As I was gearing up this morning to look over the past year’s blog posts, I found myself being pulled down by that feeling that I was “late again”.

It seems as though I missed another key seasonal window … while other bloggers spent the time between Cristmas and New Year’s crafting recaps of the past year and making plans for 2011, I was putting snowsuits and mittens in the dryer. Over and over.

As working moms go, I know I’m not alone in this feeling that I’m often behind. But I am starting to see that it’s not the management of work, but rather the management of family, that explains my experience of being behind schedule.

When you are the primary child-caring, working parent (as I am) your first responsibility is to make sure that things flow smoothly for your children. When holidays and ‘breaks’ arrive, these are almost never down time.

Sure, I had my ‘out of office’ auto-reply set so that colleagues wouldn’t expect prompt email replies from me, but it wasn’t because I was vacationing. Instead of being “at work” doing work work, I was at home doing family work — hosting relatives, wrapping gifts, cooking, packing, unpacking, driving, shoveling, and doing all that extra stuff that needs to be done when kids are off school and families are celebrating. I was the person working to make the holidays happen for the rest of my family.

And while I genuinely loved the holidays for the family time that they are, the holidays just aren’t a time off. They aren’t time to catch up on work. They aren’t time to step back. The holidays are a time for me to be fully there, in the family, so that there is a family.

For me, the holiday break actually began yesterday, with my kids’ first day back at school, and my own first day back at work work. What I’ll have is not really a break in my work so much as a comparative reduction in work-life chaos.

I will go to my office, and it will be quiet. I will spread papers out on my desk, and they will not get mixed up with receipts from Amazon. I will organize ideas on my notepads without the second running column of a grocery list. I will look at my computer screen, and it will not show me my progress on Pokemon Platinum.

There will be reflection, there will be a consulting proposal, there will be a fun conference. And there will be peace. Briefly.

I will aim to nurture that peace by hushing the nagging voice in my head that says I’m late, that tells me I’ve missed the window, that suggests that by the second week of January no one will care to look back on 2010.

I aim to nurture that peace by embracing (okay, maybe just adjusting to) the fact that my own work schedule is lagged two weeks behind most everyone else’s for a reason that has nothing to do with my desire to get my work work done. When my break arrives two weeks after most other peoples’, it won’t be because I am late, but rather because I have been there, the whole time, with and for my family.

As I read this over, it sounds a little like an apology, or some kind of over-emotive ratiocination of a variant of procrastination. But it isn’t.

It’s just work and life, and finding ways to understand how they fit me.

See also:
Why Walking The Talk Can Be Harder Than We Plan, by Chrysula Winegar at Work. Life. Balance.
Another World From Which We Came, by Julie Daley at unabashedly female

Images: The ‘Let It Snowman’ recording snowfall in our yard, the Joy-Peace-Love banner my girls made for me this year.

[One of the special joys of blogging and tweeting about progressive movements in organizations and leadership is the relationships we make as we find kindred souls. These kindred souls are often tucked into niches other than our own, but because their approaches share the our fundamental values and because they are working with a shared purpose, we discover them as allies and friends.

Fran Melmed, who writes the blog free-range [communication], is one of those kindred souls. In one of our econversations about work+life+meaning, striving to be authentic to our full selves, and making a difference in the world, Fran offered to put pen to paper to try and capture that acute set of contradictions. I’m delighted to share it with you all as a guest post from Fran.]

The Stress of Not Having It All

Welcome to my confessional: I’m feeling the stress of not having it all.

What should be amusing about this is that I don’t even believe in the notion of having it all. But let me tell you, I’m not amused. I know that I don’t have it. And I want it.

A little background

About two years ago, my kids hit their tweens and were no longer the suction cups they once were. At the same time, I began hitting my stride in my chosen line of work: helping companies better engage their employees and their families in healthier living. Should be cause for celebration, right? Wahoo! My kids are growing up; they don’t need me. Away I go, soaring ever higher into the never-never land of wondrous, satisfying work.

