Lesson No. 18 - Thinking with a ראש גדול (Rosh Gadol, Hebrew for big head)

There is a great concept in Hebrew of "small head" (ראש קטן) and "big head" (ראש גדול). (I went into that to some extent in Lesson No. 4 - Better wise than a wiseguy), but I'd like to revisit today.

The idea is that when you have a Rosh Katan, you don't look at the larger picture. I've come across the concept most often in workplaces, and it kills me. It's like people who should be thinking of the impact their actions or lack of actions have on the company instead focus on the impact on themselves or their department. But sometimes departments need to cooperate and work together to accomplish something more. Sadly, many companies don't facilitate the cross-communication that is required, instead even encouraging the continuation of fiefdoms...

Another way Rosh Katan continues to fester is when upper management doesn't invite suggestions from either those "down in the trenches" or from the clients. I once worked at a magazine which had the editor, publisher and marketing manager (me) meeting weekly...but they didn't include the receptionist -- the person who spoke with every subscriber who called. She heard their complaints and their thoughts, and she represented the magazine to them. Considering that more and more weren't renewing their subscriptions at the time, I thought it great folly. By including her in the weekly meetings, she felt more useful to the organization as a whole. And when people feel their input is welcome, they are more likely to think, to suggest, to improve...and to have increased morale, which in turn, increases productivity.

But when you have people in upper management who don't put out a welcome mat or a suggestion box, they can't even know what they're missing. People in different departments, from customer service to manufacturing to graphic design, often see first-hand how something can be done better or more efficiently, what works and what doesn't work, how to save money, etc., but if their input isn't asked for, it often won't come. I've worked for managers who have listened to my suggestions and agreed with them, but were not willing to take it further up, either out of what they saw as a corporate culture of departments not working with each other, or because they didn't want to rock the boat with those further up the line.

Now, to be fair, it's not always that input from the masses isn't wanted...it's may be that it just never occurred to upper management that others may have something to contribute to the discussion. This, of course, is aggravated when egos, territoriality and bonuses are on the line. And it's a pity, because this Rosh Katan squashes those who do have Rosh Gadol, with initiative and desire to help out the organization as a whole. There's no way around it -- it must be demoralizing to come to work day after day, knowing that something could be done in a better way, and not having the opportunity to do anything about it.

Rediscovering people from the past

I've discovered the joys of Facebook.

This includes finding people from different stages of my life: High School. The day camp I went to. One of the places where I worked in Israel. Former neighbors. Relatives. Hadassah. Synagogue. I'm still looking for early childhood, college and colleagues from other workplaces. There are too many people who've registered without pictures or maiden names entered as middle names. Makes it way too difficult. And then there are those who I can see and remember, but I won't, can't befriend for a number of reasons.

I've always admired my brother's ability to network, to keep in touch with people from different stages of his life.

I now feel like I have a chance to "catch up" somehow. Make right the connections I didn't keep up. The Groups allow us to share memories and touch the past again, both with discussions and by scanning in old photos, uploading, and tagging them. Very cool.

...and the Notes option allows me to have a feed from this blog to my page. So that those who I've accepted as friends on Facebook know it's my blog. But those who read this blog who are strangers to me (well, it could happen someday, no??) cannot identify me or my family.

Facebook: Where the future faces the past. (Okay, so I'm not a copywriter!)

It's that time of the year again...

Life is beginning to get hectic again. School has started for the kids. Soccer practices, too. 2 kids x 2 practices/week (all on different days) + one of them has flag football once a week. Another kid with four-day-a-week football practice, but at least he can stay after school for that and doesn't need to be driven. And then there's the actual soccer and football games. And one son who also referees soccer games for two different leagues (well, another son could ref at one league, but doesn't very often).

Let's throw in Hebrew school, which begins next week. Twice a week for the youngest son, but the middle son will be a volunteer helper on Sundays only (same time as the youngest). Year-round we go to services on Saturday morning, although we wind up skipping here and there during soccer seasons (fall and spring). And one son sometimes volunteers at a dog rescue shelter (four-hour shifts at a time). Let's not overlook the one-time events which start off the year as well (back-to-school nights, etc.).

