkers. These are not poems or cartoons to ponder or dissect for hidden meaning or find an iambic pentameter structure. Rather, look at them as small jolts, glimmers of recognition, or even a short diversion from your work. This is also not a book to be read cover to cover rather open the book like you would open a box of chocolates and sample a poem or cartoon. Bite into the cartoon or poem, savor the flavor, and get a small jolt of working nourishment. We trust you'll enjoy the cartoons and poems, and like any good box of chocolate, feel free to share them or pass them around. You can leave the book on your desk and let someone come by and bite into one of the poems or cartoons. Remember, these cartoons and poems will melt in your mind not in your hands. They will melt away rigid views of working, stress from an overload of demands, and fixed or inflexible views of working and the workplace. Go ahead, start reading and take a bite out of work. IX The course of courage Courage at work is expression not impression. Not medals but meddle into what we care about not exclusively but inclusively. Courage is the heart at work and hearty work. Rather than a course in courage courage is following our course. Or making corrections while remaining true. We don’t find courage we express it. 1 2 Napkin futures Tabling strategy. Gel pens drawn during fast food lunch sparking napkin artistry. Ink bleeds arrows, words, and stick figures into thin paper. Absorbing both strategic thinking and mustard drips oozing from the overflowing cheeseburger. It is going to be a good year. 3 4 Above the bottom line Dwelling above the bottom line our contributions our meaning our routines our relationships our passions our connections our fears our hopes our irritations our time our lives. Business is looking up. It doesn’t all come down to the bottom line. 5 6 Ouch During the annual recognition gala Jim pinned the coveted long service pin right through Julia’s blouse piercing her skin. Julia yelped. Jim stumbled fumbled and dropped the pin down Julia’s blouse. The annual employee recognition effort ended for another year. 7 8 Management Command and control lose their seat to conversation and collaboration. Organizations humanize into communities while impositions quiet respectfully into invitations. Hierarchy is redrawn on the napkin into a matrix. Leadership levels while management spreads. Our white space decade ahead invites us to get more from management than we ever imagined. 9 10 If If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs your Blackberry is broken. 11 12 Going horizontal in a vertical world Our organizational problems stem from being so vertical in a horizontal world. Elevators of rank, privilege, and delusion traverse up and down the corporate hierarchy giving the illusion of height over width. Even our page views are portrait, not landscape. We need to move horizontally to be in touch with each other. Can we dwell on the level rather than taking it to the next level? Whatever deluded us to think our title, role, or function put us above or below anyone else? I love the limitless stretch of expansive prairie as we see forever in all directions never hearing, “look out below.” 13 14 Mistakes Mistakes were made, as they always are, yet here is where the big mistake takes place. Blame. Hide. Yell. Cry. Deny. Make no mistake. There will be mistakes. Let’s just not make two in a row. 15 16 Listen Can I Can I talk Can I talk with you? Not at, not over, but with. Our with gives wings. Can we... Can we talk... Can we talk with each other? Not I, not me, but we. Of course, if we talk it must begin right hear. 17 18 Corporate without class The new guy down the hall needs to learn how we do things around here. We’ll train him without a course by rolling eyes, banter at lunch, and afternoon chocolate bribes. He’ll fit in, won’t make waves and tread lightly around cultural cubicles. 19 20 Encountering variance We respond to variance in so many ways from ignoring to snapping, from bewilderment to beffudlement. When we experience variance at work let it trigger listening let it trigger understanding let it trigger learning. Our approaches may vary yet it is valuable to embrace variance with full acceptance before moving on. 21 22 And another thing The guy behind me in 16A on AC297 to Vancouver knew everything. He spewed nonstop advice for three hours at the woman in 16C. He never said, “I don’t know.” “What do you think?” “Tell me your ideas.” Over Moose Jaw I jammed loud Steely Dan tunes into my ears to obliterate the irritating expert. The lesson from 33,000 feet: Don’t make others listen up you’ll tune them out. Rather listen side by side to ensure your ideas fly. 23 24 Dick and Jane He said. She said. They