Inspired Manager

My name is Nick Greenko and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Tangram Interiors, the largest privately-owned office furniture services dealership for Steelcase, Inc. in the Western United States.

Like most CFO's in corporate America, I assume all of the financial responsibilities that come with the title.  But beyond that, I oversee Tangram's Administrative Services, including Accounting and Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Customer Service, Design and our in-house, custom office furniture division - Tangram Studio.

I am also a Certified Performance Coach and mentor many individuals at the company while also playing a vital role in the support of key customers and prospects.

My background is broad, reflecting the study of music and language and posts in finance, healthcare, municipalities, the arts and the private sector stretching from New York to Los Angeles - all enhanced by an eclectic assortment of activities and interests.

When I travel, I see things in a different way. I know, Hello Obvious, but bear with me. They say you should only travel with those you love. That is so true, especially when you are traveling alone. I have to get myself into the head space of loving who I am and staying in a receptive and resourceful state if I want to have any fun. That head space allows me to change my perspective of the world. It’s like clearing the camera lens with a cloth. Suddenly you can see things clearly, perhaps closer to how they really are.

So, in travel, whether I am reading a magazine, listing to my iPod or looking at the zillion pictures I have on it, because of the time I have, my perspective changes. I get informed by the past, by familiar music and images, and inspired by the new settings around me.

She came from humble circumstances, but brought a sharpness, inquisitiveness and an acumen for business uncharacteristic of many in her industry. She sold elegance. She exuded elegance. And she had a private plane at Le Bourget, relationships with the most influential people of her day, made a ton of money and left a trail of iconic beauty and elegance.

In business, we prize an elegant solution. It is stylish, well-crafted and simple, with great bone structure, just like in fashion, architecture and office furnishings. It endures. The most elegant things do. It’s not about ornateness or gilding. It’s just that all the parts work perfectly and beautifully together.

Some seem to come by elegance easily, but frankly if it was easy, we’d all be there. It takes work, and an elegant solution might go through tons of iterations and distillations before it seems remotely elegant. It takes refinement, restraint, to arrive at an elegant solution.

Or it might just appear miraculously, and forever change the landscape of the world around it.

But don’t count on that only! Do what Chanel did. There is the old tale of how she selected the fragrance of the enduring No. 5. Rows of white handkerchiefs lined up on the mirrored mantle, the result of years of research. Each one sniffed, evaluated, ruthlessly scrutinized, even though she reputedly had a migraine that day. Shades of minor distinction to choose from. All her life experience to that point in the setting of great personal weakness informed her final choice. The result endures to this day.

An elegant solution.

Last Tuesday was Nervous White Man Day. How did I know?

The day began with a bunch of emails on a wide variety of subjects.

They all had the following in common:

1. Vague description of a problem
2. Assumptions about the problem
3. A vague sense of malaise on top of the vague description of the problem
4. Guilt about the problem (even that was vague)
5. The problem was being handled for others who might be Less Fortunate
6. Value judgments, centered around the problem

Oh, and the authors were, well, white men. Nervous ones.

Of course there had to be follow-up emails. And calls. To make sure the magnitude of the situation was underscored.

Today is Monday and I still cannot recall what was important about any of those emails last Tuesday. None of them are in play any more. Maybe it was just Nervous White Man Day.

Sad to say, I was one of them. Yes, I am a Nervous White Man.

So, what‘s an NWM to do? What can you do if you get NWM’d?

• Convert the vague to specific
• Identify the real request (if there is one)
• Decide what you are willing to do (this might involve the Delete key)
• Exhale

If I sell this idea to Hallmark, I might be able to retire after all. But the thought of it makes me nervous.

All right, so I might be unusually philosophical late on a Friday afternoon. So my blood pressure might be too high, like the cardiologist with zero personality who barely knows me suggested the other day. Or I might be too toxic in how I react to every minor annoyance that comes my way. The traffic in Southern California. The choices people around me make. Assumptions I make. The traffic.

