SOP - in business it stands for Standard Operating Procedures - a routine way of completing a frequently occurring tasks. All businesses have them, even those who are too postmodern to identify them as such. (Can you imagine the guys at Google having notebooks full of documented processes? Neither can I - but I'm be wiling to bet there's a "right" and "wrong" way for completing most of their common organizational functions.) Regardless of identification, SOP's help organizations ensure consistency of results. They help eliminate the fluctuating nature of human performance by providing step-by-step instructions with little to no variance. They are what allow businesses to identify how they do business.  Although we all might not carry around a standard operating procedures notebook, most of us also have a set of practices that help us organize our life. They are our personal SOP's - the routines that we establish to ensure that we get the consistency of results that we desire. They are rarely perfect, and just like in business, they can not account for unforeseen environmental changes, but we rely on them to get everything that we need to done, and still have time for watching The Office.
However, society's SOP's have changed over time. I am reminded of this when I listen to Sugarland's latest song (for the non-country fans - Sugarland is a duo who's probably most famous for their leading singer recording a duet with Bon Jovi.) In a story of growing up and letting go, Sugarland traces the trajectory of a young girl's life. The final verse is about the end of her marriage - and concludes with her driving away from her now-estranged husband with nary a look in reverse.
The noteworthy part of this song is that the woman's disintegrating marriage is just another right of passage in the course of her life. Along with driving her first car and having her first crush, its just another step on the road. Perhaps its not quite to the point that leaving one's marital commitment is a standard operating procedure, but from the sound of the song, it's getting close.

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When you are younger, short road trips seem to take forever. I'm not sure where along the line our perspective on time changes but it definitely does. Although an hour drive now seems like a normal commute, a practice that I developed as a child still remains. I look for touchpoints that tell me how far I've come in my journey and when I can expect to me home. Growing up, when we would traverse the 91 to my sister and my dance performances, the Prado Dam in Corona, CA was one such monument. We used to say that it was my parent's dam because it was built in the year they were married and the year of their nuptials is painted brightly on its face. The fact that our country celebrated its 200th birthday that year, and was the real purpose for the 1976 acknowledgement, was incidental.

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Before you start to think I've ventured into the politcal arena, this is not a blog about Proposition 8 in California. (If you don't know what that is, I'm sure you can explore the political contributors on ConversantLife.com and become fully educated.) No, this is about mixing celebrity quips with business realities. Do I still have your attention? Well, here it goes.

 Recently, Jessica Simpson, newly minted country star and girlfiriend of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo said of her beau, "I'm seriously proud of myself for letting him into my life." As Miss Simpson has been oft-quoted recently expousing on the magnificence of her boyfriend, this probably didn't catch too many people off guard. But it did me. After all, it used to be that we would hear something along the lines of  "I'm proud that Tony would be my boyfriend". Nowadays we congratulate ourselves on letting someone have the pleasure of being involved with us.

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All of us remember a time in which we were caught doing something that we know we shouldn't be doing. If you are like me, you also a remember a time when you someone caught you in the act and your response was anger mixed with embarassment. For me, it was the time that my youth pastor reprimanded me for having a less than genteel conversation that someone had reported to me. He caught me dead-to-rights, but instead of humbling acknowleding my error, I preceded to defend myself and get angry at whomever at turned me in. I should have let my guilt lead me to repentance but instead it led me to try to figure out who it could be and what I could do to fix it so that wouldn't happen again.

As any child with loving parents know, being disciplined for wrong actions that we knowingly committed is never enjoyable.

I'm getting married in December. Along with planning the big day, and getting my condo ready for another inhabitant, part of the changes that are in store for me is a change in my name. It's a little strange when you think about it - all my life I've been known by one name, and now it will become something else. Because I'm marrying a great guy I consider it a honor that I get to take on his name. So despite the confusion it may cause my students and colleagues, I'm moving forward with the name change smack dab in the middle of a school year. I want to own my new identty immediately.

This also helps explain the name change in this blog. No, I didn't do it because I think that by being a married woman I'll become someone entirely new. Nor did I do it for some undiscovered psychological reason. I did it because I've started to really define what I want this blog and my writing to be about. Business is a broad topic and when I was first invited to join Conversant I didn't know exactly what my shtick would be. I've been slient for many weeks as I was encouraged to figure this out. And the conclusion I've coming to is that I'm about figuring out what it means to Communicate, Serve and Lead regardless of the position that one holds in their workplace. It's been impressed upon my heart that these three strains of organizational life is what creates the type of person we are from 9 to 5 (or whatever your work hours may be.) And its the intersection of these things that I want to be about. 