said. We saw. She saw. They saw. What was said, was sawed, in half. There goes Spot. There goes Puff. There goes communication. Goodbye Dick. Goodbye Jane. 25 26 Gaudi Information If I was an information architect I would imitate Gaudi expressing Spanish flair fused with Barcelona beat into artistic displays of moving information. The information would be beautiful creating towering displays of data that would continue to be built well past my short shelf life. I would wave information transforming data points into curved beauty abandoning myopic reliance on straight lines. I would invite my information patrons to walk through the data build unable to keep their hands off of the implications while grabbing hold of meaningful measures conveyed in waves of inspiring information. 27 28 Music We need more music in our workplaces. Not insipid elevator tunes, ear bud iTunes isolation, or another recruiting video in the form of a lip sync office dance party. Rather, music that joins and moves us. Don’t blow your own horn, trumpet out a new program, or drum something into us. Teach us to hear and make the music that resides within us, between us, and from the results of our efforts. Let’s orchestrate co-created symphonies of heartfelt work. 29 30 Warsaw 2010 Frigid January in Warsaw walking down windy frozen streets in the city leveled to ruin and rubble (1945). Chopin pieces play from push button street benches giving note to his 200th birthday. As the frozen mermaid stands guard singing a song of resilient rejuvenation. Walking in Warsaw I realize we can rebuild, we can always rebuild. There is no quit in Warsaw Warszawa – Dziękuję bardzo. 31 32 Meet well done We meet. We discuss. We plan. We assign. We commit. You would think, we were in action, yet we dwell inaction. Meetings can be well done and lean can strip away excess. Yet actions are rare. 33 34 Know your no Do you know your no? Do you follow your nose? Or lose scent of your prey by a confounding crisscrossing of yeses. Who knows that you know your no? No need to shout or shake your head from left to right and back again. When you know your no, you are also saying yes. 35 36 Slide Take your seats and mute your mind. One obligatory funny slide devoid of humor heralding the march of 116 slides of overpopulated data. Bullet points sprayed at us like verbal machine gun fire. Excel worksheets transformed into 3-D data charts fit for magic tricks. The business case pulled out of a hat. We slumber into corporate wonderland wondering where is Alice? So just in case you forgot the magic, the power point is the point of real connection. Don’t screen your message the medium is you. 37 38 Work as soul food Pizza parties piece of cake cookies too donuts dunked in copious coffee quaffed chocolates on desks stacked in inukshuk figures guiding the way to the lunch room weaving by assorted candies scattered around the office like seashells on a beach. The challenge is not to be fed at work. It is to prepare, share and create work that nourishes body and soul without heaping on the bonbons. 39 40 Looking out, looking in Scott stuck his head into my cubicle, looking for something that wasn’t there. Our eyes met but it was not me he was looking for. Sometimes I dream my cubicle is zoned inside an aquarium. I’m about to be schooled by grumpy guppies when I notice Scott peering through the glass. I wake up with a terrible need to pee. 41 42 See what I mean? There is a mean in meaning but there doesn’t have to be meanness at work. The meaning of work works for me when I work on me while working with meaning. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and never be mean. That’s what I mean. 43 44 Lacuna Lacuna n. pl. la·cu·nae (-n ). 1. An empty space or a missing part; a gap. She came to work but wasn’t there. Focus blotched by last night’s fear filled family fight. Invisible scars deep inside slicing into her sense of self. She valiantly but vainly tries to do her job like she knows she can but she can’t. Last night’s cutting words won’t mute. We cannot see what isn’t there but connect the dots and we are drawn into an invitation to punctuate the veil of silence. We realize our co-worker was diminished knocked off balance by verbal violence flaring behind closed doors. This is not the time to tuck our head deep down into our cubicle shell. 