Working From Your Core

Preface and Dedication

One afternoon, a few years ago, I was teaching a seminar. I heard myself say that I did this kind of work so that people would have more tools to help them heal their own workplaces. I stated that there was too much unnecessary suffering, pain and stress in organizations. That, as a result, people were literally dying from their work. Now, I had said this before. I knew it to be true. But that day an echo of this truth reached into a part of me that had been slumbering for many years. "John," I thought suddenly. "Oh, my God. I'm doing this work because of John."

My younger brother, John Seivert, was a laborer at a modern plant that treated sewage, sanitizing it into a sterilized sludge that was used for fertilizer. Although this Midwestern facility was up-to-date, the management was not. The plant had a history of accidents and near-accidents, one involving an ammonia leak where an explosion, which could have rocked the area, was narrowly averted. All this, plus uncomfortable labor-management relations, made John eager to find employment elsewhere. He was actively searching for a job in a similar facility when the following incident occurred.

One ice-cold February morning John was standing in the back of a truck in an underground garage at the plant. He had been asked to fill in for another worker. The task was to load sludge from a large ceiling spout into a truck. His best friend, Roger, sat behind the wheel. As the truck container filled, John called to Roger to move forward a bit, so he could adjust the nozzle and complete the task. Roger thought John meant that it was time to pull out of the garage. As John saw the low-hanging cement ledge coming rapidly at him, he took what appeared to be the only exit available - diving as deeply as he could into the slight cavity left unfilled. A heartbeat later, the truck lifted its front wheels onto the sharply inclined driveway to ground level, heaving the container to within a few inches of the ledge. John was crushed. Roger didn't know what had happened until he heard my brother's screams. Workers came running from all directions. John was rushed to the nearest hospital, where he underwent several hours of emergency surgery.

Dad called me after John emerged safely from the surgery. He said there had been a terrible accident, but John was out of danger. He had pulled through the surgery, and was now resting comfortably. I was stunned by this close call. I talked with my father at length, pumping him for details and assurance. We determined that I should wait to arrange travel plans until we knew how long John would be in the hospital.

Very early the next morning, at 5:30 to be precise, I was awakened by a soft, cool touch on my shoulder. I stared into the pitch-black stillness of the room. It was John. He had come to say good-bye. Before I could form another thought, or find my voice to beg him to stay, he was gone. My mind was shocked into complete silence. I slowly laid down again, then turned over on my side to stare, without feeling or thought, at the clock . I was waiting for the phone to ring.

Dad called at 6:30 that morning with the news: John had died unexpectedly an hour earlier. I rose slowly, reluctant to meet my own grief and that of the rest of my family. At that moment it was little consolation that my brother had, with the greatest compassion imaginable, come to tell his sister that he was just fine, that he was at peace. All I knew then was that I ached inside and out because I could never touch my brother again.

I chose to begin Working from Your Core with this extremely personal story for several reasons. My brother's death changed my life, catapulting me out of the life I had designed for myself, and setting me on an entirely new path. And, John's accident was avoidable: it was a "systems-failure." Management at the plant had been advised repeatedly that the combination of the sharp-incline driveway from the underground garage and the cement overhang was a deathtrap, an accident waiting to happen. Management had been told to change it - but they opted not to. The repairs would cost too much, they probably figured, particularly since odds were so high that nothing would ever happen.

W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician, writer and consultant who started the current worldwide quality revolution, was fond of saying that at least 85% of mistakes in organizations are systems-failures, and no more than 15% result from human error. I have experienced this truth again and again. That fateful February morning, Roger was not at fault for hearing wrong, nor was John for giving an ambiguous instruction to his colleague. Such minor communication problems usually result in hurt feelings, not in bodies crushed beyond repair. Clearly, the system needed fixing, management was told it needed fixing - but decided not to. My family forced the plant to fix the problem so that no one else would be hurt in the future. The cost of this system-failure turned out to be very high for everyone involved.

After John's death, I changed my life completely - leaving my job as CEO of a successful group health plan, moving across the country to be with the man I loved, and eventually starting a new career in workplace consulting and writing. Ironically, John had made this life-change possible, for (unbeknownst to me) he had named me beneficiary of his life insurance policy. With that money in hand, I set upon a path that led, a great many years later, to this book.

Working from Your Core presents a technology that approaches workplace problems simultaneously from the individual and the systems level. Both we and the human systems in which we accomplish our work need to learn and adapt to change. This book is intended to help individuals become stronger and smarter (so they can survive dysfunctional workplaces) AND simultaneously improve these systems so they don't crush their workers. This is the analogy I use: if a building collapses with people trapped inside, two things need to happen at the same time. The individuals need to have the courage and will (and luck) to survive; and, the rubble has to be lifted off them, or they'll never make it.

This book then, is a call to the Quest - a quiet quest, a daily quest. It is a call to heroism in the workplace - a call for real transformation of yourself, your work and your organization. Our systems must be changed by the people within them. And, workers must change ourselves so we are equal to the task. It is difficult, but not impossible. I have seen many workplaces and individuals who are already doing it. You will find some of their stories herein. The cure to the workplace diseases that plague us - stress, apathy, fear, anger, greed - lie within each of us. You have, in your Core (the very center of yourself), a great source of innate wisdom and heroism that it just waiting to be tapped.

The task before us is to uplift ourselves, our colleagues, employees, and organizations by first realizing, then bringing our very best natures from our Core into reality. This is "working from your Core." This book serves as a call also to organizations to work from their Core, rather than making us spin our collective wheels on the periphery, wasting our time, energy, power and creativity. This is a call to create smart workplaces that learn and thrive because the people within them learn and thrive. It is a call to all wise, heroic people who have the capability and daring to reshape their ailing organizations, thereby saving the minds, souls and health of the workers and leaders therein.

No one of us can accomplish this daunting task alone. But, then, no one of us has to. We need so much heroism today. Our problems are extremely complex, interwoven through industries and nations. It is difficult to see where one challenge begins and another one ends. We are faced with labyrinths everywhere - our buildings, our organizational charts, our problems, even our proposed solutions. We need every form of wisdom and heroism available, every set of clear eyes on the difficulties before us, every good mind on the obstacles in our path.

Most of us are trained to look for solutions to our problems from our superiors or from experts who supposedly know more than we do. We rarely trust our intuition or our own workplace experience. But this approach has not proven particularly successful. The truth is that we have all the knowledge and wisdom we need. It is available to each of us when we tap into our own Core. The only difficulty is determining how we can access this information in the midst of a full-speed work day. This book is an introduction to a colorful board of internal advisors who can help you with this difficult, but worthy task.

Wishing you the very best in this noble journey,

Sharon Seivert