Congrats to Kietzman... Be surprised. The Royals are in second place behind only the Cleveland Indians

The Royals are in second place.

Believe it or not…

I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t. The Kansas City Star’s enormously hopeful headline today – “Royals Halt Skid…” -- ignores the reality of July in Kansas City. The home nine was as cold as the damn weather was hot. They won just seven games in July. That’s right… seven.

Kevin Kietzman’s surpringly good reporting today revealed some disturbing numbers about how the Royals utilize the tax money they receive from us residents of Jackson County. My Johnson County softball buddies are enjoying a little chuckle over this. One way to look at Kietzman’s numbers is that the Royals use our tax money to pay their taxes.

It’s no surprise, however, 810-am radio did this story instead of the talkers at 610-sports and the gawkers at the Star. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. If you’re interested in how this works, read my post below on the problems inherent in journalism’s beat system.

Kietzman got me thinking after one of my softball teammates on the Kansas City Relics sent 810’s story around in e-mail.  I recall that at one point the professional athletes at the Truman Sports Complex did not pay the dreaded Kansas City 1% E-Tax. Apparently that changed in the early 1990s and today they do provide significant income to the city. It’s complicated, but like those who live in Missouri but work in Kansas get essentially a wash from their Kansas state taxes when they deduct them from their Missouri tax burden, the athletes who also pay taxes in the other states where they play deduct those taxes from their Missouri burden for a wash. The biggest issue for them appears to be the massive paperwork required to accomplish this wash.

So, the reality is, they do pay the 1% E-Tax.  It’s the ball club that, according to Kietzman, pays its taxes with our taxes.

And, that got me thinking about the Royals’ finances. Forbes publishes some numbers, though Major League ballclubs say Forbes is wrong. They don’t, however, release their finances, so their challenge to Forbes is obviously suspect.

If you look at Forbes’ numbers for the Royals you see something stunning. If I’m reading the list right, the Royals are in second place. Yes, second place in operating income, what most of us non-accountants refer to as profit. Only the Cleveland Indians scored more operating income in 2011. The Indians: $30.1 million profit squeezed out the surging Royals’ $28.5 profit.

Twenty-seven teams made less money, according to Forbes.

Here’s an even more surprising number. My non-accountant cell phone calculator shows a profit margin for the Royals of 17.7%. On revenue of $161 million, the Royals made $28.5 million. The average profit margin for Major League Baseball teams was 13%. That is, of course, the only place the Royals’ winning percentage is anywhere near .500. Apple’s profit margin was 22%. According to a New York Daily News apology for the oil industry, the average profit margin for the five largest oil companies from 2006 to 2010 was just 6.5%.

The Royals were, apparently, champions at squeezing profit out of one of the worst, if not the worst, professional baseball clubs in the world.

And this is where the brain trust of the home nine show the greatest improvement. In 2008, the Royals netted only $9 million on total revenue of $143 million, according to the Forbes list. That's just a 6% return on investment, if my cell phone is right. And, in 2008, only six teams had less income and only six teams paid less than the Royals' $83 million for players. That's squeezing blood out of a pretty profitable little turnip.

Return on investment? David Glass bought the franchise for $96 million in 2000. Forbes says it is worth $354 million today. My cell phone says that's a 368% return on investment. Now, $354 million is a long way from the Yankees' $1.85 billion estimated value, but a return on investment in the three-fold-plus neighborhood is nothing to sneeze at especially when you can do it without ever fielding anything close to a competitive team. Since the 2000 season, the Royals have won 810 games, not counting this season, an average of just 67.5 wins per year. They have only one winning season, 2003, when they won 83 games. They have won less than 70 games eight of the 12 seasons and less than 60 games twice.

--Lofflin, posting this with a sincere question: Can this be possible? Did I miss a decimal point? Somebody show me what I’m missing here…

Quote APPROVAL!?! You've got to be kidding...

“If a public official wants to use NJ as a platform for his/her point of view, the price of admission is a quote that is on-record, unedited and unadulterated.”  -- National Journal memo quoted in New York Times

Journalism is in the midst of massive change and tough times... but...

Quote approval?

We're now learning that the quotes we see in the New York Times, and probably everywhere else, have been "approved" by some political flak in the politician's entourage.

Thank god a few outlets like the National Journal are saying, 'no thanks.'

Of course politicians and corporate presidents want to control how they are quoted. But, in the past, at least at the lower levels, they were told such a thing as controlling quotes by editing them on publication was against editorial policy. As reporters, we usually pushed this back on our editors. "I just can't do that," I've said many times, "because if I do, my editor will fire me."

Apparently, it doesn't work that way at the higher levels.

Now, allow me to make an important distinction here. The word 'approval' is critical. When we were confronted by a source who demanded control of quotes in exchange for interviews, we usually had the option of offering to 'read' the quotes in the story back to the source before we published. 'Read' is a very long distance from 'approve'. In fact, those policies -- though not universal -- often allowed the reporter to get even more juicy information and also clarify what she had in the first place. We just treated it like a good second interview.

Granting approval to a source is completely different.

This is all about competition, which is generally a good thing. What has happened here, however, is that politicians have figured out how to play one weak willed news organization, one lazy reporter, against another.  This has long been a problem with the ubiquitous beat system at news organizations. Your editor says, "Lofflin, stand up to 'em. Do what's right and if they shut you out, we'll give you another beat."

Right.