As I left his office I was focusing on his obviously circumstantial, mis-diagnosis. I strode to the elevator. The lady in the elevator with the timeless black shift and the clipboard just had this radiance. We were discussing the weather, which has been lovely, but she spoke of it as if she were savoring a glorious meal. There was a contagious delight that passed to me, as she genuinely enjoyed recounting the bliss of cloudy mornings, sunny afternoons and cloudy evenings, a heavenly variety of beauty. I noticed the iconic 60’s Brazilian Modern décor of the lobby. Timeless, with that dark orange, espresso brown and white palette. I don’t think we provided their office furnishings, though. We parted into the sunny parking lot shaded by the purple trees with sincere wishes to enjoy the day.

It hit me. When I put positive stuff out there, it radiates into the world. When I do negative stuff, the same thing happens. So, although the picture above is by Chapman University around the corner from my house, miles away from the beach, there is this drain that reminds us that what goes in there drains to the ocean.

So, the butterfly wing that creates the tsunami. What I do affects the universe. Dumping drains to ocean. I know it is totally Captain Obvious, but there it was. I was seized by the obvious.

Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of The Four Agreements cites the first as being impeccable with your word. Make sure that what you put out there is positive, benevolent, inspirational, a blessing to others. It affects others, and radiates back to you, so make it positive, impeccable.

While writing, Tim McDonald forwarded me the video below by Professor Philip Zimbardo in which he talks about how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.

I am still processing this.

Back in the 80’s there was this pivotal work published in the Harvard Business Review by Felice N. Schwartz, called Management Women and the New Facts of life, in which she called for women in management with families to make choices between either being on the career track or on the mommy track (she is credited with coining that phrase).

"It's an illusion, she said, to think that you can have it all."

Well, I remember hearing lots of intense opinion over the article, either for or against. It was volatile, but she did have a point that needed to be said then, and pioneered the idea of companies making their cultures more family-friendly. It was received as an all-or-nothing call, but really what she was saying was beyond the obvious.

"It's an illusion," she said, "to think that you can have it all. If what you want is to focus on your career and compete for the top, then you're going to have to spend less time with your children - a trade-off that many men have been making for decades, and not always happily. Conversely, if you want to make raising your children the highest priority, then you're going to have to accept some impact on your career, at least temporarily."

Jim Moriarty, CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, wrote a great article at the opening of the April 2010 edition of Making Waves, their member newsletter. Jim and the Foundation are friends of Tangram and our Studio did their offices in San Clemente with custom office furniture that was designed for their unique culture. He used the example in the environmental movement of being ‘in’ or ‘out’.

“When we force things into clean, binary categories, we may win a small battle but lose the war. It makes it more difficult to create great shifts in society, and in this case, move toward an environmentally conscious lifestyle. Once we take the time to understand something, we start to recognize the nuances.”

The either-or paradigm is called the Sucker’s Choice in the book Crucial Conversations.

“What makes these Sucker’s Choices is that they’re always set up as only two options available. It’s the worst of either/or thinking. The person making the choice never suggests there’s a third option that doesn’t call for unhealthy behavior.”

The question better could be “how can I have it all?”, or “how can I dial up or dial down the elements in my life to achieve the balance I need?” It really is a question of degrees. What can I do or what do I need to get more of what I want in my own life?

There was an explosion after Ms. Schwartz’s article that prompted degrees of reform, the benefits of which are still being felt today. So after the hard stance, the process of understanding and nuance began and other possibilities fleshed out into new practices that made the culture of organizations more relevant.

So, either you take the binary stance and then you move to understanding and nuance or you start with understanding and nuance? Just kidding. Stay open to possibility. This is a very current topic!

“A second marriage is the triumph of optimism over experience.”
-Samuel Johnson


For any of us who manage in today’s workplace, the home of do-more-with-less, this paradigm recurs again and again as we revisit systems, staffing and situations to find more efficiency. Many times with the same players or constraints. Optimistically looking for some little thing that will be the game-changer. In a sense it is like a second marriage. What is different that will create different results?

I have been an agent of change lately, and have found myself thrust into situations where a difference needs to be made in the context of groups or organizations that have a lot going for them but need to either get things done better or to get more things done. It is challenging to look at a situation and come up with something that can be that game-changer, that shift of context that makes things work better. There was an accounting manager in the Paris office of one of the firms I worked for that was famous for throwing her hands into the air and authoritatively stating “It cannot be done!”. I was the dumb guy on the other side of the pond trying to figure out how to get it done somehow. There has to be a difference. You can’t just have optimism, or experience. You do need both to innovate successfully.

