ice) but we were measurably much better than ever before. Neighborhoods where previously Mother Nature melted the snow before a City plow got there, finally saw snow removal equipment within hours of the storms. At a neighborhood meeting many months after that first winter, a woman stood up and said, “Deputy Mayor, we’ve never met but you had the streets around my children’s school plowed right after I called your office. That never happened before. I just wanted to say thanks.” That made my job worthwhile.
Why were we better? Because we put managers in the streets, on the plows with the workers and made them learn from each other. I rode with three great guys, long time union members, who taught me how to plow snow and remove ice. Their practical ideas contradicted many of my impressions about delivering these services but their ideas worked.
One more example: the City had never met its recycling target set by Westchester County. Never. Not even close. And the overtime budget for trash removal and recycling was out of control by about 150%! My solution was to ask the sanitation workers what were we doing wrong and how do we fix it. You would think a worker wouldn’t suggest ways to cut his or her own paycheck. You would be wrong.
The workers told me three things. First, the overtime pay was blood money because they didn’t want to haul refuse for 10 hours a day. Second, most of them had second jobs; some even took care of their kids. They wanted to leave work at a decent hour with the job done for the day. Third, if the City radically changed the trash removal and recycling pick up schedule, the job would get done, the recycling numbers would go up, and overtime would go down. This wasn’t a consultant’s recommendation. This was straight from the workers’ mouths and hearts.
And it worked.
Recycling complaints went from ten a day to once a week. Designated pick up days saw all the recycling collected. No more commingling garbage and recyclables. The workday was eight hours. Overtime dropped to under 1%.
The local newspaper, leaping before it looked, reported the City had yet again missed its recycling goals. Then I showed them the County figures. Yonkers had not only met its goals but adding in leaf composting and recycling motor oil, Yonkers had surpassed its goals. The local paper had to print an op-ed column by me, quoting the County’s official report that confirmed by the numbers that Yonkers had more than met the target.
There is one other lesson in listening that I experienced, leading me to write this book.
On April 1, 2003 at 8:00 PM, I was driving back to my home in Westchester from Darien, CT. I had worked late and then stopped at a friend’s restaurant for dinner.
The road was wet from an early evening rain. The weather was turning cooler. I was driving my new SUV and I was stopped at a light on Route 22 in North White Plains, a road and an intersection I encountered going and coming every workday. As the light turned green, I put my foot on the gas to go up the short incline at the intersection.
The next three seconds were a blur – the SUV’s wheels skidded on the slick roadway, then lifted up as the 3000 lb. vehicle hydroplaned and swerved out of control into the incoming lanes of traffic. I struggled to turn the steering wheel, only to become aware that it and I were no longer controlling the flying vehicle. I realized I was headed straight for a telephone pole that was once to my left but was now in front of me. I didn’t have time to think I was going to die. My life didn’t flash before my eyes – there wasn’t enough time. A half-second before impact, the vehicle made a quarter-circle turn as the passenger side wrapped around the telephone pole.
As the safety glass sprayed around me, the steel frame of the vehicle pushed in and around, and the passenger side safety curtain deployed, I understood three things:
1.There had been no oncoming traffic or I would have slammed my vehicle (at upwards of 90 mph) head-on into another speeding car or truck.
2.Anyone who had been sitting on the passenger side of my vehicle would have died instantly.
3.I was still alive, and unhurt, for a reason.
My vehicle was totaled. I unbuckled myself, brushed some glass pellets from my hair and walked away from the vehicle. A police officer arrived at the scene and said, “You were the driver in that wreck? You’re walking around? I don’t believe it.”
When I went to reclaim my belongings from the wreckage the next day at the junk yard, the woman behind the desk said to me, “You were in that car? And you’re alive?”
I listened and learned that I am a fallible but resilient person and that the Creator isn’t finished with me down here yet.
“I really cannot count all of the times God has saved me from my own idiocy and carelessness. I should not really be alive. To Him, my endless praise and thanks. Literally, I should have been dead or in prison a dozen times and He saved me. I don’t know why, but I am grateful.” Ben Stein, Fleeting Beauty
Amen.
So I’m writing this book to make a difference in your life and share my story with you. Every workday for over thirty years I’ve had the privilege of talking to managers about problems, usually their immediate challenges in the workplace. I’ve done a lot of listening and learning. Often, the only thing another human being wants is for someone to just listen.
One of my friends, Rich has been an in-house recruiter for Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years. He has worked for IBM, Stanley Tools and several other large, successful organizations. For a number of years he was the recruiter on my human resources team in the freight business.
A manager in one of his previous companies told him, “Every time I come into your office and tell you my problems, you always give me the right answer. And I always leave feeling so much better. Thanks.”
These were heartwarming words except Rich reports that he almost never gave the manager an answer. He just listened. No advice. No readymade solutions. He just listened intently and with empathy because this manager was baring his soul about work. Now the manager didn’t work for Rich and Rich didn’t work for the manager. They worked for the same company but not in the same department.
Along On the Journey
This book is my conversation with you along our journey. In this format we can’t be as interactive as in a face-to-face conversation but I’ve anticipated many of your workplace concerns so that we can talk. If you listen intently and with your heart as well as your mind, you can hear me listening to you. I’m not an MBA and this book isn’t my graduate thesis. It’s not filled with case studies or flowcharts. In this book I talk to you about human experience, yours, mine and many others’. It is my belief that you already have the tools to be a more successful manager. I can help you recognize and use them, as I have helped the managers with whom I’ve been privileged to work. Neither you nor I are mistake-proof managers. But we are fellow human beings, eager to do well while doing some good along the way.
What is a Best Practice?
Throughout this book I will be using this term. A best practice is a work method that has been observed and analyzed by professionals, that produces effective and efficient results consistently. In the workplace, everyone from the receptionist to the CEO uses best practices – best practices are the ways we get our work done that time and trial have shown us give the best cost effective results, easily and quickest. Most of the time, we don’t identify these methods as best practices and, significantly, we aren’t sharing them within the organization so that all of our colleagues are using them across the board. Best practices help us put our faith in motion successfully.