That, of course, is a rotten deal. I have to learn a new beat. I may have spent a decade learning this one. And learning a beat is tough. It not only means learning stuff, it means cultivating sources, and cultivating sources is roughly the equivalent of growing tomatoes in this wretched heat. And, especially if your beat is a plum, you will be violently adverse to such a change. If your beat happens to be the White House, well, there are no comparable beats to compensate you for standing your ground.

You learn to play ball. You play ball as little as possible, work your charm, soften the effect of bad news with plenty of push back from the sources you have to hurt, give a few nasty findings -- the small ones -- street paroles. Ultimately, the news is tainted by the beat system combined with the limits of personal integrity.

But, giving final approval of quotes to sources in exchange for access takes 'tainted' up a level. Kind of the way an Atlas rocket takes a capsule up a level.

It's time for principles to dominate. Put another way, it's time for the big national news outfits to grow a pair. If the majors stood together against this silliness, it would stop. If the editors of the majors simply made approval of quotes a major offense, it would stop. Because, in the end, the politicians and the corporations need the majors as much, or more, than the majors need them.

And, herein, lies another solution. What we really need today are reporters who file stories based on depth of research rather than access to politicians. We need depth journalism, not 140-character journalism. And, at the economic heart of this -- because everything does come down to money, thank you Cindy Lauper -- is a simple reality. The people who pay for news aren't after those gotcha quotes. They buy substance. In fact, in the Internet age, substance may be the only thing they will actually buy.

They can get all the 140-character quotes they want from the infernal crawl under the news talker or from Google headlines. They don't need a news organization for that.

Especially, they don't need a news organization whose quotes are no more than political public relations. The age of single source, catchy quote journalism is over. The majors just don't know it yet.

--Lofflin

What the Royals need more than decent pitching on the eve of the July 31st MLB trade deadline -- They need a winner's attitude... losing. dammit, should hurt

"After the Loss" -- Fred Patek in the dugout long after the Yankee beat the Royals in the final game of the 1978 playoffs. Photo/John Lofflin

Losing should hurt...

I know. Baseball is a long season. The best players keep an even keel. Not too high, not too low. Always look for the silver lining. There's always next year. We've got good stuff, it just doesn't translate to the game. We just have to keep going out there and grinding...

Right...

But the real problem with this team across the past quarter century is its brain trust has done a wonderful job teaching talented young players how to lose gracefully.

It's time for a some Freddie Patek attitude in Kansas City.

--Lofflin

A few minutes later.../photo John Lofflin

Flow: the final word on motivation... as Daniel Pink says, time to move from compliance to engagement, from pawn to player, or playa, if you prefer....

Flow: Great Smoky Mountains Stream / hand-colored image John Lofflin

Flow. Flow brings this soliloquy on motivation full circle.

When I started, I promised to bring this exploration back around to the personal from the organizational. I’ve said my piece on how your boss, your organization, tries to motivate you. At some point, you have to motivate yourself. It’s too damned bad that sometimes you have to motivate yourself despite them.

Flow is a term I borrowed from Daniel Pink. He borrowed it from Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. I don’t know if I have it just right, but what I have works for me so that’s what I’ll share.

Flow is that feeling you get when you’re in the zone. Pen in hand, notebook on table, a good cat twitching her tail at your elbow, you melt into the work. Everything else goes quietly away. The sound of traffic in the street, the hum of a television on the first floor of the house, the rattle of the air conditioner coming on, your oh-for-four night, your itchy hemorrhoids, the disrespect you felt today from someone you trust, your ambitions, your victories, the melody Layla put into your head, all fade quietly into the background. Everything vanishes but the work. The words, as Henry Miller once said – somewhat ironically – are coming from God and you’re just trying to keep up.

I was in the flow once writing a feature story. I was on the last page of a 20-page manuscript. The chair I was sitting in – I’ve always lived in dorm furniture – splintered as I tried to adjust it to the table. I kept on writing, crouched over the computer, until the page was finished. I didn’t even realize the chair was gone until I finished that thirty-dash.

That’s flow and you can feel it doing almost anything.

Let me put these thoughts into context. The first time I tried to put flow into words I was having some difficulty in my feature writing class. The students were rebelling against the deadlines I’d established for pieces of their final projects and to the points I’d assigned to those deadlines.

My reaction was quick. I just threw out the deadlines and kept the points. In other words, you didn’t have to do any of the pieces until the night before if you wished but you still got the credit. In motivational terms, you got the carrot whether you did what I wanted or not. Were the final projects as good as they would have been with incremental deadlines? Some were. Some definitely were not.

A couple of weeks after I struck down the deadlines, I knew I had to explain why they had been posted in the first place.  That’s where flow came to the front. Here is, more or less, what I said to them taken from the notes I made before class:

“The carrot and the stick was not what I was after when I established these incremental deadlines. I was after a more disciplined approach to writing designed to provide you with a certain experience.

“As a teacher, I see myself in the same business as a tour guide. It is my job to take you to certain places where you can witness certain things. When we get there, you can choose to look around, to look deep, or to not look at all. My job was to get you to the edge of the Grand Canyon, for instance. You could look hard, you could take a picture, or you could go get a hot dog.

“The view I wanted you to see here is an experience, an experience which is rare but attainable by anyone. I wanted you to see and feel what it is like to be in the flow of writing. It’s the experience of having everything together in one place, of having something meaningful and significant to do, then to simply tell a story without interruption from your soul to the world.”

