"Managing people is a delicate and complicated art. I have nothing but respect for people who can manage well. Unfortunately, companies too often promote people to management positions who either don’t want to manage or who, for all practical purposes, are no good at it. If you’re one of those people, the smart thing might be to go back to being a regular employee." ~ Jeff Davis, writer for a technical publication

Welcome back. Today's back to work episode finds itself making an appearance on Tuesday, September 4, 2018. For those who were able to take the holiday, I do hope you enjoyed the three-day break. A factoid popped up on one of my social media feeds the other day. It was from a Gallup survey of manager effectiveness. It was not surprising to me, but, pretty sobering when you think about it. According to their findings, 70% of the teams or groups with a manager are worse off because of the manager. How's that for a splash of cold water in the face to get your day started? I can speak on this subject with some insight since I have been a manager and I do have some credibility. Senior management consistently rated me as an excellent manager. The people in my organization agreed. I led by example and only mention it to say this, not everyone should aspire to be a supervisor or manager. I've made the mistake of putting people into jobs where they were responsible for leading a team, but, they were not inclined to lead. The old hierarchical system, sadly, still predominates how organizations function. People come to work and they attempt to grow by being promoted to the next higher position and eventually they hope to be the department leader. Some of these folks are great technicians at the job they were hired to do, but, they are not good candidates for leadership. Before I left the big company we had attempted to address this flawed design. We developed and paid people based on their fit into the organization. In some unique cases, the manager did not make as much as his or her highly skilled technical staff. (Similar to a professional coach managing a team of athletes.) We used outside comparable modeling to set job requirements and pay. It was greatly resisted because the status quo, somewhat like the embedded establishment in our government, will always try to thwart any change that endangers its power profile. I remember one fellow who came into our organization. He was a peer of mine. He had been a major in the U.S. Air Force. He had been responsible for a technical group. However, he was not equipped to manage highly skilled people whose positional rank did not have them to salute every time he gave an order. Within weeks, he was downing Malox like it was water. He was close to a breakdown when the Company helped him make the decision to move on down the road. Every person is good at something. Finding out what that is and being the best at it is what true effectiveness is all about.

Seeing that statistic from Gallup caused me to have a flashback. Let me just say this about the death of Senator John McCain. I'm 100% appalled by some of the comments the then-candidate Donald Trump said about McCain when they were running against each other. John McCain was a patriot and he served our country honorably and because of his prolonged captivity, he was appropriately designated as a war hero. All of that being true, this is America and people can have their own opinions about Senator McCain's legacy. I am the same 100% appalled at how his death has been made to be a crusade against the duly elected President of the United States. Because of the bad blood between President Trump and John McCain, one might understand how his family would have made some critical comments. However, the news media has turned his death into a reenactment of the Crusades from the middle ages with the holy grail being the takedown of President Trump. Pitiful. And, I was glad to see a poll was taken that showed the American people are incensed by it. Their sentiment? Enough already! Don't use a state funeral to bash a sitting president! I typically watch these types of events out of respect for the person being honored. I saw only bits and pieces and what I saw were typically the news bites showing criticism of our President. I know some of this was brought on by President Trump, however, this is so over the top we all should be appalled. 100%.

I had a really great three-day respite away from the daily grind. It was mostly spent doing very little. For me, it was a lot of time spent in one of my favorite venues, my ole recliner. Lots of napping going on. We had an absolutely amazing service at our local fellowship on Sunday morning. At the end of the service the altars were filled with praying folks and a large number came forward for salvation and some for Church membership. The Spirit of God was among us and it took our breath away. On Monday I accompanied the wife to the special needs elder home for their regular weekly service. I was asked to do the devotion and was happy to do so. The wife and I sang a song, "I'm Glad I Know Who Jesus Is", that went along with my thoughts from The Gospel of John, Chapter 14. I commend those who have been faithful to minister to these folks for many years now. What a blessing to see the heart response of these folks who are often shut in because of their situation. Other than that, we mostly just hung out. We did have a great seafood meal Saturday evening at a restaurant. We saw several hours of preaching Sunday morning before we left for services. We watched NASCAR. We watched LSU. We watched Mystery Masterpiece on PBS. We watched some of the reruns of Live PD. Add all of this up and it made for a rewarding time of rest and reflection. I do hope you had a good break also, but, regardless, we show up today knowing that God is still on His throne and He reigns over all! Amen. ....More later.