This Happened to a Friend of Mine

Some time ago, this happened to a friend of mine.

He was hired a few years back for a specific job at a non-profit organization, what at my company we’d call an “individual contributor” position. Gradually his skills and abilities led to more and more responsibility. He knew a lot of stuff, because he’d done a lot of stuff.

He was kind of an oddball, something of an interloper working among people who had been there a long time. And, no surprise, his perspective was different from that of his colleagues. He saw and sensed things more quickly than others; he spotted trends with the eye (or heart) of a prophet. He would say things, disturbing or aggravating everyone in the room, and then be proven right, which is often worse than being wrong.

But he was liked anyway. Quiet, dependable, extremely skilled and talented. Solid in a crisis. Adept at fixing messes. People generally forgave him the prophetic outbursts, which he did learn to keep under control. Mostly.

The department he was in expanded, and he found himself leading a lot of people. He had a crazy idea about people. He believed people had the same intrinsic value and worth, because they were each made in the image of God (yeah, he was one of those types). He knew that people possessed different skills, talents and abilities, but those differences didn’t make them any less valuable in God’s eyes. And that’s how he managed, or tried to. He wasn’t a socialist; he differentiated among top and good and average and bad performers. But everyone knew he treated all of his people with respect. The team flourished, producing results that were outstanding, and advanced themselves, the organization and their profession in the process. It’s still an amazing story.

Things were fine for a while, and then came one of those annual job reviews. Here’s what he was told by his boss:

Outstanding performance. Great results.

But, here’s what management thinks about you.

You are not a good leader, because your people like working for you. That means you’re too soft.

You’re old-fashioned. You don’t think like we do.

You are good at too many things. That means you’re tactical, not strategic.

Hard as it is to believe, given the performance and results of his team, that’s what he was told.

Here’s what my friend said:

I have to lead people in the way that’s central to me. I can’t and won’t browbeat them. Look at the results. Could that have happened by making people afraid?

You’re right, I don’t think like you do. And that’s what makes me valuable.

Being good at many things could mean that I can see things clearly from many different perspectives, that I may be the most strategic person you have.

The discussion ended fine; there was no shouting or even defensiveness. (Not with a bang but a whimper, as T.S. Eliot said.) But my friend was shaken.

He asked me what I thought, since I knew him well. I said that if his review was typical for others in his organization, then his organization was doomed.

He didn’t know what others’ performance reviews had been. But he knew he couldn’t change, at least in the ways his boss suggested. He started updating his resume, making phone calls, and networking.

A week after his performance review, something happened.

His boss unexpectedly left the organization.

And my friend was promoted.

He still doesn’t understand it. Neither do I.

Sounds like one of those crazy organizational things.

Or a God thing.

Those Pesky Book Reviews

On Monday, author T.L. Hines posted an article on his blog about book reviews -- and about why you shouldn't do them if you intend to be a published writer yourself. His reason, and it's a valid one, is what can happen when you review a book you hate -- and you later run into the author who wrote it, like at a writer's conference. Without a doubt, your name has been burned into the writer's mind. It can make for general unpleasantness all around.

I wrote a review of his latest novel, Faces in the Fire, and posted the review on Amazon and some thoughts about the book on this blog. That review doesn't apply to Hines' argument, because I really liked the book and my review and my blog post reflected that.

I've learned to avoid the problem Hines discusses by writing reviews only of books I like, and like a lot, books so well written that they make me think of something in a new way, blow my socks off with an incredibly crafted story, or send me to Amazon to find everything else this author has written.

But there's a key word in the first sentence of that paragraph -- learned. I once wrote a review that cited a book's fine writing but pointed out some problems. Some saw the same things but weren't as bothered by them; others felt more strongly than I did. But for whatever reason, it was my review that caught people's attention. It caused some nasty reactions, it did, from the writer's fans. It got so nasty that I ultimately removed the review (in that sense, online is much easier to manage than print). Some Christians can sometimes be very un-Christian like in their behavior. All of us have our moments. But it wasn't worth the general nastiness. (And Hines is right -- those names and comments are burned into my consciousness, and this was just a book review.)

But I still write and post reviews. I read a lot of both fiction and non-fiction. I review perhaps a fifth of what I read (ask my wife how the books pile up around here). I read a variety of genres. But I review very little of what I read. Some books begin with an interesting premise and then fade into triteness. Others promise something different but then discourage you with the utterly expected. Others have characters that never move beyond cardboard. Still others go well for the first three fourths of the way and then collapse into compressed and hackneyed plot resolution.

