topics: |  management | self-help

an uplifiting story, with lessons for the individual and the organization.
very much in the chicken soup genre, except that it's a much longer
narrative.

The story revolves around Hope, the vice-president of human resources at
EZTech.  A born optimist, she has entered a darkly negative phase in the last
year since her husband walked off.  The opening pages paint a grim portrait:

      [as she is entering office] She thought of the various routes she
	could take from the elevator to her office. If worse comes to worse,
	I'll make a mad dash for it, she thought. She wasn’t ready to talk to
	anyone yet, and she certainly didn’t want anyone to see her until she
	could carry on a normal conversation without crying. 1

her negativity comes out as an endless series of complaints.  it affects her
work and her family.  daughter Lauren says: "every time you say how much you
hate your life, it's saying that you hate your life with us. If I'm a
complainer, it's because I had a good teacher."

Interweaved into the story are various tools for implementing the policy -
such as "No Complaining cards" which can be used both for the individual
and the organization are partly embedded in the story.  More tools are
given as appendices.

One wonders how the idea of formalizing such a structure struck Gordon.
Here is what he has to say on this:

    The idea for this book came from Dwight Cooper, the CEO of PPR, a health
    care staffing company, who told me about a No Complaining Policy he had
    implemented in his company and the positive impact it was having.

Excerpts

where there is a void, negativity will fill it.  

within every organization you get voids in communication between leaders
and their employees and between different teams and team members. it
happens everywhere: with sports teams, work teams, family teams. within
these voids, negativity starts to breed and grow and, eventually, like a
cancer it will spread if you don’t address it.

People don’t just want to be seen and heard. they want to hear and see, and
if they don’t feel like they are part of the company then they will assume
the worst and act accordingly.

She hated hospitals, and even worse she hated waiting in hospitals. 36

"... when you complain, you travel down the negative road. So which road
are you on, Hope?"
     "I think it's pretty clear," Hope said as she calmed down a bit. "But
when you feel the way I do, ... besides, what about venting ... it's
healthy to vent? psychologists say it all the time."

We were born to complain. As babies, we cried our hearts out to get what we
want. ... We cried to get our way all the time, and it worked like a charm.
Unfortunately, far too many are still using an adult form of crying...

For years psychologists had their patients hit punching bags to relieve
anger only to find out recently that this practice creates more violence.
It works the same with complaining. When we complain, we feed the
negativity.

Step 1: you do a No Complaining Day.  I call it a complaining fast. You
	quit cold turkey.  It's great because it causes you to monitor your
	thoughts and realize how negative you really are.

Step 2: When you do complain, use your complaining to your
	advantage... every complaint has an opposite. If there is something
	you don’t like, then there is something you do like.  use your
	complaining to discover what we do want and do like. ... we can say,
	‘Okay, I don’t like this or I'm not happy about this. So then, what
	do I want? What will make me happy? What thought will bring me peace
	instead of frustration?

The goal is not to eliminate all complaining. The intent is to eliminate
the kind of mindless complaining that doesn’t serve a greater purpose...
it's a difference of intent. With mindless complaining, you are mindlessly
focusing on problems; however, with justified complaining you identify a
problem and the complaint moves you toward a solution.

[Two kinds of complaining 
	- mindless complaining - not looking for a solution as such.
		Inflicts your negativity on others around you 
	- justified complaining, about a real problem.  It is better to 
		a) think of a way to actually resolve the complaint, and 
		b) complain to someone who can help do something
		about it, and not to anyone who happens to be near.
]

each year Robert, the head of sales, had to let go some of his negative
sales and customer service people. ... one person can’t make a team, but
one person can break a team.  And worse, negative people can scare away
every customer you have. 60

John Wooden - the legendary UCLA basketball coach - never focused on
winning.
He focused on developing his players. He focused on improving their
fundamentals, skills, character, and teamwork. He focused on people instead
of outcomes and as a result he won ... a lot.  Of course the goal is to
win.  But winning is just a goal and not the focus. Winning is the
by-product... 79

---
John Wooden (1910 – 2010) - basketball coach.  ... Nicknamed the "Wizard
  of Westwood", he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period
  — seven in a row - as head coach at UCLA, an unprecedented feat.  Within
  this period, his teams won a record 88 consecutive games.

  Wooden was renowned for his short, simple inspirational messages to his
  players, including his "Pyramid of Success." These often were directed at
  how to be a success in life as well as in basketball.

  "What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a
  basketball player," was one of Wooden's key messages.
  "Don't give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you,"
  http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketball/story/John-Wooden-dies-UCLA-coach-99-060410

  As Doug McIntosh, the backup center on the 1964 team, told Sports
  Illustrated: "The word 'win' never escaped his lips. Literally. He just
  asked us to play to our potential."
  		 - alexander wolff