I know this Chautauqua seems pretentious but, really, how pretentious can you be when the student next to you is eating chicken fingers from a Styrofoam box, another is eating Chinese with chopsticks, two students are texting each other across the vast expanse of the room and one is understandably somnambulant from senior comprehensives? Maybe to the three who were listening it was pretentious, I don’t know. I do know I felt like a squirrely little souvenir someone was bringing home as a joke from a trip.

Anyway, the point of all this was intrinsic motivation. I reasoned that if I could give these students the liberating buzz of actually being in the flow with words, they’d be hooked. And the best way to get there, I thought, was to parcel the work out so they could do it when they had time, when they had all the pieces in front of them and they were full of confidence about the possibilities.

My guess was this would be better than trying to cobble something – anything – together the night before the last day of class. Oh, it happens.

Flow, it seems to me, is the object of all this talk about motivation. Anything you do, as a boss or as the boss of yourself, which contributes to flow, is good. Anything that doesn’t contribute to flow is counterproductive. This is not a world where flow is plentiful. If you’ve ever experienced that place, you’ll want to go back. If you’re a teacher or a boss, you have to put people in a position where they can feel it – then get the heck out of the way. If you’re a writer or a painter or a photographer – or a ballplayer – you have to put yourself in a position to feel it, and to do it – then get the heck out of your own way.

--30--

Whew! -- Lofflin

No more rumors

Hummers are here...

Maybe the best thing a boss can do is get out of the way... more thoughts on motivation from Daniel Pink

I want to talk
a bit about autonomy – one of Daniel Pink’s pillars of healthy motivation – but to do that I have to start with its opposite – authority.

When people want to put a happy face on authority they call it leadership. But a rose by any other name is still a rose. The trouble I’ve always had with being a leader is that it implies being a follower. To be a leader, you need followers. And, as a child of the 1960s, I’ve always detested followers.

So, if I’m a leader, I’m in the uncomfortable position of wanting to lead people I detest for being followers.

This is more than semantics. It’s the very nature of thinking of yourself as a leader. If nobody follows, you haven’t done anything. You have nothing to put on your vita. You can’t check anything off your to-do list. To be a leader, somebody has to follow.

Right, you say. Everybody can’t be a leader; somebody has to be a follower. That brings to mind my favorite blues line, attributable, I think, to Memphis Slim. “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.” Everybody wants to lead but nobody wants to follow. Which is, I cautiously suggest, the case in just about every workplace.

I have much the same problem with the idea of being a “manager.” As Pink says so eloquently… You manage supply chains, not people. But the bigger problem is this: I have found it nearly impossible to manage my own life and I’ve been managed by quite a few people who also found it difficult to manage their own lives. It is, no doubt, easier to manage supply chains than to manage people and even harder to manage yourself. Management of people looks to me like a big trap for anyone who pursues it.

Indeed, somebody has to be in charge. I’ll grant that. Allow me to couch this in the terms I know but you can apply it to any workplace. And let me be clear, this is a what-if; I do not wish for this to happen. That said, my suspicion is if  the entire executive staff went on a leadership cruise and the ship was lost in a storm until Thanksgiving, all students would still be enrolled, all classes taught, all grass cut and all restrooms cleaned. The executive staff would, I’m certain, return to find a fully functioning outfit. They might even discover a handful of creative solutions to persistent problems.

And, if that happened, they would have to ask themselves the question I’ve been trying to raise here. They would have to ask themselves, what exactly is my job? What exactly is it to be in charge?

I hesitate to say this, but maybe the most important thing to do if you are in charge is not get in the way. Foster autonomy rather than manage, lead, threaten or reward. The work will be far more intrinsically satisfying if people are left to simply do it the way they think will be best.

Why would all the students be taught, all the restrooms cleaned? Because doing what we do for the university is our job. Most of us take intrinsic satisfaction from it. We come in, we teach. We solve problems. If two of us wind up scheduled for the same classroom, absent executive staff, we would figure out a solution. Life would go on because we would go on doing our jobs. Not for the evaluation we would get; but because our jobs are what we do, we get satisfaction from them, we see that they amount to something… most of the time.

Now, I have to be honest here. Academia is the home of autonomy. It’s hard to think of a job with more autonomy than higher education, though government and business are doing everything they can to strip autonomy out of elementary and secondary education. And the business model many in higher education are mistakenly embracing is making inroads on autonomy there, as well. But, at least for today, autonomy is still a large part of teaching in colleges and universities. Autonomy is not so prevalent in most of the jobs we do today.

In fact, in an age when research shows autonomy is more necessary than ever for the kind of work most of us do, managers and leaders seem ever less likely to embrace it.

Pink is far more specific about this. He thinks of autonomy in terms of having control over the task, the time, the technique and the team you work with. I’m always a little nervous about lists that begin with the same letter. The point he’s making, however, is that to be satisfying, work has to be engaging. It is difficult to engage when all you’re doing is satisfying somebody else’s calculus about what’s important, about what’s measurable, about what counts.

If you want people to engage, you have to turn their jobs into adventures. And, if you’re the person in charge, that takes courage.

Next: One final post on the subject – Introducing the important concept of flow, the key to mastery.

--Lofflin

Well, after I posted this, the question it asked intrigued me, so this morning I made a list of 10 things those in charge can do for you, in addition to getting out of the way. Nothing magic about 10... it's all that would fit on a napkin. And, in no particular order...

