Author: Florence Tandy

Experienced Executive; Board Director; Expert in Organizational Leadership, Strategy, Governance

On the Road

On By Florence TandyIn Northern Kentucky, travelLeave a comment

Music—or to be more precise, song lyrics—offer great insight into our culture.  If we were to gather up all the song lyrics ever written, love would undoubtedly be the most common subject. Following closely behind, though, would have to be songs about the road.  Sometimes love and the road are even linked, as in that classic country song, Thank God and Greyhound she’s gone. (really. look it up.)

Yes, there’s something strangely romantic about a road trip.  It’s the stuff movies are made of—Who could forget the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby-Dorothy Lamour road pictures of the 40s, or the more modern, if less wholesome, Thelma and Louise or Wild Hogs.  It is on the road where the people in movies discover themselves.

Perhaps that is what makes travel images stir our imaginations.  It may have something to do with our history as explorers—our manifest destiny.  Or it may be the power of suggestion that a good movie or country song provides.  We may no longer get our kicks on Route 66, but now we thrive on I-75. I find myself on Interstate 75 almost daily, and have for most of my adult life.

In case you were wondering, Interstate 75 is 1,775 miles long, spanning from the Canadian border to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, crossing six state in the process.  We have 191.78 miles of the road in Kentucky.  Thousands of people travel along the route every day, most of them it seems at the same time I need to go somewhere. Eighty percent of the nation’s residents are within a 2 day drive of I-75 in Kentucky, helping to explain why we have so much truck traffic. In some parts of I-75 near Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, a truck passes every 2 seconds – 47,500 per day!

As I travel the interstate day after day, my mind tends to wander.  Sometimes I think of the day ahead of me or the one just behind.  I plan out my weekend, or compose my shopping list. I listen to NPR or the occasional podcast. And I study my fellow travelers.  Do you ever wonder where all those people are going, and why?  I think I have many of them figured out.  Collectively, they are a metaphor for our society.

In the early morning hours you can find the carpenters and plumbers and electricians and general laborers on their way to a hard day’s work, making our lives easier and better.  They drive pick up trucks, and usually travel in twos and threes.  They’re tanned, almost always wear baseball caps, and are often handsome enough in a rugged sort of way to make even this 50-something wife and mother take a second look.

A bit later, white collar drivers take to the road.  Their crisp, fresh-from-the-dry-cleaner shirts give them away.  They’re usually in a hurry and talk on their cell phones a lot. The car of choice is either a nice conservative sedan or an “I’m the boss” SUV.

While the office mavens are scurrying to work, moms and dads are also rushing to get their kids to school. The parental taxi service continues into mid-morning with the assorted field trip and during the summer months with swimming practice or baseball games.  Volvos, mini vans and SUVs are the vehicles of choice.

By midday, the Shoney’s gang is out in force. That is the group of retired people who travel from one end of I-75 to the other, back and forth all year long.  South in winter, north as the summer comes. They try to stay within a few miles of the Interstate, and will only veer from the course to spoil a grandkid or annoy a daughter-in-law. They eat at restaurants like Shoney’s, Cracker Barrel, or Denny’s and drive Oldsmobiles and Lincoln Town Cars or sometimes RVs. Did you know there is actually a book about I-75 for such people?  It contains restaurant, motel, shopping and sightseeing listings along the entire length of the Interstate.  Now there’s exciting reading.

The evening brings out the trucks. Long haulers from faraway places like North Dakota or Ontario. I-75 is referred to as the Industrial Corridor of the Nation for good reason.  It has about twice as many trucks as most interstate highways, they say. And I believe them. Those trucks carry our country around on their 18 wheels.  They bring our food, our shampoo, our lumber, our gasoline, and even our children’s X-Box games. As much as we curse the truck driver who whizzes past on a rainy evening, we depend on him, too.

For each of us who travel I-75 or any other Interstate the journey is unique. Different destinations, different agendas, different interests and needs. But each of them—each of us—is alike, hoping to be happy, to be productive in our endeavors and reach our homes each evening safe and secure.

