Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
My daughter Staci didn’t read the “Tipping Point” by Macolm Gladwell when it was handed out at the University of Wyoming’s freshman orientation, but I did. I found the premises that Gladwell listed amazingly linked to life here in Fremont County.
My dad always claimed I knew everyone in Fremont County, which was a substantial exaggeration, but when you added my charismatic, late brother-in-law Matt Conilogue to the mix, there weren’t many county residents who we didn’t have some type of connection with.
That was one of Gladwell’s points of emphasis in describing the three agents of change necessary in any social setting. Gladwell listed three types of personalities: connectors, mavens and salesmen.
We all know connectors. Those are the people that freely introduce themselves to you or notice you in an awkward social setting and come to the rescue in finding common ground between you and the strangers around you.
A true connector doesn’t just know your name, but the names of your parents and if they happen to be kid oriented like my wife Sue, the birthdays, and order of the kids in someone’s family she met only a couple of times.
A maven is different. Yes, they know a lot of people, but they have no idea when their kids were born or even a person’s name sometimes.
I’m a bit of a maven. I’m forever forgetting someone’s name, but when I hear it, a flood of memories flows in. I’m especially guilty of this when I run into former students. In my defense, a kid I taught for a couple of years in junior high school that moved away changes dramatically over the next few years.
More than once a bearded giant has walked up to me in Denver, Houston or even Los Angeles and said “Hi coach, or hey Mr. Tucker.”
The best I can offer in return is often a blank stare.
Inevitably they’ll grin and say, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Nope,” is all I can say followed by a little joke, “But I hope I was good to you.”
They always laugh, tell me their name and the memories flood back. I always remember something they did, who their friends were and if they were an athlete, their best, or worst performance. It is fun when this happens.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg for a maven.
Another statement I often make when someone asks me a technical question outside my bailiwick is, “I can’t answer that, but I know a guy.”
“Knowing a guy” is the essence of being a maven.
In the process of knowing a lot of people, even in small community like Fremont County, you learn who is and isn’t good at something.
Often you can tell who is the best one around by the time it takes to get your car into his shop, get your hair styled (I’m told) at her salon, or just get a checkup from a physician.
The good ones are always booked solid for weeks ahead. The ones that are always available are either incompetent or inexperienced and haven’t made a name for themselves yet. I like to give the youngster, the person just starting out a chance. Someone took a leap of faith in me in the past and it’s the decent thing to do for someone who is just starting out.
Electrical work? I know a guy. Truck repair? I know another guy. Plumbing? Yep, and you know who you are if you’re reading this. Ag questions? I know a couple of dozen guys who are experts at specific things.
IT, writing, carpentry or gardening, I can take care of those things on my own.
Siding, flooring, roofing or painting? I’ve done all three a lot over the last 50 years, but now I prefer to hand the ball to a pro, and yes, I have a go to guy in vinyl siding, asphalt shingles, carpeting and interior and exterior painting. You guys know who you are, and in the case of the painter, the contract comes with plenty of political dialogue.
The point is that living in one place and doing many different things exposes you to a community in a way that nothing else can. You became part of the fabric of the area, and in the process are woven into the very fiber of life, isolated as it can be in Fremont County.
A maven can connect you with people you’d never be able to find without them.
My daughter, though she didn’t read the book, is a medical maven. Her connections are amazing, and lifesaving. She’s an incredible resource.
The final personality, the salesman, is a bit foreign to me. I don’t try to sell people on anything. They can do what they do without my interference. A good salesman can connect people with products and make a nice profit in the process.
The salesman personality comes with a caveat when they enter the political realm. Politicians annoy the hell out of me, and as I get older, I can see through the smokescreen they offer with their appeasing babble much easier than I did as a younger man.
Slick salesman style politicians are creating the great divide that the other salesmen, the talking heads of 24 hour, seven-day a week news pundits glom onto with relish.
We are much more alike than we are different, but that doesn’t sell, and salesmen personalities always must have a product they can push. Today that product is division. There is big money in getting society split right down the middle.
Divide and conquer is a process attributed to Phillip of Macedonia, Alexander the Great’s father. In Latin it is divide et impera. Julius Ceasar used it, Genghis Khan, the Han Dynasty, Napoleon and most recently the national Democrat and Republican parties.
It only accomplishes one thing, and that is to create division, while making money for the divider. It never helps anyone else.
You can’t be a connector or a maven if your goal is division, only a salesman can accomplish that when it comes to Gladwell’s “Law of the Few.”
The law of the few should be familiar to you if you’re one of those who does most of the work in an organization. You won’t recognize yourself if you’re one of those who just rides along.
His statement that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work in any organization, whether it’s a family, a church, civic group or a workplace is stunningly accurate.
How many times have you wondered why someone is kept around by those in charge when you know how little they do. How many other times have you seen management ignore the “worker bee” in the group while piling on more work for them?
The only time administration or management notices is when that person has had enough and quits. Inevitably they hire three people to replace them, all at higher salaries than the original employee was paid.
“The Tipping Point” comes to organization just as often as it does individuals.
If you need to find out how this works, call me, I know a guy.