The Pushmi-pullyu

You can take this one to work with you!

From a flight dynamics perspective, it worked!

There have been many push-me-pull-you attempts with varying degrees of success.

Counter-canoeing was a bust.
Doolittleisms did OK.
Cartoon characters were well received.
International program management, not so well, and not surprisingly, small scale projects had similar experience and results.

For example, if it costs $1500/year to treat one AIDS patient and $20/year to prevent one AIDS case, where should resources be focused?  The number of lives saved points one way and the current need points to another.  Then a third issue arises as we learn we can prevent the transmission from mother to unborn child ...  The overwhelming majority of top-down programs are focused on cure when prevention would be an order of magnitude more effective.  New on the scene, addressing both treatment and prevention in the same program.

We're learning, at least in some fields.  Commonly, there's only a tenuous connection between (1) the top-down management issues and (2) the bottom-up perspective on what is needed and what works here and now. Expecting the two perspectives to rigidly agree is a bit fanciful; they don't even exist in the same timeline.

One of the best organizational examples of getting it right is World Vision.  Organizationally, they support in-country and in-community teams that settle in and work locally for decades.  Importantly, they measure and adjust based on results over time, a rarity in international efforts that are commonly 'fire-and-forget' programs.

It's not uncommon for a government-sponsored international aid effort to be a 1 or 2-year project, transferring some technology or capability. Without life-cycle support, maintenance training, or transition planning, it gets delivered and dies within a few years. The African coastline is littered with externally provided ocean-surveillance systems, delivered and abandoned.  Success is rare for such short-scoped efforts, and the damage from the practice is troubling.  A receiving nation will reallocate personnel and resources to accommodate the change, and after years, discover that their scant resources have been wasted on another badly conceived assistance effort.

Effective organizations implement continual evaluation of target and effect.  A one-time-through by management is nonsense; continuing, insightful leadership determines success or failure.

It's an annoyance having to regularly verify that you're on target, but the alternative is major failure, wasted money, and harm done to the folks you're trying to help.

Worth remembering?  Absolutely!  Take it to work with you as a reminder that leadership stays well informed and sensitive to the goals.  Management, by definition, may not.

Note to the over-30, over-40, and over-50 folks; just because you're sure you know doesn't mean you couldn't modernize your thinking a bit (understatement of the decade).  A typical recent-graduate can show you how to streamline work by as much as a third without significantly affecting the risks involved; you can actually hit your targets. How are you with change and new and different?

Examples?

• One-off reports that take 20-60+ labor hours to produce but are of little benefit ... standardize and automate the report/deliverable.  
• Large meetings to review what a few could resolve quickly ... insert asynchronous team tasks in process instead of the 'death by meeting' gatherings of all.  
• Refine process to be exclusively goal focused.
• Isolate programmatics from the work process. 
• Protect the work effort from interruption and unnecessary redirection by well intentioned players.  The boss can walk the factory floor, but if he's smart, he'll keep his hands off the tools and won't presume to direct the machinists.  
• If meetings are the norm, preload with agenda, action items, and decisions expected/required; if unable, cancel the meeting.  Etc., (and there are dozens more; like conducting meetings standing up, no chairs.)

Ever wondered ...

Ever wondered why religion engenders such disrespect?  It's perhaps a study worth pursuing; there's enough variance to suggest some useful lessons.  That's religions in general, you might note.  Western Christianity does have its share of detractors, of course.

Interestingly, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of history, is widely known and his teachings are generally well received.

What might it be about the practice of Christianity then, that causes such disaffection, even from within its own ranks?

• Anything worth noticing in the criticisms from outside?  
• Anything from insiders worth considering seriously?
• Or worth doing differently?  Is there a missing piece?

We might perhaps learn most from those who agree with us least.

惡人當離棄自己的道路，
不義的人當除掉自己的意念。    
歸向耶和華，耶和華就必憐恤他；         
當歸向我們的神，因為神必廣行赦免。          
耶和華說：「我的意念非同你們的意念，        
我的道路非同你們的道路。                          
天怎樣高過地，照樣，                              
我的道路高過你們的道路，                   
我的意念高過你們的意念。
以賽亞書 55           

宗教有一点说值得一听。
Religion has few answers for us, as the more experienced
will attest.  There is that which is beyond religion and
blindingly real, for which we're deeply grateful.

Subsidy

McDonald’s has closed its McResource website.
It had been a well-intended attempt to serve their employees, but it revealed a bit too much about corporate ethics.   There were a couple of problem areas.

• How to make ends meet:  The site offered financial advice for employees including how to tip an au pair or a pool cleaner, for example.  Not really helpful for McDonald’s workers.  For their low and minimum wage employees, they suggested that workers consider returning unopened Christmas gifts to get out of debt.  Workers who called the McResource help line was told to look into food stamps, Medicaid, and local pantries for the needy.

