Category: Observations

Bosses Struggle to Respond to Burned Out Workers (Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2021)

“Workplace stress is rampant and resignations have risen; employers are trying four-day workweeks, mandatory vacation days and other new ways of working.

In the first 10 months of this year, America’s workers handed in nearly 39 million resignations, the highest number since tracking began in 2000.

Some want better jobs. Others, a better work-life balance. Still others want a complete break from the corporate grind. Almost two years into the pandemic that left millions doing their jobs from home, many Americans are rethinking their relationship with work.”

One the joys of our annual cycle of religious and secular observances is how past memories are often rekindled.  They arise in personal stories and from music primarily played at this time of year.

Last Friday my wife and had dinner with a 90-year-old couple, still living in their home.   The husband is still active in the credit union community.   He was 11 years old when WW II broke out.

As we finished the meal with Greek cookies bathed in powdered sugar, they recalled a time as children when war cake was served for dessert. The ingredients include little or no milk, sugar, butter, or eggs, because they were rationed, expensive or hard to obtain. When his father received a 5-pound bag of sugar as a gift for Christmas one year, he immediately turned it over to his church lest he be accused of violating ration limits.

Remembering times past makes them special, no matter what our worries were then.

Musical Joys with New Words

Music is especially potent in calling up special moments. I remember the first time I heard a live performance of the Handel’s Messiah.  During the Christmas season I was at Boston Symphony Hall, senior year in college, on a date with a young lady whom I would later marry.

Years later I heard the familiar sounds, but with different words.   The oratorio was being sung in Russian, a banned work during the Soviet era.  This was one of the first recordings in that language.   Listening to words, unknown to me,  made it a wholly new experience.

En route to a holiday dinner years later while listening to the local classical music station, I heard a new CD that was also not in English.  But it was so buoyant, melodic, and festive that I looked up the station’s playlist to find the title of the CD, Karolju.

It is a suite of original Christmas carols for choir and orchestra by the America composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned and first performed on November 7, 1991 by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The composer modeled the work and its rhythmic variations after Carl Off’s Carmina Burana.   Here is how the composer explained his unusual choice of language.

As I wished to compose the music first, the problem of texts presented itself. Finding appropriate existing texts to fit already composed music would have been virtually impossible, and as I did not trust my own ability to devise a poetically satisfying text, I decided to compose my own texts in a variety of languages (Latin, Swedish, French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, German, and Italian) which, although making reference to words and phrases appropriate to the Christmas season, would not be intelligibly translatable as complete entities. It was rather my intent to match the sound of the language to the musical style of the carol to which it was applied. I resultantly selected words often more for the quality of their sound and the extent to which such sound typified the language of their origin than for their cognitive “meaning” per se.

Though the music of Karolju is original, the first and tenth movements of the work paraphrase the coda of “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. The third movement also quotes a four-measure phrase from The Nutcracker by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which itself dates back to an 18th-century minuet.

This is the link to all of the individual carols on the album.   Many languages are used but to capture the spirit of the season you might open with the Swedish carol #2, for 1:45 minutes.

Enjoy these original sounds of the season’s spirit. Listen as the words, even when not understood, create texture for each musical movement.

Please add your favorite choral sounds at the end of the blog.

 

 

Amid sheepish shepherds,
embarrassed kings, awkward angels
with their bent-coat-hanger wings –
my most unforgettable character
is the tender-hearted lad
assigned to play the innkeeper,
who undid the whole production
when he assured the wandering couple,
“You folks are so, so lucky.
We just had a cancellation.”

by J. Barrie Sheperd

My mom grew up in Taylorville, Illinois.

This is an EXTRA edition of the Breeze Courier, Christian County’s only daily from 80 years ago.

The headline event changed the world for our parents. Knowing what was coming, my mom and dad eloped to Missouri to get married as there was no waiting period required for a license.

My Dad’s military ID shows his active service from May 5, 1941 to his release from inactive duty on January 17, 1946.

On page 6 of the paper are ads for current local movies. The main show is Keeping “Em Flying starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.

The Special Sunday dinner of roast tom turkey at tne Blue Classic restaurant is 50 cents, served from 12 to 8 pm.

Nature’s fashion change brightens our autumn.

History remembered for those who welcomed the first newcomers to our shores. This blog was written on the land of the Piscataway peoples.

People living in temporary shelters.  The unhoused on the grass circle in front of Union Station in DC.

A gift of thanks for a life well lived and hope in the future. (Nun danket alle Gott)

These brief examples represent  the ideals, principles, and qualities desired and admired by persons,  communities and nations.  The three persons apply these principles in their daily efforts.