In this past Sunday’s New York Times, I came across an article on Generation Y, on this very subject. Judith Warner’s piece in The Way We Live Now on The Why-Worry Generation. Say what you want about that generation, they are very much a part of our workforce, and are changing the face of it. Any capable manager needs to know what they need, how they show up, what motivates them and how to communicate with them. There are constraints. The general rule is to start with heart, by focusing on creating good relationships based in genuine interest. According to the author, you have to be careful, because people in that generation are confident, think they have it all nailed, think they have the perfect resume, don’t take criticism well and are convinced they have what it takes for future success.

Optimism.

“They’re extraordinarily optimistic that life will work out for them,” Jeffrey Jensen Arnett of Clark University is quoted in the article.

This is a fabulous affirmation for those of us who are their parents, that maybe we did something right.

“These emerging adults may be off-putting to a worried 40-something — their sense of entitlement and their lack of humility are somewhat hard to take — but they’re not necessarily maladapted. On the contrary, with their seemingly inexhaustible well of positive self-regard, their refusal to have their horizons be defined by the limitations of our era, they just may bear witness to the precise sort of resilience that all parents, educators and pop psychologists now say they view as proof of a successful upbringing.“

She goes on to say that the unease of some of the significant social issues that shaped that generation might have influenced that optimism. See? Optimism and experience.

There is a way to innovate, but it will take optimism and experience. We can’t for a minute hope that just wishing will make it so. We need to look the facts in the face and figure out how to proceed in the light of that glaring reality. Then add the optimism.

So, in one of my conversations today, I was discussing a new chain of command for someone. She was not buying what I was selling. I had the patter down, all the right business reasons. And then when I stopped talking, I could see her reacting and then being honest about her own experience (and why she was probably right and I probably not so much, but she would hold off on judgment for the moment).

I know from experience that if we show her some results in the short term that we can create a sense of possibility for her that things could be better.

And I’m optimistic.

So, where’s the blog? Can I help?  Tim is prodding me to follow through on my commitments. And I am grateful.

I have been traveling and on projects for the last 3 weeks, in between a visit to my in-laws in Atlanta.

We presented at our best practices group on Social Media and its applications to the contract office furnishings world. I pitched my idea about not taking things personally to my wife, who subsequently burst into tears, accused me of manipulation and threw food at me, if I remember correctly.

So, I am not exactly brimming over with new ideas. And I think I will take another pass at the taking-it-personally thing. That is the great thing about working with women in management. You think you have it covered? Dude, they so know what is REALLY going on. Several theories are working. You just have to reckon honestly with where you are at and what you are up to. There lies freedom.

So I have been really social and available to our community of practice. This is from an IIDA event we sponsored in Orange County for the Architecture and commercial interior Design community. That is me with Christine Peter and Nick Varreos. Lots of projects coming my way these days, but still finding time to do my day job, which is keeping all the brilliant managers who report to me engaged, thriving and generating the energy that makes our company better. That is the amazing part.

So I am trying to get some yoga in. Haven’t been to Bikram for 3 weeks now. Can’t remember the last time I surfed, but I did put a board back in my car this morning. The water is still 55-59 degrees, which does NOT inspire me. I still weigh less, but depending on the day, gain or lose a pound or two from my lowest point three weeks ago. My private yoga practice centers me. Keeps me open to possibilities.

So, Coach Carol.

All right, I live in California. People begin sentences with ‘so’ here. Especially if they are explaining or defending something. ‘So…’. I like it. It has a neutral quality, kind of like the ‘it’s all good’ thing.

So Coach Carol, my dear friend, texts me today. I haven’t heard from her in like a year. Then this. “Where are you? When can we talk? How about our regular Sat am? Shift happens,…carol”. Isn’t that the best? Notice the form. All open-ended questions. All engaging me to want to reply. We used to dialogue every Saturday morning. Carol is who got me interested in becoming a Coach myself.

So, you. When you show up tomorrow, or this afternoon, or later this morning, what will your staff, your colleagues, your customers see? Are you engaging them? Where are you, when can we talk? Are you open to the possibility of a shift happening for the better? To what extent are you aligned with people who will be frank with you and call you on your stuff and offer you a chance to get real about it?

