The unbelievable storm

I was up until 4 am Oslo time last night watching super storm Sandy make landfall on the eastern coast of the USA. It chose the area around Atlantic City as its entrance, and the video footage of the Atlantic Ocean pouring into this casino city was just unbelievable to watch. The Atlantic Ocean has never been the enemy before. Not until last night. Watching it flood these coastal towns was kind of like watching a mini tsunami—scary, unbelievable and fascinating at the same time. I can understand why people want to get close to the fury of a storm to film what it does to everything in its path, but you would have been completely foolhardy to have done so yesterday. I’ve been in Atlantic City, walked along its boardwalk, and enjoyed its shopping and luxurious hotels. Last night it did not look luxurious at all. It made me sad to see the destruction, as it did to see the flooding and destruction in Manhattan and Queens. This is not supposed to happen in these areas. But it did. The monster storm from hell made sure that we will not take anything for granted ever again, not where nature is concerned.

I grew up in Tarrytown, a lovely little town on the Hudson River, about a thirty-minute train ride north of Manhattan. In all the years I lived there, I cannot remember this type of storm occurring. Yes, there were intense storms, with resultant minor flooding here and there. I can remember the Saw Mill River and Bronx River Parkways being flooded and becoming impassable. Once I tried to drive through one of those parkway floods with my car, but had to back out of it as I could not steer my way through it. Luckily I managed to back out of it; not everyone was so fortunate. I was together with a friend of mine; we were commuting home from college that day. Water seeped into my car through the doors, and we had to bail out pails of water from the car afterward. It was a stupid decision on my part to attempt to drive through the rising water, and I learned an important lesson that day for the future about not taking unnecessary risks. But in Tarrytown (and other Hudson River towns) yesterday, there was unprecedented flooding. The Hudson River rose higher and higher due to the storm surge further south. Boats floated inland, having broken free of their moorings. In the town of Ossining, a few miles north of Tarrytown, a boat floated onto the railroad tracks, blocking passage in both directions. The pictures tell the story—proof that the unbelievable happened. I am including two links to online storm photos here. I am sad to see the destruction and flooding, and only hope that most people have come through the storm safely. http://www.businessinsider.com/at-least-16-dead-75-million-without-power--heres-what-hurricane-sandys-destruction-looks-like-photos-2012-10?0=bi

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/8138916414/

A new favorite TV show

I am enjoying (if I can really use that word) watching the new season of The Walking Dead on Fox Crime on Thursday evenings. Perhaps a better way to say it is that I am enjoying being scared and jolted by the twists and turns and scares of the new season. We are about a week behind in Europe compared to the USA. The new episodes (Seed and Sick thus far) contained a lot more exciting action now that Rick and his motley group of survivors have arrived at the prison and made it their home. The ‘walkers’ inhabit certain areas of the prison and need to be dispatched if the group is to live there. Some of those attack scenes were pretty intense; we’re talking a high zombie dispatch rate and a group of survivors who were literally dead-set on taking the prison for themselves. But to spice things up even more, there were also surviving prisoners who were intent on keeping their prison for themselves, which made for a tense conflict in this week’s episode with unfortunate outcomes for some of those prisoners. Rick and his group don’t waste too much time talking; it’s kill or be killed.

I have been online to read about what people are saying about the new season, and a lot of the reviews are quite positive, precisely because there promises to be a lot more excitement during this season. There is less talk and more action, and many of the characters have gotten much tougher. It’s a welcome change from last season which moved slowly and relied on countless numbers of conversations to drive it forward. Not that slow or talky is bad, just that action is more exciting, and that is one of the reasons I tune into a show like this.

The last time I actually looked forward to watching a TV show each week was when The X-Files was on the air. Some of their episodes were completely spooky with assorted creatures and monsters (e.g. Home stands out) and the creep factor was quite high. But I sat and watched them all and dealt with being scared. The Walking Dead is different in that the humans are always under attack by the same type of monster—zombies. So the survivors have learned how to take them out and have become good at doing so. But at the same time viewers are being scared, they are also being comforted, because they know that ultimately the survivors will be able to take care of themselves. That doesn’t mean that favorite characters won’t die off; I’m sure they will as the season progresses, but it’s anyone’s guess as to who they will be. In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the ride--it promises to be a memorable one. 

