FIRST QUARTER 2019 29 Several years ago, my friend Gary Strack and I were talking about an employee situation and I was asking for his insight and wisdom. It was one of those tough ones where a top level manager had been caught in some bad behavior and there was nothing left to do but let the fellow go. I asked him what he thought and he said, “Sandy, if you have to swallow a frog, swallow it quick. If you have to swallow two frogs, swallow the big one first.” Frogs in General You know, frogs are strange. They’re mostly green with big eyes and they like to job hop. There are Bull frogs and small frogs and frogs that live around the water and frogs that live in bushes and I suspect there are probably some frogs that we don’t know about. Frogs make funny noises, something like “ribbid” and they like to croak. Someone once said that if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water he’ll jump right out, but if you put him a pot of cool water and then gradually turn up the heat, he’ll stay in the pot until he goes on to his reward. And, if you live in the South, you may at some point be confronted with the idea of eating frog legs for dinner. Actually, they’re sort of ok, if you can get past the green skin and the idea that you’re eating the leg of a frog. They’re moist and tender and taste like chicken and they’re not that bad if you put ‘em with mashed potatoes, half runners, cornbread and sweet tea. One of my favorite frogs is Kermit the Frog, especially when he sings “The Rainbow Connection.” “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me.” Pretty good work, for a frog. Actually, it was Paul Williams, but we’ll let Kermit take the credit. Kermit was one of the good guy frogs and I recall that my eldest daughter Samantha played “The Rainbow Connection” for her piano recital at about the age of 10. The Story of the Virginia Tree Frog At work, however, frogs aren’t always such a good thing and most of them don’t look and act like Kermit. Most of them are complainers, drama producers and prevaricators, very much like the tree frog I met one night back in the 1970’s. I was traveling up and down the Shenandoah Valley and one evening I ended up at a Holiday Inn on top of a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia. I drove around to my room at the back of the motel, where there was a stone wall built up against the side of the mountain. Upon lying down to sleep that night, just as I was dozing off, all of sudden I was bombasted by a discordant, strident, reverberating racket, loud enough to wake the dead, coming from just outside my door. Possessing a college education, I could tell right away that it was a frog but I didn’t know where the transgressing croaker was located or how long he would continue his perverse nocturnal counter-concerto. I waited for a while, trying to go to sleep, and hoping that the frog would finally give up and go to bed, also. But, alas, the croaking continued unabated so I finally donned my frog hunting outfit and headed out the door in search of the offending croaker, fully expecting to find that it was the biggest Bull frog in Virginia that was interrupting my slumber. Using my best Sherlock Holmes techniques, I followed the sound of the croak and finally found the scaly scoundrel. Lo and behold, it was a small tree frog, no larger than a fifty cents piece, who was lodged for the night in a crack in the stone wall. The stone wall, made of good Virginia granite, grabbed hold of his croak and resounded it across the way until it was 70 times louder than it might have been otherwise. Undeterred, I reached into the crack in the wall, secured the felonious frog in my finely tuned frog hunter’s hand, and shot putted him 30 feet over the stone wall and into the Virginia hinterlands. I then went back into my room, dropped off to sleep, and enjoyed a restful night of croakless slumber. MANAGEMENT Matters Matters BULLE TIN By Sandy Seay, Jr., Ph.D., Seay Management Consultants, Inc. NO. 45 What Management Can Learn From Frogs