How to help you Boss!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Every person reading this article; indeed, most every person on this planet has experienced the phenomenon of The Boss. This is the designated person within your organization who gives the orders and runs the show.
He or she is the person you talk about the most and strive to do your best for, right?
But the real question is: do you daily do your bit to help the boss be a better boss, producing better results and astonishing every one in the entire organization?
You see, virtually everyone in virtually every organization is so focused on what the boss thinks of them and what everything he says means… that almost no one thinks about what the boss needs to do his job better, for the good of all. Hence this checklist of things you can do starting today to make your boss more effective and hence your organization overall.

1) Review your own working relationship with the boss.
Making your boss more productive starts with — you!
What are you doing that is less than effective?
Do you come in habitually late?
Do you take extended, unauthorized breaks and lunch?
Do you have a desk that resembles an explosion in a paper factory, so that you’re constantly engaged on wasting time finding things that should rightly be at your fingertips?
Do you spend your office time online visiting websites you shouldn’t while muttering about how difficult and time-consuming your job is?
If any of these, or countless other infractions, apply to you… you are not helping yourself and you are certainly not helping your boss.
Start by putting one of your typical days under a microscope. What do you do that you shouldn’t? What are you not doing that you should?
Before you can help the boss, you may well need some help yourself.
2) What kinds of things does the boss usually say to you?
Bosses are in the business of constantly reviewing performance and working with employees to improve what they do. This means communication, and a lot of it.
What is the boss saying in her communications to you? Your job is to become a better employee in the eyes of your designated boss. To do so, keep a list of everything the boss says to you and writes to you. Here you’ll find the seeds for improvement.
The plain fact is, you probably haven’t been very concerned about making your boss’ life easier… and you probably haven’t reviewed all his communications to see what he’s really saying and what you need to do. Now, however, that must be a key consideration… not just once either.
3) Study what the boss does… and brainstorm ways you can make what he does easier and more effective.
For instance, say your boss has to remind you constantly about a given infraction or task inadequately or incompletely performed. Say that you must file a daily report on sales, for instance, before leaving for the day. Say you’re lax in this department; your report often comes in the day after, or even later. This inconveniences your boss, makes his life more difficult than it needs to be, and doesn’t help your advancement prospects either.
Remember, if the boss is engaged in constant oversight of what you’re doing and getting you to do your job better, he’s wasting time better spent on higher-level, organization-building duties.
4) Volunteer suggestions that will make your boss’ life easier.
Every boss in the world is engaged in numerous tasks which others could do as well and which prevent the boss from using his skills in the best possible way. A perceptive individual like you can be of the utmost assistance here.
Say your boss has to make sure the rest room is always clean and hygienic. Employees complain when high standards are not kept, but who’s helping the boss with this task, which is frankly not very taxing, though most important?
How about you? Once you’ve watched the boss do this task and once you’re sure you can easily add it to your work load, schedule an appointment with the boss and propose that you take over this task, to free up some of the boss’ valuable time. In other words be proactive.
Given the ordinary relations between employer and employee, your boss may well be astonished at your proposal, maybe wondering what you’ve really got in mind. However, make it clear you want to help the boss delegate less significant tasks, the better able to concentrate on things important.
Your boss, being human, will want to know what your motivation is, what is your ulterior motive? Are you after more money? Even the boss’ job?
Your response should be simple and honest, “I want to help you.”
It may well be that your boss has never heard such a sentiment before; it may take a moment or two for the very idea to sink in. Sit down and say nothing until the boss speaks to you — and accepts your proposition.
5) Begin your new task at once, as soon as the boss has approved.
Don’t wait to begin the new regime, the regime of helpfulness and needed assistance. Start today.
Make sure you understand the new task completely; written instructions may be necessary. Then commence at once, always giving the boss a prompt, clear report on what you did. Do the task the very best way you can, thereby indicating what kind of person you are and the high standards you mean to maintain.
6) Look out for other ways to assist.
Don’t propose too many changes at the beginning; one is enough for now. But not forever. As soon as you have mastered the new task delegated by your boss; as soon as you are doing it promptly and well… continue your self-appointed, important task of reviewing other things you could take on. You are sure to find several.
