The White Collar Recession

Part One- Awareness: Coyote Continuity

When an economy turns, the first response isn’t denial, but coyote
continuity. Nothing seems to have changed. If you’re still attracting
customers, delighting them, and making payroll, nothing in your
experience confirms that you are, like Chuck Jones’ Looney Toons
character Wile E. Coyote, already running on thin air, familiar mesa
falling ever further behind you.

No one notices big shifts. We might notice others failing, but we imagine
these caused by some character flaw—poor planner, weak manager,
greedy speculator. Never simply bad luck or tectonic movement. Even
after the Madoff scandal makes headline news, we imagine some close
correlation between wealth and intelligence, and the loss of wealth or
income as evidence of some shameful personal shortcoming. We’re more
likely to whisper about another’s stumble than notice our own.

Fact is, our economy grew to specialize in making the best danged buggy whips in the
universe, and nobody’s buying buggy whips now.

We’ve done this before.

A few years ago, I interviewed the Chief Financial Officer of one of the two remaining ex-
buggy whip manufacturers in what was a hundred years ago the center of a burgeoning
buggy whip industry, Westfield, Mass. His industry-leading company was called U. S. Whip
until well into the 1920s when, faced with certain extinction in spite of being masters of
their universe, they stumbled aside to reconsider what they really knew how to do, how
they might produce real value in the world.

After two decades of coyote continuity, losing altitude, U. S. Whip became U. S. Line, soon
to become the leading braider of fishing line in the world. They decided that their unique
value proposition might be in braiding, and they chose to stop braiding buggy whips, a
necessary identity-crushing shift that only took twenty years and most of their corporate
treasury to acknowledge. Denial came in attempts to legislate laws requiring buggy whip
holders on all horseless carriages, but their industry evaporated anyway, displacing every
master craftsman and reliable supplier up and down their supply chain.

Each of these, in turn, experienced over-running their personal mesa and learning how to
accept their world on previously unimagined terms at the least convenient time.

This shift is destructive, but also holds the potential for creativity and renewal. There are no
guarantees except that things will be disorientingly different. So different that the first
glance will notice no difference at all. What will I do in response? I will make my buggy
whips faster, better, and cheaper until my inventory smothers me. Then I might notice the
absence of solid ground beneath me, then gravity will have her way. I will be inventing a
parachute on the way down. You’d do this too. It’s only human.

Those who imagine themselves still standing on solid ground might well imagine correctly.
At ten percent unemployment, ninety percent are still employed. The government has long
been by far the largest contributor to Walla Walla’s economy, though the security of even
those jobs is threatened by the hard choices being made by people far away from here.

What makes this one different? The disappearing white collar jobs, previously held by well-
educated, highly-skilled, well-paid professionals. They do not qualify for the blue collar
safety-net. Their average gross earnings over the past year exceed the maximum allowable
to qualify for food stamps. They were sole proprietors, and don’t qualify for unemployment
compensation. Some were entrepreneurs who invested a lot more than forty hours per week
in their careers and sometimes earned a lot less than minimum wages in return. Where will
they go now? What will they do?

They might be re-trainable down the food chain, to drive truck or work transient
construction rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. But not in that tie. And not in those
shoes. Our first generation to graduate from college sent back to trade school. Some argue
that this is a waste.

The economists call this Creative Destruction, and claim it’s a normal part of every healthy
economy. We invent britches, learn to efficiently manufacture and distribute them,
outsource their manufacture and distribution, then outgrow them, leaving everyone kicking
air on the far side of some personal mesa.

However numbing the numbers might feel, the personal experience is painful. I am
suddenly a member of the white collar unemployed. I’m over-qualified but lacking in specific
experience, expecting too much while willing to settle for almost anything. Worse, I’m in
danger of losing more than my identity in this, and I feel my identity melting. I don’t know
who I am anymore, where I might reasonably aspire to grow, what I might do without
merely fooling myself into believing there might be a secure future there.

Out of options, out of ground, but at least, at last, coyote-aware of the gravity of my
situation. Of our situation.

This one’s different. Recently, the UB’s Web Producer Jeremy Gonzalez captured comments
from citizens on Main Street. “It won’t be so bad here.” “They should have marketed more
agressively.” “We’re the center of our universe.” Wile E. couldn’t have said any of it better.

