Patterns of behavior can be interrupted and changed instantaneously. When employees lock into recurring patterns of negative behavior, it may serve them better to have someone interrupt the pattern rather than berate or sympathize with them, which could reinforce the attention they get for acting out that pattern. Pattern interrupts can short-circuit the mental paralysis and inspire a more resourceful, positive state.

On March 19, 1998, the storied Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team was sold by the beloved O’Malley family to corporate predator Rupert Murdoch. Named that year by Sports Business Journal as baseball’s most successful organization during the 20th century, the Dodgers were a paragon of “family values” as an organization, a very close knit group. It was understandable that everyone in the organization had a massive letdown when Murdoch’s marauders usurped the helm. A friend of mine worked in the Dodgers’ public relations department, and informed me of how demoralized they were because of the change. Being a Dodger fan and good friend, I faxed over to him the following news memo parody just to interrupt the pattern and bring back some levity to his staff:

RUPERT MURDOCH ACQUIRES THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
VATICAN CITY. At a press conference today in St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican announced that Rupert Murdoch will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for common stock shares in his media empire. If the deal is approved, it will be the first time a media mogul has acquired a major world religion. Pope John Paul II will become Senior Vice President of the company’s new religion division. “We anticipate tremendous growth in the religious telecommunications market for the next decade,” said Mr. Murdoch. “The additional resources of the Catholic Church will allow us to make religion easier and more accessible for a wider audience of people. Through our telecommunications systems, we will make the sacraments available via satellite for the first time…through new interactive media, you can confess your sins, obtain absolution, and reduce your time in purgatory, all without leaving the comfort of your own home.” Mr. Murdoch added that he intends to give the church a racier look for broad public appeal.

According to my friend, the memo made its way around the office and reinstated the family spirit. They resolved to maintain solidarity in the face of any changes that were not deemed beneficial to the organization. Given the number of mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers running amok, sometimes it requires a little comic relief to stop a negative pattern and regain perspective. Go Dodgers!

Excerpt from the Amazon best selling book,
“When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Lighten Up!”
by Terry Braverman
© 2012 All Rights Reserved

One of the most eclectic and influential saxophonists/composers of our lifetime, Wayne Shorter wields a profound and lasting influence that has touched a whole new generation of musicians. His career spans several decades, starting with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in the 1950s, Miles Davis in the 60s, and the seminal fusion group Weather Report during the ’70s, progressing to his own very creative groups to date. At the age of 77, his talent is still sought after for concerts, studio work, and film compositions.

Far more than exclusively a jazz musician, Wayne Shorter is a deep thinker who sometimes speaks in cryptic, elliptical analogies and similes, with a decided penchant toward science fiction. Above all, he’s a keen and compassionate observer of the human condition, with insights that can be appreciated and applied by anyone receptive to the message…

TB: “At this stage of your career, what do you want to convey most through your music, to your audiences?”

WS: “I hope the music will change people’s minds about how they live…they may want to look at how they live, a way they’ve been taught and conditioned…being “hi-jacked” from the cradle is something to watch out for…some grow up and sacrifice themselves for someone’s notion of how life should be, instead of saying, ‘I want to think and investigate for myself…open up to other possibilities. Improvisation, jazz, is to me an expression of that desire to open up, that says, ‘Wake up, stay awake.’ You can listen to music and still be asleep. Music can awaken one’s awareness to possibility when you enter it, really listen, let it engulf you. The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the (way it was) saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light. And if it keeps crossing over (to other musical genres), it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something fresh and spontaneous.”

TB: “It seems that the message of your music these days is about thinking beyond, going beyond boundaries. Your quartet appears to test those boundaries moment to moment.”

WS: “I think about Stephen Hawking a lot, who went beyond the barrier of his own body, denying himself the length of time that anyone in his condition should have. And he broke past that. I recently got one of Stephen Hawking’s tapes where he’s talking to the science fiction writer Gregory Bedford, and he’s saying, ‘I want to talk about boundaries in space.’ It gave me chills. People might think of the end of space almost like the end of life. But then, you come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as beginning or end. So those words, they’re kind of artificial in a sense. And a lot of people give their lives for something that’s artificial or an illusion. And illusions can hit you in the face harder than what you think reality is.”

TB: “So you see music as a form of mind expansion.”

WS: “I want my music to connect with people. People say it’s getting a little too high falutin’ for marketing, a little too cerebral and all that. I’m thinking that I want this music to just impact people, so if they get a chance to hear more of it, they’ll get it. This music is saying that someone who’s not famous is just as important as kings and presidents. Yeah, this is music for the common folk and it keeps us human. Back when I was 15…hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and all of them in high school…we played a little bit of that music and people would say, “It’s far out, it’s too deep, too technical”. I recently played that for a lady who never heard Charlie Parker before and she said, ‘Sounds like he’s talkin’ to us’. And I’m thinking, ‘Wow, here’s a real 21st century person’. We need more people like her. I know what the marketing of music has been, historically…basically trying to get the formula for what works. But I’ve been trying to avoid all that…the labels and categories…and just play music.

