Before

 

Several years ago I learned a distinct difference between sweetened iced tea and Southern sweet tea, and I learned this distinction both by description and taste.  Speaking to a group in Tennessee for a series of meetings spanning a week, I was captivated with how I was received (coming from Southern California, they may not have known what to expect!), and discovered soon upon arrival that I was intentionally placed in an honored position of receiving abundant doses of warm Southern hospitality, including mountains of delectable food, great conversation, contagious laughter, family closeness, and tea--lots and lots of tea, essentially two kinds from which to choose, regular, and sweet tea.  And the differences between those two are noticeable indeed.

            In Southern California, where we reside at the time of this writing, we can select from many varieties of tea including iced, of course, herbal (a big favorite of many in this State, especially near the beaches), oriental teas, caffeine and non-caffeine types and many more.  But only in the South did my taste buds relish their first acquaintance with sweet tea, and very nearly only in the South has my desire for enjoying more sweet tea become satisfied in remembrance of that first sip.  That satisfaction is only achieved with what has to be the genuine article, and I’m writing to tell you, that genuine article tastes mighty fine.  Understand here that the method of making tea sweet where I live is by adding sugar, at times mountains of it, to tea already poured over ice.  In Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and I am told throughout the South, sweet tea is the result of combining necessary ingredients as part of the actual process of making the tea, not the product of an addition after the fact.  Bottom line, sweet tea simply tastes better.  Its character is inherent in its make-up.

            I know I could have used flavored coffee vs. coffee flavoring for the illustration, and for those of us who prefer coffee over tea (I would be one of those, especially in the morning) the point is the same, and it is simply this: building great work teams in any business environment has more to do not with combinations of people who may or may not produce well together because we try to combine right elements, including personalities, education, competence and skill sets.  Rather, success for great and effective teams is more assuredly founded, and dependent on, people’s characters, their core essence traits, their internal compositions, which, when mixed together yield strong and enduring commitments based on core values agreement, and cooperation of their networks and interconnectivities, competencies and desires. 

            When people are combined on work teams on the basis of agreements of essence and essential core values, their work environments become places where their talents and abilities reflect heart-felt longings for excellence in contribution which demonstrate proper alignments of people and production, proving this unalterable premise: that people are more important than the products they produce.

            Fostering a work environment where people who share like values and dedication build one another first and provision product second is the responsibility of the leader who sees people as vitally important in their persons as primary over their functional expertise.  The leader who sets basic parameters of “Relationships precede and give definition to function” because “People are more important than what they do” is the leader who is growing great people who produce better products, in that order.  The thread that intertwines the leader’s desires with the followers’ contributions is the declared and shared truth of the inherent importance of the folks who do the functions, and the agreement within that truth that the process of development is more important than the end deliverable; that, in fact, the process is one of the most significant deliverables in and of itself.

            Where people-importance is primary, production with excellence is manifested in multiple and recurring day-to-day work place experiences: as communication loops are closed, all-important large and small details are attended to, right attitudes birth right actions, goals are fulfilled ahead of time and above expectation, budgets are adhered to, humility characterizes working atmospheres, and support of individuals on the team replaces tired, ineffectual and often fruitless efforts, wasted energy, and low morale, traits that so often accompany, and are descriptive of, so many contemporary work environments .  These lines of demarcation between valued and devalued people and processes are not hard to recognize where both exist.  The encouraging truth is that any environment can be changed at any time by any people who truly desire growth in their work place and who want to produce better environments and heightened excellence in their product. 

There are many choices as to what kinds of teams an organization wants to build, and what that organization should expect to contribute to these teams and receive from them.  The processes of choosing what kinds of teams are desired involve numerous considerations, of course, but the bottom line is to be found in this question and the answer to it, whether one is a follower or a leader: Do you want to help create and involve yourself in the workings of a team where people are treated as valuable and therefore produce value-added contributions, or, do you want to be satisfied with work groups as usual where production is too often consumptive of the people who produce it?  The answer to that question will give meaning to the assimilation of the context and content, the principles and practices described in Industrial Strength Solutions. 

If you are serious about learning and growth, the mix of what you read and how you incorporate the elements of truth into your life and work experience will tell you beyond doubt whether the principles you see on the page are the principles you choose to engage, that if applied can become the verifiable evidence of the good choices you make in daily work life.  These choices become the traits other people see and wish to duplicate because of who you are in your character and who you choose to become at your core.

            It’s a lot like making sweet tea as opposed to making tea sweet.  As an illustration, I took the liberty of checking with Rick, simply one of my best friends, a good ol’ Tennessee boy (once a Californian, since removed to the South), and his very dear wife, Patti, along with one of Rick’s co-workers, Tonya, to ascertain the process of making Southern Sweet Tea, where the sweetness is “organic” to the mixture as opposed to becoming the result of sugar added to an existing liquid after the production process is finished.  The tea recipe below, according to Patti, was “served many years at Grandma's table, mama's table, and mine.”  Without a whole lot of fanfare but with a sure desire for a better result in mind from the outset, here is how it’s done.