Not so fast. Many moons ago, I made the personal decision to contain my career while I had kids in the house. (It’s based on my emotional baggage, to be sure, so don’t take this as my way of saying my choice is the choice.) When I became a mother while working at Hewitt, I worked part-time and then full-time, but flextime. When I left Hewitt, I started my own company to maintain, if not expand, the work-life balance Hewitt so generously supported.

I’m ready. Depression.*

And it’s wonderful. I have all that I want…except. Except for the ambitious, competitive and adventurous career side of me that aspires to growing my independent consulting firm tenfold. To implanting myself on the speaker circuit. Or taking that tantalizing mega-job at a start-up that’s nailing health engagement. Of my own choosing, these exciting paths beckon but are barred. I can’t have it all.

And so I feel like a part of me is untended and underdeveloped. I feel torn and stressed. And sometimes angry. After speaking with several friends, I realized I’m not alone. Our backgrounds and our choices may differ, as does what we’re missing or pining for. But to a person, we all felt the frustration of not having it all.

A false choice

Generally speaking, the notion of having it all is something women have embraced because for too long we couldn’t even have what we wanted, let alone it all. Perhaps, initially, having it all meant having the right to choose, as would have benefited my mother, who was told by her father that he’d financially support only nursing or education studies—studies suitable for a woman destined for marriage. With time, having it all became the Holy Grail, and just as elusive and mystical.

I think it’s time women recognize that we’re never going to have it all. We’re not going to have it all if we do fewer dishes. We’re not going to have it all when men wipe more babies’ bottoms than we do. And we’re not going to have it all when we storm the C-suite, like they stormed the Bastille, and rout the place.

I think it’s time men recognize that they, too, are never going to have it all. Not when a man pushing a baby in a swing at the neighborhood playground gathers no accolades. Not when more companies “man up” and supply paternity leave, either.

None of us—men or women—are going to have it all. Because we can’t. The entire concept is a farce—a snow job.

Is it the terminology or the elusiveness?

Every one of us has to make decisions that deny us elsewhere. Sometimes we’re forced to. Sometimes we choose to. Every one of us longs to have it all. Most of us know that it’s an impossibility. So, why does having it all have such a stranglehold on our consciousness?

Since communication is what I do, I can’t help but examine whether it’s the terminology. Are we stressed by the choice of words: “have it all”? Does our continued use of the phrase lead us to believe it is, in fact, possible and we’re the only ones who haven’t cracked the code? Or is the allure of having it all so strong that it blinds our reasoning?

And because employee health is what I encourage, I have to ask how not having it all plays into our work performance, our feelings of engagement and our health?

I’m left with more questions than answers.

Notes:
* If you saw The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, this phrase needs no explanation. If not, watch this.
You might also enjoy this post by Fran: no predictions, no resolutions. only courage.
See also: Work-Life Initiatives Are the Foundation of Authentic Organizations

Images: Blue + green from dichohecho , photo11_7A – Green + Blue from dichohecho, Green and blue from Raoul Pop

November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to honor people we have lost due to anti-transgender bias, prejudice, or hatred.

While I can be thankful that I have no friends or family members who have died due to anti-transgender bias, I do have friends and family members who have been hurt by anit-transgender bias and by the fear that undergirds other prejudices about how we are ‘supposed to be’.

There are too many of us who continue to experience this world as a place where we cannot freely, safely, and joyously be our authentic selves.

A few days ago I came across a video that moved me to tears, and reminded me how very lucky I’ve been. I had as a colleague a woman who was in the process of coming out into her authentic self. She introduced me and my co-workers to the real life experience of supporting a transgender colleague.

Although, now that I think back 10 years, I’m not sure how well we supported her.

I remember the day she sent us all an email explaining in detail the concrete steps of her transition, asking us for our support, and telling us some very simple ways we could show our support. I remember having that sudden “oh, now I get it” when her disclosure explained and made sense of behaviors and appearances that had, up until that point, seemed a little odd.

I remember being impressed by the way a senior colleague took a visible role demonstrating how the community should support her, and who behind the scenes protected this colleague’s job and professional status during her transition.