Attend the Port’s Economic Development Committee Meetings (hey, it’s a free lunch!), and
hear the grim statistics reinterpreted into more reassuring form. I announced that I was
there representing the White Collar Recession. No one else was. Yet.
The White Collar Recession
Part Two- Acceptance: The Panhandler’s Paradox

That first visit to The Blue Mountain Action Council feels like a
trip to the principal’s office. Oh, the staff doesn’t look down
at me. There are no humiliating accusations. I’m the one
looking down my own long nose at myself. Never thought I’d
pass through here.

As I sign the form testifying that I have no income and

receive some grant money to pay my gas bill, I realize that I
have become someone I never expected to be: low income.
No income. Asking, even qualifying for help. A panhandler.

A few years ago, Amy and I were invited to make a

presentation at the Changing Change Management
Conference in Vienna. Arriving at the venue, a mansard-
roofed mausoleum to industry, we found milling attendees,
anonymous name tags pinned on their formal lapels,
presenters showing Powerpoint® slides.

Munching strudel during a coffee break, I mentioned to Amy that this conference didn’t
seem any different. “Where’s the change? Tomorrow,” I proposed, “I’m going to show up
as a panhandler. A beggar.”

And I did. The next morning, I skipped shaving, dressed in ratty jeans, an inside-out
sweatshirt, sneakers, and a wide-brimmed hat. I scored a large cup at the Starbuck’s across
from the Opera, and squatted about two-thirds of the way up the grand marble staircase
every attendee would have to climb. I wore a name tag declaring me as simply “Change
Agent.”

“Got any change?” I implored as each delegate approached. Half the people were able to
make both of us invisible as they passed, seemingly struck deaf, dumb, and blind by my
plea. About a quarter of them complained, “This is a private conference! How did you get
past security?” These, I chased, asking, “How can you come to a change conference without
any change?”

A quarter of the people caught my pun and contributed. After an hour, I’d accumulated
nearly twenty euro in change and utterly changed the tone and tenor of the conference. I
promised the folks attending our session that I would leave my change in the alms box of a
lovely little church on the far side of the city, so the end of the day found Amy and I waiting
in a cold wind for the Ringtram.

That’s where we met Anthony, pronounced with that watery lisp common to Viennese
German. Anthony was a wheelchair-bound Macedonian immigrant: greasy-haired, fleck-
toothed, obviously indigent.

Where was that tram?!!!

“Got any change?”

I had two pockets brimming with meaningless change, which I’d pledged to an anonymous
alms box. I tried to make myself invisible, but failed. “Change?” Anthony pleaded. I parted
with about sixty cents, secretly hoping that would make him disappear, but it encouraged
him. We learned, over the course of the millennium waiting for that tram, that Anthony had
a wife and kids, liked “Aarnood Sthwartzanegga” movies, and possessed a disarmingly
infectious presence. We chatted warily, me protecting my change, him freely sharing his life
story.

When that tram finally arrived, he asked again, “Got any more change?” I begrudgingly
pulled out another euro or so from my straining pockets before disappearing into that tram.

Arriving at the church, I could find no alms box, so I plugged in my change with the candle
offerings, chasing out a penitent worshiper with my clatter.

I’ve wondered many times since what kept me from just giving my change to someone who
had fully qualified himself as worthy of it. Anthony had acknowledged my presence,
effusively accepted me, and encouraged me to give no more than I could easily afford. Me, I
barely acknowledged his presence in return, only distantly accepting my potential as
benefactor. I gave a little, but I know in my heart that I blew it. Big time!

Acceptance entails a whole lot more than getting over denial. And a whole lot less. My own
small, desperate step through the Blue Mountain Action Council’s door confirmed my
hesitant, personal acceptance of the way things were for me in that moment. I anticipated
punishment, bureaucratic abuse, but found, instead, warm acceptance. Nobody questioning
my dedication, competence, or work ethic. I met someone more poised than I have ever
been to accept me as I presently am.

The paradox, the confounding contradiction every white collar unemployed confronts,
involves asking for help when schooled by a lifetime of experience on the opposite side of
that transaction. My acceptance of my own current, hopefully short-lived neediness allows
others to fulfill their mission. Perhaps to discover a purpose previously hidden from their
own perspectives.