A supermarket on every corner

Well, it’s official. We are now almost completely surrounded by supermarkets on our city block (three of four corners are occupied), so that soon it will be impossible for me to leave my house without encountering a supermarket. The Turkish convenience store with its friendly proprietors and wonderful variety on one corner closed a few months ago after losing its license to sell beer. And as is always the case when that happens in Norway, they go out of business rather quickly, whether or not they are a small grocery store or a restaurant. You cannot survive without the beer or liquor sales. The same will happen to one of my favorite pizza restaurants right down the road from us; they lost their liquor license a few months ago and that will most likely be their death knell.

Back to the supermarkets. I googled supermarkets in Norway and retrieved this Wikipedia listing. This then is a list of supermarket chains in Norway, broken down into Discount stores, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, and Convenience stores. To me, they’re all variants on the same theme—supermarkets, large or small.

·         Discount: Bunnpris, Coop Marked, Coop Prix, Kiwi, REMA 1000, RIMI, Rimi Stormarked

·         Supermarkets: Centra, Coop Mega, ICA Gourmet, ICA Supermarked, Meny, SPAR, Ultra

·         Hypermarkets: ICA Maxi, Coop Obs!, Smart Club

·         Convenience Stores: ICA Nær, Joker, 7-eleven, Narvesen

I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by supermarkets if they offered a real variety of groceries, in other words, if they were different from each other. But they are not. Two of the supermarkets are the same chain—Joker (I know, what a name); the other one is Bunnpris (literally translated as ‘bottom price’). I have no major problems with any of them, just that they all offer homogeny. It’s all the same, a standardized foodstuff menu with limited choices. If you want slightly more variety and breadth of choice, you have to go elsewhere, like ICA Maxi, Centra or Meny. Thank God they exist. What makes me laugh is that this is such a small country; at last count, roughly 5 million people. Why do we need so many supermarkets? Soon there will be one supermarket per 100 people or per one large apartment building. I’m not joking. I cannot understand how they all can turn a profit. I’m not sure it matters to the food chain owners, who are wealthy beyond belief. All I can say is, ‘oh bliss--I no longer have to walk too far to find a grocery store’ (a little sarcasm never hurts). 

Treating customers well

Just had to comment on a pleasant experience today with a large company. It’s not every day that you deal with a customer service department in a huge company that actually treats you well, solves your problem for you, or even gets back to you on the same day that you contacted them. All that happened to me today in my dealings with Amazon.com. I had purchased a DVD TV series for several hundred dollars back in May of this year, and it arrived in Oslo in late June when we were on vacation in Germany. Unfortunately, the post office in Oslo only allows the packages to sit in their buildings for fourteen days, so as we were on vacation for about this amount of time, the package was returned to Amazon before I had a chance to pick it up. I contacted Amazon in mid-July to register this incident as a return, and received an authorization number so that I could track the return process and when the package was logged in as ‘returned’. As it took almost eight weeks for the package to arrive in Oslo initially, I figured it would take about the same amount of time for it to arrive back in the USA from whence it was shipped. Due to other matters, I didn’t have a chance to check on the status of the return until today, three months after I first contacted Amazon. I wrote to the customer service department as the package had not been returned by me but by the post office, so that the return process was irregular. I received an email within a few hours from not one, but two customer service reps, within a few hours of each other. The first one wrote to me to tell me that the package had been returned and that it would be no problem for me to get my refund. The second one wrote to tell me the exact amount that would be refunded and how my Amazon gift card and credit card accounts would be credited. No fuss, no bother, no ‘please contact this or that person’ in a long chain of persons, no recriminations or criticism on their part concerning the irregular return process. Rather, personal emails to me that said that they understood that I was disappointed that I had not received my package and that the refund process was initiated and that it would not take long for me to receive my refund, respectively.