45 46 Glance Close the form. Avert your eyes from the screen. Take a chance on me. Take a glance at me. What you see is what you get. But do you see. Do you get seeing? Do you really get it? No need to stare deep into data sets. Just take one glance and let me know that you see me. 47 48 Winging trust What happened to trust? Did it go? Was it here? Did it crack open too early spilling out doubt, deception, and despair? We are not Humpty Dumpty perched on the organizational wall ready to do a group trust fall. No blindfolded trust walk through our cubicle maze will put trust back together again. Without trust our organization is an empty nest devoid of the safety and nurturing needed for flight. Transparency is overrated. We don’t need to see through you. We don’t need you to see through us. We need you to see us through, as we see you through, too. Hope not for trust for hope casts trust into a future that is never here. Rather gather the twigs — honesty caring empathy respect mutuality — thatch them into an organizational nest to nourish, protect, and launch us into flight. 49 50 Stereo conflict In this corner... The match is about to begin. Manager poised behind desk. Employee ready in one corner. Employee expectant in the other corner. The bell sounds. He said she said but she said “no you are wrong.” So she said he said and he said “that isn’t right.” At the end of 10 rounds they stopped and awaited the manager’s decision like plaintiff and defendant on Judge Judy. The manager paused, deep in thought. Wondering if he should have spaghetti or salad for lunch. 51 52 Business as usual We passed. Elevator door opens. You enter. I look at ceiling. You stare at floor. Six floors up we exit. I escalator up You escalator down I look left. You look right. We glance at each other without a hint of acknowledgment. Then you passed away. I’m sorry our eyes never met, like the look between quarterback and receiver before they connect for a score. Incomplete. Dropped. Missed. If only I’d found the gall to commit an illegal procedure. Stop the elevator between floors, look you in the eye, and ask, “how are you?” It didn’t happen. Business as usual. 53 54 Just one word Distill work into one word. Blend 4 parts energy effort meaning contribution with 4 parts boredom frustration fatigue irritation Fuse into one word. 55 56 Engaging breaks We need a break or work gets broken. 57 58 Beyond hope Hope is a place in British Columbia as you drive out of the Canadian Rockies towards Vancouver. Hope is not a place we should journey to at work. We will get it done when we embrace hopelessness. We don’t hope. We trust. We do. Work in the moment not drifting dreamingly towards a mythical future. When we replace hope with gumption we get it done. 59 60 Engaging the meatball Another meatball tossed on our overflowing spaghetti-like plate of work. Before forking into our crowded strands of work yet another meatball is tossed on the pile colliding with the meatball already there precipitating an avalanche of meatballs hurdling downwards in all directions at once. If work is to nourish us we must say no even when we are told, “it is just one more meatball.” 61 62 Dark chocolate Monday morning at 10:24 Work inertia Restrained not rested Feeling antsy and irritable Wrapped in a brain fuzzy fog Want to step out Need to step in Not out How sweet it would be to nibble dark chocolate. Close eyes. Inhale. Just be. The dark chocolate lingering on the roof of my mouth. 63 64 Citius, Altius, Fortius Is there a torch within your workplace lit with the flame that burns within while also being passed along? We need Prometheus like people at work with the courage to steal fire from Zeus and champion human kindness. Catch a flame and pass it on swifter, higher, stronger. As you carry the torch the torch will carry you. 65 66 Flood of work Work flows like a raging river washing over sandbags of effort all sense of calmness washed away and “where the hell is that file?” Our stress management skills no longer hold back the flood of demands, threats, conflicts and hassles. Even a broken paper clip can snap us into stress. We are mired knee deep in irritation as our heels sink into the mud and the shine leaves our shoes. We grab a late latte lunch to make it past 2:30 without dozing at our desk. We must craft a raft. A raft of resilience thatched with calming breaths, realistic expectations, and human kindness. Using no as our rudder to steer away from turbulent waves of relentless work. When the water recedes, will the cherry blossoms bloom? 