“Have You Ever Lied for Your Company?”

I’ve spent 40 years in organizational communications, mostly in the corporate world. I’ve been on the firing line more times than I want to remember – product crises, environmental crises, public controversies involving the company, and more. I worked for slightly less than year for an urban school district forced into massive change during a full-blown financial crisis and became the most familiar face on local television during that time.

Once, perhaps more than once, I was asked a question by an acquaintance that caught me up short, because I had never been asked it before.

“Have you ever lied for your company?”

I thought a moment, looked at the person asking the question, and answered.

“No. Not once.”

He was surprised. That’s what public relations people are supposed to do, right – lie on a regular basis? Or “mis-speak,” to use the more common word today.

I understand the question. I have seen PR people lie. I’ve also seen just about every other kind of professional and worker lie as well.

But with PR, it’s expected. PR carries a bias for the organization, or bias for the client.

And I will say this: the questioner actually asked the wrong question. The question he should have asked was: “Have you ever been asked, or told, to lie for your company?”

He would have gotten a very different answer. Actually, he would have received four different answers.

First, being directly and knowingly asked to tell a lie is exceedingly rare. It might have been more common in the days before tape recorders, listening devices, and email, but no one says “I need you to lie to the newspaper about this one.” It can happen, but it’s not at all common.

But things quickly get more interesting, more “gray.”

It is possible to speak the truth and lie at the same time – but omitting a key fact or number or situation or perspective. Most of what passes for “spin” – positive or negative – falls into this category, emphasizing one perspective while hoping no one asks about the other. This isn’t limited to business and the private sector, by the way; many others commonly do this. The list  includes politicians, social and environmental activists, lobbyists, attorneys arguing court cases, and teachers trying to explain why they don’t teach penmanship any more but that sensitivity training module for 8-year-olds was wonderful. Newspaper editorial writers are often especially prone to this.

Spin is not something done only by PR people.

The third form of lying is how you say something. You use enough high-sounding words to make a statement seem substantive but really say very little. You emphasize a particular word or phrase, directing attention away, such as “We would never consider doing something that dastardly” (meaning, “No, but we might have done something slightly less dastardly”). What may the most common form of lying in America today – the non-apology: “If I offended anyone with my statement, I’m sorry.” That little word “if” changes the entire meaning.

And finally there’s the old standby, “No comment.” In some cases, organizations truly can’t comment for valid legal reasons – like when an executive gets fired after losing an internal political battle, or a merger or acquisition is pending and what you say will be scrutinized to death by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Publicly traded companies have to be particularly careful.

But much of the time, “no comment” means you don’t want to talk about it because it’s embarrassing and the accusation is actually correct, or a response might get you sued, or answering the question will only drag you into a deeper quagmire.

So, have I successfully avoided lying in all of these contexts? The answer is yes.

In most cases, candid discussion will set things right. People often don’t realize that omitting something or a particular phrasing can be misleading or untruthful, and they will work to make it right.

But it’s made for some difficult work situations. If you regularly raise objections to a planned statement or course of action for valid reasons, you will not be seen as a team player. There can be and often is a cost to your career, your salary, your bonus and your position.

But if you take your faith seriously, and if your faith accompanies you into the office, cubicle or shop floor, that’s what you do.

This week, The High Calling has been having a community linkup on the theme of “Clear Conscience.” To see what others are saying, please visit The High Calling and check the links.

My One Day

It is my one day, my one day

is today to be lifted from the stack

where I’m carefully kept, paper

napkins between us so we don’t

scrape or chip or abrade. I am

lifted and separated, carefully

washed, hands in yellow gloves

feeling my heaviness, for I am not

ordinary glass but crystal imagined

and blown and shaped and cut. I sit

on the table, next to a cutting board,

and I listen to the peeling and paring

and cutting and dicing and halving as

into my interior is emptied apple

oranges tangerines grapes (red and

green) pecans maraschino cherries

and whatever else is deemed worthy

and appropriate. I am covered

in clear plastic and placed in a box

that is cold, not icy but sufficiently,

until I am removed and carefully

carried to the table, where my contents

are spooned out and whipped cream

topped to murmurs of “ambrosia.”

It is my one day.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, we’ve been discussing Spin: Taking Your Creativity to the Nth Degree by Claire Burge. One of the suggestions Burge makes in this book is to take an everyday object and personify it in an art form of your choice. To see the discussion and what suggestions and questions others tackled, please visit Tweetspeak Poetry.

And may you enjoy your own ambrosia this Thanksgiving Day.

Photograph by Maliz Ong via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

From the Dark Times – Creativity

Twice in my professional working life I experienced two dark times, and the results were as unexpected as they were confounding.

The year 1987 was a trifecta of convulsions. My father died suddenly in March, leaving behind a business that was a colossal mess. My church figuratively blew up in June. Then my job blew up in October, and I walked away from what many considered the best part of the company to work for.

A little over twenty years later, my job blew up – and for all the wrong reasons. Success in doing new things had outstripped the organization’s ability to deal with it, and so the team was broken apart.

Both situations led to self-doubt, loss of sleep, emotional turmoil, and ruptured relationships. For a time, it all looked dark.

In the first situation, within two short months in a different job in the company, a job that several people had turned down because it was largely about dealing with negative stuff, I realized I had walked into the equivalent of a professional gold mine. I had really good people working for me, and huge opportunities in front of us. I simply had not expected anything like this. A lot of work, yes, and dealing with negative stuff, yes, but the opportunity to change an industry? How did that happen?