I suppose every skilled panhandler already understands this paradox. The act of giving is no
more or less blessed than the act of receiving—both are sacred. This blessing cannot appear
without acceptance from both parties. The Anthonies we encounter are angels, inviting more
than simple generosity. That my sudden presence in the white-collar unemployed multitude
might make me an angel for anyone else, demands some deep considering from this
humbled angel-in-training.
The White Collar Recession
Part Three- Authorship: My Own Self-Help Book

“You have to know enough to be cynical, yet still choose not to be

cynical.”

Shift happens! Sometimes even the best cowboy ends up beneath

an upraised tail.

It’s easy, perhaps even useful to accept full responsibility for

positioning, but accepting the way things are doesn’t mean that
anyone caused anything. We generally reap what we sow, but any
farmer can tell stories of sometimes reaping a whole lot less than
he planted. Luck happens, too.

Continued belief that I cause what befalls me in life has helped fill
my therapist’s calendar, and usually results in cynical resignation,
leaving me simply, helplessly, hopelessly bobbing on an endlessly
hostile sea.

There must be some middle ground between accepting complete personal responsibility and
blowing off all culpability. Sure, had I chosen a different major, a different career, a
different job, a different life, things would doubtless be a whole lot different now. But each
of these alternatives requires changing the past. Failing to change the past sits atop the
long list of pursuits holding the greatest potential for creating cynicism.

In his remarkable book Learned Optimism, Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman describes his studies
showing how to induce helplessness. Disengage the connection between effort and reward.
Sounds like unemployment. Dr. Seligman wondered whether, if helplessness could be
learned, optimism could also be learned. He discovered that the story a person tells to
explain their experience makes a lot of difference. Curiously, those who describe their bad
luck as evidence of some personal shortcoming, struggle more to recover from their
stumbles. Quite independent of any real cause, the story I tell myself deeply influences my
agility when coping with the experience.

I am writing my own story. This is not simply a matter of painting a smile over my grimace.
Authorship requires a certain ‘if-you-knew-the-world-would-end-tomorrow, would-you-still-
plant-a-tree’ hopefulness. I didn’t cause the credit crisis that evaporated the demand for my
work, but I am—or had better be—fully responsible for how I surf the big sucking hole it
leaves behind.

It might not matter a lick what I do right now, but it better matter to me how I do it. I need
to know enough about what’s going on around, through, and to me to support a
debilitatingly cynical outlook AND I hold the personal responsibility to still, in spite or
because of this, choose not to become cynical.

If I don’t know enough to be cynical, I’m simply naive—an easy mark. I might buy self-help
books instead of writing my own story, searching for someone, anyone to deliver me from
my own situation, leaving me feeling only more helpless.

If I choose to be cynical, I forfeit what little leverage I have left. Resigned to a fate I am
certain I don’t deserve, I might chose the only certain way to lose this fragile game. Give
up. Cynicism adds terminal weight, smothering every scenario except the one no one wants
and everyone fears.
I am a published author. Like every published author before me and since, I discovered
something important when my book was accepted for publication. It would be edited. I
would rename, rewrite, reorganize and rethink what I submitted as a finished manuscript.
The result was better and the process for achieving that result, challenging.

It’s no different writing a resume. I envy my wife Amy’s ability to recraft her resume,
reframing her past to fit whatever opportunity appears before her. Exactly the same past
reflected in a variety of ways. Her story so vibrant, her past seems alive.

For us white-collar newly unemployed, it’s been a while since we were unable to publish
pretty much whatever we decided to write. We understandably thought we caused our past
good fortune, and maybe we did.

We are each still writing our story, a recent plot twist making it a mystery now. I still get to
choose whether it becomes a comedy, a tragedy, or an epic seething with redemption,
though lately written with what feels like the merest stub of a blunt pencil.
The White Collar Recession
Part Four- Articulation: Finding My Voice Again

Self respect is the first casualty of bankruptcy. The space

between respectability and shame must have always been hair
thin. Time slows to infinity in the moment I abandon the rusty
belief that I might actually dodge this bullet and accept that I’ll
have to take it, hoping for no more than a flesh wound.

Then shock sets in.

Me, I couldn’t talk about it. Whistling around the carpet-concealing carcass, I held my
breath, my thoughts, and my voice; then I carried on. What else was I supposed to do?

