Dark and Sunny

Dark and Sunny

by | Apr 24, 2022 | Consulting

The brothers were close in age, identical twins in fact, born two minutes apart. This was a source of pride and pain as the “older” twin was always saying “Respect your elders!” The younger twin didn’t like that teasing much, but his frowns were not long-lived.

People usually had some difficulty telling the boys apart; they seemed to be exact physical copies of each other, but these boys did not grow up with the fun of the pranks of exchanging places as some twins do. For as identical as they were physically, whenever they spoke it was apparent that they were completely opposite in attitude.

The “older”  complained a great deal. He saw the defects in anything. A spring cloudless day was “a little cold.” A person’s friendly gesture caused him to wonder “What does he want?” When the family was making plans, he often said things like, “Let’s consider the worst-case scenario,” which sounded strange when he was six.

His brother’s disposition was completely opposite. He expected good from everything and everyone. On a day dark with rain clouds he would say,  “I think the sun is poking through.” When it poured, the youngest twin would say, “It’ll be over soon, in fact, I think it’s stopping.”

The neighbors called the boys “Dark” and “Sunny” though those were not their names. When unsure of something they would joke, “Let’s ask Dark and Sunny and then pick what’s in between, that’ll be closest to the truth.” Everyone would laugh.

Once when the boys were eight years-old, they overheard  a group of neighbors tell.one of these jokes. Dark was unhappy. “They like you better than me. They think I’m depressing. Why do they call me Dark?” Sunny tried to comfort his brother, “Come-on, bro, they’re only joking, let’s go walk the bridge railing.” “Too dangerous,” moaned Dark.

The parents grew concerned about their boys. The twins ninth birthday was approaching and the parents hatched a plan. The adults had always given their boys gifts that were the same or complementary, similar toys, games they could play together, matching clothes, with small differences so they could tell them apart in the wash.

This year they decided would be different.

The birthday came. The parents took Dark into a room with nine brightly wrapped presents that contained toys, and clothes.

They handed Sunny an old shovel and told him to clean the manure from the barn.

The birthday wore on. Dark opened each present. He thanked his parents for each one, but he also fault with each and all. This toy was “poorly made”. That one had “sharp edges.” This sweater was an inconsistent color. He hesitated to play with toys that might break or wear clothes because he might ruin them.

The parents despaired, but decided to check on Sunny.

They found the younger twin at work on the load of manure that they parents had delivered. The dung pile filled the barn  and the boy worked furiously. He was sweating, but smiling as he shoveled. “How’s it going?” They asked.

“Great!” the boy enthused.

“I figure with all this manure, there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere.”

This is an old story. I often find that old stories are Sufi stories, teaching vehicles of the Islamic mystics. But I am not sure about its origins.

It is usually told as the optimist-pessimist contrast. “Isn’t it much better to go through life with a positive orientation. Don’t be a ‘Debbie Downer’” (of Saturday Night Live fame).

I first heard the story when I joined Analysis & Design at Gemini Consulting. A&D was Gemini’s turbo-charged sales process for reengineering projects. An A&D was a smaller project sold “at cost” (usually at a 15-20% margin vs. a 60-70% margin for normal projects). The objective as told to the client was to do detailed analysis to diagnose problems and to design a solution – a project design to deliver results.

Of course, Gemini hoped to deliver the results, so the A&D objective was to sell the second project. But it was a client decision point. The client could choose to deliver the results on their own and not hire Gemini for the Results Delivery (RD) project.

Most can see that this process, A&D to RD, is open to abuse and conflicts of interest and I certainly witnessed some of that. But Gemini in its heyday had an 80% conversion rate of A&Ds that sold the larger RD project and Gemini’s clients were by and large happy with their work.

The A&D team was under a lot of pressure. A&D projects were usually eight weeks long. They needed to word hard and fast and find process defects that were costing the company money. The team was usually on-site at 7:00 a.m. and often didn’t leave till 10:00 p.m. Consultants frequently flew out Sunday night and home Friday night. It was a meat grinder that many Geminites avoided.

