ORG Blog

The following originally appeared in the Boston Globe on August 20, 2012

As the Con Edison lockout enters its 20^th day, stories are emerging of workers who are struggling without healthcare coverage and supervisors who are exhausted from suddenly being thrust into 12 hour days covering the very physical jobs they held years ago.  To make matters worse, temperatures are hitting record highs, and the utility is being forced to lower wattages being supplied to segments of their customer base.

As the political season heats up, so too does the rhetoric about who’s right and wrong in headline-making labor-management disputes. Recent among those was coverage of the Machinists strike at a Caterpillar hydraulic parts factory in Joliet, Illinois.

The battle in Wisconsin over public sector unions has left the state terribly divided. This Washington Post  piece from a couple of days ago quotes a range of people, describing an intensely polarized environment:

When it comes to labor-management relations, what typically dominates the headlines are the boisterous disagreements, emotional point-counterpoint arguments, and sad economic news of layoffs, lost benefits, even facility closures. And there’s an all too familiar refrain: labor blames management for failed leadership or corporate greed, while management cites excessive labor costs paralyzing the enterprise’s competitive ability.

"Actions speak louder than words.” Whoever was the adage-maker on that one sure had it right! It’s an expression that invariably comes up when labor and management leaders discuss how they should go about articulating their commitment to working  together. The phrase garners knowing nods, agreement all around, “Well of course that’s true” type statements.

I had a little epiphany during my annual spring drive to improve my golf game.  Understand that improving my current handicap should not be a great challenge, but I like to think that starting early will result in some seriously lower scores for those two or three rounds of golf I will actually get around to playing each year.  In any case I decided I should focus on putting – after all it’s the club I use most often in the course of a round, so…

How powerful they are. Individual alphabetic letters we put together to form words, some full of promise, others fraught with nuance and innuendo. Simple words when strung together declare war and proclaim peace; foster relationships and tear them apart. Put to paper, they are political manifesto, contracts that bind, poetry and prose. Uttered aloud, they incite riots, inspire greatness, challenge our belief systems in necessary ways. Put to music, they remind us of our allegiances, make our souls sing, our toes tap. We choose them with care and thought, also with reckless disregard.  They are powerful indeed, and often under-estimated.  Here is a case in point.

I know it’s bad form to contradict your mother (or any other elder for that matter), but more and more I believe the “practice makes perfect” mantra my Mom regularly espoused, shoots too low to hit the mark.  I am amazed how often I see people and whole corporations happily “practicing” processes and behaviors that are nonproductive at best and destructive at worst.