By this time, your boss will be at once happy at what an exemplary, helpful employee you are… while wondering whether you’re bucking for his job. Make it clear that your first objective is just being helpful, but that you would like to be considered for advancement when positions emerge. The fact that you are ambitious is a plus; make sure the boss sees it that way, too. When asked, make it clear you’re a team player and that serve the captain of that team… the boss.
You are the best employee around. Soon you’ll be the best boss, too.
People who show the empathy and willingness to assist the boss as you are doing are the best employees on earth. Believe me, your boss knows this, and if he’s as dedicated to the organization as you are, he’ll do what’s necessary to keep you. Congratulations! You are moving up… and will continue to do so… becoming in short order the boss yourself.
Now boss: what is your first task? To locate the best and brightest in your organization… the people who can help you and make you the very best boss ever. People like you!
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=rb14eOHk

Those magnificent men in their flying machines to fly no more…. as NASA’s shuttle program ends and an era with it.

What a great history lesson ??and encourage you to post comments about what you liked about this article.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. To get into the right frame of mind for this article, search any search engine for the music and lyrics to “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” (released 1965, music by Ron Goodwin). Prepare to be aroused as one of the great stories of our lives soars…
For most of us the space age has a quite specific commencement — October 4, 1957. That was the launch date of the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik I. I was there. Like every single American, my concerned, curious parents herded my brother and me into the backyard of our suburban Illinois home… as we saw our sense of security destroyed by a 184.3 pound device called a Sputnik. In my mind’s eye, I remember the event with complete clarity; I seem to remember, too, that it made a beeping sound… but that may not be so.
What was so was that all the verities of the heartland ended for a generation right then and there.
“Better Red than dead,” people said. Was that our new reality? We started to look for Russkies under the bed…
Eisenhower blinked.
Sputnik spooked us at the moment of our greatest power; we thought we were the only game in town… Sputnik was a jolting wake-up call which President Eisenhower, old and full of honors, missed. A restless Senator John F. Kennedy did not. It was Kennedy who read the thoroughly aroused and anxious public mood better… and in due course made him President of the United States, an office Ike, who established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (October 1, 1958), felt Kennedy unqualified to hold. Maybe so… but Kennedy is rightly seen as the man who galvanized America’s fears and turned them into the fuel for conquering space — and giving us back our lost security.
We had to conquer space… and that meant having a space station and the means to get back and forth to them. From the moment Sputnik flew, 1440 orbits of Earth in only 3 months, the shuttle program was a given. And we put all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to work on it. The result was the launch of Explorer I (officially Satellite 1958), January 31, 1958. It was the U.S.’s first earth satellite. It was rushed to launch so fast that its tape data recorder was not modified in time to make it onto the satellite. Nonetheless, the nation breathed a sigh of relief… we were back in the game.
Project Mercury followed and the grand era of magnificent men in their flying machines….men whose names the nation knew and whose pictures could be found in every schoolroom of a grateful America… astronaut Alan Shepard (first American in space May 5, 1961)… astronaut John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth, February 20, 1961)… and all the others… culminating in that never-to-be-forgotten day of American pride, July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar landscape while Michael Collins orbited above.
These were truly the up, up and away days! We were late to the space game, but having started we approached the matter with characteristic energy, imagination and determination, a great people committed to a great goal.
The first shuttle launch, February 15, 1977.
The shuttle program was our way of saying that our connection with space was a permanent one, that we’d be going back and forth as part of our preparation for ever grander explorations. And so…
2/15/77, OV-101, Enterprise (yes, it was named after the television series), performed its first (taxi) test flight as part of the shuttle program. It never flew in space and was cannibalized for parts.
Then April 12, 1981, OV-102, Columbia, blasted into orbit, becoming the first successful space flight in the space shuttle program. (STS-1, Space Transportation System.) It returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting Earth 36 times. Columbia carried just two crew members: Apollo veteran John W. Young and rookie pilot Robert L. Crippen.
August 30, 1984, OV-103, Discovery, was first flown on mission STS-41-D, launching two communications satellites and becoming the third operational NASA orbital shuttle following Columbia and Challenger.
But tragedy lay dead ahead.
We must never forget that at the core of the shuttle program was danger. Good men and women, dedicated, our nation’s finest, always understood that death was always a possibility. That no matter how often the system was tested; no matter how many experts signed off on the matter, catastrophe was always a real possibility. They all accepted that as part of the adventure, the great game, the cost of doing business.