The bankruptcy attorney was perfunctory, matter of fact, only interested in the barest
information. A God-send for anyone too ashamed of himself to speak. The bankruptcy
trustee, reviewing our accounting of personal property asked simply, “What happened?”

“Business cycle, I guess,” I replied, deeply ashamed that someone might publicly survey my
meager treasures. Books, worth little but landfill to anyone but me. A twenty year old car.
Odds and ends of ancient furniture, each with its own resonant story. A home we might sell
in a down market for as much as we owe. No evidence of profligate spending.

Whether the business failed because of bad marketing or a bad market doesn’t matter now.
It’s gone. And with it went more than the promise of livelihood, but my whole carefully
crafted identity, leaving me simply speechless.

The myth insists that the professional remains emotionally more distant from his livelihood
than the typical craftsman. Hooey! Anyone engaged heart-deep in their work feels the hole
its absence leaves behind. And that space fills first with shame. Deep embarrassment at not
carrying my weight. Self-inflicted humiliation.

In this country, thank heavens, we have a long-standing tradition of making bankruptcy as

easy as possible, but no easier. The personal barriers to declaring it are daunting enough.
In less entrepreneurial cultures, bankruptcy begets civil penalties little different from public
flogging. Our tradition is more forgiving, acknowledging that our successes come from risk
taking, not simply from following the established order.

No one ever knows where the edge is until they stumble over it. And stumble we do.
Eventually, I managed to stand up on something almost resembling my two legs again, and
actually start talking about my situation. When I sent a note to the kind editors at the UB
describing my experience, I could have had no idea whether they would snub or welcome
my invitation to write about what I could then only barely speak about.

Neighbors, over to the house last weekend, learned in conversation about our dire situation.
“Hey, we went through that two years ago. It’s survivable. If you have any questions,
please let us help answer them.” They followed up with an invitation to dinner to more
deeply engage.

The dentist office called this week, euphemistically asking about an appointment last
September. I responded that I’d canceled my appointment in October, and that we would
not be rescheduling until our situation improves, having become indigent and all.

An hour later, the dentist’s office called back to say that the outstanding balance had been
taken care of. “God bless you, and please come back when your situation improves,” she
said. Amy cried when I conveyed the message. Me too.

These are tough times for some of us, made tougher by my own tough hide, insisting that I
should certainly hide whatever’s going on inside. My ancestors were proud people, made no
less proud in my double-standard eyes by the washouts they experienced.

My great, great grandmother left Illinois on horseback, a fifteen year-old bride. With her
little sister and new husband, too poor to afford a wagon, they made it as far as Union,
Oregon before winter set in. Her sister died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and they
holed up in a lean-to until Spring, when they went back to Illinois, where they became
tailors, saving their pennies until they tried again, making it only as far as Nebraska
Territory, where they settled until Oregon insisted they try again.

They made it this time, but my great, great grandfather died shortly after they arrived,
leaving a young widow and seven or eight kids. They persisted. Their story is now part of a
proud family epic, mostly populated with tight-lipped, tough-skinned people.

I carry on this proud family tradition in my own shameful way. Pride, it seems to me now,
might well come before a fall, but also rise following one. Until I could find my voice to add
to this story, I was simply ashamed.

The deep sense that I blew it might someday blow past, until then I’m learning to speak a
language foreign to me before. No whining allowed. A certain pride in the fact that I do still
have a voice in whatever happens to me from here.
The White Collar Recession
Part Five- Application: Working Anyway

When a local non-profit finally contacted us about facilitating

their long-anticipated board retreat, we thought maybe we’d
finally generate a little revenue the old fashioned way. Two
possible contracts had slipped away over prior months, as
client budgets evaporated in the economic meltdown. We
could really use that cash.

A few days later, the board chair sent an apologetic e-mail,

explaining that their primary funding had just been cut by
40%, so while they really needed to work with us, they
wouldn’t be able to afford us after all.

I simmered a while in disappointment before looking at Amy,

saying, “We really need to do this work anyway.” And so we did.

In the Great Depression, pork chops only cost a nickel but no one had a nickel. And few
would part with a precious pork chop for nothing, so pork chops rotted while people starved
surrounded by plenty. How smart was that?

