Rounding Up
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston stands at the register at a coffee shop and what comes out of his mouth is a complete surprise to him. ----- Last week I bought a coffee and a T-Shirt at a coffee shop. And at that awkward moment when the person at the register spins the pad around for me to sign and enter a tip amount, I asked the guy “How much should I tip you for this?” I’ve never asked that question before. The moment I thought about asking it was after I had said it. Tipping has gotten out of hand. A few weeks back at a hotel in Colorado, every transaction at the hotel...
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Wisdom Is More Important Than Smarts
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week Cam offers some insight to new college graduates on some basic workplace skills that will make them effective in their workplace. He’s advised his clients for over twenty years on these things, maybe he should have something worthwhile to say. ----- My daughter graduated from college in May. After 20+ years advising companies and 7+ years interviewing workplace leaders on my What’s Working with Cam Marston radio show and podcast, I realized I should have some useful advice for her—and others—stepping into the next chapter. This is lesson number one called Wisdom is...
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Blaine Got The Call
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, lots of people celebrated last week. Cam was one of them. It was a case of determination unwavering belief that was finally rewarded. ----- So, after six years, Blaine finally got the call. I remember during the pandemic my wife and I rode our children’s bikes down the center of the street late one evening to our friend’s house for a cocktail. It was strange to have no traffic at that hour. At their house we sat outside and chatted for a while. Blaine was home and he and his sister stood in the back yard playing an improvised game hitting ping pong balls with...
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Practitioner
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam wonders if we have what it takes any more. If the thumbs up button is as far as we'll go or as much as we'll do. ----- David Brooks wrote a column in the New York Times last week calling for a, quote “comprehensive national civic uprising.” There are well over four thousand comments with most being something along the lines of “Yes. It’s about time. Someone should do something.” Brooks’ says the Trump administration has gone too far, that we are indeed in a constitutional crisis, and it’s time to act. But, I wonder, do we have what it takes to...
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Prom
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam tells us that based on a series of recent events, he has two people he'd like offer up as potentially superb spies. ----- My twins are high school juniors, and prom was last Saturday night. The event went something like this: For my son: He brought his Joseph Banks suit downstairs about noon. It looked like it had been in a pile on the floor since he last wore it in March. There was a button-down shirt with it. My wife took the clothes and began steaming the wrinkles out. She asked “What flowers did you get your date.” A blank look. “Go to Publix and...
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To AI or Not AI. That Is The Question.
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keepin' it Real, Cam reports on a writer's conference he attended last weekend where a good part of the conversation was about using AI. All the writers, Cam reports, choose to not use it, preferring to remain "pure." ----- I attended a writers' conference last Saturday. Writers are a curious breed, convinced their unique perspective on describing something as mundane as a sunset is groundbreaking and essential. I love them. But they’re weird. This year, though, a frequent topic was artificial intelligence – how do writers use it, if at all. Speaker after speaker claimed they...
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Get The Joke
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam and his wife were at a wedding reception last week. It was beautiful. One conversation, though, has stuck with him. ----- My wife and I stood with a young man at a wedding Saturday night as he lamented the lack of turkeys to hunt at his camp. There were no gobblers, he said, and he was a bit down in the mouth about it. “Why,” my wife asked. “In the spring,” he said, “the hens move to a different place where they like the environment for nesting. The gobblers follow. And wherever those hens go, it’s not on our property. I wish there were something about our place that the hens...
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Judges Of The Truth
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
It's been a long week for Cam. He's going to get paid one hundred dollars for two days of work that he is required by law to perform. He didn't enjoy it but it wasn't because of the low pay. ------ In grade school I never wanted to be the one to pick teams. I was afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. It’s ridiculous, I know. I like to get along. I like to see people succeed. I’ve never wanted to be the arbiter of someone’s else’s happiness. That responsibility scares me. Monday morning, I was selected as a jury member for a federal trial. It was my first time doing this. I was one of...
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Meaningless Conversations
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston shares what exhausts him and how a good conversation is hard to find. ----- It was 1,000 one-minute conversations. A collection of people who all were within a degree, maybe a half a degree, of separation. Hardly a meaningful chat and as the event wore on, the meaningfulness of the chats dwindled further. For so little conversation, it was exhausting. I think maybe that conversations that skim along the veneer of content are more taxing than digging into content. I don’t know. But when I left, I was completely spent. I’m like so many other people...
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Happiness
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On today's Keeping It Real, Cam recounts his birthday week which has some unexpected surges of happiness. ----- Happiness is fleeting. It never lasts and I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It’s different than joy and contentment and pleasantness. Happiness bubbles up from an unexpected place and last such a short time. And when it arrives, it sometimes brings tears. Living in constant happiness would render us nearly helpless. It immobilizes you. Living in joy and contentment is great with, hopefully, unexpected surges of happiness from time to time that render us speechless. For my...
info_outlineOn this week's Keepin' it Real, Cam Marston's new effort has been a year in the making and it's finally ready. It's learning delivered the way it used to be and he's very excited for it.
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Here’s a story for you:
An old man lowered his clay jug every day at the well. He did it by hand with the jug attached to a rope. He was very careful to not let the jug bump the edge of the well which was made of stone or else the jug may break. A young man saw all this and proposed a wheel built over the center of the well with a rope that would lower the jug straight down every time. It would be easier and faster. All he had to do was crank the wheel up and down. The old man listened to the young man’s idea and said, “No, thank you. Without the work of lowering and raising the jug, I’m not sure the water would taste as good.”
Over one year ago I begin surveying clients and colleagues and having lunches and Zoom meetings with them to discuss a new two and half day workshop I was developing on communication skills. Their reply was unanimous: these skills a desperately needed in our workplace. I asked a lot of questions, have written, rewritten and rewritten the course over and over again and the program launched this past Wednesday.
Could the program be delivered remotely? Yes. Could it be pre-recorded and done online at the leisure of the participant? Yes, I think so. Could it be shorted to one day? Or maybe half a day? After all, people are busy. Probably. But none of that’s going to happen.
There is a saying in the addict recovery world: What do you do when the very thing that is destroying you is what gets you through the day. For the addict it is drugs. For many of us today, though, it’s urgency. It’s more and more. It’s busyness. Its Fear of Missing Out. It’s the dopamine hit of the flashing or buzzing phone. And I’m as guilty of it as the next guy.
So in an effort to make a difference with the people who began with me Wednesday, I’ve created a program that slows the pace of learning. It’s not cramming. It’s learning. It’s savoring new knowledge. It’s dialogue, discussion, eye-contact, and thoughtful progression through learning and relearning skills that, per my colleagues, are desperately needed in their workplace.
No PowerPoint. No Audio or Video. Instead it will be flip charts, instruction, dialogue, and practice. Even pencils and not pens. It’s the hard, slow, deliberate work that creates results and will lead to a more fulfilling and successful workplace for my participants. It’s in a sense, retro learning the way it used to be done back in the day before all these tools we’ve created made things, what, quicker, better, easier? Maybe all of those but what I’ve created will be – memorable and transformational.
To many of my participants, what’s old will be new again. It’s been a year in the making. And we could get to end of the program much quicker than two-and-a-half days but, like the old man lowering the jug by hand every day, the water simply wouldn’t taste as good.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.