But A&D had esprit d’corps. They believed that they “fed the firm.” They took pride in their workaholism. (I did mention that I was part of this unit, right?)

So when I heard this story in A&D it was in it’s extremely truncated version, just a piece of the punchline really. . . ”Whatcha doin’?” . . . “Lookin’ for the pony in the barn.” Sometimes analysts just said “lookin’ for the pony.” That communicated “I don’t have time to talk , but I will emerge from all this shit with a smile on my face and a ‘finding’ in my hand.”

Mostly, when I heard the entire story told the “Sunny” character was the hero. Everyone would rather be around the optimist. So I’ve heard the story in leadership workshops and personal growth webinars. The message is always how my sister used to answer questions about her blood type, “B-positive and that’s my attitude in life!”

However, once I heard a process improvement trainer tell this storymto a group of internal process improvement consultants. He let the laughter at Sunny’s pony quest die down and then he said:

“The twins grew up. Dark went into quality control. Sunny became a salesman.”

He then proceeded to conduct a discussion of using everyone’s strengths on an improvement project. Sunnys were good at management presentations and funding requests. Darks were good at seeing unintended consequences of a plan. “Everyone has a role,” he said, and then he showed this Hagar the Horrible comic strip.

Hagar the Horrible comic strip 1979 drawn by Dik Browne, used with permission of Chris Browne
Joy and Wisdom: First and Last Words

Joy and Wisdom: First and Last Words

by | Apr 17, 2022 | Living

Joy bursts from a neo-being and is absorbed and amplified by an adoring ancestor. Later, the child hangs on the parent’s last breath silently hoping for last guidance or “intimations of immortality.”

“From the mouths of babes.” “From beyond the grave.” First and last words are powerful.

Let’s face it. Language is important to humans. Perhaps animals talk and we just don’t understand. That may even be likely, but when humans speak a different language and we just don’t understand, it is frustrating, a challenge to be overcome.

In the words of comedian Steve Martin:

“Dog is chien; cat is chat. Hat is chapeau. Those French! They have a different word for everything!”

Language is meaning; it is communication. It is central to our humanity. So is it any wonder that we so anxiously await our children’s first words?

“She was speaking from 3 months!” Really?

There is often a little friendly competition about whether a baby will open wide eyes, smile and first say “m-m-a-m-a-a” or “d-d-a-d-a-a.”  We decide what we want to be called and thrust our faces into the entire field of vision of an infant repeating some sounds over and over.  “Come on babygirl say “Pa, Pa-Pa, Pa – Pa, Pa, PA P-P-P-AAAAH!” It must be terrifying

Some grandparents take the appellation first mouthed by a little butterball that can’t rightly form words. Why else would there be glowing grayhairs at the grocery responding to names like “Gangy, Tinzi, Gumgum or Bingghi.”

First children often speak first words early. This is no doubt a function of parents, grandparents, family, friends and strangers pointing at things and repeating the word for them, over-and-over-and-over. When my children were little they even got this from the TV -Sesame Street “Near -Far, Near, Far, Near, Far. “AAAAAAAaaEEEEKkk! Can we please turn that off.”

That repetition can apply to whatever. We have a friend who swears that her first word was “cheese.” Apparently slices of American cheese were the first solid food she was given and she learned the word and repeated it early and often for the treat.

My youngest daughter was born in England and we lived in a section of Northwest London near Gladstone Park populated with enough Irish immigrants that it was known as County Cricklewood. Helen O’Sullivan lived behind us and was quite taken with baby Caitlin. She soaked the corner of a washcloth in her heavily sweetened tea for the baby to suck on saying “cuppa teee,” which predictably became one of Caitlin’s first words.

My first daughter, Tegan, is very verbal. She spoke early and often and still does. My son was and is less talkative.

When Zac was small he was slower than his sister had been in speaking. It may be his personality. He grew up to have other preferred media of communication than words. (He is a working artist.) When he was little, we were concerned that he was not talking. We worried out-loud to our friends, Steve and Roberta. They had a son Adam who was Tegan’s age, but not as verbal. “Kids are all different.” They reassured us.