We could choose to respond this same way today. Or not! In economies where the flow of
money literally freezes, other mediums of exchange emerge. The classic beggar’s sign Will
Work For Food, in my case reads, Will Work For Work, because not working feels like the
worst possible punishment.

Now, with the economy stalled and shedding jobs, perhaps the price of simply doing work
has become priceless. This is no reason to stop doing good work. If no one’s buying, I say,
“Give it away!”

How will we survive simply giving away our work? The real question might be how will we
survive if we cannot? Conditions have changed, and changed more radically than I’d ever
imagined possible. I could hold myself as hostage as a nickel pork chop in this world where,
for now, nobody’s spending money on what I do. They still need it, and I need to do my
work.

We white-collar unemployed have been trained by a lifetime of salaried working to not count
the hours of engagement. We are perhaps more fortunate than those accustomed to trading
their talents by the hour. We never so much worked to live as lived to work. Not working
feels like not living.

“We make a living,” Winston Churchill reflected, “by what we get, we make a life by what
we give.” Those of us who have always worked to make our lives dare not cease doing our
work, even when the cash stops flowing. There’s no good reason to accept the lack of
monetary remuneration as an excuse for not sharing our gifts.

And so, between scouring the network for “real Jobs,” we’re continuing to do our real work.
My next book continues to take shape. Amy coaches and councils those in her orbit who
used to pay for that privilege, and now simply feel privileged to receive. The privilege works
both ways.

I don’t know the price of anything anymore. But I’m clear about the cost of idleness. On
reflection, was I ever motivated by the money? Not really. I was motivated by the
opportunities to do great, worthy work. Still am.

I’ve held my share of menial jobs, and if they taught me anything, they taught me that if I
couldn’t construct some alluring purpose for doing the work, it didn’t matter what they paid
me. I needed to pay myself with purpose, whatever the paycheck promised. Unemployment
is just another challenge to find my purpose again, and to apply it in a whole ‘nuther
context.

Perhaps this period of economic uncertainty is a call for all of us to rely upon what has
always been certain in this world. We need not be prisoners to our paycheck. Losing
livelihood does not forfeit life. We are free to give whatever we feel free to part with, and a
prisoner only to what we believe we must reserve.

So, we promised that non-profit’s board that their retreat, under our facilitation, might be
grueling. We would expect them to contribute more than they might have expected, since
no money would change hands. Fair trade. And the sessions were grueling, sorting through
the options for providing service with drastically reduced funding. Each encountered their
own personal invitation to find deeper purpose. And each answered their call.

After The Long Dark Night Of The Soul before the closing session, a few board members
reflected that they’d arrived convinced that they would have to resign. But something
happened while swimming with that swirling uncertainty, something not about funding at
all. It was, I guess, about working anyway, about finding one damned good reason to
continue doing good, necessary work in this world. And then simply doing it.

Maybe the money will follow. Maybe not. If this economy ever hits bottom, let the record
show that we decided to keep dancing all the way down.
The White Collar Recession
Part Six- Activism: Can You Hear Me Now?

My business made nearly $78.5 million more than

Banner Bank, $2.8 billion more than Chrysler, and a
whopping $4.2 billion more than GM in the fourth
quarter of 2008. Not too shabby!

Of course, shabby is in the eye of the beholder.

I’ve been writing to my US Congresswoman every

few days, trying to help her understand that tax cuts
won’t accomplish anything for those who don’t have
any income. Us, well, we aspire to make enough to someday pay taxes again. And that will
require work, which will require freed-up capital flows and something other than ideology-
based budgeting.

She worries about inflation at a time when economists worry how the heck to induce it now
that it’s needed. She’s worried about incurring long-term debt when capital markets have
frozen. And she seems most concerned about preserving a status quo that has already
slipped through our collective fingers.

I respect her right to disagree with history and the vast majority of economists, but I sure
don’t understand what she expects to gain by crossing swords with the experts. Those of us
suddenly, surprisingly dangling from the economic margin marvel at her tone-deafness.

I’m still writing.

I’m not helpless, only sporadically hopeless, and not nearly as powerless as I feel. I have a
voice that’s louder than others’ because I’ve used my voice. I’ve attended the County
Commission, City Council, and Port meetings. I’ve invited candidates over to my house to
meet my neighbors and other candidates. I have coffee with elected officials. I write
respectful letters to the editor.

