weather

It snowed here today in Tennessee; we had less than an inch of accumulation at my house. Yes, that's snow to us. Every school in the area was closed today; several businesses shut down early; medical appointments were canceled; the shelves were bare at the local supermarkets. This phenomenon is part of my culture.

On the other hand, we had numerous tornado warnings in 2009, and no one really blinked. School was not canceled when tornadoes threatened to appear; grocery stores functioned per the status quo. Having survived the devastating F-4 of 1998 in Huntsville, AL, tornadoes do not phase me, nor my kind. 22 people were killed (one of them, my friend's brother), 500 injured, hundreds of homes wrecked. Tornadoes are a fact of life in the South; snow, however, is not.

So, to me, those of you who panic over tornados...well, that's just silly; those who panic over snow, I completely understand. Perhaps, you are the opposite. Maybe an earthquake is no big deal to you, but it would freak the pants off of me. Hurricanes, no problem, but threaten to put me in the path of a wildfire, and I would lose it. Weather, and how we react to it, is a cultural divide; it's one of the only divides, in fact, that seems PC to discuss. It is not about race, religion, age, gender; it is, quite simply, weather. But it says a lot.

If you chuckle at the seeming overreaction of my town at the threat of snow, that is good. That means that you get the point. If you empathize with our snow freak-out, then that is good, as well. You also understand.

Each of our teams, each of our little cultures inside of this monstrous coporate universe, have a culture. Thankfully, that culture is not built on superficialities such as race or gender. The culture is based on empathy and understanding, skill-sets and competencies, experience and survival. Here in CLP (where I work), if you come to me with a customer's complaint about bleedbars, I totally get it. If you do not understand why EdSched is built the way it is, I understand. It's our culture, and, likely, it is a culture that very few "others" would understand. On the contrary, I read posts on our company site about programs and issues that are foreign enough to me that a 23rd-century being could have penned them.

So, what is the point?

It's simple. Cultural acceptance is not a phenomenon only relegated to the obvious classifications. We have rules, laws even, to make sure that we do not discriminate, nor demonize, those of a different creed, sexual orientation, belief system, age, skin color, etc. Too often, however, we fail to accept those who interpret the weather through a different lens than our own. You might not define 'snow' the same as me; I might scoff at your fear of tornadoes. However, the truth is, there is no right or wrong here; there is only culture.

Remind yourself: though you might not agree with, understand, or even care about the priorities or emotional reactions that are coming from parts of the company-culture that you don't fully understand, that those pieces are valid, important, and necessary to our overall, binding existence.

We are who we are, and we are where we are, because we are who we are. Once we learn to accept the differences in our corporate culture, we will be able to connect on levels very few companies have ever achieved. Then, and only then, will we will finally be able to weather any storm that might befall us.

shanti,

mjh