Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

View from a Country Workshop

The contrast between the intense activity inside this workshop and the idyllic beauty immediately outside the workshop doorway is hard to believe.

My picture framing workload has increased to the point where I need computerized equipment and an employee who spends several days a week helping me get Floyd Custom Framing to the next level of efficiency.

Even so, I still spend 12 hours a day doing all of the myriad tasks that need to get done.

So it is a treat to look out the workshop door and down the serpentine gravel drive to see Gretchen chatting with neighbors down by the mailbox.

This is a like a Norman Rockwell illustration. Kids on bikes, dogs nosing about, women chatting and neighbor Tom King taking photographs of the impromptu gathering.

This is one of the moments I envisioned many years ago when corporations began shifting from comfortable offices to vast cubicle mazes and statistics began replacing accomplishments. This one brief shining moment validated all that Gretchen and I did as we transitioned from corporate life to self employment.

We work as hard as we ever did, but the rewards are immediate and we can stop and chat with the neighbors when the opportunity arises.

We are immersed in projects and deadlines, but we are surrounded by natural beauty and good friends. Who could ask for more?

This is the good life. It was worth all of the effort it took to get here.

Prosperity happens to the extent we create it

With all of the doom and gloom promoted by mass media, it can be easy to miss the fact that the economy is kept going by a lot of hard working individuals putting their money and their effort into creating better services and products for their customers.

We have a number of these individuals in Floyd, Virginia.

Coffee shop owner Sally Walker and artist/sign painter Greg
Locke plan a window sign to highlight Cafe del Sol specialties
so they can be easily seen by people driving by.

Sally Walker is an excellent example of an entrepreneur who has created a pleasing experience for lovers of good coffee and tasty snacks. Her Cafe del Sol offers gourmet soups, sandwiches and salads along with a wide range of expresso-based beverages. She and her capable staff also cater for local functions.

She has managed to survive and stay cheerful in spite of cranky air conditioners, lack of space, and the usual problems that plague any startup operation. She has invested in training her staff and the results show it. You get cheerful service and tasty food even when Sally is away from the Cafe.

Visiting the Cafe del Sol is one of the high spots in my frequent trips to Floyd. I never know who or what I am going to see there, but it is always a good value and that is what keeps an economy and a business going.

What are businesses in your area doing to make things go right in this uncertain economy?

Strangely unreliable customer service at Countrywide

Two years ago we ran into a Countrywide loan officer who didn't have both oars in the water. We refer to this loan officer as Mrs. Glib because she made reassuring statements that were not supported by facts. I wrote about our adventure with Mrs. Glib on this weblog and thought we has seen the last of this kind of unreliable service from Countrywide.

Recently, we were encouraged to make a new mortgage agreement with Countrywide and we dealt with a loan consultant who seemed to be quite knowledgeable and sincere as well. He was quite thorough and took pains to explain every aspect of the financial transaction we were interested in.

At the end of our conversation, he repeated the essential facts to us so that we would all be on the same page. He even rechecked the spelling of our names. His final words were that we would receive a loan package through Fedex to review and sign and return and that a "loan processor" would help us answer any questions that we had with the package.

We commented afterwards, how refreshing it was to deal with someone who knows what he is doing.

Little did we know...

The loan package arrived and it looked as though it had been prepared for two other people! My name was misspelled throughout 20 30 pages of documents and the financial data we had provided had been altered repeatedly and differently on different documents.

We thought, what the hell, we will just call the name of the loan processor who was supposed to help us with any questions. This "loan processor" woman blithely chattered away and skillfully avoided answering any questions we had. In twenty minutes, she provided not one factual answer.

When Gretchen pressed her for specifics, she brightly said that these were preliminary documents and it didn't really matter if there were errors on them. Gretchen called her on that and said, "We cannot sign these documents! They are full of outright falsehoods. You have changed the data that we provided and the loan payments bear no relation to the numbers that were given us by the loan officer."

The loan processor started speaking faster and faster as if she could baffle us with BS. Gretchen tried to get her to slow down with no results. Gretchen finally cut her off gently and said, "We may not have a deal here. We are going back to the loan officer and see what is going on."