And I’m not always a squeaky wheel seeking grease. I remember to appreciate those who
do good and stifle when I can see no good coming from anything I might say. I mow my
yard, tend my trash, and help my neighbors when I can.

I hear a lot of slander these days about how Roosevelt created the Great Depression, how
illegal immigrants overloaded the economy, and how people who want to work can always
find jobs. Such babble has always been with us. Marie Antoinette advised her rabble to “just
eat cake,” which seemed oh so common to her, and beyond luxury to pretty much everyone
else.

In times like these, the leaders have usually been the last to really understand the situation.
Few of them have ever successfully re-negotiated a utility bill from a position of absolutely
no leverage, thrived on less than a teen-ager’s allowance, or made the hard choices that the
least among us make every day. Excuse them if they are struggling to catch up, they are
hindered by their lack of personal experience.

Those touching bottom can help the others understand how deep the pool actually is, but it
requires more generosity than we might imagine we can afford. It’s easy to rail against the
clueless, and infinitely more difficult to patiently explain again how the world looks from
down and over here. They will not willingly open their gates to any group wielding pitchforks
and burning torches, but might well accept your generous invitation to tea.

I have expected archetypal bad guys out there, but have yet to find any. We live in a
society where all men are assumed to have been created equal. That some are more
economically equal than others is simply an eternal feature of human existence. Equality
lies in our voices, unless we assume before speaking that no one will hear or we scream so
loudly that no civil civil servant would willingly listen.

My recent successes having bettered Banner’s, Chrysler’s, and even GM’s performance
might give me pause to consider my standing in this freshly disoriented community. I
needn’t let my success go to my head anymore than I might let my imagined failures silence
my voice. I’m still here, voice intact, perhaps just a nudge more emphatic than it used to
be.

I realize that as my economic elevator has fallen, my activism has been rising. Injustice and
privilege offend me more than they ever did, while justice and equality seem all the more
alluring. Ours is a troubled society, populated with people who are decent to their core. That
we need near constant reminding just how decent we are, merely human.

I am reminding. Can you hear me now?

The White Collar Recession
Part Seven- Altruism: Greater Gifts

Losing work initially eroded my sense of self, but this

depletion matured into a certain selflessness.
Curiously, the poorer I’ve become, the more generous
I’ve felt.

2008 was a year of loss. My dad died. My business

crumbled. My house didn’t sell. My income
disappeared. My debts defaulted. My mom moved out
of the house I grew up in, into assisted living, while I
metaphorically moved out of a kind of assisted living
into something more closely resembling where I grew
up.

Everything changed! The world’s economic troubles

were mere background noise for me.

2008 was also a year of uncountable gain for me. I

really got to know my dad, my wife, my family, my
community, and myself.

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. Some of us have plenty of nothing,
but that’s not everything we have. Scraped clean of distracting necessities, a bare bones
existence has a lot going for it. I’m beginning to understand what the old timers meant
when they fondly remembered hard times as the good old days. There are plenty of good
new days now, too.

We suspended gift giving last Christmas. We made not one harried purchase. We gave each
other greater gifts. Each fit. No returns.

After a time, the desire to shop dissipates. I’d rather browse in the library, visit my mom, or
read a great book. I even started writing songs again.

One Friday, we decided to spend the evening as the family who built our hundred year old
house might have spent a Friday evening. The three ten year olds groaned. No Gameboys.
No TV. Fire in the fireplace. Popcorn. Personal stories told around the room. Reading silly
poetry. We giggled more than usual.

Suppers are slower now. Nothing pre-cooked, flash frozen, or previously chewed for our
convenience. We shop around the edges of the supermarket. Meat is flavoring, not main
course, and we save bones and peelings for stock. Little wasted. My old pants fit again.

I’ve spent much of my adult life traveling somewhere else. One year, I stayed in fifty two
different hotel rooms. Traveling like that, I left more often than I ever came back. Waiting
for the bank to foreclose, I’ve never felt more at home in this place or less attached to
anywhere.