How great is this? This is a huge global company at this point in time, and yet they managed to get back to me the same day I wrote to them. Not only that, they managed to resolve the situation immediately. I am a regular and good Amazon customer and have been since the late 1990s. I have never had a customer service problem with this company, which in and of itself is pretty amazing. Their efficient, fast and friendly customer service ensures that I remain a loyal customer. Why is it that they manage this absolutely crucial aspect of running a business—providing excellent customer service--whereas other companies fail so miserably? At Amazon, it seems that the customer is always right. At least that’s been the case in my dealings with them. It just goes to show that just because a company is large doesn’t mean that we need to abandon all hope of being treated well as a customer. I hope their policy of treating the customer well continues. 

Quotes about bureaucracy

As most of you know, I am preoccupied these days with bureaucracy and its fallout, especially in the workplace where it threatens to strangle the very efficiency it proclaims as its sworn goal (efficiency and productivity, which shall be dissected and measured down to their minutest details). 

Bureaucracy is defined as (definition from Merriam Webster online dictionary):

1) a body of nonelective government officials; an administrative policy-making group

2) government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority

3) a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation

So I thought I would post some interesting quotes about bureaucracy as today's post. Interesting to consider that some of them were written many years ago. For example, the first quote from The Screwtape Letters, is from 1942. That tells you that these 'systems' have been around for a while. Some bureaucracy is of course necessary to get things basically organized. But at present, it seems that it exists for itself and itself alone--to make itself bigger, better and irreplaceable. We must need it, for without it we are nothing. And I have real problems with this way of thinking. 

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“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

― C.S. Lewis, from the Preface of The Screwtape Letters

“Remove the document—and you remove the man.”

― Mikhail Bulgakov

“I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.”

― Kim Harrison, Dead Witch Walking

 “Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?”

― Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

 “In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.”

― Chaim Potok, Davita's Harp

 “Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.”

― Laurence Gonzales, Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.”

― Hyman G. Rickover

 “The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.”

― Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

 “Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.”

― Kollontai Alexandra, La Oposición Obrera

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]”

― Jerry Pournelle

Street art in Oslo

Street art in Oslo is more prevalent now, and some of it is really eye-catching.  I don’t know who the artists are, but I hope you enjoy their work. Feel free to comment if you know who the artists are. I'm only the photographer, but I like what I see.

Random thoughts on writing, street art and 'Living in the Material World'

A very busy week at work, which did not leave me much time for writing of any sort. I have mixed feelings about these kinds of weeks. On the one hand, it’s good to be busy at work. On the other hand, time passes and each day that ticks by is one less day to write and to pursue those small personal dreams. I guess others have the same problem—being torn between personal dreams that have less to do with career ambitions and more to do with personal fulfillment, and workplace ambitions and goals that are held up as meaningful by the workplace. I am always trying to find time to write. It has become my soul’s desire, nothing more, nothing less.

Tired in the evenings, so that doesn’t always bode well for writing, either for its quality or its quantity. In other words, I don’t get many words on a page before my eyes start to close and I feel sleepy. Twenty-five years ago, I could pack another life into my evenings, and I did. I worked sixty to seventy hour weeks then, and sometimes on the weekends. Sometimes I took courses at night—accounting, Italian, business courses, or sometimes I attended evening seminars having to do with investing. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a course. I’m more into learning how to do things myself these days, and less interested in traditional ways of learning. I suppose that has to do with how the brain changes and learns as one grows older. I like that aspect of growing older. Everything feels more fluid and less rigid. There is not one right way to do things anymore, like we were ‘taught’ when we were young.