TB: “There was a period of your life when you recorded only three albums within a decade or so…”

WS: “There is so much more to living and life than doing music. It is working on, not working on, but exploring the areas of life that can be left unattended. You can do music, music, music, and then still be a cripple when it comes to what you’re really here for. You think you might be here for music, then the human condition, the humanity part of your life can be, you can be blinded to that part, be really out of touch and when somebody is saying something, you can’t always equate it with what you’re doing. It (taking time off from recording) was like finding out what is my real purpose in life. I used to walk by a mirror and look in the mirror and say, ‘What’s your real name?’ And we’ve been named as we are born and ‘what is your real name?’ What is anybody’s real name? That sparked, what are you supposed to do? What are you supposed to do also? By playing music, I am doing less than a fraction. Music is a drop in the ocean of life.”

TB: “With all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom, have you come to a conclusion about the purpose of it all?”

WS: “At this point, it is to celebrate life in such a way that it, the celebration translates to other people, that they can translate it to mean that we are eternal and since we’re eternal, there’s no need to count our neighbor’s fortune and rob our neighbor’s fortune because prior to being convinced that we live eternal, you think you only live once, because you only think you’re here for a short time, you’ve got to go out and rob banks. You want what someone else has if you don’t have it. You want the shortcut if you can get away with it. You may pay for it by being executed or something like that, and you may think that’s all there is to it. That’s not all there is to it.

I can do music for movies that will never be made as long as the person that is listening or embracing it can start to make movies of their own lives, and so they become the producer and director and actor, so it is no one else making them puppets. If I can do musically, be a musical catalyst for self-decision or self-thought, person who thinks about themselves and not have to join the club of popularity, the popular club, where everything is sold with a pop package. I am talking about cars and food and voting and voting unilaterally. It is another word for popular or it is another word for thoughtless, mindless.

To actually support, I would say, to support all pervading law of life itself and saying that we are that law. We are the manifestation of that law. When we do negative stuff, the law reveals the negative effects. The law of ourselves doesn’t punish us. We reward or punish ourselves. I am talking about blame outside of ourselves. Blame when something goes wrong or goes down, something tragic happens and you start to blame. Of course, there are opposing forces among people. The opposing forces have come about because of an unawareness of person by person by person taking advantage of unawareness from birth. In other words, there is a whole karmic something that we are able to erase from this moment on.”

Excerpt from “”The Replenisher,”
A publication of Terry Braverman and Company
© 2010 All Rights Reserved

Keeping employees energized, enthusiastic, and engaged in their work is a constant challenge in these uncertain times. I have ventured into countless numbers of companies to facilitate seminars, where cultures of “terminal seriousness” are pervasive, and staff looks as if they’re on death row. A recent study showed that almost 80% of all work-related injuries, and illnesses, are stress-related. Companies are starting to acknowledge the need to “lighten up,” and inject some fun into the fundamentals of business. Here are just a few suggestions that can improve morale, teamwork and productivity…

Start a Monday morning off with “humor impact aerobics.” Within a time frame of two-three minutes, this will re-energize your staff after a long weekend and re-connect everyone in the spirit of teamwork. Everyone stands next to each other in a line or circle. Direct them to raise their right arm and shake out their hand, then left arm/left hand. Now have them shake out their right leg, then left leg. Next, right arm/right leg, left arm/left leg, right arm/left leg, left arm/right leg. It will look like an epileptic support group, and the room will fill with laughter as some struggle to maintain their balance. Now, using their right hand, they take the left hand of the person on their right, and shake their hand (the person on their left will be shaking their left hand). Finally, have them face the front of the room and take a deep breath with a slow exhale. Now they are primed and pumped for the day’s tasks!

If you find staff morale or energy levels sagging in mid-day, take them aboard the “massage train.” Have them stand one behind the other, throw their hands way up in the air and stretch, then drop the hands onto the shoulders of the person in front of them and rub. Then reverse the line 180 degrees and repeat the process. This need not take more than a few minutes, just to reignite the energy level via some fun interaction by kinesthetically connecting everyone.

An employee at a local department store found a fun-filled answer to the problem of learning new company guidelines for clerks. She’s also an aspiring singer, and with management’s blessing, created a “compliance choir” that sang the new guidelines over the store’s sound system just prior to opening the store. The tune was not only catchy, but the clerks caught the message as well, and there were far fewer mistakes made during new policy changes.

Much resistance can show up when implementing new company guidelines and policies, blocking retention of information. One time I was hired to announce a company’s new safety regulations as several of the celebrity characters that I do. This not only entertained and disarmed the disgruntled staff, but it proved to be effective in helping employees retain the new information, because they connected it to what my characters (Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Child, and other celebrities) said about it.

You may want to render your own version of what I call the “Worst Work Experience of the Week Award.” I worked for a bank that was beset by low morale among the tellers, who constantly feared dealing with troublesome customers. So on Fridays we started to reward the teller who was voted the best (most horrific) story about a difficult customer with a prize. It dramatically improved morale and increased customer satisfaction because tellers were now seeking out those hard-to-please patrons to win the award. Customers responded by becoming more civil, as a result of the increased attention.

When appropriate humor and fun become embedded in a company’s culture, employees feel more relaxed, resourceful, and ready to contribute to the business.