If you are not pleased with your reply, drop me a line. We’ll talk. I promise.

So, I live a block from a university, and on my run through the campus the other morning, I came across these signs for their coaching program. As the grads get ready to launch into real life, a coach can be a consoling resource. Maybe I will throw my card out there. Let’s be available to those who need us. Flawed though we are.

So?

So, I was having this dialogue with my wife the other night as we were watching What Would Brian Boitano Make? on Food Network over dinner.  What a scream.  Love the energy.  Anyway, she is a psychologist, and we razz each other back and forth about the buzzwords in our respective professions.  So when I told her that the South Park song is all about being planful, she was in my face about it being a made-up word, and a pretentious one at that.

Well, I’ve been traveling, it’s tax season and I’m slammed.  Time for pithy observations later, but for now, sometimes when you need to transform your office space, planning to just show up as your outrageous-self can work wonders.  Saw this in a diner lobby on Long Island.  More later.

So much for the holidays!  It's on to 2010.  We were traveling just before Christmas.  On a business trip to Oakland the week before, I saw this graffiti on the men's room wall at Luka's, a really wonderful local taproom (Anything with roasted beets there is fabulous. It is an oasis.). The three key ingredients of a successful holiday season were there on the wall: make it merry, make sure you tip and Michigan rules!  Well, two out of three.  I know I felt merrier after reading it.  I suppose the blurred 'I heart...' phrase could represent goodwill - but that might be stretching it.
Next day, we left for New York for a week and landed just in time for the blizzard.  Living in Southern California, we are less often affected by something like a blizzard that can literally shut down an entire seaboard.  The sign was literal - and being snowbound for a day really made me think differently about stuff I take for granted, like mobility, easy access to resources, business as usual.
As we enter 2010, this is my watchword - a prompt to notice what is going on.  Stop the usual assumptions, fears and pre-conceived ideas. Challenge them.  Stop and notice what is really going on. Like in the photo.  It is pretty, but because of the distractions.  There is the clear message to stop, the graffiti tag that does not obscure it but upstages it/ the snowflakes that, again, are attractive and distracting and the darkness beyond.  It is important to notice it all.  The beauty, the vagueness and the real message.

This is how I am going about 2010, or at least starting to.  Got the fitness regimen back in play. Got my new journal and to-do lists.  Got the list of a zillion things I want to do differently, and better.  And being more laid back about noticing what is going on around me and less about driving my own agenda.  So far so good.

One of the business consultants I work with just sent me an email under the above title.  I love it!  It was in the context of his trip back to the Midwest at the onset of the current winter storm out there, but for me it is a metaphor.  I told you, I get inspired by the ordinary sometimes.

So, today he is safe and curious.  What a great vantage point! Because I am safe, I can choose to be curious - about you.  How are you doing?  I am OK, so I can reach out beyond myself.

You know, we just came off Thanksgiving with so much thought around what gratitude is.  I had a parking lot conversation with someone the other day about how gratitude puts me into a resourceful state.  Instead of griping about why I don’t have something else, something about being thankful for what I do have opens possibilities for me.  I see things as available, rather than being closed off to possibility.

We are stepping up the cadence of our management training here at Tangram and as we have been assessing needs and trying to create a curriculum to meet those needs, we seem to be focusing on the importance of communication that creates effective business relationships.  The philosopher Martin Heidegger said that, “Language is the house of being."  The words we choose create how we are with others.  They can advance a relationship or prevent one from growing.  The challenge is for my language to serve my purpose and not be an end unto itself or worse, work against my purpose.  If I am safe and curious, I am free to use language to create an opening for someone else to grow.  It could be a peer, a staff member, a customer or just someone I come across.

At lunch today with one of my staff, just checking in, I found myself creating this kind of experience and it resulted in her deciding to take a challenge to go a step further in her own professional development.  No fanfare needed.

So,  you’re safe.  Are you curious?

So, the holiday season is upon us here at Tangram Interiors.  Parties, corporate gifts or statements of benevolent intent are almost daily events now.  Those two gold antelopes on the B&B Italia table in our foyer at work.  'Tis the season!

So, are you in the season?  Are you decorating, or not?  There is a wave of illness this year, with every fifth person I come across being severely under the weather.  How are you holding up? Does your inside match the festive outside, or vice versa?