As I leave the Interstate each evening, I can’t help thinking of one more song lyric.  Country Road, Take Me Home.

The more you know

On By Florence TandyIn ethics, intelligence, leadership, politics5 Comments

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” – Bertrand Russell

Have you ever known someone who was so very dumb, did very dumb things, acted just plain stupid, but yet THOUGHT they were so smart! Come to find out, and my experience bears this out, the dumber someone is, the smarter they think they are. Conversely,  the smarter one is, the less confidence they have in their intelligence.  They’ve even done some scientific studies that prove the point. and it has a name: The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Sufferers have what has been called illusory superiority, where people overestimate their positive qualities and underestimate their negative qualities relative to others. I guess the corollary is illusory inferiority.

What I would have labeled as false modesty for intelligent people, is actually a psychological fact. This has fascinated me since I first heard about Dunning and Kruger’s Cornell University study a decade ago. The theory has many applications beyond simple wisdom and ignorance.  Take ethics, for example.

Ethics and Ignorance

I have recently had a class on Leadership and Ethics through Gonzaga University’s Masters of Organizational Leadership program.  We talked a lot about Kant, various ethical theories, shadow and light – basically what you would expect from an ethics course.  But we also talked about Moral Imagination. I am simplifying, but basically, you have do develop your moral imagination in order to truly understand the ethical decision-making process well enough to make the right decisions. It’s kind of like exercising – but for one’s ethics muscles instead of the biceps. The various ethics theorists agree that ethical orientations develop along a continuum, from very basic understanding of a thing as right or wrong, to quite advanced reasoning and understanding.

And I find it very interesting that a person who is at a lower stage of ethical development cannot understand the reasoning of someone operating at much higher stages (one above and one below is the generally accepted rule of thumb). The same holds true for various stages of cognitive development in adults.  Lawrence Kohlberg came up with a theory of Adult Development, and made the same conclusions. It makes sense. You cannot relate to or understand something if you have not developed the imagination or cognitive experience that will open your mind to understand these different possibilities.

What does all this have to do with anything?  Well, nothing and everything.  If you want to relate to people you are trying to influence, whether it is employees, family members, or politicians, then you are wise to first understand their level of development. From there, you can craft your message to appeal to them at the level of development at which they are functioning, presumably with better results.

Maybe this is what our political leaders need to understand when trying to negotiate for peace. That, and the fact that they may not be as smart as they think they are.

Multitasking is driving me to distraction

On By Florence TandyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

We are becoming a culture of bits and bytes. In this world of multitasking gone mad, I find that I get distracted way too easily these days! Or, to be more precise, I distract myself.  I will be working on something at the office, then all of a sudden, I will have a thought that I must stop that for a minute and do this other thing.  I do it at home, too. I’m cleaning the kitchen, remember that I need to change the wash, then stop midway through that to empty the trash, and so on, never quite getting back to the original task. Some would call it multitasking, but I know it is not very productive for me.  But still, I cannot seem to stop this behavior.

What we are really doing, they say, is switching tasks, not multitasking. That sums it up very well for me, as I never feel like I handle either of the tasks I am trying to do well.  I will get engrossed in one, ignoring the other, probably retaining less in the process. Researchers tell us that we lose productivity when we multitask – by as much as 40%, according to Paul Atchley, Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Kansas.  Russell Poldrack of the University of California says that multitasking affects learning and memory, too.

That certainly has been my experience. It takes about 15 minutes to get back to the same level of concentration we had when we switched to that other task.  I keep trying to develop the discipline – or re-develop, actually – to stay focused long enough to finish the task at hand.

The younger generations are doing this multitasking behavior all the time, responding to a variety of media – internet, TV, email, text messaging, etc. – constantly.  Chrisine Rosen of The New Atlantic concludes, “with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.”

Perhaps this should be one of my new year’s resolutions.

Focus, focus, focus!