Inspiration comes from films—I watched ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’,  a documentary film from 2010 about street art as viewed through the eyes of Thierry Guetta, a would-be filmmaker, who followed street artists around the world for years as they pursued their art. One of those artists was Banksy, who ended up using Guetta’s video footage to make this film, because the film that Guetta first made was (presumably) a chaotic mess. Hard to know for sure how tongue-in-cheek this movie really is—is it a hoax film or is it for real? Thierry Guetta followed these street artists and ended up besting them at their own game—setting up a big ‘street art’ show happening in Los Angeles as MBW (Mr. Brainwash) and making millions. By the end of the film, Madonna has hired him to do the artwork for her latest album cover. The question then becomes, who was the brainwasher and who was being brainwashed? Are we being hoodwinked, or is this film for real? The film is well-worth watching, as it is a good introduction to the lives of currently-popular street artists from around the world.

Apropos Madonna (“…You know that we are living in a material world, And I am a material girl”), another good documentary film I watched this past week was from 2011—‘George Harrison: Living in the Material World’ (director Martin Scorsese). Scorsese did a great job with this film; we get a real introduction to the spiritual Beatle, and to his spiritual journey as well as to his progression and evolution as an artist. We also get a real sense of the conflict that pervaded most of his life—how to remain spiritual in a material world. Harrison was truly an amazing artist—creative, spiritual, persistent, focused, dedicated. All of this came through in the film. Mostly when you think of the Beatles, you think of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. This film shows you why George Harrison was an artistic force to be reckoned with. He was way ahead of his time in terms of collaborating musically with ‘foreign’ artists—Ravi Shankar and other Indian musicians--as well as organizing the first charity concert for Bangladesh in 1971. But mostly, I was impressed with his spiritual journey. Here was a man who thought it was important to prepare for death, for the time when he would leave his body for another world. He never denigrated or poked fun at the world of the spirit. And he was a pretty good example of practicing what he preached, with the possible exception of the few periods in his life when he dishonored his body through excessive drug use. I like films about artists of all kinds; I like watching the creative process at work—how artists think, act, work, live in a family, relax—all those things.

Autumn comes to Oslo

It takes two to tango

Sat down to breakfast this morning, and was flipping through the newspaper sections rather randomly. My husband was reading the front section of Aftenposten, so I settled on the Jobs section, where there are not only employment ads, but often articles about new trends in the workplace as well as advice from headhunters and work-life coaches. Wouldn’t you know, there was a photo of two couples dancing the tango in connection with a leadership course they’re taking. This particular course encourages its participants (leader personnel from the company Siemens Healthcare) to learn to dance the tango as part of learning how to team-build and be a better leader. In this particular case, since there were no women attending the course (which is telling in and of itself—not many female leaders out there, apparently), males were dancing with other males, and the photographer snapped a photo of two of these couples. There was talk about ‘stepping outside of your comfort zone’ and all that. I’m sure it’s a lot of fun and hard work to learn the tango, and I would be stepping out of my comfort zone as well to learn the tango and any kind of ballroom dancing. But I would do this in my free time, not during work time, so it wouldn’t matter that I was a slow learner. I’m not sure how learning the tango has anything to do with learning how to be a better leader. Does it have to do with learning to lead and have others follow, or vice versa? What happens if you are trying to follow the lead of someone who never learns the dance, as is often the case in the workplace? What happens if none of the trendy leadership courses results in better leadership? I don’t get it, so someone has to please explain to me why companies are spending money on such courses at a time when the global economy is in a downturn. These courses cost money, a lot of money.

I have yet to see the solid research/statistics that demonstrate the absolute benefit of leadership courses for leaders. How do you measure the effectiveness of these courses; how can you assess the results? Can you be sure that the methods work? I’m a scientist, so I want to see the research data. Please show me the reports so I can read them. I have no problems with an annual daylong seminar where leaders can meet together in their workplace and share common problems, brainstorm, or otherwise come up with new and creative ideas about how to lead. I just don’t understand the emphasis these days (the new trend) on traveling to out-of-the-way hotels and resorts for this purpose, for two or more days at a time. The idea I presume is that you cannot just ‘go home’ at the end of the course day; you’re stuck together with other leaders during the evenings where social skills play a large role as well. Networking and more networking. I know several leaders who shun these trips (or want to) as often as they can. A decade ago, private companies spent money on sending their employees out into the forests and mountains to learn how to work together as a team to survive and maneuver through the inevitable problems that cropped up. These team building courses seem to have paved the way for the new types of leadership and team-building courses. Is this because the old ones didn’t work, or are the new approaches the ideas that sprang up during the old team building and leadership courses? Did someone ten years ago think—it would be cool to have leaders learn to dance the tango together? Is that how it works at the top?