 

Southern Sweet Tea

 

“Well, first you get a 2 qt. sauce pan and fill it 3/4 full of water, place on high heat, and bring to a boil.  If you’re using family size tea bags, use 3, if you’re using small bags, use 8.  Tie tea bags together by their strings.  Remove tags.  While the water is heating, put tea bags in the water.  When it boils, cover and remove from heat.  Steep 30 minutes.  Get a 2 qt. jug and add 1½ cups of sugar, more or less to your liking.  (Please note: a true Southerner does not use sugar substitute in their tea.)  Pour hot tea over sugar leaving tea bags in pot. Fill pot with water (making sure water pours over tea bags to get all the flavor) and add to jug until full. Stir until sugar is completely dissolved.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Place tea in glass pitcher and float thinly sliced lemons on top.  Now the best part: Get you a glass (not a plastic tumbler), fill it with ice, and pour the tea over the ice.  Add a sprig of mint or a slice of lemon.  Then go set in the recliner, put your feet up, relax, and enjoy!  Southern Sweet Tea is best when shared with a friend on a lazy afternoon.”

 

            The key here is “Pour hot tea over sugar...” The character of the process of composition creates the integrity of the final product.  Much in the same way great teams in the work place are formed and function.  The essentials of character are not compromised as these people are brought together; rather, characters are blended in unity upon first-priority agreements of a strong value system, dedicated from the outset that because they value each other and are committed to each other’s success, they will contribute that of which they are able, out of their strengths, to assure excellence, creating and growing a workable solution of tremendous force and resiliency, and a model that endures.

            During 1862, at a height of profound discouragement for the Union in America’s Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was faced with the awesome consideration of weighing mounting incredible costs of lives sacrificed and property decimated on both sides.  The results he and the country endured appeared at that time to be far from justified or satisfactory; indeed, they were at many moments monumentally discouraging beyond words.  A victory for the Union seemed distant at best.  It was during these forlorn and lonely seasons for the President, as defeat upon defeat converged from multiple sources that Lincoln made insurmountably tough decisions—he had to.  His choices would make or break not only the conduct of the war but ultimately determine the Union’s success or failure.  Criticism from within and conflict from without made his process of decision-making harder yet, but true greatness shone and he chose what he deemed best.

Upon his resolve to continue to move down the path he had chosen, because he believed and declared he was acting as an instrument of the people to uphold the Constitution and save the Union, he enacted a war measure that forever put the blight of slavery on its path of eventual destruction.  That war measure was, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation.  The Union armies needed the manpower the emancipated slaves would provide and the slaves that were freed were those who at that time were located in the States that had rebelled.  Not ever referring to the Confederacy as a separate country, only as States “then in rebellion” to the United States, he exercised his authority over and on behalf of the people held as slaves within those States, who, because of their freedom, helped the Union win the war, and preserve the country from disastrous dissolution.

            When Lincoln was assassinated it was said that the South lost one of its greatest supporters, and it was true, for as part of the plan to restore the Union, in addition to the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had articulated in the weeks and days just before his death his desires to make the process of restoration and reconstruction as right and as accessible for achievement as possible.  To empower the States that had rebelled to rejoin the Union, Lincoln was not in favor of burdening them with unnecessary measures born of a spirit of vindictiveness or punitive subjugation; rather, he asked only for fundamental requirements needed as basis points to unify the country in the short term and reinstate the States for a United States that would endure in perpetuity. 

As he closed his Second Inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865, he proclaimed these words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”  These immortal words were addressed to a country that despaired of war and was desperate for peace, and they came at the time when Appomattox was still weeks away, but it was coming, and eventually did.

Some truths are worth believing, desiring, risking for, and acting upon.  The union of the United States of America was certainly one of them.  The union, or perhaps better put, the unification coming from essential agreement on values, goals, people, process and product may be representative of other more contemporary causes that while not requiring the extent of a sacrifice of civil war, may inspire courage and boldness based on right attitudes and attributes that will encourage people who agree to engage in right actions to produce better results than the status quo, especially if the status quo is not producing well, or if people on teams in your organization are involved in their own uncivil wars.

            Consider and weigh your work environment against what you might like it to be if it could be shown that through your contributions, stemming from your true desire for improvement to be accomplished in best methods, it could become markedly better.  In what ways could the cooperation between workers be strengthened, problems solved, communication improved, trust more genuinely granted and evidenced, customers served with more accuracy and timeliness, and additional profit realized from the combination of these elements mixing together well?  And what role, if any, would you like to play in initiating action to bring about better results?