I remember talking with some of the administrative assistants (women) who were scared about whether our colleague would be using the Ladies Rooms, and I remember feeling challenged about how to address their fears in a way that supported my colleague. I remember the conversation we (cisgendered) women had about whether to invite our colleague to the Women’s Faculty dinners. I remember talking with my closest friends about my own discomforts, my own awkwardness, and my own things I didn’t quite understand.  And, I remember when our colleague arrived at the Labor Day picnic wearing opaque black hose, and thinking “that girl needs a stylist”.

But most of all, I remember feeling a little bit scared, the first time I saw her in person as the woman she knew herself to be. I did not really know how to acknowledge her, and her courage, and her willingness to share her transition with a community that was so unevenly supportive (meaning, not very). So, I walked up to her, held out my hand, and said, “Christine, I’m glad to re-meet you.”

Lame, I know, but that was all I could think to say at the time.

After that, it was a little easier. Still, I look back and see that I could have been more supportive, more of an advocate, more of an ally, than I was.

I personally don’t like to discover that I’m being homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, or blind to my own privilege. I’d rather think that I can take all my academic, theoretical knowledge about what I believe about social justice and right action, and make it so in my daily practice.

But, I can’t, and we can’t, do this automatically. We have to learn how to act in real life, outside our heads, in a way that matches our beliefs. As we learn we make mistakes, we fumble, we feel embarrassed, we hope not to offend.

With these mistakes in mind, I want to take a moment to day to thank my colleague Christine for her courage. Her courage has made me a better person. I thank her for creating an opportunity for me and for others in her community to learn, in real life, how to be more like the inclusive, supportive, authentic people we want to be.

We remember, we learn, we move forward.

See also:
Greeting Card Emergency #6: Four Coming-Out Cards
It’s clever and helpful up until 3:00. After that, it’s transcendent.

This is a story about a quirky little cafe that disappeared.

While I lived in town, and for a few years after we moved, this cafe was a touchstone, a demonstration, of one of the experiences that made our small town so interesting. When the cafe changed just one little thing, it lost what made it special. Nothing has seemed as meaningful since.

The cafe was right downtown, just a few blocks from my house, and my family and I would go there all the time. And I mean, all the time. The cafe had several of your typical barista ‘characters’, often grad school dropouts who kept hanging around town, providing local color and culture.

One of our favorites of these was Patrick. Patrick was there when the cafe first opened up, and was an occasional weekend manager. Patrick was also an artist, a designer, and not coincidentally a great barista. He was the guy who’d give my two year old a cup just like her mom’s, filled only with milk foam, and tell her to find the invisible latte he’d hidden inside.

Patrick was so key to ‘who’ the cafe was that they had a special drink named for him. “The Patrick” was some kind of soy milk based decaf drink that the actual Patrick had made up. Folks would order it by name.

One day when we were sitting in the cafe, Patrick came over with a round of free lattes, to share the sad for us/exciting for him news that he was moving to New York.

Although Patrick the barista departed, “The Patrick” remained — for years — as a marker of the quirkiness of the cafe and the people who originated it.

Forever, it seemed, the cafe’s handwritten menu board listed that trademarked concoction,”The Patrick”. Every time I was back in town visiting or teaching, one of the first things I’d do was hit the cafe. I went not just for the latte, but for the reconnection to home, to the cafe and to what made that cafe special.

Time after time, I’d look at “The Patrick” on the menu and chuckle about Patrick the character, what he represented about the cafe in all its quirkiness, and what made this cafe’s latte more special than most and always worth coming back for.

And then one day, I came back into the cafe, and “The Patrick” was no longer on the menu.

Everyone else was the same– the aroma, the bad art for sale, the guy with the grey beard hogging the chess table, and even the design in the foam of my latte. Just no “The Patrick”.

When I went back up to the counter for a drink ‘to go’, I thought maybe I could also order “The Patrick”, just for old time’s sake. But neither of the baristas knew what “The Patrick” was. That they didn’t know who Patrick was was understandable, after all the guy’d been gone for 4 years at least.

But that they didn’t know of “The Patrick” just floored me. How could they not know this quirky drink, this original concoction, that had been part of the cafe since its start?