As children, we learned the Golden Rule—‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. In other words, treat people as you would like to be treated. I learned this rule early on and it stuck. And when I have broken it, my conscience tells me that I have wronged someone and to go and make amends. I live this way in my personal life and I have behaved accordingly in my work life. I can honestly say that I have tried to the best of my ability to treat those who have worked for me with respect and honesty, and have been as professional as possible when dealing with them. The awareness of your behavior and how it affects others in the workplace are the two most important things one must learn as a manager, and if you manage this you can be an effective manager or leader. I don’t think it is more complicated than that. Unfortunately, when you are lied to, exploited or pushed aside by company leaders, it makes it that much more difficult to treat leadership with respect. It takes two to tango. You cannot expect respect from employees if you do not treat them with respect. It’s that simple, and that complicated. We say that about children and adults as well; you cannot expect children to respect adults who abuse them or treat them badly or indifferently. It doesn’t matter if the adults are parents, teachers or other authority figures. I could already differentiate very clearly when I was in grammar school, who were the good teachers and who were the abusers. You remember both and you learn from both. Had I been surrounded only by abusive teachers, I would have learned how to evade them to the best of my ability--how to lie to them and how to be dishonest—how to play the game to see who would eventually win control. They would not have deserved better treatment. The same is true for abusive or exploitive company leadership.

My view of workplace leadership is more along the lines of the top-down approach. If you want respect from employees, start at the top and look down. Take a really good look at yourself, and then your employees. Companies should hire leaders who know what the Golden Rule is, who have ethics and morals, who abhor corruption and political game-playing, and who are not just interested in their cushy titles and salaries. They should hire leaders who understand that the buck stops with them. But companies have to value these types of leaders. This is the type of leadership that employees will respect. This is the type of leadership that employees will listen to, when new ideas, change, and challenges confront them in a world of global uncertainty and instability. Employees will look to leadership for guidance, but they will also pitch in and do their fair share and more if they know it will help the company survive. I have yet to meet one employee who was treated fairly by his or her company, who didn’t want to give back his or her fair share to that company. In other words, those employees who have been kicked around, exploited, lied to or treated poorly, and there are a number of them, are those who do not want to give back their fair share to their companies anymore. They have felt the injustice that pervades the system; they know that they are dancing alone. Where they once followed another’s lead, they now dance in place. Their leaders bailed out on them a long time ago. I would say that’s the biggest problem in workplaces these days; employees have to figure out everything on their own. There is no one to look up to, no one to mentor them, no one to take responsibility for them and their professional wellbeing. There are few good leaders who take their employees into consideration, who prioritize them. I know of one leader who was told that she was too concerned about her employees; that as a leader, she should be concerned with the company views and policies and with getting her employees to ‘accept’ a new policy that amounted to nothing more than a new way to exploit their competence and dedication (getting them to work twice as hard for the same amount of money). Suffice it to say that this company has a lot of problems and that the turnover rate for employees is high. Employees can ‘see through’ a lot of the new trends in the workplace, and leadership courses are one of those trends. Bad leaders will not become good leaders by learning to dance the tango; they will become good leaders by practicing the Golden Rule. I have yet to see a course that focuses on the ethics of leadership. I have to wonder if it would be well-attended.

Autumn comes to Norway

Autumn has arrived, and with it comes some stormy days, with menacing clouds and rain. But sometimes rainbows follow after the storms, and if we're lucky, we get to see double rainbows.

This past weekend, we drove about thirty miles north of Oslo to see the autumn foliage. In many places, the leaves were just starting to turn, in other places, they were well on their way. Not so many bright red colors this year--more oranges and yellows. At least right now. It has been a lovely autumn so far--mild temperatures, mostly sunny days and clear nights.