American View: Celebrating column #666 and what’s so important about it 

That said, figuring out what the heck was going on and adapting had been my full-time job since I’d joined the U.S Army in high school. Once I graduated university, it all got tougher since I was yoinked into active Army service and didn’t transition to civilian life until I was 25. After mustering off active duty, I had no idea how to function in the corporate world. My parents had been teachers. My wife was a teacher as well. Most of my adult relatives worked either blue-collar or pink-collar jobs. None of them could teach me anything about the white-collar world because they’d never been a part of it. They didn’t know the rhythm, the language, or the “unwritten rules” of the environment. 

I took the painful lessons I learned to heart after I joined the workforce and tried to pass them on to friends, family, and junior workers. I’d found much of the cubicle world to be maddeningly inefficient and counterproductive. I assumed these baffling inefficiencies had to have made sense at some point and were simply dragged along by inertia long after they’d lost their value. The more I studied, the more I understood how and why my hypothesis was correct.  

From then on, I wanted to help demystify corpo life for the people most negatively affected by it. Operating by the aphorism to “You can’t emulate success until you’ve experienced success,” I reconsidered why my one and only paintball game had been such a frustrating mess. The referee who seemed to be (but was, on reflection, not) propositioning me was using the phrase “Great D!” to mean “Great defence!” He was trying to be complimentary and encourage me at the same time. I’d never heard that phrase, so I misunderstood it (and paid for it with a couple of stinging welts). It had been a gap in occupational language.  

That realization clarified one of the biggest sources of frustration that had plagued my childhood. Because of how I was brought up, I was constantly taking crap from my peers. My parents only listened to country music, so I had no idea what my classmates where listening to. Other kids would ask if I liked so-and-so band or such-and-such hit song and I’d always draw a blank. I didn’t even know the differences between pop, rock, and metal until I got to high school and got my first radio. It was embarrassing, not just frustrating, to share no common ground with my peers. I had realized early on that if I wanted to “fit in,” I needed to learn the common cultural content that everyone else took for granted, but without anyone to explain it or put things in context, I was usually lost. 

I took those lessons when I became an adult. I’ve been training professionals since I was a seventeen-year-old Army Private, but it was only after I realized that teaching the “why” of a thing is as important (if not more important) than teaching the “what” that I truly started helping people. I’ve applied this principle to how I mentor people ever since. 

I created my first unofficial leadership course in the Air Force and evolved that curriculum into a corporate intern development program after I retired. I focused at first on teaching my Senior NCOs why the military acts the way it does. Starting with the beginning of industrialization, we covered how military structure, doctrine, operations, and thinking evolved in parallel to the civilian world. My goal was to teach my leaders to understand “how we got to “now” so they’d be able to make rational and effective decisions, especially when it came to developing their own subordinates.  

Converting that curriculum to civilian life was a hoot: I kept the core curriculum, but leaned heavily into the psychological, anthropological, and sociological aspects of individual and organisational behaviour. I used catchy (and often self-deprecating) stories to illustrate each point, so my interns could learn the what, why, and how elements of the corporate ecosystem. I stressed unique corpo vocab so that my students could accurately decipher what their new bosses and coworkers were trying to communicate. All told, I wanted to help my interns avoid experiencing their own confusing and mortifying “Great D!” moments.  

That drive to teach was why I was thrilled when Lyonsdown Ltd. first reached out to me on 15th June 2012. One of their talent scouts had read a story I’d posted to social media and asked if I’d like to ‘blog for them. Of course I said “yes!” I submitted my first column four days later and it was published on the old Business Technology site the following morning. I was over the moon ... Not because it was a ticket to wealth and fame, but because it was a more effective way to encourage, support, and mentor thousands of people … A way to give others a better shot as success in the business world then I’d had. To explain through stories and quips the secrets I wished I’d known as a young and gormless cubicle dweller.  

That’s why this seemingly arbitrary anniversary is so meaningful to me. I’ve been joking for weeks that I planned to celebrate my 666th column this week. While the number doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, the … let’s say “fervent” … kids I grew up with had been raised to be thoroughly hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic; that is, frightened of anything associated with “666” due to their apocalyptic theological upbringing. Some of my less-religious mates suggested I make a satanic joke or two in this column to poke fun at people who buy into that superstition.  

I thought about it – a good joke-telling opportunity is a terrible thing to waste! – but the content didn’t sit well with me. It wasn’t the prospect of potentially offending people that deterred me, so much as acknowledging that it wouldn’t help anything. Cracking a quip at the expense of gematria is so last century.

Unlike most social media users these days, I have zero interest in gaining audience share through outrage. I find that approach pathetic. I’m here on American View, week after week ^[2] to reach people through positivity, encouragement, and entertainment. I’m deeply grateful to everyone at Lyonsdown for inviting me to preach from their pulpit (so to speak). As a result of this byline, I’m met and connected with people from all over the world who’ve read something I wrote that legitimately helped them.  

That’s why I’m still here: to help other people learn, vicariously, through my misadventures, some ideas, findings, language, and goofs that might help them succeed in their own working life (even if it is at my expense). To give others the “insider knowledge” they need to navigate the weirdness surrounding around them and, maybe, give them a reason to laugh in the telling. To unlock the pedestrian mysteries that shroud office culture behind a mask of responsible competency when the reality is anything but. 

So, yeah. There’s nothing inherently special about column number 666 other than that it frees me up to start writing column number 667 to post this time next week. I’ll see you there – count on it!  

^[1] I think that means years 7-8 in the UK educational system.  

^[2] And over TEISS.co.uk every month.