Obsessed with fiber

On By Florence TandyIn healthLeave a comment

My doctor says I have to eat more fiber. Since my recent illness, I tend to pay close attention to what he thinks I should do, so fiber I will eat. But it isn’t as easy as it should be.  First of all, I thought I had always eaten my fair share of fiber, but it turns out that is not the case.  They say I should eat between 20 and 35 grams of fiber daily to keep my digestive system healthy. 

 The doctor isn’t making it easy, either. He says I can’t eat things with skins, apples, potatoes, etc.  But the skin is where the fiber is, so that makes it a little tough. 

So I have become obsessed with fiber, with counting what I am getting for the day, with finding more sources that will get me closer to my goal of 35 faster.  I have bought fiber supplements to help. I read the nutrition labels on everything. I downloaded a chart from the Internet that lists the fiber content of common foods, and I check it every time I put a morsel in my mouth just in case I can add another gram or two to my tally for the day. 

It’s almost getting to be too complicated to eat, what with the forbidden list of foods (skins, for example), and the need to eat more fiber, less fat, drink more water, less alcohol (translated, no alcohol). I suppose it will get comfortable after awhile, but for now, I am obsessed with fiber.

The things we take for granted

On By Florence TandyIn health, insuranceLeave a comment

I have always been healthy.  I’ve never had to worry about my blood pressure or my cholesterol.  I can always stand to lose a few pounds, or get more exercise (okay, ANY exercise, if you want to be picky), but generally I would say I am in pretty good health.  Until recently. 

I had some abdominal pain recently, thought it was just some stomach virus or something.  I went to instant care for some medicine.  Instead of a quick cure, they sent me on to the emergency room.  Talk about a surprise. Eight days, several tests, and gallons of intravenous antibiotics later, they released me to recuperate at home.  I have to learn a whole new way of eating – not the act, but what to eat.  What I took for granted all these years is suddenly completely different.  And it is hard, trying to figure out what I can and cannot eat and in what quantities. The person who never went to the doctor is now having to plan regular visits for tests, checkups, blood work, you name it. 

The person who never used her sick leave is now down to ZERO leave hours remaining. That is another thing I take for granted – what if I didn’t have the paid leave and had to go without my check for three weeks?

Another thing this whole experience has taught me is how lucky I am to have health insurance.  I wonder what a person without insurance would have done in my situation.  Would they have gone to the doctor, or suffered with the pain?  Knowing they were without insurance, would the ER have admitted them, or even ordered the tests they conducted that night?

I think the cost for this little wake up call from my body has exceeded $30,000 by now, but I am responsible for less than a tenth of that amount with the various co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket maximums.  How would I have paid if I didn’t have the insurance? 

The NEW communication

On By Florence TandyIn marketing, nonprofitsLeave a comment

I went to a seminar a few months back about nonprofit marketing.  The seminar leader, Katya Andresen, of Network for Good, talked about how important it is for nonprofits to become engaged in the Internet communication phenomenon, popularly referred to as Web 2.0.  Her remarks got me to thinking about that, and I have begun to dabble in this Web 2.0 thing to see what all the fuss is about.

First, I joined Facebook. That is definitely an interesting experience.  Sure wish it had been around when I was a youngster! The idea is to create a page for yourself, using the prompts they provide – schools job, interests, photos, that sort of thing.  Then you locate your friends who also have  Facebook pages and invite them to become a Facebook friend. Both of my kids have several hundred friends on Facebook.  The have all their school chums, the kids they met at camps, various school activities, and their friends’ friends, too, in some cases.

It is actually very cool, being able to stay in contact with people you know from all those different compartments of your life.  When I was growing up, I would get to know someone at, say, church camp really well. We would write for awhile after we returned home, but then life interferes, and we would lose touch.  With Facebook, it’s much easier, because you see their Facebook page updates, make comments, share memories, stay connected.