This season brings added pressures to us in business.  How’s retail doing?  What are the seasonal indicators up to?  Can I get checks out of that customer before the holidays?  How is my own business doing?  And then, there is the idea that we are suddenly supposed to have Norman Rockwellian perfect family lives at the holidays.  In the midst of work, commuting, economic challenges and fears and an ever-encroaching workload.  Happy holidays!

So, there is an edge this time of year and you see it everywhere.   Watch for it!  This season gives us a glimpse into sides of our associates, staff, customers and vendors that we may rarely see.  The pressures of the holiday bring the daily griefs, despairs, joys and triumphs to the surface much more quickly and you can see people in a clearer light. Opportunities will arise to build quality relationships if we are willing to engage others with honesty and compassion. 

I have learned to not take the holiday season at face value, but to use this time to notice opportunities for strengthening bonds and creating new relationships.  All it takes is a little openness and honesty.

What is your top salesperson up to?  Your top customer?  Your staff?  Watch for the signals, and look for the chance to be there for them. 

After all the holidays only come once a year!

There is one of those old stories about the company President and the young, new manager.  The young guy asks the senior guy how to be successful, and the President says, “Good decisions” and glares back at him.  Awkward pause.  The young guy thinks about it and ask back, “Excuse me, sir, but how do I learn to make good decisions?”.  The President fires back, “Bad decisions!”.

I love that.  It is absolutely true.  However, I come across a lot of people who are fearful of taking risks, because of the negative implications of ‘bad decisions’.

One of the first powerful things I learned when I studied to become a Performance Coach is that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.  It is a fundamental principle in coaching.  It’s not good or bad, right or wrong.  It is information.  So, I did something.  It did not turn out the way I wanted.  Now I can examine the results and make a different choice.

Unless I am so hung up in guilt, shame, fear, paralysis or what other people are thinking.  It is hard to be open to possibility if I am defending myself against blame, but it is absolutely freeing to be able to look at results and decide to do something different.

There is a difference between what is called accountability, but rather is really blame or responsibility.  People use them synonymously and wonder why other people get terrified, or shrink away or glaze over.  Accountability is accounting for the steps that led to a certain outcome.  By training I am an accountant, so I get that.  Opening balance, debits, credits, closing balance.  It is objective.  It is what it is.  Accountability identifies the context, the actions, the decisions that resulted in a certain outcome.  I can fully identify my role in the outcome when I am accountable.

Blame is where someone takes the accountability and adds a value judgment.  That was good, or bad.  Stupid or brilliant.  Right or wrong.  They take their own values and superimpose them on the outcome.  This can be thrilling or absolutely crushing.

It is said that the actual event is not the real issue.  The issue is how I viewed the event through my filter of values and then how that judgment made me feel. I made stuff up about the event, and it made me angry.  Or mad.  Or happy.  And then I go off.

Some of the greatest discoveries came out of mistakes, and most of the great leaders we admire had some form of what could have been considered failures.  So, in your organization, are you allowing yourself and the people who work for you the space to experiment, and to be accountable for the results?  Will you stand in the gap for them as they grow?

If you do, it might be a bad decision.  Or a good one.

This last week has been intense.  I am not usually the guy out entertaining in our office furnishings company, but this week I had several evening events plus the usual deadlines to get to. 

So, by Friday, I was ready for some down-time over the weekend.  Winston Churchill said that it is not enough to just not do what you do all week to unwind.  You need to DO something different.  So I slept in, did mindless tasks around the house, took a yoga class with my wife, got some surf, wandered around Home Depot and Trader Joe’s, and came home to create dinner.  For me, that is unwinding.  I put the Food Network on in the background. 

One of the TV chefs was contrasting the French way of creating a meal with the American.  In France, you go to the market, find what is fresh, buy it and create something wonderful from it.  In America, you start with a recipe, make a list, then go to the market and go crazy trying to find everything on the list so you can cook from the recipe. 

This was one of those realizations.  I mean you can do both, but look at the power that is released when you notice what is going on around you and use it to create something better.  In management, I see a lot of frustration around things not turning out the way people want.  To be successful, it should LOOK a certain way.  We read books, copy other people’s recipes for corporate cultures and superimpose them on our culture at work.  And then are frustrated when we don’t get the results we wanted.  How much more powerful it is to mine the natural energy that is going on around us?

