Jim's story for the September 21 Bulletin

It was Monday, September 14, 2020, and President Tim Hageman displayed Sue Vogl’s photo of our Flag in front of the Manhattan Beach Police Department on 9/11/20, followed by Sue’s plea for empathy, referencing President Obama’s concerns about America possibly suffering an “empathy deficit” in hard times, when in fact we are all tied together……Rich Montgomery described the Manhattan Beach Fire Department’s efforts fighting fires around the state as part of the state’s mutual aid program.  Rich also felt good about a Bruce’s Beach protest being peaceful and constructive.  Local restaurants are doing well.  The Residence Inn on Sepulveda is the subject of City oversight—they appear to be housing domestic violence victims through L.A. City programs……President Tim’s daughter moved into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and it was an emotional time for her parents, as we could see in the photos.

 

President Tim showed us a video of the reconstruction and building of the Memorial Museum on the 9/11 site in New York City, after which Scott Yanofsky told us about the construction of our own 9/11 Memorial at 15^th and Valley.  Scott himself spearheaded this project, which features two pillars from the New York City site.  2,500 groups were invited to submit proposals to the city to create this memorial, and Scott’s group got the bid.  All these years later, the event still overwhelms Scott’s emotions, which has resulted, in part, in Scott and Mark Burton bringing fruit and bagels to the MBPD every Monday and Wednesday morning (our help would be welcome).

 

Jim Schlager introduced former Manhattan Beach resident Jason Averbrook (he was our Little League president when he lived here), who is cofounder and CEO of Leapgen, a management consulting firm in Minneapolis, focusing on the HR and IT aspects of the digital work force, especially with large enterprises and school districts.  He can be found as @jasonoverbrook.  He has books, podcasts and more, using the phrase The Now of Work.   To integrate human beings with technology, he suggests starting with a strategy—a vision.  Then deploy, run, optimize and innovate.  I can’t reproduce this power-packed talk, but here are some phrases:  Unlearning is the key to digital success.  Define your journey.  Design work for your workers and your audience, not just for yourself.  Align work to technology.  Humanity is more important than ever—be agile in fragile times.  Work and schools must work for humans, not technology.  People and machines meet in the hands, the head, and the heart.  Check in on people, not up on people.  Enable productivity, don’t just monitor activity.  He invited us to join Leapgen on Crowdcast to see what these concepts look like in practice.

 

We started with Sue Vogl’s thoughts on empathy and ended with Jason Averbrook telling us that empathy is the key to integrating humanity with technology.  Humanity is the target, and technology is the tool, and empathy is what makes it all work.  Of course, Rotarians already knew that.