My husband and I share some of the driving, but I think the most difficult part is just keeping track of it all, and finding time to breathe.

I enjoy my job (40 hours/week) and I enjoy going to the gym five mornings a week (takes about an hour-and-a-half for the workout and shower). But all this adds up, timewise, too. Good thing I don't sleep much. On the other hand, I don't always use my evening hours wisely when I'm still awake. After dinner, my youngest son will read to me, then I'll check facebook yet again (I love my Blackberry when I'm stuck in traffic!), and then the killer: read the paper and/or watch television, when I should be doing things I need to do (bills to pay, papers to file, stuff for the non-profits I'm involved with, whatever...).

My idea of heaven during the school year would be to get a day off every two or three weeks, to just let me get stuff done. Sad, huh, that that's what heaven looks like to me.

When I was in college, I'd get depressed thinking about how insignificant we were in light of the never-ending enormity of the universe (I mean, it's infinite space and infinite time!). Today, it's a different story. Who even has time for even thinking about that kind of thing when there are reinsurance proposals due, newsletters to write, lunches to prepare, homework to check and dentist appintments to schedule?

Lesson No. 17 - An Aha! Moment

The more you do, the more you don't do.

(Hmmm, I don't have enough time to explain!)

How did I get here?

Some people have a life plan. They know early on what they want to do and be, where they want to live, what they want to accomplish. These people could be driven, they may have a sense of purpose, they may have a vision, or, alternatively, their path may have been dictated to them, by circumstance, by family, who knows?

Part of my working life has been the result of the process of elimination -- figuring out slowly what I didn't want to do, as opposed to what I wanted to do. Had I given more weight to what I enjoy (art, design, problem-solving), I might have pursued a career in architecture. But it never even crossed my mind back then.

Part of my life has been reacting to things which came along and moved me. In tenth grade, we read Exodus, in college. I took some Judaic Studies classes, after graduation I went for a summer and I knew I wanted to live in Israel someday. I later met my ex-husband in a night club there (okay, not the smartest move) during a trip for my cousin's Bar Mitzvah, returned for a year-long volunteer program called Sherut La'Am (Service to the People), during which we were married. Eight months later we came to the US to work and save money, before moving back.

Nearly a dozen years later we were divorced, and I moved back to the US, this time to Georgia. Why Georgia? I'd met my current husband online and he lived here. It turns out that he had moved back only a year earlier. He had actually lived in Israel for over 20 years, but moved back to the States, thinking it would only be for a year or two, to be closer to family. Instead, the children and I relocated and we have been here for about five years, with no plans on returning.

Now that I've created a Facebook page, I've connected up with old camp and school friends; this prompted me to take out the old high school yearbook. Inserted inside was a directory from the ten year reunion. Although I wasn't able to attend, I'd ordered it, curious to see where people were. I remember when I first read it, being surprised at how many people married others from High School, and how many had remained in the area. I, of course, was far across the ocean. And now, I think of where I currently am in my life and it's simply somewhere else entirely...

Life certainly takes us along paths we could never have predicted for ourselves.

Lesson No. 16 - Everything is better covered in chocolate

Okay, that's not so much a lesson as a self-evident truth.

Once I made chocolate covered pretzel rods for my son's Bar Mitzvah, I discovered how easy it could be (although they were a bit tricky, in that we couldn't leave either end uncovered. to look like magic wands, I needed to put white chocolate on the ends too).

Anyway, a few weeks ago I prepared pretzel twists, which was easy enough. Two nights ago, I made parting gifts for the kids' camp counselors (with ten of them, I wasn't about to give tips, sorry!). So, I covered rods again (all but an inch at one end), and then added sprinkles. Last night I bagged them and the kids filled out homemade tags which I tied on with ribbons.

All you do is melt the chocolate in the microwave, cover what you want and leave on wax paper to harden in the fridge. Some recipes I saw for chocolate covered spoons (something I had thought about doing for the grownups at the Bar Mitzvah, for mixing into their coffee) also used shortening.

So a few minutes ago, I googled for "chocolate covered" to see what else I could make, and found something I cannot and will not: chocolate covered bacon-stuffed cake!