The workable solutions that Lincoln proposed, produced, and dedicated himself to completing were founded on solid and essential truths from which he would not waver, regardless of cost, criticism, political sacrifices, and immense tolls that weighed upon him and his family, not to mention the thousands of families forever scarred by the awful effects of battles and immense personal losses, where, bereft of sustenance and means of supply, people in both the North and the South suffered long, some never recovering.  An agenda that endures in any environment will be one established on lasting principles that constitute an unshakable mix: a combination of values, desires and actions that are destined to produce good and right results if followed through, because the engagement is proven to be the proper course of action, and the people are wholly dedicated to its process and prospect, regardless of the cost.

            It is this kind of industrial strength solution provision and authenticity of character that current commerce craves.  In a market environment where needs for deeds based on core values is growing, this authenticity is demanded from and created by the people who do the work, regardless of their positions, if they want it earnestly enough. 

            Those who know that business effectiveness is not just determined by the bottom line understand, of course, that hard work is needed, and they are willing to expend dedicated energy required to achieve the results an industry requires, but these results are shown not only in profit margins; rather, they are first demonstrated in improved processes that build frameworks for success, treat people as valuable, building those who within themselves and in cooperation with each other provide the strength of industry to produce the great solutions. These people and their teams, along with their contributions can be deemed truly to be “value-added.”  The commerce world in which we engage, longs for these additions.  For those with a view toward building people and production, in that order, these additions are not optional; they are the essential elements in what may be to some a brand new mixture of solution provision in organizations where people produce because they want to, as opposed to being pushed to achieve provision because they have to.

            If this sounds too good to be true, take heart, it isn’t.  In fact, it’s good only because it is true.  The willful engagement of principled truth in the real life work place’s daily grinds represents some of the most difficult efforts ever expended to accomplish best goals, including required deliverables.  Creating, maintaining, developing, and expanding industrial strength solutions that are applicable because they are reliable do not rest on theory.  They stand on proven demonstration because principles endure whenever they’re applied with integrity.  Since the principles are true then it must follow that they will work in every environment eventually, if given the opportunity of real work and life engagement.

            Industrial Strength Solutions is described in its sub-title as “A Business Life Investment Model.”  Simply, this means that once constructed, the model becomes a vital and living standard that can and indeed must be duplicated and expanded in manifold applications.  In cooperation with the principles articulated in Leadership Is-- (www.LeadershipIs.com), this book serves as a natural extension of enduring and true-to-life representations of instilled principles that help leaders and teams win repeatedly.  A team that consistently incorporates lasting values and principles into daily practice regimens lives and contributes within its durability and passes along their models to those who seek to follow them.

            Industrial Strength Solutions is a book about your work place, the way it is, and the way you may want it to be in form and function.  Its contents will focus on methods you can use in building successful work teams.  The study describes environments formed through preferred, and less-than-desirable mixes of people, in chapters titled, “Office Chemistry 101A,”  “Whining vs. Winning,”  “Nitpicking and Petty Criticism,” and “Mixing and Matching—Work the Workable Solutions.”  Stability factors within teams of people who work well form focus topics in chapters titled, “Compliment Your Complement,”  “Strength is a Condition--But It Is Not Conditional,” and “The Four Attributes of Industrial Strength Solutions.”  Finally, placing people first and focusing on their desires are positioned in chapters titled, “Achieving Balance,”  “Come, Work Where I Do: Creating Industrial Strength Solutions in Your Organization,” and “Building a Productive Work Environment.”  “Before” and “After” sections prepare and review with a view of challenging readers toward behavioral change.  “Permissions,” information about Creative Team Resources Group, Inc. (CTRG: www.ctrg.com) along with selected CTRG tools, “Final Thoughts and Reinforcement,” and “Acknowledgments” provide bookends, front and back.

            Throughout the book real-life work place stories or interviews are provided as illustrations and proof points.  All of the stories are true.  In most of these the names of the people involved are not changed and are used with their explicit permissions.  Also included are true stories that beg to be told because they are vital to the dissemination of facts and features they so graphically illustrate.  In these instances associated names and industries are changed.  The names of participants and business enterprises or companies contained in these illustrations are purely fictitious; any resemblance within these stories to any existing company, or to names of any individuals that correspond to, or match those within the stories, is purely coincidental.

            “Mix it up,” as it is said.  That phrase can mean, among many options, the opening of a boxing match, the stirring of a batch of cookie dough, or the process of making sweet tea.  It can also mean something significant for you unrelated to boxing, cookies, or tea.  You may wish to make the phrase signify your desire to become part of a solution provision that apart from your involvement would simply be incomplete and less effective.  With your affirmative decision, however, you can take your place as one who participates fully, born of your earnest desires to create strength in your organization as a living business investment model for others to see and emulate.

            Will you engage and become an ingredient in the creation of success mixtures on your team?  Let’s see.