January 28, 1986, STS-51-L Challenger, a nation shocked, a nation mourns.
This was supposed to be another day of American triumph; instead, with the disintegration of the Challenger over the Atlantic Ocean it became a signature day of national mourning.
These 7 crew members gave their lives:
Francis (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe; the plucky teacher who meant to teach the world’s school children about space and instead taught them all about the shortness of life and the costs of commitment. That day the nation was reminded of the terrible costs that may come when frontiers are challenged. That day, too, the nation was fortunate in its president; Ronald Reagan’s decency and empathy were notable. We were all grateful for that.
975 days later, September 29, 1988, STS-26 Discovery launched with five crew members into space, always beckoning, always challenging, with so very much more to discover, study and know.
On February 1, 2003, tragedy struck again and again it was brought home to the nation that the costs of “conquering” space included periodic tragedy as it did this day when STS-107 came to an abrupt and tragic conclusion. Seven crew members died…
Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark.
And again the shuttle flew. It was the American way.
Now, however, changing budget priorities have done what no great tragedies succeeded in doing. Thus the shuttle, after just a few more flights, will end, thirty years and 133 missions later. Is this the last word on the matter? For the shuttle, probably; but for space? As long as one child looks up and wonders what there is in the great beyond, determined to find out, this story will never end…
Readers: for a thorough bibliography on the history of the space shuttle, search for “Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography ” compiled by Roger D. Launius and Aaron G. Gillette.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=rb14eOHk

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An appreciation for the life of Violet Cowden, 94, died April 10, 2011. World War II aviation pioneer.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

President Harry Truman once remarked that there is nothing new under the sun except the history you haven’t learned yet. How right he was, and nothing proves the point so well as this appreciation for the life of World War II aviation pioneer,Violet Crowden and all the other 1,078 Women Airforce Service Pilots.
Here is the crucial problem they helped to solve:
When the United States entered World War II, (December 1941), it placed its massive manufacturing and industrial capacity at the service of the Allies. This meant producing aircraft in the quantities needed to overwhelm Germany and Japan thereby ensuring the fastest possible victory. But there was a problem here.
The war drained America of its male pilots; they were needed at the front, to fly the crucial missions. But there weren’t enough male pilots in the country to replace them. That left a huge problem that had to be solved and had to be solved fast: how to get the planes being manufactured to the landing fields worldwide where our “boys” desperately needed them?
The solution?
Cherchez la femme, particularly the thousands of American women who were licensed pilots. They were the ace in the hole… though they had to get through a mountain of male skepticism and doubt before they got the opportunity to show America and the world that they could do their “bit” too.
Creation of the WASP.
Even before America entered the war far-seeing women were at work on solving problems that would occur when she did. Two famous women pilots — Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran and test-pilot Nancy Harkness Love — independently submitted proposals for the use of female pilots in non-combat situations. These proposals were submitted to the US Army Air Forces (USAAF), predecessor to the United States Air Force, or USAF. They rightly believed the war would spread and that the United States must be prepared when it did.
Their (separate) proposals were rejected by General H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the USAAF. Poor “Hap” was hapless. Not least because Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s activist First Lady, intervened and strenuously so. Her involvement triggered the usual winks, nudges and (privately) malicious digs and comments; why couldn’t she just give teas in the Blue Room like all the First Ladies before her?
But that wasn’t Eleanor Roosevelt’s way and the USAAF got a whiff of what one determined woman could do to help other determined women help America. In due course, America’s need for pilots trumped the arguments against female pilots… and so, bit by bit, women were integrated into the services. Some ferried new planes to their destinations; others towed targets for aerial gunnery practice; still others were flight instructors.
The “Big Cheese” syndrome.
But if women could do men’s work, they also suffered from the same turf battles. Who was going to be the Big Cheese of these proceedings — “Jackie” Cochran or Nancy Love? Cochran was in England volunteering to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). While she was gone, “Hap” Arnold decided to go with Nancy Love’s proposal. “Jackie” Cochran, back from England, immediately made An Issue of this decision… while Hapless Hank Arnold claimed ignorance… anything to cool Cochran down.
