Northbound Train
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| Photo from Slate.com |
Last September an article in Mother Jones by Julia Lurie reported that “thanks to the drought, many people in East Porterville can't cook, shower, or flush the
toilet”. The part of Ms. Lurie’s opening
sentence that caught my attention was “East Porterville ”. As far as I recall the entire town of Porterville is slightly larger in area
than my backyard and I was puzzled why there was a need to officially designate
a portion of it as being east of the rest of it. The City of Los Angeles
consists of 503 square miles so I can see the practicality of referring to
part of it as East Los Angeles . With Porterville
I read further and discovered that
East Porterville is an unincorporated suburb adjacent to the City of Porterville Los Angeles San Francisco or even Fresno , Porterville Exeter
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| Photo from ci.porterville.ca.us |
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| Image from pinterest.com |
Typically OD involved developing mission statements, charters, objectives, goals and team building. Workers and their bosses were led through a series of touchy-feely exercises that encouraged over-communicating and often amounted to a PG-rated version of truth or dare. It is still with us today and is packaged and sold much as it was back then, as a process for enabling an organization to change its culture and improve performance. There exists no hard evidence whatsoever that any such result has ever been achieved.
I maintain when companies prove to be a disappointment to customers and employees it is the direct result of the people running things. The way to change an organization for the better is to sack the idiot(s) in charge. It's never a secret. Isn't it true that at every job you've ever had, everybody knew who was screwing things up? Isn't it also your experience that it's never someone in the mailroom? In 30 years of consulting it never took me more than a day of talking to workers to find out who was the problem.
Many of the skills needed to be effective in one's job can be learned where as ability is the hand fate dealt you. Realistically, if a boss lacks the ability to do their job and/or is a screaming asshole, no amount of T-group sessions is going to help. Consulting firms could fix companies overnight if they chose to do so. Unfortunately, the driving force behind consulting is to make as much money as possible. Taking a day or two to clean house for a client is a choice that can't compete with a long-term, labor-intensive OD engagement. It's relatively easy to fix a place but it doesn't pay well.
In the 1970s management consultants all across the U.S. could hardly contain their glee. When it came to pitching OD to a board of directors or a city council it was too wholesome sounding for anyone to voice concerns. The work itself had no end point and generated oodles of billable hours. Best of all, by design there were never any measures put in place which meant no one would ever know what benefit resulted from the process, if any.
The Porterville Chief of Police had called the firm I was working for and asked that someone be sent up to help them with goal setting. I had been doing quite a bit of this sort of thing with other small cities so I was assigned. My experience working with the various parts of a typical city organization had taught me that policemen were a separate breed. Plainly speaking, they are a different species from everyone else who works in finance, public works, redevelopment, parks and recreation, building and safety or any other group. I never believed that this difference was the result of performing police work. I preferred the theory that policemen were born not made, and that's what leads them all to eventually gravitate to law enforcement. To me it is similar to the idea presented by Yuval Harari in his book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, that for at least a few centuries, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals shared time together on this planet.
I had previously done work including goal setting for a dozen or so police departments. Goal setting is nothing more than (1) indicating what it is you are supposed to do in your job; and (2), devising a way to measure if it gets done. It is a ridiculously simple task requiring basic common sense, but there are risks. This was especially true of workplaces such as city government where entrenched unions have established seniority as the basis for pay and advancement. Setting goals means that come the end of the year it might become painfully obvious that many of those with the most seniority haven't accomplished a damn thing. By outsourcing the work to consultants, city management has a ready made scapegoat should things turn ugly.
My morning in Porterville began in a large conference room with the Police Chief, his Watch Commanders and Supervisors. The process began with a ploy that had worked well for me in the past. I said, "To start with it would help me a great deal if you guys could simply tell me what is it that you do for this town." This quickly digressed, as was typical, into a rambling incoherent dumping of complaints, frustrations and personal anecdotes. The chaotic and pointless nature of these discussions is excruciating to sit through and after about 30 minutes an unbearable level of desperation is reached by the participants who each silently yearn for an act of God to bring an end to the torture. This of course is the point at which I, an outsider and total stranger, can suggest something that will be immediately accepted as gospel.
I said, "Forgive me if I over simplify but it sounds like you guys are supposed to prevent crime, solve crimes and avoid law suits."