They told us about friends of theirs with a little boy, Jake. “Jake never spoke. He was almost three-years-old. His parents were really worried. They’d taken the kid to specialists to see if his vocal cords and other equipment was functional. It was, but they were talking about an exploratory procedure. The were driving home from the hospital in Boston and they took a detour to drive by the Boston Common. It was Christmas and the whole place was lit up. They were worry-whining about the procedure. Suddenly they heard a little voice.

“Wow! Look at all the lights!” 

“Bob almost wrecked the car. But they turned around and there was Jake staring out the window from his car seat, totally transfixed. He just kept saying it. “Wow! Look at all the lights. Evidently the kid hasn’t stopped talking since,” said Steve.

Last words are something different. Somehow we think when people are dying something truly wise will pass their lips. Sometimes that pressure is too great.

Karl Marx’s housekeeper kept asking. Finally in frustration he replied,

“Go on. Get Out! Last words are for fools who believe they have not said enough in life.”

When my mother died at 93, she waited until all three of he children arrived. We sang songs we learned from her when she was a Camp Fire leader. She had no last words. We were singing “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes” and she smiled, closed her eyes and breathed her last.

When he died at 95 two years earlier, my father didn’t really have any last words either, though he may have wanted to.  We kids were called to his bedside at 1:00 a.m. He was out cold helped by a morphine drip. We waited and waited for about an hour. Finally, I said to my sisters “Why don’t we come back at 7:00?” We left. Evidently at around 4:30 a.m. the power in the nursing home went out. There was a great rushing wind and another resident saw him walking down the hall. Even denied last words, he made his exit memorable.

People do say things as they die, some more profound than others.

Some express regret. I have long promised myself that I would not say what John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, said on his death bed:

“I wish I had drunk more Champagne.”

I have made sure that I celebrate and sip plenty of bubbly and will continue to do so till the end.

American actor Humphrey Bogart said goodbye to his wife Lauren Becall, as she left to get their children, with something that sounded a lot like his famous line from the movie Casablanca, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Unfortunately, he passed before she returned, but before he left he turned to a nurse and said, “I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”

The last words of some are the perfect reflection of who they were in life. Oscar Wilde died in a hotel after bitterly complaining about the aesthetics of the hotel room wallpaper in the room where he was. “Either that wallpaper goes or I do.” After he died the hotel changed the wallpaper in his room.

Gustav Mahler, the composer and conductor was vigorously waving his arms when a nurse tried to quiet him. “Mozart,”  he smiled and died.

Emily Dickenson said, “I must go, the fog is rising.”

Some pass giving us hints of what lays beyond. Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the lightbulb and so much else, said, “It’s very beautiful over there.”

Steve Jobs, said “Oh wow. Oh, wow, Oh Wow!” A little like Jake’s first words. Promising.

But in the words of the Iris Dement song, “I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”

Probably just telling those you love that you love them is more than enough, as did John Wayne, Vince Lombardi, W.C. Fields and many others.

As a writer, there is a great temptation to want to craft something.

In my senior year of college I acted in a dramatized version of Edgar Lee Masters “Spoon River Anthology.” This is a collection of poems spoken by residents of a graveyard in a small Mid-Western town. The characters each spoke about their lives and loves, pains and joys. It is a moving portrait of the dead looking back at life.

I spoke the last words in the play and I always found them to be the kind of peaceful ending I might wish.. When I read the book of poems, these words were not there. “Oh no! Did the scriptwriter make them up?” I thought.

No. It turns out the words are Edgar Lee Masters’ epitaph:

 “I think I’ll sleep. There is no sweeter thing nor fate more blessed than to sleep. Here world, I pass you like an orange to a child. I can no more with you. Do what you will.”

“Wow! Look at all the lights.”

      Beyond The Silver Bullet 

      Beyond The Silver Bullet 

by | Apr 10, 2022 | Leading, Leading Change

I often heard the phrase “silver bullet” from clients. ”We don’t expect a silver bullet, but…” “Such and such [solution to a problem] isn’t a silver bullet, but we should at least try it.”