In their individual areas, they rise, or rose, above self-interest and seek to bring out the best in others.

A 20’s something woman coach’s philosophy

Building the character of the rower is just as important as developing the skills of the athlete.   Diligent training on respect, resilience, and the outcomes of hard work is rewarded with improved teamwork and an overall love for the sport.

Every word spoken is intentional to create a positive learning environment and consistently progressing rowers. 

An author seeking appropriate use of words

Maybe we need to delete the word ownership from our vocabulary and certainly from our legal contracts and sales agreements and land deeds. Instead, let’s use the word stewardship — and introduce a raft of legislation that defines stewardship as “leaving something better than you found it.”

Steward it or lose it.

An Example of Selfless Generosity  (excerpts)

What made Aaron Feuerstein famous was not success but his attitude in the face of catastrophe. When a fire destroyed the textile mill he owned, he faced the decisions of whether to rebuild and whether to continue to pay his 1,400 workers, who were left destitute in the dead of winter. His decision became a model of how employers should treat their workers.

Standing By His Employees

Mr. Feuerstein won where it matters most. As a business leader, he captured the hearts of his employees and the imagination of Americans everywhere.

What made Aaron Feuerstein famous was not success but his attitude in the face of catastrophe. He became a model of how employers should treat their workers.

In December of 1995, a fire raged through the Malden Mills complex, destroying almost everything. He faced the decision of whether to rebuild. He also saw that the plant’s 1,400 workers were left destitute in the dead of winter. He could have collected the insurance proceeds and walked away from the disaster.

However, he decided to stand by his workers. He took a risk and retained all 1,400 employees on the full payroll for three months. He extended their health benefits and began rebuilding the plant so that they could return to work.

In a 1997 speech, he explained that if the worker felt he was “treated the way he should be treated,” he would go the extra mile and make quality products for the company. He was right.

Here is the link to his interview on 60 minutes (6 minutes):  https://youtu.be/ry7_FcSiQL8

Doing the Right Thing

How will your stewardship be remembered by your credit union’s members?  Who is showing the way for others on your leadership team?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote almost a century ago, “the fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

 

For generations men and women have been rising before dawn to row.   These early morning workouts are dark, cold and damp.   The sport is far from public view save for infrequent weekend regattas.

The physical and mental sporting challenge can be rewarding.  But more unique is the setting–the never ending  tableaus of dark nights transforming into colorful  mornings of first lights.

Nature as it awakes, monuments bathed in artificial pre-dawn light, and the iconic sight of an “eight” participating in this classic ritual of humans and nature.   That is rowing’s aesthetic experience that transcends the physical.  And draws people of all ages back to the water.

Dawn’s dramatic opening fanfare

John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The Georgetown Waterfront

The half-awake moon over the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument

Monuments at daybreak

Rowers  greet the dawn

Light announces a new day

Photos by Alix Patterson, a life long rower, rowing coach and parent.  From high school through college and now in a master’s program on the Potomac River in Washington DC.

One of history’s many lessons is that organizations, institutions and even countries rarely end their existence because of external forces.

Leadership failures, not competition, cause the demise of most businesses and non-profits.

In the credit union system today it is easy to see examples of this failure of leadership oversight described by Warren Buffett.  The technical term for this activity is governance.

Rarely do credit unions have elections for directors; CEO’s end their reign and opt for one more big payday by  selling their coop to another; CEO’s buy banks with members’ savings without disclosing relevant details or future returns to their nominal owners; etc.

Here are Buffett’s view of these institutional failures.  The question is whether your credit union could be fairly characterized by one, or all?

1. “A CEO that wants a puppet board can still get one, I’ll put it that way.” (he notes that executives can prevent their directors from questioning them by wasting their time.)
2. “It isn’t fundamental dishonesty that causes people to go in a different direction. It’s human nature. There are plenty of people who are really decent people, intelligent people. I’d be happy if they married my daughter, or if they moved in next door to me. But they just don’t come to grips with reality. And boards usually don’t push them to.”
3. “Picking the right CEO is 10 times more important than the compensation. But somebody has to be there to represent the shareholders in terms of overreaching by even competent executives.”

How are the member-owners represented in your credit union?  Are they are just well-served customers?  What is necessary for credit unions to reverse the all too frequent examples of leadership and governance failures now occurring? And accepted as “usual and customary”?

It is not a shortfall of capital that causes most credit unions to turn in their charters.   It is the absence of character and  awareness of the member’s “common good” by leadership.

When every credit union performance measure is a number, one consequence is that everyone has a price.