Notes from the corporate underground

Journal for Quality and Participation, The, Fall 2002 by Moore, Kenny

That's the present state of progress with the Mr. Hatch Award. I'll probably keep it up until I read another kid's book that leaves me feeling hopeful and alive. Then I'll experiment with another idea. Maybe something based on The Velveteen Rabbit or Ira Sleeps Over.

I'm sure some well-meaning executive will read this article and try to formulate a corporate Mr. Hatch Award. Fuggedaboudit! Not everything needs to be imitated and mandated into business policy. Some things work just fine when they're small, personal, and unique. There's organizational strength in fermenting a mixture of the institutional along with the idiosyncratic. Executives would be better served by encouraging staff to hatch their own ways of nurturing the corporate common good.

Oh...one more thing. While I was finishing this article, I passed the woman who received the first Mr. Hatch Award when it was a pilot. She had fresh flowers on her desk.

"Is it your birthday?" I asked, "No," she said. "Somebody still sending you anonymous flowers?" I whispered.

"Nope, not this time. They're from my boss," she said. "I got promoted, and she sent them as a present."

"Sounds like you have a long list of admirers," I said, and I walked away feeling a little renewed.

Who knows? Maybe Mr. Hatch will start a trend in corporate America! I can hear Tom Peters talking about it now.

Kenny Moore is a former monk turned businessman, improvising his way through the daily workaday grind. He's corporate ombudsman and human resources director at KeySpan in New York, NY Moore has survived "incurable" cancer and open-heart surgery -- largely due to luck and divine playfulness.

Having dealt with both God and death, he now finds himself eminently qualified to work with executives on corporate change efforts.