A manager I worked with once was deciding about whether to replace an assistant manager.  While replacing the role might have been the obvious choice, any of us who have done that know the feeling of having to take on the extra work of that role while we are trying to interview, recruit and train a replacement.  Add Murphy’s Law and a spike in business volume and you have a recipe for crazy.  We talked about the pros and cons and looked at what the real need for the role was.  What functions did the role perform?  What are some other ways those functions could be done, using who was already in place?  She came up with four names and some suggestions about what each could do, in the context of what they were already doing.  Without any additional expense, she just divided up the workload and created a whole lot of new empowerment for four employees.  Each one was delighted to rise to the challenge.  Instead of the drain of trying to get it all done on her own, she found the thrill of having people come up with creative alternatives for their new responsibilities.  A few weeks into it and people in the department and outside were noticing and commenting.  There is a new energy.

Diana Vreeland said, “Don't look back. Just go ahead. Give ideas away. Under every idea there's a new idea waiting to be born.”

Rather than be frustrated by the demands of the recipe, she was inspired by what was right in front of her - and created something wonderful.

After I got my first position in management at the bank where I was working, it dawned on me that although I now was a manager, I had no training or worse, idea, of what being a manager or a leader was.  I just knew that whatever that was, I was not it.   I was good at what I was doing before, but now I had a team to run and all I had was a sense of guilt and the examples of a few managers around me.

They were not good examples.

One day, I got an ad across my desk from the Harvard Business Review, and in the ad I noticed the phrase that ‘managers are made, not born’.  I heaved a sigh of relief.  I could learn to become better,  I didn’t have to be born to it.  There was still the vast gulf of what I did not know, and there wasn’t a whole lot of training available.  And what do I do in the meantime?  I still had a department to run.  One I was the ‘leader’ of.  As John Maxwell says, "the only thing a title can buy is a little time..." so I quickly had to decide how honest I was going to be.  Was I going to pretend I knew more than I did and take the risk of being exposed, or would I be honest and admit what I didn’t know and be thirsty for all the information and guidance I could find, wherever that would be?

Well, nothing is ever clear cut.  I did both, of course and had plenty of interesting outcomes as a result.  But more on that later.

There is an old saying that ‘when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears’.  So, throughout my career, my own leadership style has been informed by many diverse voices.  There were professors in the school where I got my MBA.  There were authors of great management books.  There were the colloquial sources.  Managers who did well.   More interestingly, managers who did poorly.  The New Yorker cartoons, which are indispensable.  Then, an eclectic assortment of people, voices and objects from all aspects of life, whether a movie marquis, someone I meet in the surf lineup, something totally out of left field.  Suddenly, I am inspired.  Then, just being who I am influences the culture at work.

One of the managers I did admire at the bank was a young executive who was over the retail operations of the bank.  In one of our brief meetings, he told me that afternoon he was following the M.B.W.A. plan.  This was one of those moments when I had to decide how honest I was going to be.  I knew about M.B.O. plans, which were trendy then.  Management by Objective, a team collaboration tool where you co-create goals with your employee.  But I hadn’t heard about M.B.W.A., so I asked him what it meant.  He said, “management by wandering around”.  He wandered around through the organization, having informal meetings conversations with staff and customers, seeing what came up.  Very powerful.  I later found out that this method was used as early as the 1940's at Hewlett Packard and popularized in 1980 by Tom Peters in his book In Search of Excellence.  Interestingly, today M.B.W.A. is being re-discovered as a relevant tool for organizations, especially those in states of change.

In coaching, we talk about ‘being’ with people, experiencing them as they are, without judgment.  Just taking them in.  Since leadership in the workplace is all about people, this is the most important step.  We can invent a new initiative and immortalize it in procedure and code, but if we aren’t reading the signals of those who the initiative affects, we might not get the results we want. 

So now I notice things.  Little things, big things.  I listen.  I look for patterns.  I ask, and I gain insight.  This informs my process of leading.  It opens possibilities for things to get done, perhaps in unconventional ways, but done.  This blog is about realizing the possibilities that can open up in the course of leading an inspired life.  I hope to challenge you to welcome inspiration into your life, your career and your management style and so to transform your own workplace environment.