I am repeatedly astonished by various sins of omission.

First example, many people don’t read or grasp agreements. I can’t list the number of clients we write to, detailing an offer, with clear terms and conditions, who write back enthusiastically and say, “Let’s go!” Then, having broken ground, asking them to make time, to be responsive with their accountabilities, or pay our invoices as per the terms of engagement, they cite “sudden reversals,” “meetings,” or “standard practices.”  Occasionally I understand the corporate equivalent of a natural disaster may strike. Usually it’s a tempest in a tea-cup being utilized to justify inertia. We’re good at tackling that, invoking our client’s own best interests as a way to get them up off the mat and going . Meetings recur. That can hardly be an argument against taking necessary proactive time. As for “standard practice,” that’s irrelevant when you’ve agreed to specific terms. Why we should be bound by the lack of imagination or dogmatism of other consulting firms  is beyond me. These temporary sticking points are usually all resolved amicably through engagement, but I almost feel like saying, “Okay, can we get past the post agreement depression at realities, so we can get on to delivering value for you?”

Second sample, people who don’t reply to messages or emails. These are often people who end up hiring us, getting back to us and more. So why do they disappear for periods at a time and enjoy being chased? Why don’t they say, “Not now”?  Or else, “I need something else.” Or even, “I’m struggling with this decision.” Then we could have a dialogue. Or if they know they aren’t proceeding, why keep wasting everyone’s time? Evasiveness, elusiveness, vagueness, does not make you special, or important, or a celebrity. It reveals you as a flake, someone taffy like, or so self-absorbed that simple courtesy or honesty eludes you. These are not great calling cards. Worse, they become habitual. If you only respond to those who can benefit you, and can’t abide by professional decorum and reciprocal courtesy, that’s a way to begin unraveling your character and reflexes. Good luck when the shoe is on the other foot.

Third offshoot, obliviousness to others. These are people who stand in front of restaurant doors say, phones in ears, or chattering with pals, holding up everyone else. When you say, “Excuse me,” they glower at you, because you have dared to intrude on their self-absorbed banter or loud ranting. We all may be temporarily oblivious. Most of us when we realize it, apologize pleasantly, and oblige the other person’s request. It’s called civility. What do we gain by dulling our senses at what is happening around us? Might such blinkers not inhibit awareness of opportunity, dull the creativity to connect our services to other people’s needs (which requires discerning that these are other people and may have needs that may not immediately occur to us), or lessen the capacity to communicate across disagreements or barriers? What is the motivation for such tunnel vision?

Someone who delivers on their accountabilities, understands and abides by agreements, refuses to make paltry excuses (like “meetings”), responds clearly and proactively, is a pleasure to interact with, is aware of the world around them, and enjoys expressing as well as receiving civility and service, is almost in  a league by themselves. Their businesses will flourish, their lives will be enriched.

Let’s join them!

Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times that Tiger Woods should be nominated “person of the year”. Why? Because the chasm between his public persona and his frenzied personal antics and peccadilloes seems emblematic of a rather tawdry decade, book-ended by Enron and Woods, with Iraq war fictions and sub-prime meltdowns in between.

We have reached that period where people truly cannot distinguish between “status” and “stature”. More’s the pity. Nonsense eventually reveals itself, and the debacle of the “Me” decade where we sought personal identity from retail logos and gadgets, impoverishing our discernment and perhaps our souls in the process, is now before us. The debris of reality-avoidance and narcissistic self-indulgence, of chastising political candidates who make us think and mulishly following those who beat their chests, is everywhere.

But if these icons have been shown to be incontestably hollow, where does that leave us? Do we rend our garments, flagellate ourselves, what?

Maybe it’s time to remember instead that human progress has depended on substance, not spin. It is the evolution of social institutions, the wide scale dissemination of education, Gutenberg and the printing press, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the expansion of voting, Civil Rights and more. None of these came from congratulating ourselves for fluff and having role models who had to parade themselves as paragons for the rest of us to build esteem vicariously from.

Let’s get back to education. Let’s demand accountability from leaders. Let’s rise to the responsibility of active citizenship. Let’s rebuild families rather than using electronic babysitters for our kids. Let’s balance budgets, personal ones and national ones, and let’s restore common sense. Let’s not be bought off by pyrotechnics, in war or in economics.

It has been said that life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think. We need to feel more passionately and think more clearly.

It’s time to get real.

The hope was that President Obama’s election was an augury of a new decade to come. But not if we think we can delegate our future prospects to him or any other leader.

We have to live the words so beloved to Nelson Mandela from the poem Invictus,  “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”  It’s time to reclaim that mastery and leadership.

Baby steps are fine. But let’s break ground on a better, more worthy decade!