Instantly there was a flurry of heads nodding in agreement and a chorus of "You got that right"; "That's it in a nut shell"; and "Truth be told, that's what it's all about." Had I made the same statement at the beginning of the session the group would have fought it tooth and nail, creating deep resentment from which recovery would have been impossible. As with a great many things, timing is everything. By holding off until the group could no longer endure their own nonsense, I would have been able to claim the world was flat and had it swallowed up with equal enthusiasm.
I quickly wrote the three points (prevent crime, solve crimes and avoid law suits) at the top of a flip chart, turned back to the group seated at the table and said, "Later you guys may want to come back and change this but for now are you willing to agree that this represents what the department is trying to accomplish?" This was the point in the process where everyone usually turned to the person in authority to see what their take was going to be. The person in authority this morning was the Police Chief who did the most unexpected thing, lifting his arms slightly off of the table he turned both palms up indicating a eureka moment and said, "Northbound train!" This brought on laughter and applause from the group. When things had quieted down, despite having no idea as to what had taken place, I proceeded with the remaining steps in the goal setting process.
As the group worked patiently through the process there were a dozen more similar outbursts. Each time right on the heels of my making a simple statement, one of the group would bark out a cryptic phrase to the delight of everyone. Each time it was different than the initial "northbound train!" but equally a mystery to me as to what was the meaning of "catch and release!", "bucket brigade!" and "rogue wave!". So as to avoid coming across as a complete imbecile, I chose to wait for each interruption to subside and then plodded ahead. We broke for lunch at noon and the conference room emptied out except for the Chief and myself. He said he was really pleased with what we had done that morning.
I said, "That's good to hear. If you don't mind me asking what's the deal with the short phrases?"
The Chief said, "A few months back we had a consultant come through who used a catalog of 90 metaphors to identify certain concepts and situations that apply to work. We all really took to it and have now memorized them. Many of the things you mentioned this morning were examples of these metaphors. It's become a contest of sorts among us to see who can be the first to spot these things when we come across them."
I asked, "What was it I said that caused you to say northbound train?"
The Chief said, "That has to do with the importance of everyone knowing where we are headed. It is the most critical of the bunch and the consultant chose it as the title of his book."
I said, "What is the purpose of these metaphors?"
The Chief said, "They make it easier to talk about work issues without people becoming so defensive. The metaphors are a way to acknowledge a situation but at the same time depersonalize it. They can also serve as a verbal shorthand to communicate a complex situation. An example would be 'bucket brigade.' This metaphor calls attention to a situation where all of one's time is devoted to fixing problems or fighting fires. Things never improve because no time is ever spent on eliminating the root cause of the problems. Lots of our people get a rush from being knee-deep in crap that could have been avoided. They relish jumping into the middle of a mess even thinking they have a chance to come out a hero. With a shortage of problems the real sicko's will resort to creating problems cause they crave the action."
At the end of my day in Porterville, the Police Chief handed me a well-used copy of The Northbound Train to take with me. I read it the following day and was surprised to discover that other than "northbound train" I could find none of the other metaphors or phrases I had heard the previous day. Additionally, in the 25 years I spent working with hundreds of other places after Porterville, I never met a single soul who had ever heard of Karl Albrecht's metaphors. Over the years I've considered several plausible explanations:
1. The Chief handed me the wrong book. He meant to give me Albrecht's other book - Conversations with a Frog.
2. There never were any metaphors. The Porterville Police at that time were notorious for their practical jokes.
3. Albrecht and the Porterville Police formed a clandestine organization using a set of closely guarded metaphors that were never documented but passed along via the oral tradition similar to the ancient Druids.
 |
| Image from amazon.com |
The Porterville Chief of Police had called the firm I was working for and asked that someone be sent up to help them with goal setting. I had been doing quite a bit of this sort of thing with other small cities so I was assigned. My experience working with the various parts of a typical city organization had taught me that policemen were a separate breed. Plainly speaking, they are a different species from everyone else who works in finance, public works, redevelopment, parks and recreation, building and safety or any other group. I never believed that this difference was the result of performing police work. I preferred the theory that policemen were born not made, and that's what leads them all to eventually gravitate to law enforcement. To me it is similar to the idea presented by Yuval Harari in his book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, that for at least a few centuries, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals shared time together on this planet.