67 68 Below the surface We swim in an ocean of performance. We do this, we do that. The work gets done. We swim in schools biting on skills and hooked on corporate competencies. You cast your net into this oceanic performance. Catching our movement to assign a score. Will we be a trophy brought on board or thrown back for being marginal? Scaling our initiative from 1 to 5. A year’s performance cut open You thin slice our teamwork to 4.3. Toss your scales aside. Jump overboard. Swim with us. 69 70 Passchendaele progress How do we manage change while barely changing ourselves? We are caught in no man’s land charging out of trenches to who knows where and we can’t go back. Yet we are not moving forward. We keep our heads down as barrages of tips and tactics explode over our heads while three more screens scream. Face down in the mud we hear the management consultants bellow out the latest 55 rules of success and the 200 competencies we need to achieve them. Or they send us anemic marching orders dressed up as large font 100-page parable books about moving cheese or learning five secrets. Perhaps it is time to just stop in the muck see where we are and if we really need to storm the next trench. Let’s look ahead and look carefully at what we leave behind before we race head long into a Passchendaele parade. 71 72 Branded Are you branded? Painted and tainted by marketing mavens. Packaged like a box of Tide until soap stings your eyes. Can you be a personal brand without a logo, a swoosh, a blog, a tweet or a tightly rehearsed 30-second elevator pitch? Would you ever want to be stuck in an elevator sealed in as the door closes and your traveling companion regales you with their pithy elevator speech when all you asked was, “what floor?” My father, the irreverent CPR railroad executive offered me his leadership legacy: “Son, in life you are going to fart, fumble, fall and fail.” Without our vulnerability to be sliced by paper cuts we become nothing more than a box of Tide Squeaky clean. Far too soapy. Used up after just one rinse. 73 74 Line of sight When we are flying high above the earth 33,000 feet over Saskatchewan prairie and look down through our small window do clouds obscure or do we see the clouds and the prairie frame each other like an Escher print so that we are grounded in clouds of floating movement? 75 76 Six words This poem, every line, six words Can the story of your work Be worked out in six words? Is that too much to ask? Would it be a Chaplin comedy? Would it be a Chaplin tragedy? Would it even have a plot? Choose your six words very carefully With toil and labor over meaning. Can six words capture the essence? And what will you leave out? Express six words of your work. Go ahead, try it, write now. One two three four five six. Never forget Ernest Hemingway’s great story. “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” 77 78 Humor me There is no joy in Mudville When did work stop being fun so much that we needed workshops white papers and gurus to convince us to play? Holy mackerel do we really need to flop plush fish over cubicle dividers to demonstrate our laughter competency? Forced fun feels phony like spilt snake oil ponding on a boardroom table while minutes are read hours are missed and venom stains the oak. Meanwhile Guru Garry pinches clown noses to our faces leading us in a mantra minute we chant, “ha ha ha!” 79 80 I to I I am learning to be more myself. I am learning to be more. I am learning to be. I am learning to. I am learning. I am. I 81 82 The Reorganization They moved us, yet we were not moved. They changed us, yet we remained the same. Boxes on pyramidal charts yanked off the shelf like Cheerios from a grocery store. They morphed us into a matrix. Duties reassigned as we searched for our coffee mug that failed to move with us. They pushed. We stiffened. Memos menaced as washroom whispers hissed. Bounce back. Start over. Invite us. Ask us. Involve us. Trust us. We move together, not chess pieces at war checking each other into corners, we play on the same board. 83 84 Two roads diverged Let me tell you a tale about the disengaged. A tell tale sign is you are told not asked, you are fringed not foreground, work is an energy drain, not an energy gain. You would rather be anywhere else, yet you seem stuck in place. And you have to stay because of the pension, economy, fear, benefits or just the plain inertia of it all. It is time to tell a different tale where you are connected in the foreground gaining energy and making contributions. If that tale cannot be told get your tail out of there. You only have so many days to work and when you work in the those days and those days work for you it makes all the difference. 