I don'ta think'em is what you think'em is

Now that I am a professional, I find myself working hard to fit into the norms of United Way life. I try to dress better, work long hours, and generally fit into the business culture. By in large, its going well. But part of culture is language.

I make a lot of jokes about Michigan being another planet, but its a planet where most people still speak the same language that I do. Mostly.

After my first two weeks of hearing people constantly talk about "Leveraging our work," I finally sat my boss down and told her that I didn't know what they were talking about. Leverage to me meant finding a crowbar to open something, or perhaps a show on TNT, or even a finance term I looked up on Wikipedia. None of these things fit the context. It turns out that in United Way-Speak, leverage means to coordinate efforts to produce better outcomes, especially meaning that the different types of work compliment each other. So that was my first United Way language lesson.

My second lesson was about tickling and Rocks.
Each quarter, our various business units set goals for ourselves. But we don't call them goals, we call them rocks. At each staff meeting, we set an agenda to discuss our rocks, and any other non-rock topic. It took a whole "rock setting" meeting to figure out what was happening.

One of our rocks is always about making sure we are entering our contacts into the database. Most of this is to help fund development, so they know who has strong relationships with potential donors. But it also helps to know who else is talking to an agency before you go out for a site visit. So, after each contact with individuals or agency, you put a note in their data base file. But on that note you can "tickle' other staff persons, to make sure they see the note. Tickling is very important.

So i find myself at staff meetings trying not to laugh as we discuss leveraging food, carrying and trading rocks and tickling at least 15 people a month.