I think the term comes from folklore about werewolves, allegedly killed by said silver bullet. Those silver bullets might have been a little difficult to come by for the average villager, but, once found, eliminated the werewolf infestation quicker than Raid gets rid of cockroaches. Monster killers have always carried silver bullets, so whether you were Dean and Sam Winchester of the television series Supernatural, or Abraham or Gabriel Van Helsing (vampire killers of multiple movies), or Clayton Moore in the classic television series The Lone Ranger, Silver Bullets-R-Us.

In business, the silver bullet is a simple but sure-fire solution to a complex and/or chronic problem. Once you use it the problem goes away completely. I heard the term in the following scenarios, all of which should be avoided:

  • Jumping to a solution before understanding the root cause
  • Managing by the latest fad
  • Trying yet another problem-solving methodology when the “going gets tough”

Jumping to Solutions

In process improvement, one indicator of a well-written problem statement is that everyone who hears it wants to help solve the problem. As human beings, though, we frequently describe ourselves as “problem-solvers” when we really are “solution-finders.” And sometimes our solutions go looking for a problem to solve. So all too often we hear a problem, equate the problem with one we have seen before, and propose the solution to that problem as the solution to this one.

Sometimes these silver bullet solutions even work, which reinforces our tendency to jump to the solution before understanding the root cause of the problem. However, when the silver bullet fails we typically suggest a different silver bullet, not realizing that the failure was due to a lack of understanding of the problem. This leads to stops and starts in process improvement, as well as in bigger problem-solving like business strategy. People have a tendency to fix symptoms, but miss the underlying problem. It’s all because we fall in love with our silver bullet.

Managing by Fad

“Here comes the flavor of the month.”

This was how I was often greeted as a consultant in my first foray on the frontline. I was sometimes insulted, but recognize it now as “change program fatigue.” Many companies overuse consultants, and many managers are always looking for the next “shiny new thing.” To be fair, consultants too often have invented new service offerings as the revelation everyone has been missing until now. Recognize these?

Re-Engineering Economic Value Added
Lean Six Sigma

MBWA

(management by wandering around)

 Innovation
Rapid Application Development Matrix Management
Delayering Empowerment
Balanced Scorecard Management by Objectives
Agile software development Theory Z
Self-managed work teams

All these methodologies have merit. They also all have their own jargon, deployment plan, key performance indicators (KPIs), and critical success factors (CSFs). Sometimes they require reorganizing and giving people new job titles, assessment criteria, evaluation and even certification. They voraciously consume an organization’s resources for a promised ideal gain.

As in investing, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

While each of these methodologies can improve business performance, the maxim “less is more” is relevant. If a company viewed methodology as a silver bullet and used all of them, say one or two per year, it would likely achieve little except confuse the heck out of its workforce.

Why would any company use a silver bullet? Perhaps it faces an intractable problem like the need for a turnaround, or the CEO just wants to “spice things up a little.” I’ve heard frontline people cynically speculate about a new manager, “He’s new. He just needs a ‘quick fix’ to ‘declare victory’ before moving on to his next job. Just wait it out. This too shall pass.”

Whatever the reason, these mangers are jumping to an easy solution, a silver bullet.

Not Toughing It Out

Most methodologies require disciplined implementation. Discipline and hard work aren’t compatible with a belief in silver bullets.

So what happens is that midway through implementation, just when the first difficulties appear, someone says, “You know, this is just the problem that [Insert different methodology here] is intended to solve. We should try that.”

In other words, “This one is hard. Let’s try a new silver bullet.”

I suspect that looking for silver bullets and achieving consistent results are negatively correlated, like losing weight and trying every new diet that comes along. I’ve discovered the secret to losing weight for me is “Eat-less-move-more-stay-out-of-the-Häagen-Dazs.” That’s not easy for me, of course, but it does address the root cause of the problem.

