Endless Knots

Easy-peasy way to help Sandy folks

Coats. "New or clean gently used." 50K needed for Sandy victims.

Drop-off centers are in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Most people I know have a connection to Brooklyn -- friends are driving back and forth from Boston all the time.

So...If you know someone, send a coat or two. If you know me, email me and I'll make sure the coats get there.

Here's the article in full just in case clicking doesn't happen:

New York Cares is collecting new or clean gently used coats to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Over 50,000 coats are needed to help victims in areas such as Staten Island and the Rockaways.

Donations can be dropped of at the following three Prospect Park locations now through December 31:

• Litchfield Villa in Prospect Park
Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
95 Prospect Park West (lobby) (between 4th & 5th Streets)
Brooklyn, NY 11215

• Prospect Park Tennis Center
Daily, 7 a.m. – 11 p.m.
50 Parkside Avenue (lobby)
Brooklyn, NY 11218

• Parks District 14 Headquarters at Parade Ground
Daily, 7 a.m. – 4 p.m.
397 Coney Island Ave. (enter at back of the building on Parade Ground side, near public restrooms)
Brooklyn, NY 11218

For a complete list of collection sites, dates and times, visit newyorkcares.org or call 212-402-1173.

 

 

 

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Teams: We're There!

How great to discover while looking for something else we'd written that "Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?", the HBR article that we wrote with Ann Majchrzak and Arvind Molhatra, has been chosen as one of HBR's 10 Must Reads on Teams. Or in their words in the compilation:

This collection was previously published as "Harvard Business Review on Building Better Teams." We've moved it to HBR's 10 Must Reads series because the ideas are critical to the success of every manager and aspiring leader, meeting our high standards for must-read status.

We're in good company with Jon Katzenbach, among other great thinkers.

Thanks, HBR, Ann, Arvind, and our editor on that one, Ben Gerson!

Collaboration 2.0 by 3-year-olds

Confused about collaboration and what it really means? Lake and Finn help here, leaving us with a bit of a cliffhanger. Perhaps they'll be back to finish the story.

 

 

Transcript in case you are not familiar with "WordGirl" from the Planet Lexicon, who introduces words like these.

Me: First say collaborate.

Finn: Collaborate.

Mom: Can you guys explain what that means?

Lake: Collaborate means work together with two people.

Finn: Yes.

Mom: Who likes to collaborate?

Lake: Dr Twobrains and Granny May and Chuck and Toby. Likes to collaborate.

Mom: Cool.

Ethan: What do you have to say, Finny?

Finn: And there's two monsters, two monsters in WordGirl, yes.

Ethan: Do they collaborate?

Finn: Yes. Mom: Who are the two monsters?

Finn: The energy monster and that green monster.

Mom: Oh.

Me: Are they collaborating too?

Finn: Yes.

Me: What are the collaborating on?

Finn: On a mission.

Lake: What kind of mission?

Finn: A mission that stops WordGirl.

Me: A mission that stops WordGirl.

Ethan: Exciting.

Mom: And then what does WordGirl do?

Finn: She goes, she pretends that she's in jail.

Mom: And then what happens?

Finn: It's over.

Mom: Oh. She doesn't get out of jail?

Finn: She does get out of jail. She finds a way to get out of jail.

Mom: Cool.

Lake: ???

 

 

 

Post-Engage with Grace -- Year 5

Though I missed the annual Thanksgiving "Engage with Grace Blog Rally," it was not because I wasn't thinking about it. It's never too late to think about this stuff. In fact, it's never too early. The closer we bring death, the easier life is, at least in my (limited) experience. Having lived through a death where the person embraced the end, I am (eternally) grateful that he didn't fight it. In fact, Jeff Stamps entered his final year with enormous "grace."

Here again are the questions that "Engage with Grace" folks recommend families discuss; here also is their annual preamble to the conversation.

 

The Engage With Grace post for 2012

One of our favorite things we ever heard Steve Jobs say is… ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’

We love it for three reasons:
1) It reminds all of us that living with intention is one of the most important things we can do.
2) It reminds all of us that one day will be our last.
3) It’s a great example of how Steve Jobs just made most things (even things about death – even things he was quoting) sound better.

Most of us do pretty well with the living with intention part – but the dying thing? Not so much.

And maybe that doesn’t bother us so much as individuals because heck, we’re not going to die anyway!! That’s one of those things that happens to other people….

Then one day it does – happen to someone else. But it’s someone that we love. And everything about our perspective on end of life changes.