David Mamet, playwright and screenwriter extraordinaire is at it again. His electrifying play Oleanna is back in New York. When it was last here, at a time when political correctness was far more charged as a topic, couples left the theater polarized, some people even came to blows! The subtitle of the play warns you that whichever side you take, you’re wrong.

Perhaps that’s because this isn’t a play about “sides”. There is no one to cheer. As one commentator said in the “Talk Back” series that takes place after every performance on Broadway (with a facilitator and two panelists), “He’s a fool and she’s a tool.” Hmmm.

Okay, a bit of background. “Oleanna” is probably “Oleana”, the settlement that Ole Bull, the famed Norwegian virtuoso violinist established for himself and fellow Norwegian emigres in the 1800’s to escape the strictures of their home country. Alas the land was unsuitable for farming, much money was lost by the settlers, and most, including Ole Bull had to flee back to Norway. Today the site is commemorated by “Ole Bull National Park” in Pennsylvania. An “Oleana” now refers to any hopeless pursuit of a Utopian state of affairs where it is naively believed anything is possible.

One wonders if Mamet is chastising society for having myopic views of political correctness or relations between the sexes, or if he’s referring to an idealistic view of education held by the professor, or an idealized view of “class” and “elites” and “power” expressed by the student and the political support group she seems to be a part of. Perhaps all of the above?

On the surface, a student on the verge of failing, desperate not to, visits her teacher and vacillates between self-pity, hopelessness and accusation towards the professor, who in turn seems to trivialize her plight, evidently distracted by a pending house purchase and the hen-pecking telephone attentions of his wife. However in her flailing the student says he is implying she is stupid and will never succeed. This triggers a reaction, as the professor then cathartically (it seems) reveals how he was accused of stupidity growing up, and then proceeds to regale her with a narcissistic diatribe about the shortcomings of college education, equating it to a form of “hazing” where education is secondary to protocol. With an evident Savior complex, he claims that if she will re-engage relative to the course with him, he will give her an A to remove any stress and they’ll start over — he’ll ensure she gets the education she deserves from this course  because he “likes her”.

In the second act, we find she has lodged a complaint of inappropriate conduct and sexual harassment! His tenure which was all but confirmed, is now on hold, he can’t close on his house, which seems to vex his wife above all else, and he attempts to psychoanalyze the student’s accusations as “anger” at various aspects of life. She is having none of it, calling what she has claimed, not allegations but  “facts”. Towards the end as the encounter escalates, he tries to stop her from leaving , she struggles and cries out very vocally, if arguably excessively, for help.

By the third act, he is a mess. He’s being dismissed — after the last incident the university committee has come to believe her (we now know why offices today have glass walls and why people leave doors open or have third parties present!) — and now she explodes with derision at him, pointing out that she now has power as he once did, and making demands that his book be expunged from the curriculum — this apparently is a demand from her “group” who all feel each others pain we are told and clearly have an agenda. Some have described this as also a play about “intellectual terrorism”.

She calls him sexist, elitist, feeling entitled to a house, and advantages for his son and more. He keeps saying “I feel…” and she explodes, “I don’t care what you feel!”  Indeed, neither of them do care in that way about the other, and that’s the wick running through this.

The final violent confrontation is precipitated when she starts telling him not to call his wife “baby”. By so doing, she crosses a line that triggers him to cross the line too. He erupts into physical violence, leaving her to say in the aftermath, with grim if shaken satisfaction, “That’s right.” She’s wrung it out of him at last — he now has to obey her dictates and that of her group, or his life is irretrievably over.

He was indeed a fool. He frittered away his power by continuing the discussion when he could have ended it initially, by not listening fully when he then opened the door for her to share, and then made her a “project”, a demo for his own evangel. He never saw her as a real person, with her specific fragility, flaws and needs. He never sought to serve her, but his own vision of her when she mentioned feeling “stupid”, because suddenly he could personalize her plight, and the thought of helping her through this may even have been therapeutic for him.

For her, rather than aim to succeed in her subject and ask for real help, she translated her despair into anger, her scholastic challenge into a holier-than-thou sense of victimhood in search of an oppressor to bring down. She saw him as someone whose need for the status quo in life (tenure, family, home) made him vulnerable and able to potentially be manipulated.

The ultimate sin of both of them was to look at each other as objects, as means to their own ends — be those ends emotional, educational, career or political agenda related. She became an obstacle to a house closing (which seemed the only real relevance of tenure to him, certainly not pride in a calling), and he became a mode of dissemination of certain ideas and a means of censoring others. Martin Buber would have called this an “I-It” relationship rather than an “I-You” much less “I-Thou” relationship (from objectifying to respecting boundaries to valuing intrinsically someone else’s needs and feelings).