I think this exploration will cause me to add a couple of lines to that mantra:

There are no Silver Bullets. Stick with it. Persistence is the only thing that pays off.

The Entry Learning Curve

The Entry Learning Curve

by | Apr 4, 2022 | Consulting

 “Tell me, what did you learn?”

It was the last team meeting of my first consulting project. The team was entirely composed of London Business School first year MBA students. We had just spent the summer studying the UK commercial vehicle market to determine the feasibility of two new truck lines. The client was ERF, a Cheshire assembler of heavy duty forty-four-ton articulated lorry cabs (called tractor-trailers or semis in the US). ERF asked us to study whether they should build a thirty-two-ton,  eight-wheel vehicle (think garbage truck or road construction dump truck) and a sixteen-ton box van (used for grocery distribution and U-Haul rentals). As the “data secretary” for the team, I felt that the question was directed at me.

I stumbled a bit over the words but launched into a summary of the findings. “In the market for the sixteen-ton distribution vehicle there is no premium end of the market. There is a substantial penalty for vehicle weight because margins are razor thin. . . .”

“No, what did you learn?”

The questioner, Basil, had been the team’s advisor while the project leader, Dick, went to the south of France for four weeks. Basil was a tall lanky man, a bit craggy of face, and a kind, almost professorial demeanor. In our weekly meetings with Basil, he would quietly listen as we reported findings, his long fingers steepled, touching his lips. He only lowered his hands slightly to make the occasional quiet suggestion; we students were pretty much on our own. I had no idea what he was looking for, but commenced again.

“By contrast, the thirty-two-ton market does offer a premium for durability, and the power of Gardiner drivetrain has a certain cache. . . .”

“No. . . what did you learn?” Someone else jumped in to describe how the British Leyland Chieftain was the clear price leader in the sixteen-ton market and no competitor seemed to be able to underprice them, nor establish a premium, for even six months without dramatically impacting their own sales.

“No, no, no. . . well. . .”  Basil intoned in a gently condescending way. “Let me tell you what you should have learned. Perhaps, you learned how, with very little prior industry experience or knowledge, to get yourselves to the point where you could have intelligent business conversations with people who had worked in this industry for their entire careers.”

I looked around the room. It was clear that all my fellow students were simultaneously coming to the same realization that we had in fact done that.

“If you did learn that,” said Basil quietly, “It will feed you for the rest of your lives.”

Thinking back on that first project, how did we learn enough about the UK truck market to be credible to industry insiders? We read a lot and talked to friendly industry people before we ever talked to a client.

For me, the excitement of starting a new project and the steepness of the learning curve are what kept me in consulting for thirty-seven years.

After so many years in the field, I’ve recognized that each phase of the consulting process has its own learning requirements:

From Discovery to Decision the learning requirements are technical and project-specific. Disengagement is hard. Many consultants want to pitch more work and forget that the client must implement.

But in Entry the learning curve is the steepest because the consultant must learn enough about the industry and company to earn the right to proceed.

I worked with some consulting firms and project managers who were really good at preparing the team to learn quickly.

I also worked with consulting firms and project managers who didn’t spend enough time preparing the team. They sent consultants to initial interviews with little prep and clients felt like the consultants were “borrowing their watch to tell them the time.”

Some consultants feel the need to demonstrate how smart they are, which gives all consultants the reputation for arrogance.

But the consulting firms and project managers who are good at preparing the team all provide some of the same things:

  • An industry pre-read deck, which includes Information about:
    • Customers and buying criteria
    • Competitors and their products and services
    • Relevant previous industry project materials, if available
    • Articles about industry history and trends
    • Harvard Business Review industry notes (or similar)
  • Company background
    • Annual report and analyst notes if a public company (client-supplied data if a private company)
    • Organization charts
    • Relevant previous company project materials, if available
    • Product/service brochures
  • The project proposal or statement of work or the relevant portions of those documents
  • An email and telephone list that includes all consultants and clients and rules (e.g., only the project manager is to talk to the CEO)
  • An opening meeting to discuss questions from the pre-read and the project plan

Many times all this information isn’t available at the beginning of the project, but a good project manager creates a template and charges the team to help fill it in. Clarify what is confidential material and be careful to “not leave this stuff in the photocopier.”