1) Tell you what's going on. Like newspapers are supposed to do, those in charge can establish their veracity and the veracity of the outfit.If they don't, distrust will put a ceiling on what your outfit can accomplish.
2) Give you all the information you need to do the job. As Socrates said, all knowledge is good.
3) Handle the paperwork.
4) Make sure you have the materials you need to do the job.
5) Listen.
6) Help you link up with others who can help with the job you're doing. 'Help' is a key word here. Not 'assign,'
7) Inspire, with substance -- ideas, principles -- and by example.
8) Know who you are and put you in a position to succeed. If you are seen as an interchangeable part, you'll act like an interchangeable part. The best bosses appreciate your rough edges and utilize them. This is where rewards and punishments often stifle creativity and innovation.
9) Deploy your strengths where they can help the cause.
10) Do some of the work themselves so they know what's going on and what the evolving challenges are.

7//9/12

How to tell what your boss really thinks of you and what your boss really thinks of the work you were hired to do...

What does your boss really think of you?

What does your boss really think about the work you do?

Here’s an easy clue to these questions. By simply adjusting the way you see how you are being motivated, you can make the answers transparent.

Just figure out the theory of motivation to which your boss subscribes. And, when you figure out his or her theory, you’ll understand what your boss really believes is the fundamental nature of the human being. And, since you are a human being, you’ll know what your boss thinks of you.

Are we basically good, basically capable, basically well-intentioned? Or, are we basically evil, slothful, bent on being and doing as little as we can? Are we basically trustworthy or are we incorrigible cheaters? Left to our own devices, will we flourish or flounder?

My guess is, if you really see what theory your boss operates under you’ll find your boss worries you’re basically an evil, slothful, untrustworthy, flounderer. You’ll have to look past the transparent gloss of the fine language of the latest management text she has read -- or her boss has foisted off on her. You’ll have to look past the sticky cotton candy verbiage the carpetbagger consultant sold your outfit. 

You’ll have to ignore the particularly tricky word “empowerment” in their lingo. If your boss declares she wants to empower you, she means, as Daniel Pink says, she has the power and she intends to ‘ladle’ a little bit of it to you – then hold you responsible for that sip of power you’ve been given.

Here’s one key place you can find the secret. Take a hard look at the evaluation form your boss uses and the rewards he or she offers. Take a look at the nature of punishment and the nature of reward. Take a look at what your boss counts toward those and what your boss doesn’t count. Heck, take a look at the very fact that your boss counts.

If what you find is a 1950s stick and carrot model of evaluation, you can bet her theory of motivation is not that you are a self-directed, creative, trustworthy person. So says Pink, in his new book “Drive” ruminating through acres of behavioral research on the nature of human motivation. If Pink is right, your boss's theory and its subsequent motivational system are better designed for 1950s manufacturing tasks and ill-suited to the need for creativity and innovation in the post-industrial era. 

Which, then, is also a clue to what your boss thinks of the work you do. If your boss subscribes to this old school theory of human nature and human motivation, she does not care if you are creative, if you innovate, if you can improvise to solve problems that stymie others. She thinks your job is closer to tightening bolts than nurturing ideas. No matter what fine verbiage she attaches to her management tools, her evaluation forms and her kudos, if she’s counting the pieces you do, you’re doing piecework.

In fact, the very fact she thinks of herself as a manager, is a clue to what’s in her boss’s heart. You manage supply chains, Pink says, not people.

Lest you think these negative images of people and their work fit only telemarketing salesmen and wait staff, these theories are quite obvious in my world, the world of higher education. Academia is more about controlling our worst impulses, keeping us in line and churning out credit hours than you might imagine. Don’t get me wrong; that old ivory tower is a fine place to work but sometimes the pomp and circumstance hide the underlying ways it is just as pridefully old school as other 1950s professions.

Here are some clues Pink and I offer:

Language – In addition to the words management and empowerment, look out for the phrase “bottom up decision making” or “we’re moving decision making down.”  Carefully examine the meaning of a “collaborative process.” If that process begins with your input -- another word freighted with meaning -- but doesn’t end with your decision, the meaning of “collaborative” does not trend in your favor. 

Counting – As I said before, the very fact that your boss counts is a strong clue to what he or she thinks of you and the work you do. Most academics operate under the weight of the holy Trinity – teaching, scholarship, service. The calculus your outfit uses to evaluate you is a precise measure of what it values. A recent long-winded discussion among the newspaper division members of Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) devolved, as usual, into an acrimonious argument over this precise calculus. Amen.

Counting, part two – What sort of work do you do? Chances are you consider your best work to be innovative, to be the creation of something, to be your ability to solve a problem or help someone else solve a problem. Does your boss count these things? If not, your boss doesn’t consider them to be the work you were hired to do.

Guess what; even in education this is true. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an evaluation form that asked if the teacher was good at helping students sort out their lives. I doubt anyone who signs evaluation forms actually reads many of the articles fellow academics submit to journals, unless they happen to share the same expertise. I can’t recall anyone in authority saying a syllabus looked interesting … or a syllabus was flawed. The only word I’ve ever heard from authority about a syllabus was when it was late being posted. 