Had ‘The Patrick” disappeared as the cafe added a few more locations around town?
Had the owners/founders gotten tired of “The Patrick” and erased it to make room for a new version of Chai?
Had “The Patrick” lost its meaning to other customers?
Where did “The Patrick” go?

Wherever it went, it took with it the link to the founding sense of quirkiness, of play, that had always defined the cafe for me.

Now, when I’m leaving town after a visit or teaching, I still fill my thermos with a grande to sip on the way up 29 North, but it no longer tastes quite the same.

See also: Can Starbucks Touch Your Soul?

(No, it was not “Get right back on.” Everybody knows that.)

Sustaining organizational authenticity requires continually realigning organizational identity, purpose and action.

But realigning can be harder to do than you’d think. I learned recently, after falling off a horse, that getting back into action was only the start of a longer, harder realignment process.

Overall, though, getting back into alignment was more difficult than I’d expected. Here’s why:

1. It’s easier to address incremental misalignment than to wait until a big jolt makes misalignment undeniable.

The most noticeable misalignment comes from a hard, unexpected jolts. Which is too bad, since incremental misalignment would have been easier to fix.

It was obvious that I’d fallen hard, and I couldn’t deny that the fall had done some damage. But as I thought about it, I realized that I’d known for months that I’d been over-compensating for my “right-sidedness” in an attempt to stay in balance, and this over-compensation had been interfering with my riding.

I could have explicitly addressed the imbalance earlier, before I fell, but I didn’t.   Why? I didn’t want to interrupt my riding. I suspected that addressing the problem might mean backing down from the challenges I’d been working on. I didn’t want to interrupt my “performance” to re-learn and realign.

The same is true of organizations. Organizations (and their members) get plenty of warnings when they aren’t being authentic and they aren’t delivering on their promises. Missed deadlines, internal disengagement, customer disappointment, slips in our corporate reputations, missed opportunities all tell us that our organization’s sense of self and purpose are out of alignment with our organizational actions.

Yet, too often our organizations wait for a hit– a crisis (BP), a betrayal of our claimed identity (Target), a thoughtless corporate decision (MAC/Rodarte) — before we think about who we are, what matters most, and what we should be doing differently. We wait too long to address being misaligned, which only makes recovery harder.

2. It can be embarrassing to admit that misalignment is damaging your performance.

Being out of alignment means that somehow, your organization’s actions, professed purpose, and sense of self are not/no longer true to each other. One way or another, you’ve been doing something wrong for a while, and so admitting you’re out of alignment can be embarrassing.

In my case, the embarrassment was twofold. First, I had to admit that I fell off a horse. Even though this happens somewhat regularly to any rider, it still doesn’t sound like you know what you’re doing if you fall off, right? Second, I had to admit that even though this wasn’t a critical injury (I could still walk, and ride) I had to realign my ability to act with my beliefs about what I should be doing. And, I needed help.

3. You can’t let the embarrassment or skepticism get in the way of pursuing re-alignment effectively.

We don’t like to think that we can’t fix our organizations with the same people and the same systems that we already have up and running. Organizations sometimes need help– and they need to ask for it.

Organizations may also need to ask for help from new kinds of people or new kinds of systems. Maybe that means hiring consultants or listening to the HR department, maybe that means employee engagement programs and authenticity check-up systems.

4. You have to open up you mind to the process of being readjusted back into alignment.

Getting re-aligned can be scary, it might hurt, and it might be hard.

My skepticism about chiropraction? (chiropraxis?) made me a reluctant patient. For me, getting adjusted was scary. Sometimes it hurt afterward to feel stretched and pushed in different ways. But that’s what needed to be done.

Organizations may be skeptical about the need to realign and resist getting the skillful help they might need. Before organizations can get readjusted, they have to relax and open themselves up to the process. They actually have to try different things as they pursue realignment.

5. Re-alignment is an ongoing process.

One adjustment (even a big one that goes snap) doesn’t fix the problem. You have to get adjusted over, and over, and over.