If you haven’t personally had the experience of seeing or helping a loved one navigate the incredible complexities of terminal illness, then just ask someone who has. Chances are nearly 3 out of 4 of those stories will be bad ones – involving actions and decisions that were at odds with that person’s values. And the worst part about it? Most of this mess is unintentional – no one is deliberately trying to make anyone else suffer – it’s just that few of us are taking the time to figure out our own preferences for what we’d like when our time is near, making sure those preferences are known, and appointing someone to advocate on our behalf.

Goodness, you might be wondering, just what are we getting at and why are we keeping you from stretching out on the couch preparing your belly for onslaught?

Thanksgiving is a time for gathering, for communing, and for thinking hard together with friends and family about the things that matter. Here’s the crazy thing – in the wake of one of the most intense political seasons in recent history, one of the safest topics to debate around the table this year might just be that one last taboo: end of life planning. And you know what? It’s also one of the most important.

Here’s one debate nobody wants to have – deciding on behalf of a loved one how to handle tough decisions at the end of their life. And there is no greater gift you can give your loved ones than saving them from that agony. So let’s take that off the table right now, this weekend. Know what you want at the end of your life; know the preferences of your loved ones.

Print out this one slide with just these five questions on it.

Have the conversation with your family. Now. Not a year from now, not when you or a loved one are diagnosed with something, not at the bedside of a mother or a father or a sibling or a life-long partner…but NOW. Have it this Thanksgiving when you are gathered together as a family, with your loved ones.

Why? Because now is when it matters. This is the conversation to have when you don’t need to have it. And, believe it or not, when it’s a hypothetical conversation – you might even find it fascinating. We find sharing almost everything else about ourselves fascinating – why not this, too? And then, one day, when the real stuff happens? You’ll be ready.

Doing end of life better is important for all of us. And the good news is that for all the squeamishness we think people have around this issue, the tide is changing, and more and more people are realizing that as a country dedicated to living with great intention – we need to apply that same sense of purpose and honor to how we die.

One day, Rosa Parks refused to move her seat on a bus in Montgomery County, Alabama. Others had before. Why was this day different? Because her story tapped into a million other stories that together sparked a revolution that changed the course of history.

Each of us has a story – it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We work so hard to design a beautiful life – spend the time to design a beautiful end, too. Know the answers to just these five questions for yourself, and for your loved ones. Commit to advocating for each other. Then pass it on. Let’s start a revolution.

Engage with Grace.

 

 

Superstorm Sandy collides with Supermess LIPA

"Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area."

Remember that famous line from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? In case you've forgotten, here's the awful story.

The week after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Aaron Broussard, then-president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, sobbed on national television as he spoke to the late "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, recounting the death of the mother of his county’s emergency services director. Eva Rodrigue, 92, along with perhaps thirty or more residents, drowned in St. Rita’s Nursing Home, after what Broussard described as days of bureaucratic promises broken.

He ticked off the list of the guilty:

“Were we abandoned by the federal government? Absolutely we were…nobody came here, sir. Nobody came. The federal government didn't come. The Red Cross didn't come. I'll give you a list of people that didn't come here, sir, and I was here…Did inefficiencies, did bureaucracy commit murder here? Absolutely, it did.”

We've yet to hear that bureaucracy is being charged with murder following Superstorm Sandy but the reports of massive dysfunction at the Long Island Power Authority certainly suggest organizational culpability. Consider this from Danny Hakim, Patrick McGeehan, and Michael Moss's piece in Tuesday's NY Times:

Customers have been exasperated not only by a lack of power, but also by the authority’s inability to communicate basic information. Long Islanders have recounted tales of phones unanswered at authority offices, of wildly inaccurate service maps and of broken promises to dispatch repair crews.

It gets worse (or is still worse--as of this writing 8,000 are still without power more than two weeks after the storm) and it's really echo-y of what Broussard said 8 years ago:

“Resources came late,” said Frank P. Petrone, chief executive of the Town of Huntington and a former official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When they came, there was no management to utilize those resources effectively. And it took 10 days for them to get their act together.”

Also from Petrone who tried to plan ahead only to discover that LIPA's crews didn't communicate when they finally arrived:

“The upper management couldn’t communicate with the middle management,” he said. “The middle management couldn’t communicate with the crews. And finally, when we had sufficient crews coming in — resources that should have been arranged before — they came in and had very little direction and they were flabbergasted at the condition of the infrastructure, the wiring, the entire system.”

