Conversational Jiu Jitsu

My old XO used to use the term "Staff Officer Jiu Jitsu" to describe this phenomenon -- if you want some action to be taken, you have to find the person who would carry it out, explain it, and then convince him that it was his idea in the first place. Compliment him on what a great idea it was, and boom -- it will happen.

If this sounds like it makes no sense or wouldn't work, try it before you dismiss it. You might be amazed by how well this works. Of course, you have to somewhat smooth and subtle about the transfer of ownership of the idea. But once you've done this, the old workplace maxim kicks in: "There's no limit to the amount of work you can get done as long as you don't care who takes the credit."

Well, a cousin of this idea is something I'll refer to here as "Conversational Jiu Jitsu." Again, it's going to sound absurd at first. But here it is: If you become extremely good at listening -- engaged, brow furrowed/lips pursed, with appropriate head-nods, "okays," and "I knows," -- people will actually think you're talking. You would simply not believe the number of times I've had "conversations" that lasted up to an hour where I purposely said maybe five or ten total words. What did someone else tell me at the end?

"This has been the most amazing conversation."

"I always come into your office and then get pulled into these conversations and the next thing you know, it's an hour later."

"You can really talk anyone's ear off."

If I had somehow been able to capture the conversations with a tape recorder, and play it back while juxtaposing it with the above comments, it really would've been theater-of-the-absurd type of stuff. But trust me, they're all real.

Now comes the part you're really not going to believe.

I'm guessing that you know me (I'm not entirely sure who reads this, but I would bet it's mainly friends and colleagues).

Here's my challenge to you: The next time you see me in either a) a group of three or more, or b) with someone who is not already a close friend, take a closer look at the conversation to determine who is actually doing the talking, and who is actually doing the listening.

You may be very surprised by what you notice.

Hail to the (Senior) Chief, An "Extreme Commuter"

There was a Senior Chief training me in some procedural stuff today. (He was great at this, and I've got plenty more entries in store about what it means to say that noncoms are the 'backbone' of the American military -- but I'll save it for later).

During the course of the training, he mentioned that he is what Mark Penn (Microtrends) would call an "Extreme Commuter." The man travels every day back-and-forth between New Milford, CT and Groton, CT. That's roughly 1.75 to 2 hrs each way, give or take.

Of course, I asked him why.

"I did a two-year unaccompanied tour, away from my family, and it sucked. New Milford is a great spot -- a scenic town. If you saw it, you'd know why I love it. It's where my wife wants to stay after I retire and where we'll raise our kids. Also, it's very pro-military."

I asked him about the time he spends in the car every day.

"I wake up every day at 4 to get ready to leave the house by 5. I'm there by 7. Then on the back end, I try to get out by 16 or 17 at the latest. I'm home to spend time with the family before I crash by 9 p.m. to do the whole thing over again. I realize the costs -- the miles, the gas, the wear and tear, etc. but it's worth it because of what I value -- my family."

I said nothing, but I thought to myself:

"Well, I'll see those two years unaccompanied and raise you three more. But I could pretty much plug in 'Lowell' and what he's saying would work for me as well. Senior Chief helped me put it in perspective with the emphasis on value. I value the search for 'community' more than anything right now."

Tonight was a great time. Even though I showed up late due to a flat tire outside Worcester, I made it to the Downtown Assocation meeting in time to meet some folks who live in and around my building. I got to hear their thoughts about things like the Hamilton Canal District, the recycling program in the city, and the clean-up effort this month. I got to meet Kathleen, who is a major community builder and also a big fan of this blog. I got to meet the guy who lives next door to me but isn't there right now due to renovations after a major flood last year. I got invited to an art show opening at the Revolving Museum on Shattuck. Then, I made it to the Blue Shamrock for (several) beers and the Celtics.

Coming to Lowell from southeastern Connecticut means roughly two hours in the car, each way. I'm using the time well (remember the whole audiobook thing), though of course there's still a cost attached. It's a cost that could probably be very neatly broken down and quantified in a dollars-and-cents sort of way.

But there's also a value attached.

And although the value of belonging to a community can't be quantified, I can assure you that it greatly outweighs the cost of a few tire rotations and oil changes.

Hip to be Square (Or, At Least Unafraid of the Possibly Square Idea)

One of the themes that I hope will emerge from these writings is how open-mindedness is critical to the good life. A big part of that means acceptance of new ideas, people, ways of living, spending time, etc. In other words, life can be a lot more interesting and rewarding when you don't torque things or scoff at them. Certainly, this is nothing new in the Judeo-Christian tradition -- the Book of Proverbs alone contains more than a dozen references to "scoffers" and how they stand against everything that is Good.

