The H.R. Doctor Is In - Jan. 25, 2016

More than 40 years of public service, working daily with elected and appointed officials, and being an appointed one myself, more than qualifies me to write a children’s book! And so it has happened. Evie and the Magic Telescope was born and is now available at booksellers such as Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Powells.com and more.

In the book, Evie is a very smart and beautiful girl — 8 or 9 years old — who, like all of us, worries about what she will be when she grows up (The real-life, HR Granddaughter Evie, who inspired the book, is “an adult 5 year old”). I often continue to have thoughts about what more I want to do, learn and achieve as I continue to “grow up.” She also confronts issues like peer pressure, dealing with a bully and a lack of confidence, and communication skills necessary to find her life’s passion.

Of course, being a grandpa also required me to highlight in the book the advice and experience she gains by spending time with her grandparents.

The book is classified as juvenile fiction — for ages 7 to 12. However my intention was to include in the book advice and approaches to life, career and joy. These are just as characteristic of adult business success and service to others as they would be to a child growing up. I want to share with you some of what Evie learned as she emerged from being “Evie the Shy” and “Evie the Worried” to become “Evie the Confident Explorer and Hunter of the Sky,” which was to become her lifetime passion.

Grandpa and Grammie gave Evie five pieces of advice. This advice is what this particular HR Grandpa has learned and taught to others over more than four decades.

The first bit of wisdom is to always keep expanding your knowledge, learning diverse information from science, history, psychology, arts and more. This way you can become as much of a “Renaissance person” as you can possibly be. People with such diverse knowledge generally are going to be more popular and more likely to be confident, communicative and successful at other things they do in life.  They will likely see a broader picture of whatever is going on around them and be a more strategic thinker.

Linked to this “life helper” advice is the idea of imagination — to dream and to work hard to achieve.

The second piece of advice is to continually be on the lookout for ways to expand your network of friends and colleagues. They are people who will be available to help you grow as a person, solve problems and enjoy life. It becomes your goal and responsibility to also help them.

 Having your own “army” provides incredible resources to you beyond what you will find in a staff meeting, watching TV or practicing any other endeavor. These will be resources, that can be brought to bear when you need help or just advice.

Third is the extremely important concept of not walking by something wrong.  Rather than “just put up with it” or ignore a problem, determine an effective action to improve a situation and act on that better idea.  Perhaps calling on members of your army can produce the assistance you need to solve the problem.

The next lesson Evie learns from her grandparents is the importance of living a life of service to others.  This can mean doing charity work. Certainly it can mean teaching. But perhaps fundamental is the idea of being a positive role model to help others, especially young others.” This “Service above Self” model (i.e., the slogan of Rotary International) exemplifies the larger idea of  “… better to give than to receive.”

Finally, she hears grandpa tell her about how important it is to laugh and enjoy the opportunities life presents. Fun is, as one anonymous wise person said, the greatest discipline of all. 

It places our worries, especially those over minutia, into a better perspective. It contributes to our physical and emotional health and it leads to more positive relationships at home and at work.

If you can put all of these lessons to work as a young child, public administrator, or senior citizen, your days will be enriched.

Your life will be more successful and you will create a legacy that will last long past the time when you cease to exist biologically.

Of course it helps to have included in your army some technological and state-of-the-art “friends.” In Evie’s case, this meant visiting an observatory and meeting a computerized, powerful telescope.

Angelina, the telescope could take Evie on magical journeys to see things in the universe she never dreamt were there and never dreamt that she might see. This kind of technology was never available until rather recently. It is hard to explain, how a robotic friend like Evie’s telescope can change the way we think and act about nature, science, religion and relations with other people.

How can looking up at the sky and experiencing the beauty of Saturn’s rings, the remnants of a supernova or a galaxy have the kind of profound effect it had on the character of Evie, or for that matter on me? The best way to answer that is non-verbal. Just watch a child look through a beautiful telescope at Saturn and share their expressions of wonder!

So it was for Evie at the end of her adventures that experiences open up minds. For us, we can imagine all that we can accomplish as public servants who can make our communities better.

Ironically, when we expand our own consciousness and knowledge, we also expand our ability to make a difference in the world and in a child’s future.

That was Evie’s great discovery and that is what changed her from shy and worried to a confident Explorer.