A quick look at LIPA's publicly available 13-page PDF organizational chart shows 3 executive-level vacancies as of August 2012. Add to that the recent resignation of its COO and LIPA's leadership team resembles Swiss cheese more than an organization worthy of public confidence and trust.

Lastly, we arrive at news that reeks of the BP spill in the beleagured Gulf of Mexico. It turns out that LIPA is a shell company that outsources its operations. Remember all the finger pointing after the BP spill as it became nearly impossible to know which company was responsible for what, who was accountable for what, and who ultimately made the bad decisions that led to the spill? Lots of outsourcing. Here's what Reuters reported on Tuesday of this week:

LIPA, however, is a state-owned shell company that has only about 100 employees [all of whose positions are represented on their publicly available org chart]. It has outsourced the operation of its electric system to a unit of British power company National Grid PLC, which has said it is responsible for implementing LIPA's restoration plan.

Outsourcing is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that if you outsource, leadership must be fixated on clear lines of communication and have complete confidence in the competence of outside organization(s). And in yet another twist to the story, National Grid is "set to hand operations over to a unit of New Jersey power company Public Service Enterprise Group Inc in 2014," according to a Nov. 6, 2012, Reuters story. Although our research on this is still to be completed, it's likely that National Grid currently has massive outsourcing operations itself. That, coupled with the planned turnover of operations to yet another company in a short time (PSEG), makes the accountability/commitment-to-excellence worth questioning.

Given LIPA's empty leadership and problematic outsourcing, it is no wonder that a historic Frankenstorm is causing so much suffering. Going forward, it would be interesting to use OrgScope to fully analyze LIPA's (and/or National Grid's) organizational structure, examine lines of communication, and provide recommendations for transforming LIPA from a dangerous disconnected bureacracy to a fluid, communication-rich storm-proof network.

 

 

 

 

Merullo's "Lunch" launch, tonight, Newtonville Books, 7 PM

Photo by Amanda Stearns Merullo

Roland Merullo's launch party for Lunch with Buddha takes place tonight at Newtonville Books, 10 Langley Road, Newton Centre. Lots of parking, two blocks from the Newton Centre T, easy to walk to from virtually any of the Newtons.

And just in case you need more background on Roland, this from the press release:

Roland Merullo is an awarding-winning author of 14 books including 10 works of fiction.  Breakfast with Buddha, a nominee for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, is now in its 14th printing.  The Talk- Funny Girl was a 2012 ALEX Award Winner and named a "Must Read for 2012" by the Massachusetts Library Association and the Massachusetts Center for the Book; Revere Beach Boulevard was named one of the "Top 100 Essential Books of New England" by The Boston Globe, A Little Love Story was named one of "Ten Wonderful Romance Novels" by Good Housekeeping and Revere Beach Elegy won the Massachusetts Book Award for non fiction.
 
His books have been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Croatian.

And here's the book summary for purposes of tantalizing you. For the record, the material around losing a spouse is remarkably well portrayed:

On the surface, Lunch with Buddha is a story about family. Otto Ringling and his sister Cecelia could not be more different. He's just turned 50, an editor of food books at a prestigious New York publishing house, a man with a nice home in the suburbs, children he adores, and a sense of himself as being a mainstream, upper-middle-class American. Cecelia is the last thing from mainstream. For two decades she's made a living reading palms and performing past-life regressions. She believes firmly in our ability to communicate with those who have passed on.
 
It will turn out, though, that they have more in common than just their North Dakota roots.
 
In Lunch with Buddha, when Otto faces what might be the greatest of life's difficulties, it is Cecelia who knows how to help him. As she did years earlier in this book's predecessor, Breakfast with Buddha, she arranges for her brother to travel with Volya Rinpoche, a famous spiritual teacher - who now also happens to be her husband.
 
After early chapters in which the family gathers for an important event, the novel portrays a road trip made by Otto and Rinpoche, in a rattling pickup, from Seattle to the family farm in North Dakota. Along the way the brothers-in-law have a series of experiences - some hilarious, some poignant - all aimed at bringing Otto a deeper peace of mind. They visit American landmarks; they have a variety of meals, both excellent and awful; they meet a cast of minor characters, each of whom enables Rinpoche to impart some new spiritual lesson. Their conversations range from questions about life and death to talk of history, marijuana, child-rearing, sexuality, Native Americans, and outdoor swimming.
 
In the end, with the help of their miraculous daughter, Shelsa, and the prodding of Otto's own almost-adult children, Rinpoche and Cecelia push this decent, middle-of-the-road American into a more profound understanding of the purpose of his life. His sense of the line between possible and impossible is altered, and the story's ending points him toward a very different way of being in this world.