Much more recently than the time of King Solomon came a study on luck done by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. Wiseman's ten-year study concluded that what separates lucky people from unlucky ones mainly comes down to mindset.

In a 2003 Skeptical Inquirer piece, he wrote, "Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for."

In other words, lucky/successful people are too busy taking in the totality of their surroundings to spend their time rolling their eyes or scoffing at ideas, habits, or people that run against the grain of what they think is cool or even acceptable. This spirit of open-mindedness leads to greater and richer opportunities than does a closed-minded one.

And if you believe that "luck" is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, it should follow that more luck will result for the open-minded.

"Comms Are a Two-Way Street"

"That unit is so f--ed up. They never tell us anything."

"I never hear from you anymore."

"Something isn't right here. Our offices are right next to each other, but we never have any idea of what you guys are doing."

"I totally saw you the other day and you didn't say 'hi.'"

These are all real quotes, and unless the speaker was actively trying to engage the person on the receiving end, they're all incredibly stupid. (The fourth one is in its own category of stupid, because it indicates the speaker ID'd the recipient, but it's not clear that the reverse is true as well).

Why are they so logically bass ackwards?

Because they all presuppose that somehow the person being spoken to is solely responsible for the communications breakdown between the two parties.

My former chief and I (the one I worked with overseas from 2006 to 2007) heard the first quote said so often among the units on our base that we just began to reflexively say, "Well, comms are a two-way street" so often that it became a sort of buzzword/catchphrase for us.

We dropped the hammer pretty hard on our own guys when we heard them lament that "[Name of unit] never tells us what they're planning." It's like, did you ask them? Unless all your fingers are broken, they're just seven short digits away on any of the phones we have. E-mail tends to work pretty good, too.

We threw it right back on anyone who used it on us, too. I'm not normally sarcastic, but I'm sure I added to my reflexive "two-way street" retort with a little barb to top it off. It's amazing how otherwise-intelligent people are just dumbstruck by the idea that they, too, can initiate comms. It's like, if I'm at my desk 16-18 hours a day, and my desk is next to a computer and a phone, I'm pretty doggone easy to reach, right?

Again, if the person saying this has made the effort, it's a totally fair point. But more often than not, they haven't.

To take it away from a military setting, quotes 2 and 3 get used all the time in everyday life.

And for all the same reasons, they're just as dumb. Quote #2 in particular can be mildly insulting when the person hearing it made the initial effort and stopped after being originally rebuffed or ignored by the speaker.

If nothing else, you have to admit that's very ironic. It also shows an astonishing lack of self-awareness.

My challenge to readers: the next time an otherwise-intelligent person says anything like quotes 1-4 with a straight face (again, assuming there hasn't been a good faith outreach attempt on the speaker's part), call it out for what it is.

Throw our catchphrase at them: "Comms are a Two-Way Street." You will have won a tiny skirmish in the Global War for Common Sense.

Somewhere, a Chief Petty Officer and a Lieutenant will be smiling.

Article on Suffering Small Cities

http://realestate.aol.com/article/_a/the-incredible-shrinking-city/20080422164309990001?icid=100214839x1200686223x1200024903

The above link is an article focusing on Youngstown, Ohio with some side info/photos on other American cities with similar profiles and stories. If you're into urban planning and the small city revival in America, check it out.

New England: The Six Best Months Anywhere

Maybe I'm a little bit biased (the name of the blog kind of gives that away) but I really believe that the six months from mid-April to mid-October in New England really are the best six weather months anywhere in the States. Because of our other six months, I won't get into the year-round argument with places like Hawaii, Florida, or California. But having lived in most of the major regions, I can tell you this:

** New England is the best place to be in the summer because it stays warm at night. There are no sudden 30- or 40-degree temperature drops like you have in the SF Bay Area. No need to run out and put a jacket on to go out in the middle of July or August.

** It's not truly stifling heat the way you have in Texas and other parts of the South and Midwest.

** There's enough weather variance (clouds, storms, etc.) to make it more interesting than the dry Southwest...and way more suitable to those of us who are prone to sunburns..

** There's no serious natural disaster threat -- tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, mudslides, etc. are all theoretically possible but we really don't get them.

** If you're into surfing or ocean-going, you've got great water temperatures here in late summer, which you never really get out West.

