Take your soul to work....

by Bob Chartier

Can a public servant have soul? Could a senior manager rock? Was Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys the greatest writer producer of the 20th century?

Here is a little story about a senior manager with Health Canada who brought his soul to work everyday and when he left us so fast this summer, he insisted that those at the funeral take something home with them. So he gave them a copy of one of the greatest Beach Boy albums of all time. A take home funeral.

"We all know that the foundation of our soul is built on love." said Chris Taylor. What got to me was that he said it in his own eulogy. "Eulogies are not the easiest things to deliver and much less write." he says starting off his own. No kidding Chris.

Still I was not surprised at this. I feel so privileged to have known and worked with Chris. He was my idea of a really great public servant. He was not one of the grey people. He worked in colour. He wanted to know what you had to offer and how it could work on his team. When you got together he loved to talk policy, then have a little chat about organizational change and then get into the good stuff about Phil Spector and the wall of sound.

If you knew Chris or worked with him you knew he was a collector. He had over 15,000 vinyl albums. Chris prowled old record stores in every town he visited. He had a passion for the singers, the songs and how the music was produced. But what he really collected, I think, was colleagues and friends.

We know that people with passions are learners. People who are learners are also usually great teachers.

I learned a lot in a short time with Chris and I soon became a colleague and a friend. Now I wish I could have spent more time with him. Thinking about Chris lately, I remembered the first time I realized that there could be a secret life to public servants.

I was a young public servant in Dauphin Manitoba. Our young family wanted a place in the country. Go see old Bill in the downtown office suggested a co-worker. Bill was a quiet, somewhat timid accounting clerk who bothered no one, did his job and left no skid marks.

Sure, come out and see the place, he invited. We got there. Bill lived alone with his wife. She was heating up some dog food on the stove as we got there. I could imagine no worse life of desperation. I felt that I stepped into a Kafka novel.

Towards the end of the evening he invited me into his back room. I want to show you something, he said and pulled an old shoebox from under the bed. Please read, he insisted and I began to pull out the most wonderful poems out from that old box. I sat in the presence of soul, of spirit that was dutifully put away each morning as he prepared to go to work and then to open later that night under the light of the back room lamp.

I remember as a young man wondering why we couldn't have had that poet in the office as well.

So, I recognized in Chris Taylor right away...he was the poet that came to work.

He was only 54 years old. He was buried with a copy of the Beach Boys classic Pet Sounds album and he went out as a teacher. He taught us that you can bring your soul into the workplace, you can manage people with spirit and discipline and you can die well if you so choose.

We talk a lot about how we will recruit young people into the public service.

I intend to tell them about Chris Taylor.