I also found many recipes using different kinds of fruit (cherries, berries, bananas on sticks, raisins, etc.), and, even better, popcorn, nuts, and even potato chips. Chocolate covered anything is an easy and inexpensive way to make gifts for friends, family, and coworkers...

Back to school

I'm still not used to the Georgia school calendar -- the kids go back to school this coming Monday. This week my high schooler had "Fall Madness" where he got his schedule (not completely what he wanted) and had his picture taken and brought in my checks for PTSA, class dues (why is there such a thing??) and English workbook fees (ditto). My middle school son is skipping his, since the only purpose is paying out checks and I can pay for PTSA later. He doesn't even get his schedule until the first day of school! Tomorrow, my elementary school son has his "Sneak-a-Peek." That's where we find out who his teacher is, meet her, and bring in items from the interminably long list of school supplies.

American society should support free education for all. But when parents have to pay class fees, and supply the school with reams of paper and dry erase markers and boxes of tissues and ziploc bags, that's not happening. (Would you believe I even have to give one school a self-addressed two-stamped envelope at the end of the year if I want to receive my son's final report card!) We're also asked to purchase reading books for the kids (okay, we use the library for summer reading, although not for school-year reading. I don't know about you, but I remember teachers in Junior High handing out class sets of reading books to be returned). Free education is especially not happening where school team sports are concerned. Parents are supposed to join a booster club which asks for over $800 (preferably $1200!). On top of this, kids are supposed to fundraise ad nauseum. Pay-to-play in public school? That's not the way it's supposed to be. For art, too, I had to buy my son a large amount of school supplies. I remember receiving the first set of paints (oils in Junior High School and acrylics in High School), although we did buy our own canvases.

In Israel, they called it free education (there was even a "Free Education Law"), a lie. The school fees we paid were for everything from photocopying to insurance to trips to unspecified. Plus we paid monthly tuition for a government school! Further, schools supplied no books. We would receive not only a long list of supplies, but of text and workbooks that we had to purchase. And despite laws which claimed a book had to be good for five years, they would change so frequently that you couldn't pass them down to younger siblings. I was certain that book publishers and the Ministry of Education were in cahoots. I return to America and feel like it's almost no different.

I know American religiously observant parents cite free religious education as a reason to move to Israel (private Jewish days school education in America is incredibly expensive), so even with the fees cited above, it's not that bad. But funny thing -- just last week I read that they're trying to pass a bill now in Israel which would eliminate school fees. Secular families are complaining, thinking it's another way for super religious families (which have many children and often non-working fathers) to get something for free. But I think it's the way it should be.

In my opinion, all of society should take on and share the common obligation of eduating its young. Period. And for that to happen, all taxpayers -- and not parents alone -- need to supply what schools need.

Lesson No. 15 - The Importance of Definitions

When I first started this sporadic blog, I wrote about communicating (see Lesson No. 5 - Huh?, Lesson No. 5 - Continued, Lesson No. 6 - Catching Flies, and Lesson No. 9 -Thinking Before Speaking).

Most of these dealt with not choosing one's words wisely (often during an emotional moment).

But another important angle to clear communications is sharing the same definitions. I've seen this become an issue at my job. I work with brokers putting together proposals for reinsurance. It's a back-and-forth process, requiring a bit of project management skills and a proposed timeline. One of the recent proposals we worked on had the brokers adhering to the timeline - in their eyes, but not in mine. The difficulty came in that I should've clearly defined what a draft is. A draft has most of its parts in place, but faces rewriting ahead. It is not something with many pieces still missing. We learned from this, and will be more specific in the future.

The point about definitions was also driven home once at the hairdresser's. I went in for a cut and asked for two inches to be taken off. The very smart woman asked me to show her two inches "since everyone's is different." Smart, because she wanted to establish a lexicon before working from her definition.

I think I'm dwelling on this now because I've just joined the world of Facebook (what fun!). How do we define a Friend? Someone we were friends with many years ago? I'll accept that. Someone we know/knew in passing? There, I'm not so sure. The "Friendfinder" offers you links to "People You May Know." Yes, I may know them, but is it okay for me to ask to be their friend?

I asked for those I felt confident asking about. But for others, I think I'll wait and see if anyone asks to be my friend.