Techo Chamber

Here’s a new word I’ve invented:

”Techo”

Techo — a hybrid of “technology” and “echo” — describes the increasingly maddening habit of resending, or “echoing,” the same usually mundane or useless message by different technologies in everyday interpersonal communications.

Here’s an illustration: several managers I know report receiving phone calls from people asking them, “did you get my email?” almost instantaneous with the receipt of the email. Slightly different example: one manager has even received an email with the request, “Call me.”

My guess is there are two kinds of people who create “techoes:” (1) folks who just can’t seem to trust all them invisible tubes and wires that make up the Network, or (2) self-absorbed people who’ve been cutting into lines their whole lives.

And While We're At It...

…what would it take for a hotel (any and all hotels, for that matter) to send someone around to every room and put a little WD-40 on the ironing board leg extension mechanism?

Every. Single. Time. I am treated to that wonderful fingernails-on-the-blackboard screech. In every hotel.

Customer satisfaction. It’s the little, inexpensive details, folks.

"Think _____."

There are few more overused words in public life than “think tank.”

What, exactly, does that mean anymore? On one hand, it can describe organizations so dense, serious and obtuse that they can’t even explain what it is they do — so they fall back on an easy, throwaway phrase that not only keeps prying eyes away, it just sounds so darn impressive.

On the other hand, organizations who are utterly weightless often use it because…well, it just sounds so darn impressive.

I think part of the problem is the word “tank.” It just sounds so darn…self-absorbed.

Anyway, for the sake of argument, let’s suggest an alternative. I propose “think pond.” Or, “think puddle,” depending on your ambitions and/or abilities.

“Pond,” and I guess I’m actually being three-quarters serious here, is a better metaphor. A pond, because it is a biological system, is more open, adaptable and hospitable to life (or, in this case, ideas and creativity).

A pond is less self-absorbed — more inclusive, if you will; it supports life (ideas) in itself and around its edges. It is also a source of water outflow (again, ideas) and an aggregation of water (ideas) from different sources.

A “think pond” is a good thing for any organization to be, from a family to a work team, from small businesses to large, multinational corporations.

Yes, yes indeed. I believe “think pond” is the next big thing. Everybody will be talking about it tomorrow, I’m sure.

Mr. Cranky Pants Bemoans the Evils of Modern Life (Part I)

I’m fortunate enough to work with a lot of leaders and practicing managers on a daily basis, and my work with them is in such a capacity that I am privy to, among many other things, their spiritual aches and pains — as leaders, certainly, but also as people leading regular, everyday lives.

Emerging from these aches and pains is a very common theme — the lack of margin.

Extensively researched and written about by Dr. Richard Swenson, margin is a wonderful, simple concept — the difference between your load and your limits. Or, in the language of business, what’s left over after the bills are paid.

Margin can be expressed in the context of money, physical health and energy, relationships and time — but most of the yearning for margin I hear from leaders, managers and professionals comes in the context of time. Or, more accurately, the lack of it. After all the activities, emergencies, tasks, demands of others, deadlines, to-do lists, there is a stunning lack of time for doing the meaningful work they want and need to do, spending time with people they care about, or engaging in reflection and renewal. In short, time not filled with tasks, deadlines, activities and urgencies.

Modern life is a thief of margin. Rather, the circumstances of modern life collude with our own desires and expectations to rob us of margin — either in time, money, health, or our relationships.

Modern life (and our desires and expectations) has created the monster commute. This article from the New Yorker is not only a fascinating description of this growing phenomenon, but also a ghastly illustration of true, marginless living.

Man, how long should anybody live like that?