I had previously done work including goal setting for a dozen or so police departments. Goal setting is nothing more than (1) indicating what it is you are supposed to do in your job; and (2), devising a way to measure if it gets done. It is a ridiculously simple task requiring basic common sense, but there are risks. This was especially true of workplaces such as city government where entrenched unions have established seniority as the basis for pay and advancement. Setting goals means that come the end of the year it might become painfully obvious that many of those with the most seniority haven't accomplished a damn thing. By outsourcing the work to consultants, city management has a ready made scapegoat should things turn ugly.
My morning in Porterville began in a large conference room with the Police Chief, his Watch Commanders and Supervisors. The process began with a ploy that had worked well for me in the past. I said, "To start with it would help me a great deal if you guys could simply tell me what is it that you do for this town." This quickly digressed, as was typical, into a rambling incoherent dumping of complaints, frustrations and personal anecdotes. The chaotic and pointless nature of these discussions is excruciating to sit through and after about 30 minutes an unbearable level of desperation is reached by the participants who each silently yearn for an act of God to bring an end to the torture. This of course is the point at which I, an outsider and total stranger, can suggest something that will be immediately accepted as gospel.
I said, "Forgive me if I over simplify but it sounds like you guys are supposed to prevent crime, solve crimes and avoid law suits."
Instantly there was a flurry of heads nodding in agreement and a chorus of "You got that right"; "That's it in a nut shell"; and "Truth be told, that's what it's all about." Had I made the same statement at the beginning of the session the group would have fought it tooth and nail, creating deep resentment from which recovery would have been impossible. As with a great many things, timing is everything. By holding off until the group could no longer endure their own nonsense, I would have been able to claim the world was flat and had it swallowed up with equal enthusiasm.
I quickly wrote the three points (prevent crime, solve crimes and avoid law suits) at the top of a flip chart, turned back to the group seated at the table and said, "Later you guys may want to come back and change this but for now are you willing to agree that this represents what the department is trying to accomplish?" This was the point in the process where everyone usually turned to the person in authority to see what their take was going to be. The person in authority this morning was the Police Chief who did the most unexpected thing, lifting his arms slightly off of the table he turned both palms up indicating a eureka moment and said, "Northbound train!" This brought on laughter and applause from the group. When things had quieted down, despite having no idea as to what had taken place, I proceeded with the remaining steps in the goal setting process.
As the group worked patiently through the process there were a dozen more similar outbursts. Each time right on the heels of my making a simple statement, one of the group would bark out a cryptic phrase to the delight of everyone. Each time it was different than the initial "northbound train!" but equally a mystery to me as to what was the meaning of "catch and release!", "bucket brigade!" and "rogue wave!". So as to avoid coming across as a complete imbecile, I chose to wait for each interruption to subside and then plodded ahead. We broke for lunch at noon and the conference room emptied out except for the Chief and myself. He said he was really pleased with what we had done that morning.
I said, "That's good to hear. If you don't mind me asking what's the deal with the short phrases?"
The Chief said, "A few months back we had a consultant come through who used a catalog of 90 metaphors to identify certain concepts and situations that apply to work. We all really took to it and have now memorized them. Many of the things you mentioned this morning were examples of these metaphors. It's become a contest of sorts among us to see who can be the first to spot these things when we come across them."
 |
| Image from amazon.com |
The Chief said, "That has to do with the importance of everyone knowing where we are headed. It is the most critical of the bunch and the consultant chose it as the title of his book."
I said, "What is the purpose of these metaphors?"
The Chief said, "They make it easier to talk about work issues without people becoming so defensive. The metaphors are a way to acknowledge a situation but at the same time depersonalize it. They can also serve as a verbal shorthand to communicate a complex situation. An example would be 'bucket brigade.' This metaphor calls attention to a situation where all of one's time is devoted to fixing problems or fighting fires. Things never improve because no time is ever spent on eliminating the root cause of the problems. Lots of our people get a rush from being knee-deep in crap that could have been avoided. They relish jumping into the middle of a mess even thinking they have a chance to come out a hero. With a shortage of problems the real sicko's will resort to creating problems cause they crave the action."
 |
| Image from amazon.com |
1. The Chief handed me the wrong book. He meant to give me Albrecht's other book - Conversations with a Frog.
2. There never were any metaphors. The Porterville Police at that time were notorious for their practical jokes.
3. Albrecht and the Porterville Police formed a clandestine organization using a set of closely guarded metaphors that were never documented but passed along via the oral tradition similar to the ancient Druids.