A woman as editor of the Boston Globe?

No, I've got no inside info nor am I starting a rumor (not deliberately anyway :) but...how 'bout it? With Marty Baron going to the Washington Post where he's replacing a man and whereas he replaced a man here in Boston and as only one newspaper of a major city (New York Times, interestingly the owner of the Globe) has a woman as editor, e.g. Chicago Sun-Times, Miami Herald, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, and...need I go on...all have men as editors AND insofar as we've just elected our first senator who is a woman in Massachusetts PLUS our neighbors to the north have a slate of all women representing them, one has to ask: Isn't it time?

(And before someone pipes up with this: Yes, women have been publishers of major papers for a long time.)

Ever since Margaret Fuller nabbed the greatest number of headlines of her time (famously writing 250 articles in 18 months for the New York Herald Tribune following her stint as the first editor of The Dial), the path to the editorial top of newspapers has been paved with testosterone, often very good testorsterone, mind you, but still, it is 2012.

A little googling reveals that a woman did edit a Boston newspaper at one time. 170 years ago, according to the New York State Library's Women in Journalism: Newspaper Milestones:

Cornelia Walter was editor of the Boston Transcript and the considered to be the first woman to edit a major newspaper in the United States. One of her reporting highlights came on August 3, 1842, during a race riot in Philadelphia, in which she chronicled the plight of the black citizens who had been victimized and left homeless.

Meanwhile, I'm very happy to report that the paper where I got my start, The Pottstown Mercury, has as its editor, Nancy March.

So, Boston Globe Search Committee, how about it? Can you live up to the great standard set by The Merc? (Yeah, I know, The Times is a tad more impressive to some of you rubes...)

 

Will we run out of generals?

Just wondering. In the US, there are only 38 four-star active-duty generals in total, if Wikipedia is right, including 11 Army generals. If things keep degenerating as they have been in the past few days, then ... what happens? Does Congress suddenly promote more? Granted, General Petraeus had already resigned but now that another general is in hot water for excessive emailing (so to speak) and a third has just been demoted for "lavish spending," are we going to have a general shortage?

Pub date for "Lunch with Buddha"

This is from Roland Merullo's Facebook status, simply too good to just "share" on FB. Book #15+ from, in my view, the best living American writer. I know that's high praise but ... read a half-dozen or so of his books and then decide whether his subjects are as human, compelling, and challenging as life itself -- and whether his mastery of writing is as superb as anyone's-- and did I mention his humor?

Bostonians: Thursday night, as in day after tomorrow, Newtonville Books, 7 PM, for official launch of Lunch with Buddha, in the high 3000s on Amazon at the moment. All the writers reading here know what this means. Go, Buddha!

Now for those of you with normal vision, the words from the man himself:

Status Update

By Roland Merullo

A famous writer friend of mine once said, on the publication date of his book, "you half-expect a parade in front of the house with sirens and a marching band". Today is Lunch with Buddha's oficial pub date and I can't say I'm watching out the window for the big parade. Still, even after fifteen or so of these, it's a nice feeling. My thanks to Peter Sarno and his crew for the massive amount of work they've done, for the investors and Kickstarter contributors, for all the readers our there who make it possible for me to keep going, and for the kind ones who've written encouraging notes. It's a good day. I'm grateful to be able to do this. . . even without the parade.

 

 

Waiting, digital style

I've spent a fair amount of time in hospitals over the past four years as various family members have had to endure lengthy stays and difficult treatment. Today, I'm with a dear friend who's having relatively routine surgery in this age of replacement parts (total hip in this case) and I'm having the chance to see how another hospital, not in New York or Boston, handles things.

At Dartmouth-Hitchcock, the sole academic medical center in New Hampshire, it was evident from the first appointments that the hospital had gone digital, i.e. most of the traditional paper was notably absent. You know those clipboards where you fill out the same sheets over and over? Here, patients receive tablets (OK, not iPads, but still) where they enter info that goes into a permanent record, thus saving a few branches, at least, not to mention accurate info being available henceforth.

Here are two artifacts from today that are different from what I've seen elsewhere. The first is a sheet of info (yes, it is paper, but in this case it seems to make sense), letting me know the patient's identifying number, which links to a pager such that I can wander around the campus, and to, second artifact, info that's displayed on screens inside and outside the waiting room, letting me know exactly what the patient's status is ("Intra-op" for the past 37 minutes as of this writing). Very cool. Take a look.