NANCY CAROL MOODY
  • Home
  • Books
  • Publications
  • Poems
  • About
  • Coming Up
  • Contact Nancy

Do Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well

4/30/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
One of my favorite things to do on Sunday morning is read the "Corner Office" feature in the Business section of The New York Times. Every week, a different corporate leader is asked a series of questions relating to her or his management philosophy. The responses are insightful and well-considered, and with rare exception, the executives cite personal work experiences which have informed their points of view.

I'm a better behind-the-scenes person than a leader myself, but having spent 26 years with the postal service under managers ranging from A+ to Abysmal on the effectiveness scale, I've given a lot of thought to what qualities make a good workplace leader. "Corner Office" has offered me some new perspectives. But it also could be that I'm so enthusiastic about the feature because so many of the great ideas I read there reinforce and validate my own opinions about what it takes to be a successful manager.

So, Sunday after Sunday, Owners and Presidents and CEOs sit with me at my dining room table and tell me about how they run their worlds. These are the exceptional parents of their industries, paying keen attention to their employees' needs, listening to their concerns, encouraging openness in the sharing and discussion of ideas. Theirs is a position of command, tempered by reason and fairness and compassion. These are the leaders who will be shaping corporate culture for years to come.

Or it would seem. With all this love drizzling down from the top, are the workers at the bottom of the cake feeling content? A while back, one of my physicians, whose practice consists entirely of women, told me that she routinely asks her patients how their worklives are going. My doctor told me that in the prior 2 1/2 years, only one of her patients had responded favorably to the query. And that was a woman in her early twenties who worked primarily with young children. Of course this was definitely a most unscientific survey. But it had me wondering, so I poked around a bit to see what workers are thinking about their jobs these days. A recent CareerBuilder survey has 67% of transportation and utility workers expressing satisfaction with their jobs. The number drops to 48% for retail employees. If you're a half-full kind a person, perhaps 1-in-2 or 2-in-3 are comely figures. But I'd give my nod to half-emptiness on this one. If a half or even two-thirds of workers are content, that still leaves a large percentage of employees feeling out on the edge.

I'm not naïve. The jewel of happiness contains many facets, and I'm not here to discuss all the cuts and bevels. But I'm
thinking of these leaders whose words I've read, their top hats a-sparkle with good ideas. If those ideas were implemented from top to bottom, I believe they'd go a long way toward increasing employee satisfaction. There appears to be a gap between upper management's ideals and how those ideals translate to the workers in the field. So where's the disconnect? A clue comes to me from my mother, her ghost-words tagging after me all these years. I always thought the buck stopped with her, but perhaps she was merely a middle-manager herself, forever negotiating the distance between the realities of the larger world and the imperatives of bringing up children within it. I can still hear her voice today: Don't do as I do, just do as I say.


0 Comments

    RSS Feed

    Nancy Carol Moody

    I'm a poet and a letter-writer. Yup, that kind. The kind who uses pens and paper and actual stamps. The kind who will leave the house with nothing on the agenda but to get to the mailbox before the scheduled pick-up time. The kind who understands that technology is a wondrous thing, but nothing quite beats finding a real letter with a real stamp on it amid the credit card solicitations, pizza coupons and seminar catalogs.

    Picture


    Archives

    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012


    Categories

    All
    Animals
    Art
    Eugene
    Happiness
    Mail
    Medical Stuff
    Monday Morning
    My House
    Mysteries
    Negative Space
    Nostalgia
    On Writing
    Oregon
    Poets And Poetry
    Sports
    The New Yorker
    The New York Times
    The New York Times Magazine
    To Do Lists
    To-Do Lists
    University Of Oregon
    Work


    Blogroll

    All About Oregon
    Anita's Poetry Blog
    Anvils & Edelweiss
    Colette Jonopulos
    Evelyn Searle Hess, Author Blog
    Haiku Oregon
    Off the Page
    Poetry & Popular Culture
    Stone Soup
    Writer's Island

    RSS Feed

© 2022 Nancy Carol Moody
Photos used under Creative Commons from marc falardeau, Sedona Hiker, juggernautco, jetheriot, Jaime Olmo, Lucas Guimaraes, titanium22, Benimoto, Tim Green aka atoach, quinn.anya, gadl, rjs1322, photosteve101, Epiclectic, Bert Kaufmann, Dave Hamster, Nesster, WarmSleepy, Double--M, appadaumen_de, Epiclectic, x-ray delta one, Krikit ♥, Hey Paul Studios, Steve Snodgrass, andydr, One From RM, Dusty J, IIun, out of ideas, claumoho, Marxchivist, AtomDocs, TheCreativePenn, acnatta, ell brown, Dyanna Hyde, katerha, ThrasherDave, highwaycharlie, photoverulam, opensourceway, mas_to, opal nova, kk+, Spigoo, quinn.anya, Flóra, Wonderlane, MaretH., JD Hancock, sunshinecity, dollen, cliff1066™, Epiclectic, PinkMoose, DebMomOf3, Jonathan Daroca, Family Art Studio, Gonmi, Jilligan86, Epiclectic, Infrogmation, christine zenino, j_lai, Andrew Morrell Photography, anemoneprojectors (getting through the backlog), exfordy, andy_tyler, psd, mikecogh, "T"eresa, Epiclectic, TheGiantVermin, cybrariankt, Sergei Golyshev, Epiclectic, Kate Cooper, Ray Larabie, kathia shieh, Homini:), Robert Banh, Hitchster, squeezeomatic, marfis75, katerha, Chrissy Olson, flikr, jenny downing, snapp3r, BazzaDaRambler, Robert Couse-Baker, leppre, Marcin Wichary, jeff_golden, jpockele, Paul Lowry, Nina J. G., Lincolnian (Brian), Epiclectic, peasap, juggernautco, cogdogblog, U.S. Embassy The Hague, gui.tavares, Wonderlane, stu_spivack, Bitterjug, puroticorico, wayne's eye view, The Travelling Bum, HockeyholicAZ, david.nikonvscanon, Paul Lowry, OnTask, net_efekt, oswaldo, donireewalker, Sister72, herval, teadrinker, James Nash (aka Cirrus), jaqian, Yosemite James, Tim in Sydney, C.K.H., Nadia Szopinska, Walraven, ArmandoH2O, Peter Blanchard
  • Home
  • Books
  • Publications
  • Poems
  • About
  • Coming Up
  • Contact Nancy