I have a humiliating 18 Facebook friends.  Katya Andresen said in her presentation that contrary to popular belief the average age of a Facebook user is in their 40s.  Well, very few of my 40-something or 50-something friends have found the need to join, so I am not sure where she is coming up with that number.  I have even tried to convince my friends to join.  Only one taker so far, and she already has more friends on her page than I have!  I have even resorted to adding my kids’ friends as my friends, and still have only 18.  I keep remembering people I have known over the years, searching for their names to see if they have a Facebook page.  Rarely a ‘hit,” sigh.

But I’m not giving up. Even if I have very few friends. I keep adding to my page, checking the pages of the few friends I have, looking for new friends, basically being a web geek. Now, I am not quite sure what having a Facebook page has to do with nonprofit marketing yet, but I’m sure I will figure it out someday.  Meanwhile, I’m having fun learning.

It’s been awhile

On By Florence TandyIn patriotismLeave a comment

I haven’t posted for awhile. Not that lots hasn’t been happening in my world lately, but I am always editing myself as to what is worth committing to virtual paper. 

 I recently had to go to Washington. DC on business.  I love that city.  For one thing, my son is attending college there (Georgetown, class of ’09, Go Hoyas!).  And for the other, the city is always in motion.  Lots to do, some famous landmark around every corner, great food, interesting neighborhoods, good walking opportunities. Plus there’s the idea that some legendary power broker could be walking down the sidewalk in front of you, or dining next to you, or even working a deal in some smoke filled room nearby.

When I am in DC, I have these continuing waves of patriotism.  I almost want to hum the national anthem the whole time I am there.  This time, I walked by the White House, and while I don’t particularly care for it’s current occupant, I had this feeling of satisfaction as I walked by. 

There were protesters in front, something about the Iraq War or Pakistan or both, I couldn’t quite tell.  Police were hanging around in case it got ugly, but it didn’t.  That same scene being reinacted in most other countries would result in tear gas, arrests, injuries, intimidation, and much worse.  I can even get patriotic watching a bunch of protesters.  Lame, but true. God Bless America.

Down in Kentucky

On By Florence TandyIn Kentucky, Northern Kentucky, travelLeave a comment

I live in Northern Kentucky, and have for about two years.  Before that, except for a brief time in Missouri (Go Mizzou!) I spent my adult life in Central Kentucky, and grew up in South Central KY.  I have fond feelings for each of these places, many pleasant memories and dear friends.

Northern Kentucky is different, though.  People here can’t really decide where they actually live.  Sometimes it’s in Greater Cincinnati, sometimes it is in the town or county they live in, usually it is just Northern Kentucky.  As in, “Where are you from?” “Northern Kentucky.”  or “Greater Cincinnati.” Never “Kentucky.” In fact, most people seem to be embarrassed that Northern Kentucky is part of Kentucky at all.

img_0209.jpgIn my two years here, I have heard the phrase, ‘down in Kentucky’ so many times, I can’t even count them.  The definition of ‘down in Kentcuky’ is anywhere not in Boone, Campbell or Kenton counties. It’s kinda like that old New York poster (from New Yorker magazine?) that had Manhattan with all it’s buildings and landmarks, a little detail for Queens, Long Island, Brooklyn, etc.  and none for the rest of the country.  Northern Kentuckians think about the rest of KY that way.

Down in Kentucky is such a generic term, it could mean Lexington, Louisville, Lake Cumberland, the Appalachian region or anywhere in the state, really.  A friend of mine referred to the movie Elizabethtown as taking place near where her own father’s family lives.  Since I have spent a lot of time in and around E-town, I commented, “oh, really, where are they from?” To which she replied “Floyd County.”  The two places are like night and day in culture, terrain, population, and are probably about 5 hours apart.  Northern Kentucky is closer to either than each is to the other.  Yet, because they are both ‘down in Kentucky’ they are practically the same in her mind.

And the rest of Kentucky often forgets that Northern Kentucky is even up here, too, despite the fact that the region is responsible for much of the state’s sales tax revenue, job growth and economic development.  Development that helps the rest of the state.