The loan processor continued to chatter until Gretchen finally hung up.

Gretchen sent the original loan officer an email. We received a conciliatory email back.

He was saddened to hear of our difficulty.

Interesting choice of words. I thought it was significant that that he was saddened, but not surprised. I wonder if he is one of the few competent people working there. What an environment to work in!

Is Countrywide coming apart at the seams? This was more like dealing with a used car dealer than with a financial institution. I felt we were experiencing a new kind of bait and switch operation. If it was just incompetence, I will feel strangely relieved.

Has anyone else been dealing with Countrywide lately? How was your experience?

Some unconventional tips on working for yourself

Since more people are considering working for themselves, this may be of interest.

I was interviewed a few years ago by Leah Maclean at workingsolo.com.au on the subject of working solo.

She had read Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day and asked if I had any unconventional advice on working solo.

Here are my top five tips from that interview:

A. If you are viewed as a good employee, you may not be ready for self-employment. Self-employment requires making decisions in the absence of complete data. Employees who do that are usually in trouble with management.

B. Do not consider self-employment unless you understand that you are totally responsible for what life throws at you. If you can accept that responsibility and the freedom it gives you, you will probably succeed as a self-employed person.

C. Be realistic about your capabilities and use others to do tasks you are not able to perform to professional standards. There is no problem being a small company as long as your products and services are of high quality.

D. Small companies have an unfair advantage if they realize what it means and take advantage of it. Every customer gets to deal with the man in charge. If you care for your customers and keep them informed and make them part of the decision-making process, you will earn their undying loyalty.

E. Most important of all: Promise only what you can deliver and deliver what you promise.

Finally, here are some things to consider:

You will become one of "them", the people whose insanity you have been complaining  about for years - an employer.

Your past experience may help you more than you think

Right answers are the ones that work

For the full interview visit Working Solo.

Do you work for an insane company?

Maybe you have suspected it, but this is the time of year when your worst fears may be realized. (This is what an insane company feels like)

Companies which have been focused on making the numbers look good finally face up the fact that they need to make changes. Unfortunately, too many make the wrong changes and never recover. Their first choice is to lay off those employees whose negative comments have been making management nervous.

That cuts down the noise level and management feels that there is hope of getting the situation under control now that the complainers in marketing and customer support are gone.

This hope is short-lived as they find themselves inundated with customer complaints that just will not go away. Somehow in their zeal to clean house, they have laid off the people who were working hardest to provide customers with good service. Then the contract cancellations begin...and the layoffs begin in earnest.

Perhaps you were so buried in work that you missed the warning signs.  You may have been the ideal employee, but that doesn't help when the corporate ship is coming apart at the seams.

If the corporate culture is sick, various levels of the company will be fighting each other and there will be little agreement on helping customers. You could view it as a multiple-personality disorder, with interesting overtones of paranoia, insane rage, and despair, whatever.

The bottom line as always, is that no one is having a good time and customers are getting the shaft.

What is not generally understood is that corporate culture is "the ghost in the machine" It is a set of agreements that grow out of the million and one discussions and interactions that go into creating and mobilizing a company. It is the most important component of any company.

Furthermore, like the human spirit, when the corporate culture is gone, the company is for all practical purposes, dead.

A sane culture is one which values and supports every part of the organization; it values customers and employees, it values the environment, and it values investors.

An insane culture values abstract numbers rather than real accomplishments. When a company shifts from satisfying customer requirements in an ethical way to meeting profit goals regardless of what shortcuts are taken, the cultural agreements are being broken and the company is on its way out.

If your company is ethically challenged, that is something you should be aware of and work to change, if possible. If you can't change your environment for the better, then you need to find an organization that operates with integrity and give it all the support you can.

Insanity is catching. Ask anyone who has worked in a sick corporate culture. Recovery can take a long time.  Spend your time working with people who recognize your worth and reward you appropriately.

For a more thorough treatment of this subject read the five articles I wrote about corporate insanity starting on June 21, 2005.