Both organizations and individuals get hardened and tightened into distorted positions, coming to treat these distortions as “normal”. And, as we first start to realign, moving away from old positions and trying to adopt new positions feels awkward. And, you have to give your frame time to reestablish itself in the alignment.

Organizations often don’t think they are performing as well with the new positions or systems as they did with the older (misaligned) ones. However, once organizations put the work into realigning, performance can get a boost.

I haven’t gotten back up to the level I was at before my fall, but my balance has improved in noticeable ways. That doesn’t mean I won’t fall off again– but I probably won’t fall off for the same reasons.

There is another lesson, which I’m still in the process of figuring out. It has to do with the idea of knowing my goal or purpose, and aligning towards that purpose.

For while, I haven’t been sure whether the point of realigning was to get back to riding the way I had been, or whether the goal was to make it possible to do something different. (Maybe it is time to switch from jumping to dressage?) Maybe all I could realistically shoot for is getting back to all-night partying. I’m still thinking on this.

But reflecting helped me realize:

Organizations can’t and don’t just realign for realignment’s sake — Organizations realign so that they can pursue their purpose more effectively.

• Alignment and authenticity are dynamic processes, not states of being that you achieve once.
• Organizations (and people) have to keep realigning to sustain authenticity over time and across contexts.
• Misalignment is easy to notice if you are paying attention.
• Misalignment is nothing to be embarrassed about– instead, you should see it as an invitation to re-align your organization’s identity, purpose and actions more effectively.
• Realigning might take help.
• Realignment often means making serious changes in your organization’s system, and
• Sustaining alignment requires lots of smaller adjustments and consistent attention.

You can’t just fall off and get back on and keep going. If you want to improve, you have to realign. All the time.

If your organization believes it has certain qualities and capacities, and it is dedicated to doing something, the organization needs to continue to realign so that it can be who it says it is, and achieve what it claims it wants to achieve.

See Also:
3 Questions for a “Quick and Dirty” Assessment of Your Organization’s Authenticity

Has your organization made it easy for you to get a flu vaccine?

If your organization really wanted to be authentic, maybe it would offer everyone flu shots.

• At a private pre-school near me, they had a pediatrician offer a “flu shot clinic” for children, teachers, parents and caregivers– doing their best to get flu protection for everyone in the children’s community.
• At Multi-Media company in NYC, they offered flu vaccines to every employee through a clinic in a conference room. After your shot, you could take an apple or two from a pile brought in by the COO from her own apple orchard.
• My landscape designer neighbor took her crew in their truck to the nearby MediCenter and paid for all 4 guys to get a flu shot, even though they only work for her part-time on a project by project basis.

All three organizations were being authentic, because in each case, protecting members from the flu is a way to put the organization’s values into practice.

Authentic Business Values

All three of these organizations have “business reasons” for offering the flu vaccine to their workers. If the workers got sick, these organizations would need to find substitute workers and pay extra for substitute workers. Or, they would have to cope with finding other ways to get work done, or just not get it done. So, for these organizations, making it easy for employees to get flu vaccines meant that the organization was protecting its core business.

Authentic Collective Values

At the same time, though, each of these organizations demonstrated a commitment to its employees (and, indirectly, to their employees’ families too). The organizations each made it easy for members who wanted flu shots to get flu shots. The organizations made it easy for members to protect themselves, each other, and each other’s families.

In organizations that are only for-profit, offering flu shot clinics is an easy way to be authentic in protecting the bottom line. For organizations that have as part of their identity a commitment to their members’ health and welfare, to “work family fit”, or to a family-like corporate culture, offering flu shot clinics is a way to be authentic in protecting their collective values.

Has your organization made it easy for you to get a flu vaccine?
What do you think that says about “who” your organization is?

When an organization is being authentic, you can feel it. Even when its character is being expressed in a very small way, or through a very small action, an organization’s expression of its authentic self can touch your soul.

I was reminded of the power of small, authentic acts to touch your soul while I was reading Ryan Jones’ recent post “Pearl Jam, Seattle Movements & Lack of Purpose“. (Ryan blogs at M Cause, about marketing & brands, causes, and purpose.) Describing a gap he saw there between ‘creating a movement’ and ‘having a purpose’, Ryan writes:

Starbucks, for example, is a Seattle brand that doesn’t just want to be a brand…it wants to be a movement. Starbucks wants to “align with one of the greatest movements towards finding a connection with your soul.”