And then there are the ones that make reading pleasurable and completely worthwhile, including the ones you wished you hadn't read. These are the authors whose writing is consistently good because they work at it hard and work at telling the best story they possibly can. They may not be the "brands" that dominate the best-seller lists but they love what they do and they compel the reader to love what they do. And it's not just the "literary" crowd but writers working across all the genres. Some are well known but many are not, and I'll write reviews of their works and post them and blog about them and tweet them and retweet them, because they deserve a wider audience and readers deserve to find them.

Here are some of them: T.L. Hines, Dale Cramer, Athol Dickson, Travis Thrasher, Chris Fabry, Charles Martin, Bonnie Grove, Susan Meissner, Anne Lamott, Michael Snyder, Charles Martin, Marilynne Robinson, Brandilyn Collins, Mike Dellosso, L.L. Barkat. Check them out.

A Long Week

I've not been posting much this week. Lots of things have been happening at work -- retirement announcements, team changes, meetings -- the whole gamut of stuff. In a week or so, I'll have more about it. But it has been a wild ride, especially today.

Yesterday, I met with six local PR people as part of a study program for the Public Relations Society of America accreditation exam. My topic was social media, and we had a really good discussion. One of the participants asked if I thought social media would have an impact on corporate structures generally, and I said most definitely yes. I said we're already seeing corporate America go through the five phases of social media adoption -- total denial it even exists; a couple of experiments with it; wild enthusiasm until something bad happens; almost total withdrawal; and then a more measured and balanced involvement.

Also on Wednesday, InsideWork published one of the posts from this blog -- one about layoffs. We've been blogging the experience at work on our intranet, which hasn't thrilled Human Resources but which has drawn thousands of employees to the stories.

My ribs continue to mend; I'm making do with Aleve and Tylenol. My lung is back to normal. Last week, I was actually given the OK to do the stationary recumbant bike for a short stretch. If things continue to go well, I'll get to be up on my road bike by mid-September, at least for a 20-30 minute ride. Unfortunately, that means I'll miss the MS 150 over in Columbia, Missouri, for which I'm registered and have my new team jersey, a fiery red in color -- perfect for someone my age to look totally foolish in.

I've been reading Shawn Grady's Through the Fire, and it's extraordinarily well done. It's a first novel, but this guy knows how to write and he knows about fighting fires (he's a firefighter in Reno). Take a look at his web site -- it includes the "soundtrack" for the novel -- the music he listened to while writing the story. (I'm listening to it right now, in fact -- songs from U2, Led Zeppelin, Cold Play, Jars of Clay and the Dave Matthews Band, among others.)

More soon.

Found by the Pool

Lie on my mat,
Wait for the move,
The swirl,
The liquid whisper that frames
The healing.

Lie on my mat.
The water stirs.
Too slow to reach.
Too slow.
Lie on my mat,
Eyes burned by the sun.

The voice flows,
Submerging my mat,
Lifting to the light.
Ride the cascading spiral.
Pick it up.
Walk.
The voice vanishes
Among the dripping faces.

In my hands
Lies my mat.

Discipleship, Evangelism and “Return Policy”

Mike Duran over at deCompose had a lively discussion going last week about the purpose of Christian fiction. He posed a question – is the purpose discipleship or evangelism or both? -- and then answered it by saying that most of the Christian fiction published today is decidedly aimed at its targeted market – readers who are Christians. (For a non-Christian, “discipleship or evangelism” means writing for Christians to help them broaden or deepen their faith as opposed to writing to people who don’t share the Christian faith.)

I think Mike’s right. Stroll through a Christian bookstore, or the Christian fiction section at Barnes & Noble, and it’s pretty obvious who Christian fiction is published for (not to mention that a non-Christian would not likely be wandering around a Christian bookstore or the Christian fiction shelves at B&N). So Mike asks an additional, more provocative question – who should Christian fiction be aimed at?

It’s easy to end the discussion with “well, both, of course.” But for a Christian writer, the answer isn’t so simple, especially in the culture we live in today. If a lot of people don’t have the foggiest as to whom Noah was, or what a “road to Damascus” experience actually refers to, then you have to write very different kinds of stories than you might have even as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, if you're trying to reach a broader readership.

I had this discussion in mind as I read Michael Snyder’s novel Return Policy (I posted my review at Amazon earlier today). He’s published by a Christian publishing house (although one with a secular corporate parent) but his readers are likely to be Christians and non-Christians alike. The gospel message is there, but it’s not overt. Instead, Snyder achieves something more difficult. He doesn’t “tell” the gospel message; rather, he lets the story play out the gospel message so that the reader sees it.