Bottomline, if your boss counts what you do, as in credit hours accomplished or articles published or how promptly the syllabus was distributed, that’s what matters to them and that’s the sort of work they hired you to do. They did not hire you for your creativity, ability to solve problems in new ways, or whether you care about the people you serve. No matter what else they say.

Who does the counting – Here’s an important test to understand what your boss actually thinks of you. Would you be considered terribly naïve if you suggested that you – the worker – ought to have the final word on how you’ve done? Would such a suggestion cause ripples of laughter around the board room where the council of presidents, vice presidents and assistant vice presidents sit? Would you be laughed out of the room if you suggested employees could be trusted to evaluate themselves? It is, after all, their careers. They are, after all, the ones who do the work. But if the idea that you might determine if you’ve succeeded or failed or hit the dreaded “meets expectations” on the nose, it that idea is considered naïve, you know a lot about what they really think of you.

For most people, the facts are obvious. Your boss doesn’t trust that the work you were hired to do will interest you enough intrinsically for you to be left alone to do it. Your boss became a boss, you might guess, because the work wasn’t intrinsically interesting to him or her. If the work itself didn’t interest your boss deep down, why should it interest you?

Next: Autonomy and mastery -- Values your boss probably doesn’t understand...and fears.

--Lofflin

How 'managers' steal the joy of your work...

Courtesy: www.ruralheritage.com

I tried writing
some about motivation in reply to Matt’s dilemma, but the stuff I had been reading and thinking about for some time, and some external events in my workplace didn’t fit the problem of motivating yourself very well.  So, I’m going to write some about those more organizational problems then come back, at a right angle, to the more personal problem. I believe the two are often related – lessons from one often apply to the other.

One thing is clear from living. Motivation is one of the most fundamental elements in our lives, if not THE most fundamental element. So, any thinking we can do about motivation is worth the effort. You could debate this question forever: Which is more important, motivation or talent?

Talent is useless without motivation. Motivation, however, can almost always produce something at least close to talent. What works is motivation in the direction that is natural for you.

This is the problem with “management.” When someone else tries to manage your talent, that person is rarely trying to manage it toward its natural bent. More likely, that person is trying to manage your talent to accomplish what he or she thinks – or, more often, is told – is the direction the company wants to move toward. You are very lucky, indeed, if the direction the company wants to move is also the direction you want to move. Unless, of course, you own the company.

And this disconnect takes you right back to the problem of internal motivation versus external motivation. It comes back to the disconnect between the natural flow of your talents and the flow of external pressures. Managers try to realign you with rewards and punishments. As Daniel Pink points out, carrots and sticks may work in the short run and may work even better if you’re doing piecework, but they don’t work at all for the sort of creative, innovative, problem solving tasks involved in modern work.

Whew! Let me just let out a sigh here. Wouldn’t you think these ‘managers’ would just look around and see that what they are doing isn’t working? Their employees aren’t happy. They’re quibbling over every tiny thing like who gets an office with windows, who gets mentioned in the meetings, who gets the green carpet and who gets the carpet that doesn’t make your eyes water. They’re not solving problems. They’re afraid to innovate. They can’t wait to get out the door and away from you.

Can’t they see this?

You wouldn’t think much of this would apply to the free form world of academia, but it does. Academia seems free form from the outside only. Inside, it is as stick and carrot as any other occupation, except, perhaps, new car sales. In fact, sticks and carrots have been refined to the level of Kantian ethics in academia. From the outside academia looks like freedom, from the inside it as tight-assed as Martin Luther. Luther and Kant in the same paragraph – that should earn some points somewhere.

Instead of recognizing the disconnect involved in trying to manage another human being, in trying to bend and twist her motivations to fit your preconceived goals, managers just double-down on control. Having raised a couple of children, I understand the impulse. But, in both arenas, that impulse has led to nothing but wasted effort, wasted talent, and, occasionally, disaster.

My guess is the problem of managing others lies in a short sighted appraisal of the goal. It lies in results oriented management. Profit centers. Whatever some consultant defines as accountability. Goals that are irrelevant to the success of the work because they are external rather than internal goals. Here’s how manager see it: I have a department full of these vastly different personalities, these people with their own goals, their own talents, their own spirits. If I let them alone, 1) I won’t be doing my job so I’ll have nothing to put in my annual (some call it “anal”) review and 2) disaster will ensue. I must harness all this talent and drive it in the same direction, the direction that, frankly, matters to my immediate boss.

Change bosses and magically the direction changes. This is transparent, by the way, to employees and a source of great amusement.

Think of it the way a good hitter looks at the problem of getting a base hit: If I take care of the things I'm doing right now -- relaxing, seeing the ball, letting my hands do the work -- the results later will be fine. If I try to drive the ball over the fence, I pop up every time. Managers pop up all the time. They make themselves miserable, they make everyone else miserable and -- to put it bluntly -- they fail more often than the succeed.

The problem is, driving talent drives out joy, creativity, spirit, and the willingness – ironically – to pull together.

OK, enough for now. Next: How to tell what your boss really thinks of you and what she really thinks of your work.

--Lofflin                                   

Motivation? You don't need no stanking motivation... or do you? And, some inspiration from a Don Levering poem might help the cause

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- 1948

Don’t know what to tell my collaborator and friend Matt Kelsey about motivation. I’ve been thinking about it since I read his post Monday but I don’t have an easy answer. And that’s both a coincidence and an irony because I’ve been doing some reading on motivation and planned to write some on the blog about it later this week.