85 86 Payday When did it become the way of work to hate our work our organization and our peers? The daily distaste for work crumbled our contributions into gritty crumbs lacking nourishment for body, soul and self. Is this what we get paid for? 87 88 Retirement He knew his number. The golden watch. With a Sisyphus-like countdown he watched his watch in a hypnotic passage of working days. He longed to retire and escape daze filled with lethargy and loathing. The day came he got the parting golden watch, a good pension, and false freedom. Imagine his dismay when nothing changed. He made his number but learned too late that the 30-year watch had actually filled his days. The countdown ended without liftoff. Retirement was much like working. We can’t go back in time. We can only move forward into the time we have. Our days our truly numbered if we believe we will live better in a future time or place. Work/life balance is not 30 years of working followed by 30 years of not. Work/life balance is to fully infuse work into our life and life into our work. Do you know what time it is? 89 90 Career mayday One pilot. Sparse cabin crew. A full load of passengers. Passengers idle time away waiting to board Fight boredom in flight Ignore the person sitting two inches away then at the end of the flight leap out of their seats to stand in the aisle moving nowhere waiting to disembark. At work we need more pilots less baggage to file our own flight plan navigate our own career as work takes off. We can only fly into the future sitting in the captain’s seat with our hand on the throttle. 91 92 Just managing Are you stuck on the management grid? We manage to manage just about everything. We manage people and enroll in stress management. We practice project management then learn anger management. We manage impressions and manage by walking around. We manage expectations and learn disaster management. We manage by objectives and by exceptions. We learn performance management and take something for pain management. We even manage to get by. I hunger to see the horse run free, running off the grid unmanageable, unfettered, and unafraid. 93 94 Punctuated leadership How do you punctuate your leadership? Are you a “.” bringing work to an end having the answer knowing when to stop? Are you a “,” with just one more thing creating lists merely pausing but never stopping? Are you a “@” head bowed in reverence to screen checking yet another email? Are you a “!” jumping around shouting announcements making declarations? Are you a “( )” keeping things inside and together keeping things out building a silo? Of course you’re not a punctuation mark but what mark will your leadership leave? Perhaps your answer is exactly the punctuation needed. 95 96 Too tense If you are too tense at work you are probably dwelling in the wrong tense. Either the future tense of anxiety or the past tense of guilt and regret. To be less tense drop the past, stop reaching for the future and live in the present. 97 98 Waiting Is waiting a room you sit impatiently in feeling the weight of the world holding you back from what you seek, or is waiting a space you inhabit as long as you are there? What are you waiting for and where are you while you wait? 99 100 Broken There was no ring just a promise til retirement do us part or so we thought. We were barely together. You took me for granted and I felt entitled. Drifting and shifting from joined to strained. We both saw it. Said nothing. Time passed. On the yearly anonymous survey I let you have it. Conveyed in numbers transformed into graphs I declared myself disengaged as you felt dismayed. I don’t want it this way neither do you. Let’s stop being so anonymous. No more surveys. No more whispered grumbling. To engage is to connect. Let’s cast aside the blame, call me by my name. 101 102 Tongue depressant Nobody talked as the project tanked. At least not in public. Heads bowed. Eyes averted. Tongues bitten to avoid possible tongue lashing. There was no conversational alchemy only a fool’s gold of thought transmuted into working whispers and empty silence. 103 104 It is later than you think Our 2:30 meeting never begins at 2:30. And even if we booked it for 2:45 we would still not start on time. For in our workplace on time is always 10 minutes later than it is. 105 106 Circling work I sit in a cubicle at the bottom of the pyramid. Distant voices cascade down the structure cajoling me to work harder work smarter work it out keep working. I don’t long. I don’t belong. I churn out unread reports. Pyramids were built to house dead people. Yet I’m alive. I’m here. Hear me out. Seek me out. Let’s throw this pyramid a curve smoothing sharp edges into a circle. The circle of connection, healing and work. 107 108 David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert who founded the Employee Engagement Network. David is the author of Zengage. David is a sought after speaker and consultant on engagement who has worked from Winnipeg to Warsaw and Wales. Contact David Zinger at www.davidzinger.com. John Junson is a web designer, graphic artist, photographer and cartoonist. He is a co-owner of WeatherTec Services, a company that provides weather maps and forecasts for newspapers. He is the featured resident cartoonist on the Employee Engagement Network. You can see his work at www.employeeengagement.ning.com. 109 110
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