Arnold’s solution was classic: both proposals were accepted and a final decision postponed. Of course both tenacious, determined, bureaucratically adept women continued the battle for supreme control. In July 1943, Cochran, famous and better connected, got what she wanted. With Arnold’s assistance Cochran became director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. No one knew better than General Arnold why they were called WASPs.
Violet Cowden at work for America.
While these internecine battles were playing themselves out, the recruitment of women pilots got underway… and the results were astonishing. More than 25,000 women applied for WASP service. Fewer than 1,900 were accepted and just 1,078 of them got their wings… including Violet Cowden, who served the WASPs in 1943 and 1944. Cowden was typical of the kinds of women who became WASPs and the constant obstacles they faced.
Born October 1,1916 in Bowdle, South Dakota, in 1936 she earned a teaching certificate from what was then the Spearfish Normal School, in Spearfish, S.D. She then stayed in Spearfish to teach first grade. There, she rode her bicycle 6 miles each way to a local airfield for her first flying lessons.
After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Cowden, by then a licensed pilot, asked to join the Civil Air Patrol but got no reply. That was typical. She tried again and applied to the Women’s Flying Training Detachment, an early incarnation of the WASPs. She was one of the 1830 lucky applicants and reported to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas for six months of rigorous training.
There she discovered that because WASPs were civilian employees and not military, they had to pay for their own food, lodging, and (generally ill-fitting) attire. Barely 5 foot tall Violet Cowden was installed in a men’s Size 44 for the duration.
Violet Cowden faced the snubs and slights the way most WASPs did — by ignoring the fact they were ignored and getting on with the job. They knew something about America’s pilots that these male pilots often forgot: they needed these women and their often overlooked skills. It was a simple as that.
Always an afterthought, Cowden worked seven days a week, sleeping on commercial flights that ferried her to and from her crucial business. There was hardly ever a good word for a dangerous job well done… and remember what the WASPs did could be very dangerous indeed. Thirty eight WASPs died in accidents during training or on duty.
And despite all they did, when in late 1944 male pilots began coming home in significant numbers, the WASPs were, with hardly a word of thanks or recognition, simply dismissed. For Violet Cowden that day came in December, 1944 when the Army dissolved the WASPs altogether and told them to go home. For Cowden this was the “worst day of my life”… but it was a man’s world then… and this was how things were done. It was America at our crudest and most insensitive, and it is painful to recall that our nation treated these patriots so.
Recognition, at last.
If there contemporaries ignored and overlooked them, later generations did what they could to bestow proper recognition and acknowledgement for a job well done. President Jimmy Carter signed in 1977 legislation to give WASPs full military status for their service. On July 1, 2009 President Barack Obama awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal and said, “I am honored to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve.”
As for Violet Cowden, having been kicked out of the war, the WASPs dissolved, she got the only job in aviation she could… behind the ticket counter of Trans World Airlines, waiting for history to catch up. Perhaps now it has…
?About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=rb14eOHk

For royal wedding guests of Prince William and his Kate, April 29, 2011 a list of does and don’ts, especially the latter.

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
By now I am sure you are aware that April 29, 2011 is a very special day in the prodigious annals of the British monarchy. H.R.H. Prince William, white hope of the dynasty, marries his Kate… and his grandmama The Sovereign is adamant that all be done just so — or else.
Sadly, you have not been invited. Admittedly it is abashing, even humiliating. But you will be glad to know that the lot of the those precious few invited is not a bed of roses. The empire on which the sun never set is history, but protocol, the right thing done in the right way, is very much alive chez Windsor.
Let’s take a look.
The Windsors are nothing if not keen on pageants that are meticulously planned and flawlessly carried out. They know that it was not always thus in royal ceremonial. One way they know this was by careful scrutiny of my first book “Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria’s Court”. (1979). I was the first American ever granted access to the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle… and it was part of the deal that The Queen and Prince Charles get advance copies to increase their knowledge of the hopeless mismanagement of ceremonies by their regal ancestors.
Confusions, muddles, and disorganizations were the order of the day. It was supremely frustrating, irritating, and inexcusable that the English made so many mistakes, even lethal, in presenting the monarchy to the nation. Ceremonies of the highest significance and importance — coronations even — were so lamentably organized and delivered that the English monarchy became a byword for ineptitude.
