The Everyday Every Day.
“No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days.
Your Grace is too costly to wear every day.”
"What is culture? It is how people behave."--Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors
"To create a better everyday life for the many people."--IKEA Vision Statement
I start everyday in pretty much the same way: I get up at 5 a.m., make a cup of tea (because coffee is too much work for 5) and go downstairs to my "office" which is really a love seat in the basement with an electric blanket and start to write. I usually get between an hour to 90 minutes to myself before someone (a child) wakes up and finds me. This morning, as most mornings, I started by writing in my journal. It's very journal-y--just lots of processing but it helps to sweep out the night's dust (but I like to keep the cobwebs) and gets my mind ready to see the day. After writing, I read. This morning I read parts of a couple of books I had re-discovered as I was organizing bookshelves: Anne Lamont's "Three Essential Prayers" (cried for 40 pages) and Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" (smirked knowingly through apostrophes). After pouring a cup of the coffee my husband made, I picked up the most recent issue of Costco's magazine, The Connection, and flipped to the interview with Mary Barra who recently became the CEO of GM. I don't follow business or know anything about her (as of Saturday morning) but was interested in learning about what kind of woman becomes the first female CEO of a U.S. automaker. The answer: a boring one.
On Costco: "We get The Connection every month and I always look through it." (Translation: we keep it in the bathroom.)
On maintaining work-life balance: "I am a soccer mom and a hockey mom and a cross-country mom. I try to be at all the events that are important to my children. When my child is not on the soccer field I'm responding to emails or reading documents." (Translation: I'm not interested in anyone's kid but my own.)
On inspirational leaders: "[My parents] taught me the power of following your passion and that there is no substitute for hard work." (Translation: My parents taught me the power of following my passion and that there is no substitute for hard work.)
How does a women so laden with cliche become Forbes magazine's fifth most powerful woman in the world? I read the Forbes article referenced in the Costco piece and found additional indications of her style, "[m]any observers have noted her plain, sincere manner" and her influence, "[a]s a financial performer, GM has really upped its game and become mediocre. " Ouch.
Success demands style and invention, splash and chutzpah, right? Not routine, familiarity, and reading on the toilet (fancy people call that multi-tasking). But then, I remembered my Shakespeare. As Beatrice observes in Much Ado About Nothing, it's too difficult to be fancy all the time. We need the everyday every day. From the Forbes September 2014 article referenced by The Connection, "[Barra's] approach is modest and audacious at the same time. She proposes to alter the mindset by behaving differently every day than any GM CEO has behaved in decades and through her example and a CEO's influence, to change the way everyone behaves every day." Culture, she says, is a result of how people behave. If you want to change a culture you need to change how people in that culture act. And the most influential actor in a culture is the top dog, the big cheese, the brass, Herself.
I recently left an organization run by leaders who would hold meetings from 10am to 2pm and not provide lunch. Or, when they did order food, they wouldn't eat but would make you feel weak for indulging your physical need for calories. They would call meetings of 20-30 senior managers on 48 hrs notice and then not show up. The quintessential moment of my everyday there was when the president arrived 20 minutes late to his own meeting, apologized for being late, received a collective, "it's OK," from the assembled and replied, "yeah, I figured it would be." Ouch.
No, my lord. Your Grace is too costly to wear every day. I started this piece underwhelmed by Mary Barra. But she offers a meaningful counterpoint to other leaders of surprising ascent who act with arrogance and disdain and create cultures of the same. What is culture? It's how people behave. I've moved from the board room to the basement and, in doing so, have become demonstrably unvaried and decidedly compelling. My daily trip to Starbucks has been replaced with oatmeal at home. I pop out of bed at 5 rather than dragging myself out at 7. I'm thrilled by the opportunities afforded by my loss of income. Modest and audacious at the same time. I graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop 20 years ago this year, and I have never taken my diploma out of the cardboard mailer. Today, I put it in a frame and on a shelf where I can see it from the toilet. Every day.