Here’s my character description from the Amazon review: “Willy is a writer and college teacher, who can't deal with his wife's abandonment from years before and spends time trying to destroy what belonged to her, like the espresso maker, while he desperately misses her. Ozeena, a customer representative at the espresso maker manufacturer, was abandoned years earlier by her husband after he allowed their child to almost drown in the bathtub; she struggles to raise her brain-damaged son and competes for a promotion at work. And Shaq, a homeless man with large gaps in his memory (large as in almost total), is searching for his wife Patrice and searching for what is missing from his mind while almost fearing he's going to find it.”

Through the lives of these three characters, and a few of the minor ones, the reader experiences the healing of brokenness, faith, hope and love. Each character is struggling with the realities of life. Each reaches a decision point where it’s either take a leap of faith or accept being permanently broken. Each receives and gives grace. The novel isn’t the stereotyped sermon at a tent revival; it is the telling of the stories of people’s lives where we can see what faith actually means.

There were elements of “Return Policy” that reminded me of the oddball humor of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and the stories of Flannery O’Connor. But Michael Snyder is an original, with an original voice and a decidedly original perspective. Return Policy does what good fiction, Christian or otherwise, should always do – broaden and deepen our understanding while forcing us to confront an old truth in a new way.

Poetry on the Web

Without looking for it, I've been finding poetry on the web.

I read poetry, but not on a regular basis. Last year, I wandered over to a book fair in a nearby suburb and found myself having an extended conversation with Walter Bargen, the state of Missouri's poet laureate. He was standing at his booth, trying not to look occupied, and I walked up and introduced myself. (If nothing else, I thought, I'd make a good prop for the booth.) (I was right.)

Bargen was delightful to talk with -- and eminently approachable. And when I told him I had actually read a book of his poems, he got downright voluble. I bought two more of his books; he signed both and did a special drawing/autograph in one called Feast. It was the coolest thing. Our conversation attracted others, and by the time I left, his booth traffic had ballooned from one to quite a few.

I've read a lot of poetry over the years -- Frost, Dickenson, the English Romantics, Rupert Brooke, Longellow, Whitman, Eliot, Yeats, Wallace Stevens -- all the standards. But I don't really visit the web to find poetry. Until the last month or so.

I'm not sure if I found poetry or it found me. I was looking at a site called The High Calling Blogs, and discovered that it had a Friday feature called Random Acts of Poetry -- poems on a stated topic with links to others also writing on the featured topic. Well, you know the web. Before long, I was looking all over the place at poetry that was really good stuff. I found poems by L.L. Barkat, Jim Schmotzer, Marcus Goodyear and many others -- and it was poetry I connected to on several levels.

We live in a time that's not exactly conducive to the reading of poetry. And yet, in a way, we live in a time when we desperately need to be reading poetry.

A recent post in The Evangelical Outpost by a writer and thinker named Hayden Butler cited three reasons for reading poetry: it breaks us out of our linguistic ruts; it can make us speak more precisely; and it shows we can create beauty in our speech. None of these is necessarily critical for political sound bites or 140-character microblogging, but they are vitally important for expanding our hearts and nurturing our souls.

Findings on Today's Web

Mike Duran over at deCompose has a good post today about the aim of Christian fiction. Is it discipleship, evangelism or both? His argument, and I think a good one, is that it's supposed to be both but skews heavily towards discipleship, i.e., the Christian market. Interesting discussion.

L.L. Barkat, who has three blogs and posts on several others, has a short, sweet post today at Seedlings in Stone called "Nothing in Return" and one at Love Notes to Yahweh about coming into wild roses. (OK, so I'm a fan. I like her writing and her art, and her children are no pikers in the art department either.) (I have a real rube's definition of art -- if I can draw it or paint it, it's not art. I can't do what L.L. does. And I can't do what her children do, either.) And in only the way that the internet can, I tweeted a reply to an question from Intervarsity Press about a favorite IVP book (Stone Crossings), L.L. retweeted it, IVP retweeted my blog post about it, and my blog got a rush of visitors. Crazy but fun.

I'm still reading Michael Snyder's Return Policy. I'm deliberately reading it slowly, catching the rhythm and the pace. I don't think I've read anything quite like it before. It reminds me, in a way, of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, but Snyder has his own distinct voice.

I spent part of the weekend working on two articles about blogging about layoffs. The editor who commissioned them saw my posts here and asked if I could write one or two articles about them. (He was editorially nonchalant, and I was editorially gaga, at the request.) We'll see how the editing and rewriting process goes.