Let us all beware. People come to us for help. If we don’t wish to and don’t need to help them, don’t prolong their agony, don’t drag it out. Focus on the house closing or spousal phone call or whatever. Or reschedule if you want to help but can’t at that moment. If you opt to help, listen to them, look at them, feel with them — don’t look for undue parallels in your own life — no one has invited you to kick-off an emotional strip show. You might share a vulnerability, but know your motives, and your boundaries.

In engaging each other, let’s see if we can find and locate value in each other’s worlds, anxieties, hopes and dreams. We have to make sure that ISN’T an “Oleana” but a real possibility.

A dear friend and long-time client recently asked me whether I felt we in the United States were peculiarly afflicted with poor service. I had to confess that hotels and airports here do seek to redefine “rancid” in terms of service. He regaled me with a story of an endlessly snaking check-in line at his hotel after a long flight. When finally, with a glacial pace that would have done any immigration inspector proud, he made it to the front, he heard a canned greeting: “Hello sir, and how are you today?”

It was clear he was seething, had been inconvenienced, and the last thing he wanted was to exchange banter about his state of health. A more situationally observant service provider would likely have said, “I’m SO sorry for the long line, let’s get you to your room right away…” And then having aligned on that priority, very likely having somewhat defused his frustration, rapport could have been more naturally built as the inevitable check-in process chugged along. Scripted, mechanically delivered inanities are not service, any more than what you hear in the elevator is really music.

Truth be told, most countries have service blind spots. Nitwits abound everywhere, as do stars. It comes down to a fundamental choice.

And service isn’t just smiles and bedside manner, it’s also what’s delivered. A famous hotel in Singapore abounds with gushing smiles, and yet delivers substandard croissants, despite being a legend in the industry. A small inn in the Languedoc in France, delivers that same croissant, moist and glistening with buttery appeal. The morning smiles are a tad more restrained at the inn. Which is providing the better service? Well, it truly depends. Singapore is not necessarily famous for breakfast croissants and Nasi Lemak there is pretty good. Add that to the smiles, and you can give them a pass (though truly, a Julia Child cookbook could cure the problem). The inn isn’t known for morning cheerleading sessions, and yet the staff is attentive, friendly and IS in a region known for exceptional croissants. Service is as service does. It’s situational to a large extent and depends on what you’re after and the expectations created.

However, the really diabolical service is usually not the failure of expertise, but the unwillingness to make a key choice. That choice is this: whether this is a job you wish to continue in, whether you rail against an imperfect cosmos for obliging you to take such a job or not, it is not the fault of the person you are serving! Hence, for the sake of God and Mammon (more on this momentarily), don’t take it out on them! Choose to have who you are reflected by how you serve.

If instead, you take your life not being perfect out on customers, you’ll drive them away, your gratuities will diminish, and you’ll be another commodity. Instead make the choice, that while you are here, you will shine, and make people grateful and glad to interact with you.  Commit to being a rock star in this role, and you’ll command more revenue, your prowess will likely be noticed, and you’ll cultivate critical interactive and responsive skills for whatever higher calling you may aspire to. Why do people who feel they could be so much more, insist on acting like so much less?

I went to Boston to deliver a speech. For my sins, I had to stay at a Sheraton (no other hotels at a sane distance, believe me), deliver at a Conference Center about 20 minutes away, and then return late night, and back home the next day. I booked a car service. Everything was duly confirmed back to me. Arrival at Boston, no problem. Trip from Sheraton to Conference Center, fine. At 10:30 pm when I emerged…no car. When I called I was told, “We don’t have a booking for you.” This was said as if it settled the matter. I asked if they’d like me to forward the confirmation I received. Silence. Then, a grudging confession: well that’s done out of LA and they’re supposed to fax us the confirmed runs. Fax? As I asked if they had checked the century we were in recently, they finally sprang into action, and got a car there in 30 minutes. Great! But it was 30 minutes longer than I needed to be hanging around. It was stress and aggravation that I was paying them not to have to endure (by calling a local cab company, which probably would have done the trick otherwise).

It’s this kind of service gaffe, which takes place every day, where you have to continuously check to see if people have ‘clicked’ to things they’ve confirmed to you, that makes you despair. On the other hand,  for those making the alternative choice, it means there’s ample room to shine…and scant competition.

We often in New York run across bartenders and wait-staff who are aspiring actors. Many are charming and clearly talented, at least insofar as you can intuit from their repartee, voice modulation, alertness and more. But some sport an attitude, as if to convey that we should consider ourselves fortunate to get their antipathy and churlishness. I am often tempted to say, “You say you can act? Prove it, try acting like a waiter. Put on a show for tonight called “I’m here to serve.”

We all have bad days. Never take them out on people you serve. They deserve better. And delivering that service, despite being down, despite the vicissitudes in our own personal lives, is the essence of being a professional. And thereby you build your brand. So be impeccable. Offer enthusiasm — generate it by delivering it if it’s in short supply naturally that day. Empower yourself to make someone’s day better.

Make the choice!