We owe improvement to Prince Albert.
Queen Victoria, only 18 when she ascended the throne in 1837 had far better things to do than worry about ceremonial derelictions. For openers she was free of the heavy thrall of the Duchess of Kent, her mother; perhaps the ultimate controlling Stage Mother of all time. The first thing the new queen did was order her bed to be taken out of the bedroom she had shared all her life with her mother… then order dinner to be served to her alone, the first time that had ever happened. She was free, free at last! She was queen, her every wish a command instantly carried out. A few glaring mistakes in court ceremonial counted for nothing.
But the German princeling she married, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was very, very different. The insidious culture of royal errors and tolerance for same made him nervous, dyspeptic, and determined to apply Teutonic efficiency to the problem. He fumed, he fretted, he even wept at the minuscule progress. But there was progress. Just not enough of it.
As the grasping English built the largest empire ever assembled on this planet, their royal pageants continued to be notable for all the wrong reasons: they were lackadaisical about the protocol that consumed other royal houses; thereby causing endless hurt feelings. Their planning was always of the too little, too late variety. And like clockwork, security arrangements were so lax that every ceremony produced a bumper crop of dead, the victims of English inability to get it right… and without fatalities.
All this is no doubt known to Elizabeth II and the princes of her house and their constant motto is “Never again!” Thus, they are fastidious in the business of Getting It Right. When the English were a great nation, the sovereigns themselves were scarcely punctilious about such matters; but with only the shadow of empire remaining, they are all adamant that the royal ceremonies, in which they so prominently feature, be the very essence of polished perfection.
Hence the list of do’s and don’ts now circulating amongst the honored guests, be they princes of the blood royal or (that democratic touch the royals are close to perfecting) personnel from the various charities patronized by the bride and groom. In Windsor eyes there is really no difference between them. For them there are, after all, only two ranks: Sovereign… and the rest.
Now to the various admonitions, politely phrased of course as suggestions, recommendations. But they are in fact royal commands and must be treated as such.
1) Don’t give the queen a friendly hug. Michelle Obama, First Lady of these United States did something akin to that and the royal reaction was a tad below frosty.
2) Don’t tweet. You are attending an historic event. Curtail all distractions.
3) Be on time. On this of all days, there is no such thing as fashionably late, even by a minute. The Queen is the last person to take her place; to upstage her is lese majeste, intolerable.
4) Ladies, select an outfit that blends in. You should wear a dress — not too short, not too skimpy, and certainly not white. Most British women will complete the unmistakable (rather frumpy) look that screams “We’re English!” with a hat or a fascinator — a small feathered or jewelled hairpiece attached to a clip or a comb.
More politely disguised commands.
5) Leave your cellphone in the car. No one wants your ring tone to the tune of “The Stripper” to be part of the record.
6) Make sure you have all necessary medications with you. You need to know that no one, absolutely no one, will facilitate your egress to get them… and you will not be allowed to return either.
7) Visit the facilities as often as necessary to ensure bladder control. This means limiting liquids, just as you’d do for a colonoscopy, a not inapt comparison. (Avoid the solution adopted by one ceremony attending gent. He brought a soft drink bottle and used it like a chamber pot. The name of the perpetrator and the incident itself was immediately classified.)
“I didn’t really want to go anyway.”
Upon reading these guidelines and rules, you may say, and actually believe, that you didn’t really want to go to this critical event of “Rule Britannia.”
But we’re kidding ourselves, aren’t we? For the chance to see Prince William and be able to tell your non-invited neighbor that he’s taller than he looks on telly is just too good to pass up. Not to mention the bride, and wasn’t she lovely?
Indeed, to secure lifetime bragging rights because we were well and truly invited, we’d all, if ordered, go naked with a full body search to boot. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also an authority expert on the royal family and author of 18 best-selling books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Extreme Niche Empires -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=kx53msba

‘I Love Lucy.’ Who doesn’t? Then you love Madelyn Pugh Davis, writer, who cooked up the humor, dead at 90, April 20, 2011. An Appreciation.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s note: To get in the mood for this article, search any search engine for the “I Love Lucy” theme song (written by Eliot Daniel). Make sure you get the version with the lyrics!