Matt, of course, is not alone in this. You could graph motivation across the arc of most lives. You’d see times when it spikes and times when it bottoms and times when it plateaus. In some ways, it’s a blessing to not be motivated because it probably means your basic needs are being met. I just finished a wonderful article in the latest Rolling Stone about people who live in their cars under the safe parking program in California. One story of a father who raised two kids for eight months in a leaky Winnebago was the essence of motivation. Each day the three took a long hike along a creek to the grocery store to buy fruit and vegetables with food stamps. They called it “The Journey” and he told the kids it was their jobs to clear leaves out of the creek so it could continue to flow clean.

Been there. Contrary to what a lot of comfortable burgers think, the food stamp life is nothing but motivation. And, when you stop being motivated by it, you’re dead.

Inside.

So, you put in a full day of work, you earn what your family needs to survive, you come home and rock back in the Lazy Boy and you let go. Good for you. What more do you need?

Well, unfortunately, in Matt’s case that’s not enough. Why? Because Matt is a writer and writers are never satisfied unless they’re writing. Folks who do beadwork aren’t happy unless they’re making jewelry. Folks who can shape furniture out of wood aren’t happy unless they’re building.

The world is full of us, putting in our eight hours by day, stealing time at night for our art. You can teach writing all day long, but when it gets quiet at night, you’d better do some writing of your own. Donna Bachmann teaches art all day. We have often talked about this. Unless she squeezes out time when she’s not teaching to DO art, she loses her edge – as an artist and a teacher. This is the burden talent has visited on Matt Kelsey.

So, to Matt the only advice I have is personal. When my motivation has waned, the reason was usually that I had stopped paying attention. I had stopped seeing. One thing I’ve noticed playing ball is I hit better on nights when I’ve been studying the moon just before I stepped into the batter’s box. 

Here’s a poem I read this morning from a new book by my college buddy Donald Levering. The book is titled “Sweeping the Skylight” and if you’re interested, go to finishing line press. This is what I mean by paying attention, noticing, seeing…

The Wreck

By Donald Levering

He’s asking the driver

of the bus the nearest stop

to a certain body shop

where the car his wife had wrecked

is being fixed.

He turns to invite us

all into his fear.

Who gets out of a car with it

still in gear?

We learn that this is not

the first of her mishaps

to put him on alert.

Running water for dishes

she’d flooded the kitchen,

and before that,

she’d caught her hair on fire.

Half a block he’s quiet, then

The Chrysler can be repaired…

--Lofflin

Motivation meter down to zero

So I need help, guys.

I work a very demanding 8-5 job, and when I come home, I'm drained. All I want to do is sit in my easy chair and read a book or watch TV. There is plenty of stuff that needs to be done, including writing and editing work and things around the house, but I don't have the energy or the motivation to do it.

(The effort to start up my computer and write this very post was almost overwhelming.)

The funny thing is, last year I worked the same day job and I also had a blog project that required me to write every day, from January 1 to December 31, and I never missed a single day.

Just a few months ago I was motivated to be productive every day. But when the project ended, my motivation to work went with it.

What do I do? Seriously, I'm asking. How do I work a full day at the office, come home and still have the energy to be productive?

Any advice would be welcome.

Tommy John surgery and the Royals meet Robert Johnson at the crossroad... and the deal goes down

A surprisingly intelligent discussion of the epidemic of Tommy John surgeries on the Kansas City Royals is happening on the Kansas City Star Web site this morning beneath an article about the phenomenon by Sam Mellinger.

The article and the comments pivot on the question of whether the Royals are just victims of very bad luck -- four blown elbows in one year on one staff -- or whether the Royals are mismanaging pitchers. As Mellinger points out, its probably impossible to know which -- or either -- but the question is a perfect debate in a city starved for competent management.

A third cause could be incompetent draft and trade protocols. For a team with little success across a long period of time, eyes naturally focus on the short term rather than the long. You spin the wheel and you takes yer chances. You draft on the basis of what a kid might give you for two or three seasons after a couple of years in the minors. If he gets the big club to .500 for two years then blows out his elbow, fine. Two years winning as many as you lose will hook the fan base back in for a decade of decline.

But, think for a moment beyond the Royals. The pitching arm is one of the most interesting elements of any element in sport. It gives the sport of baseball much of its drama. It provides a novelist's touch to what is otherwise a very long, repetitive and somewhat uneventful season.

Every time an overhand pitcher fires the ball to the plate, he tries to rip his precious arm off his body. That is the long and short of mechanics. Some mechanics are better than others -- some motions more graceful, some more scientific, some more deceptive. But all motions tear at the basic fibers that hold the arm to the body.

Our barely upright ancestors who could no longer throw a rock or a spear for food, died. Today, we visit Dr. Yocum and miss a year on the mound.

Everyone who pitches knows the reality of this. Eventually -- before you are out of high school -- you will realize you cannot lift your arm very high the morning after you pitch. Eventually you will find it nearly impossible to arrange your arm under your head to sleep. Eventually, you will tune into every creak and crack in that precious arm every minute of the day as if you have ear buds wired to it.

Opps. Was that my arm? My shoulder? My elbow? What did I do? Damn, I knew I shouldn't be out here cutting limbs, mowing grass. I knew I shouldn't reach for my kid in that position.

Every pitcher will develop an intimate relationship with his arm. They will talk to each other, plead with each other for one more inning, one more cutter. They'll curse each other. They'll find a medication or a routine that helps them make peace. If they are big time, Dr. Yocum will become their therapist and save their relationship.