These materials can’t cover everything, but it can lessen the magnitude of the learning curve, which provides a lot of the “fun” of consulting.

And learning quickly “will feed you for the rest of your lives.”

A Pocketknife

A Pocketknife

by | Apr 3, 2022 | Living

Raymond J. Culler, my father, gave me my first pocketknife when I was 11 years old. He said that his father told him at around that age that “a man should always have a pocketknife in his pocket.” I liked the knife; I liked that he called me ‘a man’. And because I had never met him, I liked hearing about my grandfather’s advice to his son.

It was a piece of advice that my father followed until the day he died. When I cleaned out clothes at the nursing home, his khaki pants were folded neatly over a chair, in the pocket was a small bone-handled pocketknife, well worn and razor sharp.

Pocket knives were something he bought, something he “picked up somewhere.” They were something you could always give him as a gift –he’d open the blades check the sharpness on his fingernail, admire the handle, joke about playing mumble-de-peg on the living room coffee table till Nan would tell him to “put the knife away and open the rest of the presents.”

Nan, my mother, told a story about the Depression, which she said – “will tell you a lot about your father.”

“We weren’t poor like a lot of folks. We had the shop; people always needed printing. Customers often couldn’t pay for things in cash – they just didn’t have it – but we took ‘scrip.’ We took milk scrip for printing the dairy flyers and traded for bread and meat; we took scrip from the grocery for the window sale cards and traded it for scrip for the movie theatre tickets.

But there were some things that you needed cash for – supplies for the shop and the like – and there were only two or three customers who paid in cash. Well, nobody paid on time, you had to go ask them for the money and usually the best time to do that was when they were ordering again. Raymond was out taking an order and collecting $5 from a job and we needed that money. He came home with $4.00. When I asked him where the rest of the money was and he told me he’d bought a pocketknife.

‘$1.00! RAYMOND! $1.00 for A POCKETKNIFE!’ I yelled at him. A dollar was half a week’s groceries.

Well, he got upset and said, ‘If a man can’t buy himself a pocketknife, then life just isn’t worth living.’”

Nan meant this story to show Raymond’s poor understanding of priorities, which, God knows, he demonstrated on more than one occasion, but I took it as reinforcement for his admonishment to me –“a man always ought to have a pocketknife in his pocket.”

When he died he left a small collection of pocket knives. I distributed them to his grandchildren, with this story and this note:

“This is one of the knives he left – handed down, bought, or picked up from the estate of someone he cared for- now it is handed down to you so you can “always have a pocketknife in your pocket, “ (except on airplanes or other places where metal detectors interfere with the nostalgia.)”

I saved a couple of knives for myself and now I have a small collections of pocket knives. Oh, there are no 100 year old Case knives or similar ones that get bid up into the thousands of dollars on eBay. And I don’t have many, just enough to have a different one each day of the week plus a couple extras, but my family know that if you’re stuck for a present for Alan, Pop, Grampa, go to a garage sale and pick up an old jackknife and at birthdays when someone uses a too much tape for a little one, you’ll hear, “Go ask Grampa for his knife.”

I’m wondering what there is about this tool that made at least three generations of men in my family advise their sons  (and daughters in my case) to carry one.

Well, it is a tool with many uses, cutting package tape, opening envelops, or being a makeshift screwdriver. You can sharpen a pencil, dig mud outta your shoes, and slice an apple. Hopefully, washing the blade before and after.

It’s called a jack knife. A jack was a workman who could do passable work at al variety of tasks. Remember the expression, “jack of all trades.” The men in my family advise to be competent at several of the types physical work involved with living, so you don’t always have to “call a guy.” My father was a lot better at that than I am, but my son is better than I am too.

The second half of that expression “master of none,” Isn’t something we recommend. Finding at least one physical job you work to master is a good idea.

For everything else, you can’t go wrong having a pocketknife on you.