I’m a big fan of Starbucks coffee and I enjoy hanging out there with a great cup of joe and my laptop in tow, but I’m not sure that I would say that it has touched my soul lately.

Ryan’s comment made me chuckle–

Who ever thinks of big corporate coffee giant Starbucks as touching your soul?

In the big picture, I reckon that Starbucks is trying to touch my soul and the souls of its other customers. They certainly seem to be trying hard with all their social media efforts. They know that their business is not ‘all about the coffee’ anymore.

Still, I’m not “feeling the love” from any of their corporate initatives. Sure, I’m happy that the Anniversary Blend is back, and that my husband can get his pumpkin spice latte. And, in theory, I’m happy that Via is now available nationwide so that I will never be completely without a safety net.

But touching my soul? I don’t think so.

Except that recently, a Starbucks DID touch my soul.

In fact, it touched my soul noticeably enough that I whipped out my trusty iPhone and took some shots. (espresso pun there)

Check out this display at my favorite “I’m here to work” Starbucks.

This is a party favor left over from a celebration for a departing store manager. (She got promoted.)

One of the baristas made this, and they all took turns getting their pictures takes as the Starbucks Siren. Then, they left it up in the store (for about 2 weeks) and invited customers to get their pictures taken as the Siren.

I was having a bad hair day so I declined to get my photo taken, but I did take one for the woman behind me in line. She and I – and the barista behind the counter — had one of those “moments” where we were laughing about our mutual espresso addictions and just being together in this ‘third place’.

Why did this experience touch me?

Not too read too much into it, but I enjoyed how the Starbucks Siren let each barista and each customer “be” a part of Starbucks, even for a moment.

I’m not completely sure what that did for me, but I know that I enjoyed the idea that the baristas and the customers had fun with this. The experience surrounding the Siren felt “real” to me, because I knew that one of the baristas had made it, that it was intended for employees, that it was instead shared with customers, and that it was “about” the organization.

Can you think of anything else that would explain why this stuck with me, in a positive way?

I’d love your thoughts on this….

Jamie and Maren Showkeir, authors of the book Authentic Conversations, also write a blog about the same concept. Their work is inspiring, and I often find myself referring to their book when I talk with organization members about how they can bring more authenticity into their organizations through their relationships with each other.

Just yesterday, we had an interesting overlap – both blogs published posts that raise a concern that real people disappear when we start to think of “the organization”.

Jamie pointed this out in the comments on the post, but there’s even more to it. Here’s a clip from the Showkeirs’ post:

By seeing people as “the organization,” they lose their histories, dreams and choices. By seeing people as targets of change waiting to be transformed by our leadership or new programs, we seriously delude ourselves. Absorbed in our manipulation, we focus attention where it will be futile. …

What is real is the flesh and blood of a person. We find them standing before us with their history, dreams and possibilities. If we want change, we must engage this person, not some abstraction we have created.

Even when we know intellectually that it’s not “Organizations” that behave, or change, or seek, but instead that it’s the people who compose organizations that do anything and everything ….   we still do well to remember that it is the real people, each with their “histories, dreams and choices” with whom we want and need to engage.

When we seek authenticity in organizations, what we’re really looking for are pathways through which we can individually be authentic and simultaneously be authentic in our work together.

Sometimes organizations fail, and you just don’t care that much.

Other times organizations fail, and you wonder why you care SO much.

It’s a failure in the second category that’s making me sad today.

With Fountains of Wayne, Route 46 sustains its authenticity as the scenic route from the Hudson to the Delaware.

Without Fountains of Wayne, Route 46 is just another generic strip-mall-access-road, in Anytown, USA.

Is it so hard to make a business, in New Jersey, out of  garden gnomes, lawn furniture, plastic lawn deer, and the eponymous fountains?

In New Jersey?

(Thanks to hometown site Baristanet for keeping track.)

From Joe Murphy, on Flickr