But the story line is set. You can find the plot a thousand places in literature but I prefer Robert Johnson's version. You know every time you rock back on the rubber this could be the time, and you make a deal with what you know. You do it anyway. You fling your arm in an insane arc toward the plate because you love seeing the look in a hitter's eye when he's swinging in a different time zone. Because you love the power of the hill, being the center of attention, being in complete control of the motion of the game. Nothing happens until you're ready. When you rock back, all the eyes are on you, everything starts to spin, the next few seconds tell the tale.

Or, if you're very lucky, you do it because it puts food on the table. You have a very short window of time to make all the money you'll need for the rest of your life. You have this gift; you can throw a ball 97 miles per hour, with movement. You will use it.

And that's the deal you make with the devil. For Robert Johnson, it was the ability to find the blues in the frets of a guitar. In this case, which is the beauty of the story line, the devil is human anatomy, it is nothing less than your own personal human anatomy. It is a deal with human DNA, with human evolution, with god. It is a deal you make with yourself.

So it comes down to love or greed and what you're willing to do for either. And, of course, the fragile ulnar collateral ligament.

--Lofflin

On Bruce Chen's humor, Humberto Quintero's "Chinese eyes", political correctness and Lee Judge... racism, I'm afraid, is simply racism

Courtesy MLB TV

The problem with writing a column that seems to touch so many people is that you want to come back tomorrow and do it again. And, you can’t. This has been true since the first column I wrote in the early 1970s, and it’s true today.

As Red Smith said, all you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.

To touch people, you have tap into something real. And something crystal clear as death doesn’t happen – thankfully – every day.

Alas, it's time to shift gears and move on. I’ve had this unsavory issue on my mind a while, so I might as well get it on ‘paper.’ Bruce Chen pinch hitting for the Royals yesterday stirred it up. His line in the Kansas City Star about “looking for a pitch to drive” was baseball funny.

What wasn’t funny were the antics of Royals catcher Humberto Quintero June 9 after a game Chen pitched. Tony’s Kansas City reported this, as did John Landsberg on Bottom line. And the Kansas City Star mentioned it briefly.

Chen, who has a fine sense of humor, was being interviewed after the game and Quintero, who apparently has an odd sense of humor, was standing behind him making “Chinese eyes.” Ugh. And in a Monarch's uniform, no less.

Come on, you’re saying, don’t make a big deal out of this.

Well, dammit, it is a big deal. Racism is racism. Doesn’t matter what color the person is, or what color the target.

I’m sure Mr. Quintero was just having fun. Boys will be boys, you know. Lee Judge issued the most milquetoast response ever along those lines. Well, you know, the locker room is not a very politically correct place, he wrote in response to a post on his discussion thread.

"Humberto is from Venezuela and I don’t know if cultural differences played into the incident, but I can tell you a major league clubhouse is not the most politically correct place on Earth."

The cartoonist Lee Judge would never give the boys in Washington the same tepid pass that baseball writer Lee Judge offered so casually here.

(Mr. Judge might also take something good from this warning of Red Smith's about "Godding up" ballplayers.)

Particularly offensive is the phrase “politically correct.” This phrase has become code for a certain kind of thinking. Politically correct means we have to be polite because our mothers are listening. Politically correct is something liberals force us to be, as they police our language and – by extension – our thought. Politically correct is Big Brother; Sister Mary Nell; Mrs. Morton, our second grade teacher; Oprah; Emily Post; the Nanny State.

So, any time we want to excuse racism, we say, ‘Well, I know this isn’t politically correct, but…”

What Mr. Quintero did was not politically incorrect. It was racially insensitive, which is the nicest way I can possibly put it. And it went away far too easily.

There’s a great Buddy Guy song: “Damn right I have the blues.” OK, you’re damn right I’m off the hook on this.

Several years ago, when he was maybe 12 years old, I took my son to a baseball game at Kauffman Stadium. My son is Korean. He was playing organized ball at the time. He had the makeup, I think, to be a fine catcher.

As we walked across the parking lot a group of African-American boys roughly the same age came up beside us. Without provocation they launched into “Chinese eyes”, karate chops, gibberish, and all kinds of foolishness. It took me completely by surprise and my son pretended not to notice but he most certainly did. I watched the Great Stoneface appear and I don’t think either one of us enjoyed the game much. I imagine a few speeders and a couple of drunks have also seen the Great Stoneface when they rolled down their windows in his various jurisdictions. It was not the first time I had seen the Great Stoneface and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was a hard thing to see it on the way into a ballpark.

Probably he doesn’t even remember this incident, but I do, and Mr. Quintero’s “Chinese eyes” brought it back to me with uncomfortable clarity. Maybe that’s why I hated to see it so easily dismissed by everyone involved.

--Lofflin

I see my light come shining... a lesson learned about life and death in the eyes of a rascal

Discovered something yesterday in the midst of welling tears and sadness.

We decided the time had come for our old girl. A rascal by name and demeanor, she had carried on rather valiantly 10 years after her sister, plagued with one infirmity after another but well cared for by Drs.Sundahl and Gloor. Before my hip replacements I used to look at her as she eyed a perch, set her feet, considered the pain and finally leapt to safety and thought, “If you can do it, I can.” She did and I did.