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I am not much of a cultural commentator. It's probably sacrilege to admit that on a site that's dedicated to the interaction of faith, news and culture, but except for an inexcusable affection for celebrity gossip, there's not much about the popular press that gets my riled up. Maybe its because I tend to be a long-range thinker and the burning issues of today, quickly become the burnt out concerns of yesterday. Or maybe its because I tend to be a pretty cerebral processor (I once read a book about bookshelves which is anathema to most people) and things like the latest political maneuver or the Ebert and Roper's movie reviews aren't of great interest. I say all that to say, my opinion on the proposal to drill in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Reserve) is barely informed and probably worth less than the paper it would take to portray it.  I tend to leave those things to the expert, alhough I would like it to cost less to fill up my car's gas tank. It turns out, I'm not alone in this.

Anyone who saw the Lakers implode on Thursday night is now very well informed of the fact that basketball is a four-quarter game. Up by over 24 points at the half, the Lakers manage to blow the largest lead in an NBA final game. GIve props to the Celtics though because the Lakers lost wasn't causes solely by their own incompetence. Doc Rivers' team did a masterful job of defending the NBA's MVP and winning the game one point and one block at a time.

I'm sure that much will be made of the game in sports annals, and I'm sure that many will use the analogy to illustrate other points. Let me be among the first. Playing to the end with excellence is what wins basketball games. It's also an important lesson in business and life.

Businesses have a cycle. After the founders leave, most businesses go through a crisis. If this hasn't already happened, it usually occurs thirty or so years into the organization's history. What has been the organization successful no longer works. Times have changed and adaption is necessary. Just like the Lakers couldn't adjust to the Celtic's smaller line-up, businesses continue to try to offer the same products and the same service and at the end of the third quarter of their infancy, they find themselves in trouble. The same is true in life. Those who don't play strong until the end find themselves similarily in despair. Achieving your goals means playing every second with them in mind and not relenting when you have them in sight.

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Variety, the trade magazine of the film industry, recently announced that the WB Looney Toon characters would be exclusively featured on a line of healthy eating products to be sold at Safeway. Of course, this exclusivity has its limits. The characters would no longer be featured on unhealthy foods except for "certain ice cream products or birthday cakes." I haven't taken a nutrition class in a long time, but I'm pretty sure those don't qualify as healthy, and I'm also guessing that those are some of the more popular unhealthy items for kids.

My cynicism aside (or at least that part of it), I find it noteworthy that the powers that be at the WB would choose to restrict their characters' license opportunities. Cast in the clock of corporate responsibility, this move creates a premim for the characters. Any upper-class marketing student should be able to tell you, using your brand to promote anything and everything quickly dilutes the power that your brand held. By limiting the types of products that these characters can promote, the brand owners actually increase the brand's value. Assuming these are characters that food companies want to have represent their product, they now have greater leverage in negotiations because their standards for representation has increased.

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In A Severe Mercy, a wonderful book about a fairytale love story that was present in reality, the author, Sheldon Vanuaken shares that his wife and he used the analogy of getting a glass of water in the middle of the night for the author as the highest form of courtesy. Thinking this through, one can see why this would be. Getting up for somebody else from the warmth of a bed into the cool of the night in order to meet their need for thirst is a simple yet profound way to treat someone as valuable - to treat them with respect. This level of magnanimity is rarely seen nowadays.

• You'll have to talk to someone else
• I just didn't get around to it
• I have to ask my boss
• I know this isn't what you wanted, but . . .
• That's not my job
• That's not my fault

Whether your the employer or the customer, these are words you don't want to hear. And yet all to often, they are exactly the response you'll receive.

Organizational life in the 21st century has many challenges. All of these challenges are now more poignantly experienced as a result of the recession we're not having. Businesses today know that in order to succeed, they must make the customer king. Maybe that's why Business Week's recent list of most innovative companies is proliferated by company's who have a reputation of listening intently to customer feedback and delivering accordingly. These are organizations who employ people that know it is everyone's responsibility to deliver excellence, consistently.

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