I’d never characterize myself as stingy, but I will admit to moving too fast to notice others’
need. The most important things happen at the least convenient times, and velocity can
degrade into inconvenience every important little opportunity to help. I was rushing into the
grocery just before Christmas, when Amy tugged my sleeve. A derelict van in the adjacent
row displayed a cardboard Homeless, Please Help! sign. I didn’t have much, but I wasn’t
homeless yet. I dropped a fiver through their window.

These are small things. Tiny treasures. Greater gifts.

A sculpture entitled The Entrepreneur stands in a courtyard on the University of St Thomas’

downtown Minneapolis campus. The Entrepreneur is chiseling himself out of stone. How he
fashioned his hands has always mystified me, but perhaps no longer.

“These,” Jesus is said to have said, holding up his own hands, “are the hands of God.” This
simple declaration has been variously interpreted, but I think it must mean that my hands
are the hands of God. Yours, too. The Entrepreneur gets one lucky break, he starts as more
than simply stone, but stone from which a pair of hands already protrude. What he does
with them, he gets to choose.

There’s nothing like a dunking to convince you that you’re all wet. I have plenty of time left
to reinflate my self importance. In the mean time, I have some greater gifts to deliver.
Destination as yet unknown. I suspect these gifts were always intended for me, and for me
alone. Had my earlier successes continued unabated, there’s no telling how much I might
have lost. Down on one knee now, I find I can more easily reach across to give, and need
no longer stoop to receive.

Through the tragedy of economic calamity wafts the scent of genuine opportunity. There
just has to be a pony in here somewhere, and it is in here as long as I can believe it is. I'll
get to shovel some of my own Shine-ola after chiseling myself out of apparently solid stone.
I am reassured to reflect that only the most fortunate get to do this more than once.

Tap. Chip. Tap. Chip. One shard at a time.

The White Collar Recession
Part Eight- Adventure: Neighborly Naked

Following publication of my book, The Blind Men and the Elephant,

Mastering Project Work (Berrett-Koehler 2003), my publishers invited me
to make a presentation at their Making A Difference Conference in San
Francisco. I decided to speak on the subject of Brief Consulting, a
technique I’d developed with Amy to induce profound change in little time.

Invited as an expert, I fussed like a rookie over that presentation, jotting

endless notes to myself while nervously pacing outside the Convention
Center. My dilemma? Like most of the most important things in this world, brief consulting
isn’t actually a thing, and our language proves inadequate to describe it. Further, describing
it is not the same as simply doing it. Me, the successful writer, found himself beyond words.

In a flash of inspiration, I asked Amy to go find me a pair of white cotton briefs, a pair of
tighty whiteys, a size or two too large. She headed off down Market Street while I nibbled at
my nails.

I began my presentation by inviting everyone who had just settled into their seats for the
performance to get up and leave the room. “The room has been filled with transforming
presentations all day, “ I declared from behind the podium, “and it needs to take a deep
breath. Go out, then come back mindful of what you want to happen here.”

I received curious stares as everyone slipped out of the room to take a deep collective
breath, then step back inside. While the crowd was thus distracted, I slipped the whiteys on
over my cordoroys, and stood behind my protective podium. When everyone had found
their place in the newly respirated room, I started speaking.

As I explained how brief consulting relied not upon clever presentations but honest human-
to-human interaction, I took off my tie and began unbuttoning my shirt. As I continued
describing the many challenges facing anyone trying to get and stay real in the
anesthetizing atmosphere of business, I stripped off my shirt, leaving only a stark white
cotton tee. Then, I stepped sideways from my shielding podium, just behind the adjacent
table, which covered my cordoroys, but left fully exposed the briefs covering my pants.
“Why do we suit up to engage in what will have to become naked conversation if we are to
accomplish anything?” I asked.

The crowd roared!

There, I’d explained brief consulting. It’s about exposing enough of your real self to make a
real difference. The old advice for nervous speakers suggests imagining the audience naked.
My advice, get naked (or nearly naked) yourself. It will transform everything.

You live in a glass house. How else will the neighbors ever get over their curiosity and you
lose your shyness.

This series of articles has reintroduced me to my real world. No better way to get to know
yourself and your community than to stand nearly naked in front of them. Yes, the
cautionary counselors claim there’s no better way to permanently ruin a reputation. The rest
of us know that everyone probably already knows whatever you’re failing so desperately to
hide.