I did some of the best work of my career. What we accomplished won national recognition and awards.

In the second situation, the critical thing was to keep as much of the team intact and functional as possible. Which we did, but it would never function like the old team had. Some people left, others were dispersed, but enough of the understanding and philosophy of work survived to allow people to continue to flourish.

But also born during this time was my decision to publish this crazy manuscript I had been playing with for three or four years. Eventually, that decision led to the publication of Dancing Priest and its sequel, A Light Shining; becoming involved with poetry (and a new book – due out this December – Poetry at Work); and writing for The High Calling and Tweetspeak Poetry. None of that could have been foreseen at the time.

I’m doing some of the best writing of my life.

My purpose here isn’t to celebrate the dark times. They are awful to experience. But what came from them was something better, something I never would have believed possible, something I never would have imagined.

What came was creativity and accomplishment.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, we’ve been discussing Spin: Taking Your Creativity to the Nth Degree by Claire Burge. One of the questions Burge asks is, what dark places have developed your creativity? To see the discussion and the questions others answered, please visit the site.

Photograph by Emma Ivanova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The little wooden bridge

A power ride, it was

165 miles, graveled and

pounded flat, with rutted

stretches appearing

unexpectedly, like

the occasional snake

and critter darting

across my path, uneventful

until the little bridge,

the little wooden bridge

across the little creek,

the bridge with its construction

sign, narrowing the way,

slowing the ride, dutifully

I slowed the ride, the handlebar

hooked the board, hooked it

hard, the bike slammed down,

slammed down hard, I’m

thinking I’m seriously hurt,

I see the blood on my leg,

broken mirror, I stand up

on the little wooden bridge

and walk for a time, then

climb back on the bike

to finish the final 15 miles,

not much else I could do,

not bad for someone (as

it turned out) with four

broken ribs and a partially

collapsed lung. It did

hurt, though, once I got

off the bike.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, we’re discussing Spin: Taking Your Creativity to the Nth Degree by Claire Burge. One of the exercises asks the question, when have brake figuratively failed you with surprising consequences? In the true story recorded above, the brakes didn’t literally fail, but the resulting bike crash (2009) led eventually to an overnight stay in the hospital and reading Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places by L.L. Barkat straight through to 4 a.m. the next morning. And that led to being part of something called Tweetspeak Poetry, and that led to a book called Poetry at Work being published next month.

Who would have thought a bike crash on a little wooden bridge would lead to that result?

So check out the discussion on Claire’s book at Tweetspeak Poetry. However, I don’t advise bike crashes as the easiest way to creativity.

Photograph via Pryor Area Cycling Enthusiasts.

Snapshots and Fragments

My earliest memories come from when I was in the vicinity to two-and-a-half- to three-years-old. My family lived in a duplex in suburban New Orleans, a neighborhood called Azalea Gardens. It was solidly middle-class modest, the kind of neighborhood you began on your way to the next economic step up. Most of it is still there.

My father worked for a company that published trade magazines, like “Shrimp Boat” and “Work Boat.” My mother was a housewife; my half-brother (older than I was by almost eight years) was a pain, like all older brothers.

The memories are like snapshots, disconnected photographs, fragments imprinted ona child’s mind.

The elderly couple next door, giving me a square of Kraft’s fudge, sometimes vanilla and some days chocolate.

The washing machine in the garage, with its roller apparatus.

A stash of black licorice on a shelf in the garage; one taste was enough to convince me I didn’t like it.

Wearing my Davy Crockett coonskin hat.

Our dog, a Boston terrier, the one I snuck into the house and then hid when my mother came looking for him. “He’s not in the oven,” I said.

Playing with the boy next door through the fence – he had measles.

My father coming through the front door, home from a business trip, carrying a jack-in-the-box. I learned later that he had searched toy stores all over New York City until he found one.

My mother making root beer floats with vanilla ice cream, in tall glasses with a red-and-green floral design.

I don’t remember the story my mother often told – that I had poured black shoe polish on the fabric soda.

The first family vacation dates from this time – going to Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The only thing I can remember about it was the sulfur-tasting water that came from the tap.

Why do I remember jumping from the back of a pickup truck, yelling “Bombs away, Tokyo”? My father was a World War II veteran, serving in the Navy in the Pacific. Perhaps that was the reason, or the desired connection.

While the memories are simple snapshots without a connecting narrative to sustain them, all during this time my attitudes and personality and thought processes were being shaped, molded and directed.  I still don’t like the noise of vacuum cleaners; my mother says the only way she could keep me still was to turn on the vacuum, forcing me to take refuge on the sofa, perhaps the one with the black shoe polish.

These were the early years of my parents’ marriage; I arrived just over a year after they had married. Certain themes were established in these years, family themes, that I would come to understand only much later, when I was older. From the fragments is a mosaic fashioned, and a mosaic discerned.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, there’s a discussion going on about Claire Burge’s new book, Spin: Taking Your Creativity to the Nth Degree. In one of the sections for this week’s discussion, she challenges the reader to descrive a childhood experience that especially surreal or dreamlike in its unfolding. I can say what I’ve written here is either surreal or dreamlike, but this is what the challenge brought to mind. Check Tweetspeak Poetry for more discussion. At the time of these memories, I would have been about the age that my oldest grandson is now.

Photograph by Amateur Pic via Public Domain Pictures. Used with Permission.