I get so confused with it all. I have started calling this region the great state of Northern Kentucky.  There’s a WEST Virginia, a NORTH and SOUTH Dakota and Carolina, so why not a NORTH Kentucky?  Makes as much sense to me as ‘down in Kentucky’ ever will.

Things I believe

On By Florence TandyIn beliefs, gardening, leadershipLeave a comment

I was reading the excellent blog of Bob Sutton recently, and in the left hand column, he had a list of 15 things he believes (about organizational life.)  His list is astute, but it got me thinking about things I believe – in general.  Here’s a start on my list.

1.  People are intrinsically good. They mean well, want to do right.  I have certainly witnessed many behaviors to the contrary, which I guess are the exceptions that prove the rule, but I believe that most people most of the time want to act morally and ethically.

2.  Positive thinking really works.  Henry Ford said, “whether you believe you can or not, you are right.” Or something like that.  The other thing about positive thinking is that it is much better than the opposite.  When I’m around negative people I feel the weight of all their negative energy dragging me down.  It’s easy to fall victim to that mentality, so I much prefer to surround myself with positive thinkers, people who believe in themselves and others.

good shepherd3.  It pays to be nice to Mother Nature. We owe it to our children and to our parents to respect the earth.  Recycle, even when it is a lot of trouble.  Plant a tree (or a flower).  Set a spider free. Feed the birds. Don’t kill honey bees, even if you are afraid they will sting you. Use less energy.  The list could go on forever, but you get the idea.

4.  Indolent is worse than stupid.  People can’t help the brains they were born with.  Well, maybe they can read more, study harder, apply themselves to improving the use of their brains, but basically either you’re smart or you aren’t.  But indolent is another thing all together.  In my 25 years or so of management, I have run across a lot of indolence – people just not caring about the quality of their work, their output, their attention to detail, their general usefulness to their employer.  That I cannot tolerate. Ignorance is understandable, indolence is not.

5. People should be more considerate of each other – friends and strangers alike.  It feels so good when someone lets you out in traffic, or when I see someone pick up trash in the street, or when the guy behind you in line gives you the nickel so you don’t have to break a $20.  As a society we do not pay enough attention to being considerate of our fellow citizens.  Being considerate of friends and family is definitely important, but  that is sort of expected.  But strangers?  No one expects us to be nice to strangers, really,  which makes it all the more special and important.

Expectations

On By Florence TandyIn beliefs, motherhoodLeave a comment

Someone on my staff said to me the other day that she would hate to be one of my kids, that I had such high expectations, they would never be able to live up to them.  Well, I guess I do have high expectations of people around me – my kids, my husband, my staff.  I gave up on the wider world awhile ago, but I still have HOPES that they will all see it my way, just not exepctations any more.

High expectations, she said. I really think I am a good mom to my kids.  I think I have always let them be what they wanted, how they wanted.  I express opinions sometimes, keep them to myself more than I want to (especially with my daughter), listen to their ideas, try to set a good example.  We didn’t have to be particularly strict when they were growing up, because they were good enough/smart enough not to need a close watch. They got love, support, lots of opportunities to explore who they were, safety.

My kids have turned out just about perfect.  I enjoy their company.  They’re funny.  They choose their friends wisely.  They’re smart.  They have ambitions and goals.  They are democrats.

Would I change anything about them?  Maybe a few little things, but none of the things that matter.  I wish my son would drink fewer soft drinks.  I wish my daughter would take things less personally. But on the big things, they are Mary Poppins perfect. Was it because I had high expectations?  Perhaps. Or did they just come that way? 

My husband is different in the way he interacts with them. He tends to do too much for them.  He has yet to see any fault in about anything they have done.  He is their biggest fan (mine too).  His example has not been as good as mine, IMHO. But they have learned a lot of good things from him, too. Unconditional love, for one.  And that is important.

If it’s high expectations that made my kids who they are today, then that is a good thing.