• How to eat healthy:  The site cautioned employees about the health effects of fast food, calling a cheeseburger and French fries an “unhealthy choice.”  To illustrate the difference between ‘unhealthy choice’ and the ‘healthier choice’, the website of the food chain that employs some 700,000 people worldwide, for some reason showed a typical McDonald’s meal and one very much resembling a meal at the company’s major competitor, Subway -- a sandwich with salad and a glass of water.

Most fast-food employees work less than 30 hours per week and are flex-scheduled; it saves the employer having to provide benefits, and they can be sent home occasionally when business slows. Half of fast-food workers in the US rely on public assistance to supplement their paychecks, costing American taxpayers an estimated $7 billion every year. The government effectively subsidizes the industry by providing benefits to their underpaid employees.

Injury

    or Illness?

A soldier comes home from the war with post-
traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. He's not ill,
 he's injured. As much as if he had been hit 
by gunfire or an IED, there's physical 
damage and he's wounded.

Although the horror of war is our common 
context for the injury, it occurs in less 
obvious circumstances.

Verbal abuse, neglect, and exposure to a threatening environment can result in brain damage, a PTSD equivalent in a child that can persist for the rest of their lives. It can be especially harmful during the middle-school years of development.

... but bullying? It’s easy to think that, as painful as bullying might be, all it hurts is our feelings. New research into bullying’s effects, however, is now suggesting something more than that — that in fact, bullying can leave an indelible imprint on a teen’s brain at a time when it is still growing and developing. Being harshly ostracized by one’s peers, it seems, can throw adolescent hormones even further out of whack, lead to reduced connectivity in the brain, and even sabotage the growth of new neurons.

One thing we hear, especially when we talk to adult bullies or the parents of bullies, is that they feel this behavior is a “right of passage”. That “everyone grows up and gets over it”.

Perhaps it’s true that everyone grows up, but here we have evidence that bullying affects its victims' development and that they carry this trauma with them for the rest of their lives.

These neurological scars (physical damage to the brain), it turns out, closely resemble those borne by children who are physically and sexually abused in early childhood.

Consider the child who comes to school without the ability to respond to authority, without the ability to trust an adult, without the ability to shake off depression, all the result of neglect, verbal assault, and a hostile environment.  He, like the soldier, is not ill.  He has been injured, and the damage is more significant than we've previously understood.

The key element of verbal abuse is the persistent 'attack' focused on the individual, the intent to beat down.  Each of us is vulnerable.  In relationships that matter, we're the most vulnerable.  

• a child can be wounded by verbal abuse from parents or siblings
• a middle-schooler can be wounded by verbal abuse by bullying peers
• a husband or wife can be injured by verbal abuse from their partner
• an employee can be injured by verbal abuse in the workplace when they can't afford to leave.  A bullying supervisor is the same kind of harmful person, attacking the individual rather than dealing with tasks and performance.

While it's still a new understanding in the general population, the healthcare community has long known that persistent verbal abuse is injurious.  It doesn't just hurt your feelings and disappear; it does physical damage.  The damage can often persist for a lifetime.

NOTE: Interpersonal conflict is part of life, marriage, growing up, and business.  It's normal, often necessary, and not particularly troublesome as long as it stays focused on issues and not on personal assault.

It's worth noting that a verbal abuser is of the same heart and mind as the bully, the child abuser, the wife beater.  They've each chosen to deliberately do harm to another.  Not popular news, not popular at all.

Interestingly, the degree of our vulnerability to verbal abuse is tied to the degree our personal identity and worth depend on the abuser.  How much do we depend on the approval of others?  Can you guess who might be the least vulnerable or the most resilient?
Recovery is absolutely possible.

NIH-PTSD
NIH-Bullying
Workplace Law
The Bullied Brain
Complex Trauma

The medical profession works on a figure of about 25% of people developing PTSD after exposure to traumas such as a serious accident, physical or sexual assault, war or torture, or a natural disaster such as a bushfire or a flood,.

That said, here are best estimates of the incidence of post traumatic stress disorder for some specific populations:

30% of US Vietnam veterans
10% of US Desert Storm veterans
6-11% of US Afghanistan veterans
12-20% of US Iraq veterans

3%-6% of US high school students
30%-60% of US children who have survived specific disasters
2% after a natural disaster (tornado)
28% after an episode of terrorism (mass shooting)
29% after a plane crash
100% of US children who witness a parental homicide or sexual assault
90% of sexually abused children
77% of children exposed to a school shooting
35% of urban youth exposed to community violence

50% of UK sexually abused children,
45% of UK battered women,
35% of UK adult rape victims,
30% of UK veterans,
18% of UK professional fire-fighters

13% of suburban police officers
4-14% of US law enforcement officers
16.5% of US firefighters

37% of Cambodian refugees
3% of Cambodian civilians
86% of women refugees in Kabul and Pakistan
75% of Bosnian refugee women
60% of US female rape survivors
30% of those actually in the building or injured during the 9/11 New York City attacks.