** Thanks in part to the year-round climate, it's way greener here (during the right times) than most other spots.

And lastly, there's the intangible benefit of the way things just sort of come alive in a place that lies more or less dormant for half the year. It's what you notice when you walk down Palmer Street (between Market and Merrimack) on the first nice weekend. All of a sudden, every seat at every table on the sidewalk is full. People are out. They're eating, drinking, telling stories, and laughing. Everyone knows that on some level they have a limited time to enjoy the great weather that allows them to do this, so it's not taken for granted.

This is a great time to be out here. No extended training or deployments on the immediate horizon and what looks like an entire summer to enjoy and get to know this area.

Quick Update and a Segue

Well, to wrap up a mini-saga from a prior entry, Men's Wearhouse made good -- quite good -- today. I now have $130 store credit, and they have me back as a customer for years to come.

If I were to keep writing about this without any connection to a larger point, that would be an example of bad talk (see my Feb. 20 entry if you need a reminder as to what exactly 'bad talk' is -- it may not be what you think). You shouldn't care, and I don't expect you to care, about my dealings with a retailer at the Waterford Crystal Mall in Waterford, CT. I certainly wouldn't care if the shoe were on the other foot, as I also wouldn't care what you ate or bought on a given day.

However, this does provide a nice segue into another topic -- the difference between being 'nice' and being a tool.*

Back in the days of all-the-time day games at Wrigley, home run hitters who weighed 160 lbs., and five-figure salaries that grabbed headlines, Leo Durocher's Cubs were known as the baddest baseball players around. They spiked, they dipped, they spit, they swore, and they offended anyone who got in their way on the road. When asked about his players' behavior, Durocher coined the now-infamous phrase: "Nice guys finish last."

It was a great turn-0f-phrase, and it's been endlessly repeated in nearly any context possible -- dating, business, politics, diplomacy, you name it.

But I'm just not sure that I fully buy it.

If being 'nice' means giving people the benefit of the doubt, smiling at strangers, caring about others, and respecting generally-held courtesies, then yes, I am nice. Even though I endlessly tease my friend Taryne for calling me 'nice' I'll take the label, even with its negative modern-day connotation.

But I would say that being nice (as I define it) helped me get the massive store credit today, just as it has probably helped me in many other situations where something was in dispute and a solution needed to be reached. 'Nice' in the sense of respecting others and being friendly/courteous is a good thing that probably can't be overdone.

The problem with the word nice, however, is that it often gets conflated with tool.

So who is a tool?

A tool is someone who carries himself without confidence. A tool may appear 'nice' on the surface, but harbors serious passive-aggressiveness and always fails to take a contrary stand. A tool complains about things in his power to fix instead of taking the action needed to fix them. A tool always bends to the will of others, even when he disagrees on principles or specifics. A tool is always available for people -- even those who don't respect him back. A tool is the guy in high school who did the cheerleaders' homework for them but wondered why he could never take one to the prom. In short, a tool knows how to be agreeable and 'nice' to others, but has no spine.

So yes, tools get to wear the nice label, but that doesn't mean all 'nice' people are tools. In fact, the reality is far from it. Based on my previous definition of nice, I would say that nearly all the people I consider close friends are nice -- but I wouldn't consider a single one a tool.

If Leo Durocher had been speaking in modern vernacular, it's my hope that he could've slightly adjusted fires and said, "Tools finish last."

Nice guys don't have to. There are plenty of 'nice guys' at at the apex of business, politics, sports, entertainment, the military, and any other profession you can name. Undoubtedly, they got there mostly with natural-born talent but also with the 'soft' personality skills that correlate with 'nice' and the backbone/focus that 'tools' lack.

It doesn't matter what realm we're talking about. I saw some of the "Mystery" shows on VH-1 and if you cut one layer through the abracadabra, hocus-pocus stuff, he's actually a very smart guy. In a nutshell, here's what he's saying: "Value yourself and project that to others. When you're able to do that, you'll attract others to you." The show was about dating, but the advice could have applied to business or just friendships in general.

I stumbled upon a blog via a GoogleSuggest search called "Briankim.net" that basically deals with a lot of the issues I bring up here (self-improvement, social networks, etc.) Some of it is a little bit polished and cheesy, but his basic message is the same -- being nice does not mean being a tool. It does not mean losing your backbone, or your faith, or anything of the sort.

In sum, being 'nice' in the denotative (though not necessarily the common connotative) sense is going to work to your benefit in 99% of daily situations.

And it just might get you a huge store credit at the mall...

* A lot of credit for the nice v. tool dichotomy described here goes to DT, who helped come up with this concept and embodies it as well as anyone I know.