ORC to Live By
ORC to Live By
ORC to Live By
Obligations, responsibilities, and consequences are what we live by. Okay, let us put it in perspective.
First we have obligations, commitments. We all have them and they come to us by delegation or by volunteering. Whether you are a homemaker, work, or a student, you have obligations outside the home and inside the home. As a student you have an obligation to be at school every day, to maintain qualifications to participate in activities, such as sports. When you have made a commitment to participate in a sport or club you have an obligation to participate and contribute.
As a homemaker, you have an obligation to run your home smoothly, to plan meals, run shuttle services, and everything else that goes with it. You are obligated to schedule, plan, shop and organize not only your own activities, but sometimes everyone else's.
If you are a worker, you are committed to being at work, in the assigned location, at the designated time on the agreed days and to perform specific tasks.
In your personal life you make commitments, obligations. It may be a simple agreement to meet someone for lunch or dinner, or to play golf or tennis. You may agree to drive someone to an appointment. A commitment is when you agree to coach a sports team or bake a cake for a bake sale or to teach a Sunday school class at church.
At home everyone usually has individual obligations or chores, such as taking out the trash, dishes, cleaning their room, mowing the yard.
Responsibility is the effort you make and steps you take to meet your obligations.
As a student, you have the responsibility get yourself to school and in your assigned classroom by the appointed time. When you have agreed to participate in a sport you generally have to maintain certain qualifications to play on that sport. You are responsible for knowing the qualifications and responsible for doing what you need to do to meet those qualifications.
Homemakers strive to meet many obligations so the responsibilities are numerous. With the obligation to plan meals comes the responsibility of assuring the appropriate groceries are on hand. With responsibilities comes coordination. Coordination is critical to pulling many tasks together and to a successful completion. Coordination is critically dependent upon communication. With good communication, a schedule is possible, so that everyone can be where they need to be, when they are supposed to be, with the items they are required to bring.
If an office worker is committed to completing a report then the worker must d the work necessary to prepare and assemble the report for submission.
In your personal life, you have an equal responsibility to meet all your obligations. If you are obligated to clean your room, you are responsible for learning to what specification and on what schedule. When it is your obligation to keep the yard mowed and trimmed then you are responsible for learning the criteria is the grass to be mowed on a schedule or according to the height of the grass? At what height is the hedge to be maintained?
When you have an obligation to help with the laundry, or housecleaning, you have a responsibility to learn the procedures and standards by which the work is to be completed.
The next component is the consequence of our actions. Consequence can be a good thing, or unfortunately, a bad thing. When we do not take our obligations seriously, or the responsibilities, we usually fail and the consequences are not pleasant.
For every consequence, there must be a good and bad reaction. For every action, there is a reaction.
For example, as a student, when you turn in your homework, and it is completed correctly, you get a good grade. When the homework is not turned in, or not done correctly, you get a bad grade.
The person in your home obligated to coordinate the schedule is also subject to consequences. Someone may not get picked up from a function or delivered in time. There may not be milk for breakfast. Sometimes a consequence can be detrimental, embarrassing, and a serious learning experience.
With busy schedules, we end up juggling too many balls sometimes so communication is critical. When someone gets stranded or doesn't get where he or she is scheduled to be, someone dropped the ball. When people are dependent upon people, communication is vital.
At work, if you are tardy, miss an appointment, or turn in an unsatisfactory report, the consequence could be dismissal or suspension, or a demotion. When you do good work, are on time, have proven yourself to be reliable and trustworthy, the consequence could be a raise or promotion.
If you have ever worked in human resources you know that one of the documents a company will govern by is a position job description. Basically a job description will spell out in detail what the obligations of the job are, what tasks the employee will be responsible for. It will then explain how those tasks will be completed, by what specifications. Then the job description will usually tell the consequences or the actions the employee should expect when they do a good job, versus a bad job, in the form of reviews and warnings. The job description, much like all written work, addresses the infamous who, what, why, when, where and how questions.
Communication is absolutely the most critical element of our existence and whether it is written or verbal or visual, we do it very badly. That is a proven fact.
For example, parents can tell a child delegate to a child the obligation to take out the trash. As far as the parent is concerned the child is supposed to know when and how to do this and understand that he or she will be nagged unmercifully if they do not. What the child determines is that he or she will take out the trash only under duress and learns that with that one chore all chances of peace and tranquility in their life is gone for reasons they do not understand.
This is an example of very poor communication and everyone reacting rather than acting.
A home is, without acknowledgement, run much like a business. The household, the same as a business, is dependent upon communication, cooperation, and compromise in order for everything to run smoothly, successfully, and peacefully. However, when the laundry did not get done, you got benched because you arrived at practice late, and you missed a key element in a report you submitted because you did it in a hurry, havoc takes over and everyone at home and work goes on the offense and defense. Everyone loses because the three Cs were not in play.
When is a person, or child, too young for his or her first job description? Alternatively, or, better yet, when should they get their first job description or ORC? That is easy. The first time you delegate an obligation.
Typically, the first obligation or task you assign a child is to "wash your hands before you come to the table". You show the child how he or she is expected to wash his or her hands and what you will look for to assure they are clean. It is now the child's responsibility to see that those conditions are met. When they terms are not met, there are consequences, for example, the child will have to wash again. If he or she did as prescribed, they get to eat and hopefully told they did a good job.
What you, as a parent, are teaching your child is how to accept obligations and responsibilities, and that they determine the consequences.
Mom and dad, here is a challenge for you. Take a piece of paper and space down the paper the words: who, what, when, how, where, why, and signature. Now, make multiple copies of the sheet and stack them in a convenient location for the family. With that done, every member, yourselves included, should complete a sheet for each task you perform.
This is a fact finding and learning experience because each person is acknowledging their obligation to complete a specific task and each person can put into perspective what the others are doing or not doing to contribute or help in managing a household smoothly.
Whether it is a home, school or in the office, people depend on people. Without the ORC experiment, people do not see or realize how dependent upon others they are.
Life should not be about taking people for granted and assuming or presuming they will do or take care of what you want done. Life is about communication, cooperation and compromise.
I cannot imagine life without ORC. Furthermore, and also critical to our co-existence is the use of good manners and common courtesies. Never would I want to consider life without those.
The last thing that everything is hinged on is the willingness to accept our obligations, responsibilities, the consequences of our actions, to extend good manners, and to show common courtesies.
That is the code every person, business or home should live by, then, how could we possibly go wrong?
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