|
|
Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover! A fully revised second edition of this award-winning classic by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley Paperback
Winner, Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award, Best Management Book - The Americas, 1995
Why Change Doesn't Work Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How to Try Again and Succeed Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley Hardcover Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. 
"This is the first treatise on change we've seen that is actually entertaining. The authors cover human and organizational barriers to change and change theories, and then take a tour of management theory that's guaranteed to upset every reader at one point or another." -- HR ONLINE Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... |
"Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church"
By the time we got to Los Angeles, I had a pretty intricate notion of what I wanted to do with the church. It would function as a screen for an array of illegal or questionable and even entrepreneurial activities.
I even went to the downtown Los Angeles Public Library to research the sanctuary laws going back to the 17th century. You will recall from such stories as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and A Fistful of Dollars that civil authorities were forbidden from seizing individuals to who had taken refuge in the church. In the Mexican version of these stories the church was then surrounded by soldiers who played the dirge of death or "Deguello" while they starved the besieged individual out.
This isn’t the scenario I dwelt on, however. My Los Angeles was the Los Angeles of Jack Webb and Sergeant Friday. My fantasy had the LAPD coming to our pad, responding to a complaint, and banging on the door. Inside, all manner of debauchery would be taking place. When I open the door, I point to the sign: "24 HOUR RELIGIOUS SERVICES." Stunned and sputtering, the cops would then withdraw, and I would slink, chuckling, back into our den of smoky iniquity, I mean sacristy. It would be sweet. Clearly, I was expecting the police to be like the Wooster police, or the Ohio National Guard unit we had disarmed, easily baffled, only 10,000 times more numerous.
Of course, LA was nothing like that. In the entire period we spent at the house on Vendome Street, no policed ever came to complain, about noise, or smoke, or whatever, despite the fact that we lived obnoxiously, insensitive to the needs of the Mexican-American family living just downstairs from us. It was not that we played music at airstrip deciblage at three in the morning -- it would have been rare for us to stay up that late, and we did not like our music especially loud -- but that there were a dozen of us at our peak, arriving at all hours, and acting like God's gift to the counterculture. I would have hated to live downstairs from us.
One weekend, Worth and I decided to make a pilgrimage to see Rev. Hensley, and we hitched up over the Grapevine and on to the Emerald Valley. We reached Modesto well after dark, and rapped on the reverend's aluminum trailer door. I expected a shining visage to come to the door, but Rev. Hensley looked irritated, as if people had dropped in on him like this before.
"Rev. Hensley," I said. "We're Mike Finley and Worth Frank, ministers of your church. We operate a storefront church in Hollywood."
"I ain't got no room here to sleep," were the first words he said.
What did we care about that. "Not a problem, sir," I said. "We just wanted to meet you and get your blessing for our set-up."
"Yeah, OK. Uh, there's a county park about a half mile down that way. Police leave people alone if they have proper ID."
It was clear the Reverend was taxed by the legions of pilgrims and luminaries that made their way to his slab, so we thanked him for putting up with us, spent the night on a couple of picnic tables, and in the morning continued on our way.