God, that cat was tough. As the arthritis worsened, her resolve turned to steel. Despite it all, her blood tests kept coming back “marvelous.” She kept eating, peeing, scratching in the box in the middle of the night loud enough a few times to bring me out of sleep, 28-ounce, 34-inch ball bat in hand, ready to do damage on any unfortunate intruder. Her last morning on earth, the old girl demanded her breakfast in the loud irascible voice of her youth.

Alas, the vocal chords were willing but her 19-year-old hip joints and spine were not. Cats hide pain like hit-by-pitch ballplayers, but there was no hiding this. She hurt and she was tired. We knew it was her time.

I held her head in my two hands as she lay on the towel for the injections. The first eased her pain and made her drowsy. If I had any misgivings about our decision they were dispelled by the look of relief in her eyes. Then came the fatal needle. It took a long time to administer.

I stroked her cantankerous head between her ears and looked into her eyes. Her life oozed away. And that’s when I discovered something I could never reason by myself.

I knew precisely when it was over. I knew an instant before the doctor, who was listening to her heart in the stethoscope, told me. She was there, then she was gone. I saw life leave just as clearly as you see someone walk through the screen door.

I thought in that moment, no wonder people believe in the soul. I saw the evidence with my own eyes. I saw life; then I saw no life. Her body was there. She was not. I don’t know if I’m describing this so you can understand, but I knew the instant her soul was gone. I knew the instant life left.

I realized something important. We are not our bodies. I am thankful to the old girl for teaching me such an important lesson with her last breath.

I have always thought Bob Dylan’s prescient song, “I shall be released,” meant to tell me something special. “Any day now, any day now, I shall be released…” Released from what? From prison? Well, what I watched yesterday morning was my old Rascal released from the prison of her painfully arthritic old body. I understood life as I suddenly understood death.

--Lofflin  

Royals announce new marketing campaign; complain mainstream media using "This is our time" to serve own agenda, not MLB All Star Game in Kansas City

==================================

Press Release

For Immediate Release - no embargo

Contact: Monte J. Crisco, vice president for public relations

May 10, 2012

Subject: “Our Time” Marketing Campaign misinterpreted

The Kansas City Royals Baseball Club Vice President for All Operations, Edward G. Heavybottom, announced today the Royals Baseball Club plans a new marketing campaign to clarify their 2012 marketing campaign “This is our time.”

“In light of the fact that many in the Kansas City media have misinterpreted our 2012 marketing campaign, 'This is our time,' we plan to initiate a new campaign beginning today,” Heavybottom said.

“The original campaign was meant to only refer to the placement of the All Star Game in Kansas City,” Heavybottom said. “’This is our time’ was only meant to denote this is the year in which the All Star Game will be held in Kansas City. We did not intend for this campaign to be construed as referencing the development of our ball club, which would be significantly premature.”

Heavybottom also said the campaign was not meant to refer to Kansas City, either.

“The campaign was meant only to refer to a statement of fact,” Heavybottom clarified. “It is our time to host the All Star Game. That is a fact. It is unfortunate those in the mainstream media have chosen to misinterpret this campaign to serve their own agendas.”

The new campaign, he said, will focus more on amenities at Kauffman Stadium, including a new 5-story Ferris wheel to be constructed beyond centerfield and 50-cent hotdogs after any inning when the Royals score more runs than the opponent. Precise wording will be announced soon.  The club is hoping to feature a prominent rap star in the 50-cent hotdog campaign but negotiations have not been completed.

--30--

MLB Draft note to AM610 radio talkers: What the Royals need now is not anger; they need players who hate to lose... and a little pitching, well, maybe Billy Martin, too

Billy Martin circa 1979 at Royal's Stadium... Photo/Lofflin

Anger is what the Royals need. Lou Piniella uprooting bases. Billy Martin spitting garlic juice in umpires' faces. George Brett ballistic.

Listening to a couple of radio talkers on AM 610 last week. Of course they were arguing over what the hapless Royals need. They need guys who get mad, get angry, get thrown out of games, come into the game with attitude, Al Hrabosky-esque.

Maybe you need angry people in football. Not in baseball. If you’ve ever played the game, you know the immediate danger anger poses in your ability to put a bat squarely on a ball or make a good pitch in a jam. Baseball and angry just don’t go together.

But, what the Royals do need, are players who absolutely hate losing. They haven’t had such players in a quarter century.

Most of the players they’ve brought through the minors in this most recent five-year plan knew about winning. They won at every level they played. Until they got to the majors. It usually takes a couple of months in the major league uniform to beat winning out of them. They go from expecting to win, to trying not to lose.

Luke Hochevar’s comments in the Kansas City Star this morning about another dismal pitching performance illustrate the mindset. “It was a 1-0 count,” Hochevar said, “and I was trying to go curveball middle down for an aggressive first strike — and it just hung up. It didn’t break or do anything. He put a good swing on it.” The blame here is on the ball. “It just hung up…”

Nothing speaks more eloquently about the dismal Royal’s franchise. At Kauffman Gardens yesterday I made sure to apologize to the grand old man who is buried there in the midst of his other fine gift to the city. At least this one -- the garden -- has people with expertise ... and financial backing ... to keep it lush and elegant.

--Lofflin 

Photograph: John Lofflin... Billy Martin, they say, liked to eat a clove of garlic before a game to punish the umpires he argued with. He figured they would think twice before letting a close call go against him.