Me, an acknowledged master of naked consulting, took a while to consider taking off my tie.
I spent the week before the UB published the first column chasing butterflies around my
stomach. I rose hesitantly that Sunday morning when the first in the series was published,
expecting my e-mail in-box to catch fire before noon. The first appreciation came in around
eight, from a college-educated former single mom, well experienced with living on the edge
of the margin. The second from a bankrupted co-owner of a recently closed local restaurant,
inviting me into conversation. “I’m over the crying my eyes out stage, and ready to start
figuring out where to go next. Thank you for reassuring me that I’m not crazy or bad.”

A local church group volunteered money, clothes, food, garden help—none of which I
needed desperately enough. I directed their energy toward The Salvation Army.

The morning continued with warm greetings from friends and former strangers. No
punishment. No shame.

The Friday before the UB published that first article, Amy accepted an offer to work for the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Washington DC office. She will be coordinating the
biomass renewable energy programs that comprise one of the clear imperatives of the new
administration. A perfect job for her! Me? I’ll resolve the last few complications here before
following her into yet another adventure of a lifetime.

After every experience that seems intended to only publicly strip us naked against our will,
comes the humbling recognition that we might have more willingly stripped away some of
our own encumbering barriers to transformation. Yea, we were mimicking Wile E. Coyote
again, and doubtless will be again and again, fools to our missions and foils to our own
personal transformations.

Amy’s job came from a workshop we taught together in a National Lab a decade ago. One of
the attendees received our newsletter, and stayed in touch, hiring us to help one of his
stuck projects a few years later. Last Fall, Amy overstepped the boundaries of our formal
client/consultant relationship to confide that she needed his help. He was pleased to point
her in the direction of some promising solid ground.

Amy says the shift happened in that naked moment when she exposed the depth of her
despair. She was not rescued, but swam her own way out of the quagmire, helped by
someone she’d formerly helped navigate beyond his own quicksand.

Likewise, this series came to life one chilling winter day, when I bucked up an extra ounce
of foolhardiness and asked the UB’s Rick Eskil if he might be interested in an insider’s look
at the economy. I wasn’t sure I could even speak about it then, but understood somewhere
inside, that when nothing else seems to work, a naked exposition carries the potential for
transforming almost anything.

It did and it has.

With my warmest personal regards to my community,

David Schmaltz

©2009 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved Drawings by D. Wilder Schmaltz

David A. Schmaltz is a writer, teacher, songwriter, and sometimes brief consultant.

david@projectcommunity.com
Notes on the outline form

This series of essays follows family therapist Jean McLeandon's Seven A-s, a little personal
tool intended to help work through life changes. I found each A to work like a focusing tool,
helping me see a different facet of what did not seem likely to become a jewel by the time
I’d finished considering. But the structure worked its magic.

It starts with Awareness, which curiously seems to encourage seeing not simply the obvious
catastrophe, but possibilities. I found that I could not hold a single perspective, but had to
choose which change I would embrace.

Acceptance side-steps denial. Authorship helped me co-opt the more obvious and common
search for answers. If I’m writing the story, I’m really in charge. Articulation brought in
triangulation, echo-locating. If others could hear my voice, they could help me hear myself.
Application was a dandy bit of synchronicity, the board facilitation arriving just at the right
moment to understand how application actually might be applicable.

Activism gave me something to spend my anger on besides rage. I had noticed that before
application got my feet back out on the street, I was burning a lot of energy holding down
my breaks. I nearly burned out my clutch, too.

What a strange destination to find altruism waiting for me at the end of this journey. Hey, I
knew it was coming. I’d seen the outline before I ever started writing this series. But I took
one stage at a time, not even thinking ahead, and waiting for inspiration to whisper into my
ear before ever trying to move forward.

Then I stumbled upon Adventure, an eighth A. Once rejuvenated from the seven A-s,
Adventure once again.

I encourage anyone experiencing catastrophic change to sit with this outline for a spell and
see what happens for you. I’m a satisfied customer. And even I can’t properly explain how
or why these seven A-s work as well as they do. Just that they did for me, and might also
for you.

Awareness
Acceptance
Authorship
Articulation
Application
Activism
Altruism

Adventure!

Best Wishes,

David A. Schmaltz
2/19/2009
Walla Walla, WA