Casualty of War

Discoveries from medical science tell us how traumatic circumstances in a child's life produce brain damage.  

It hasn't yet occurred to parents that their verbal behavior and the home's atmosphere could cause physical harm to a child's mind. It can.

Physical abuse can cause physical harm; we understand that much. According to a growing body of evidence, however, verbal abuse is equally harmful. It does damage that lasts; see Wounds That Time Won't Heal for an introduction. Verbal abuse, neglect, and exposure to a threatening environment can result in brain damage, a PTSD equivalent in the child that can persist for the rest of their lives. It is especially harmful during the middle-school years of development.

Adults can be similarly damaged by a harsh and verbally abusive environment over time. We used to call it stress at home and in the workplace.  There is research now indicating that verbal abuse in intimate relationships can lead to depression, anxiety and of course, relationship failure. Similarly, in the workplace where leaving isn't an option, an abusive atmosphere can cause similar psychological problems.  Beyond those, physical damage to a portion of the brain can follow as well.  We didn't know.

Summary:

• If I get angry and attack someone physically, perhaps hitting them, I have crossed the line. I've chosen to do them harm, and I deserve to be held accountable. We knew that.
• If I get angry and viciously berate someone, I have crossed the exact same line.  I've chosen to do them harm. Though the there's no adequate law for it, I still deserve to be held accountable for the attack. We didn't know that.

This perhaps gives us a little insight into the following passage, "You have heard from long ago, 'You shall not murder, and anyone who does will be subject to judgment.' I tell you, though, that anyone who is merely angry with another will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who goes further and insults another is answerable to the court. And anyone who viciously demeans another will be in danger of hell itself." Perhaps because ... I've chosen to do them harm.

The good news is that science has shown that are our brains are open to rewiring - it's called neuroplasticity. That means, among other things, that we can learn new ways of dealing with our own emotions, and we are able to change our brain. 

True?  Is this something we should pursue?

Psychological Maltreatment in Domestic Violence 

Sticks, Stones, and Hurtful Words Name-calling in Intimate Relationships

We can change our own behavior.  

As one example, an alternative to name calling and swearing begins with identifying our emotions and naming them (as anger or frustration, for instance) rather than being controlled by them. Expressions like "I'm feeling angry" or "scared" or "sad" will be awkward at first, but can make for healthy conversation. Stopping to understand why is even more revealing.  It may not be as emotionally satisfying as using a four-letter word or calling someone an idiot, but it can produce better results; more open communication and the real possibility of change.

Declaration of War

Lessons learned from my wife.

Communicating is a simple task. You say what you think, and I get it.  Right?



It usually works, especially about simple things like, "Do you want a banana?"  "Sure, thanks."

It gets more difficult when you add things like being in a hurry or needing to solve a problem.

"All I said was ...."
We hold ourselves accountable for the words only!  "All I asked was where's my hairbrush, and you went off on me."  Actually, the words (7%) were likely overshadowed by accusation and disapproval (93%).  It was the equivalent of an assault, a declaration of war.

We spew a torrent of information, so much more than just the words.  Our non-verbal content is huge, and it's directed at the person with whom we're trying to communicate. The non-verbal content of being angry says, "I'm angry with you!"  Being frustrated says, "I'm frustrated with you; you're the problem here!"  We extend the context of our thinking (our irritation, disappointment, disapproval) to encompass the other person.  Often, the harder we try (escalation) to make our point, the worse it gets until we're fighting about something that hardly matters.  Like which way the toilet paper should be facing; people actually fight about that.  Or, "Where's the remote?"  People fight about trivialities like that, too.

We're idiots.  Until we learn.  The sooner the better, right?

We can move from head-on encounters to working out a solution side-by-side.

In a head-on confrontation where you're aiming everything at each other, it's a conflict where lots of damage gets done.  In a side-by-side effort, you've announced that, "you're more important to me than this issue is, so let's  figure it out together."  You can choose to convey acceptance, interest, and approval as the non-verbal part of the conversation.

After we ourselves learn, we can teach our children, but not before.  In husband/wife things, it's what helps us grow together rather than apart as the years go by.  In parent/child, it's what makes the difference in the transition years as they're becoming adults.