How many laughs has “I Love Lucy” given you over the years? More than you can even remember, I bet. And it’s the best kind of laugher; deep, belly laughs, the kind that take over your body, as you howl, unable to stop. Such laughter is good for the spirit and the soul; it literally washes away cares and troubles.
Madelyn Pugh Davis was the presiding genius who delivered these laughs week after week, to the delight of the nation. Her name appeared as co-writer for every single episode of the series which ran from October 15, 1951 to May 6, 1957. It was a staggering achievement. Not least because Davis was a very successful woman writer in the male-dominated medium of network television.
** Remember the episode where Lucy battles a giant loaf of bread that emerges from the oven and pins her to the wall? A classic…
Madelyn Pugh Davis knew how to work the premise of the show and its 4 main characters for maximum comedic effect.
“I Love Lucy” was not particularly innovative — the wacky housewife, the irritated husband, the oddball friends. What made the program innovative was the commitment of the 4 principal characters to do anything for a laugh…and the irrepressible inventiveness of the script. In other words, Madelyn Pugh Davis and the other key members of the team:  Her longtime writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr;  their producer Jess Oppenheimer. Writers Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf later joined the team.
** What about this classic? Remember Lucy slipping and sliding in a vat while mashing grapes? It was hysterical.
The four main characters.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, married in real life, were married in the program, too, as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Their friends are Fred and Ethel Mertz.
Lucy was a scatterbrained housewife mad keen on a career in the entertainment business, for all that she had no talent. Ricky was a Cuban band leader, as he was in real life; a typical quick to boil Latin, occasionally misunderstood but always faithful to the Lucy he loves (not the case for this roaming Latin lover in real life.)
Fred (William Frawley) was a grump, ultra tight with the penny, but a man of the theater himself having played vaudeville along with wife Ethel (Vivian Vance.)
The job of the writing team was to keep characters (known to virtually every single American) fresh by putting them in the middle of one side-splitting funny situation after another. These situations, particularly for Lucy, involved some very tricky slapstick comedy. Lucille Ball, an international star, might have been expected to make heavy weather about some of these scenes (“are they right for my image?”), but in fact what Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote, Lucille Ball did… no matter how difficult… as a matter of professional pride. That attitude permeated all the actors and their incomparable team.
**What about the episode from 1955? It centered on Lucy’s mortifying encounter with handsome Hollywood actor William Holden. Holden accidentally sets her fake nose on fire… and puts in out by dipping her nose in his teacup.
The most watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons.
“I Love Lucy,” resting as did on Davis and team’s just plain funny scripts, was hugely popular right from the start. What’s more, unlike other series that started hot and fizzled because of weak scripts, the quality of the scripts never diminished. They were good in the first episode; they were good in the last.
The problem with “I Love Lucy” was the seething personal relationships, always likely to burst into flame. Desi Arnaz liked the ladies, the more the merrier. He was Cuban and thought rampant, careless infidelity his birth right. Lucille Ball disagreed.
The relationship between William Frawley and Vivian Vance was also poisonous; they could hardly stand to be in the same room together, not least because Frawley was master of the all too accurate put-down. He once said Vance’s body was like a “sack of doorknobs.” It was crude… it was memorable… it was funny.  No doubt some of this (funny to onlookers) tension was slipped into the script to heighten the effect. Davis would have seen the humorous aspect and run with it… increasing the laughter.
** Must remind you of this one… an all-time favorite: Lucy and Ethel in this 1952 show land jobs in a chocolate factory, only to have the conveyor belt kick into overdrive.
Madelyn Pugh wrote and wrote… ascending the ladder one (usually funny) word at a time.
Pugh (her maiden name) was born in Indianapolis and graduated in 1942 from Indiana University. Because of World War II women had a crack at jobs ordinarily reserved for men, like the radio staff writer position she landed. It’s important to recall the primacy of radio in those days. It was the primary mode of communication; virtually every family had one. Pugh was talented, hard-working and ambitious. She soon moved up to a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles.
“My Favorite Husband”.
At CBS she met longtime writing  partner Bob Carroll, Jr. Together they worked on several shows,  including “It’s a Great Life,” starring Steve Allen… and “My Favorite Husband”, starring…… Lucille Ball. The pieces that were soon to make America laugh were beginning to emerge and get together. “I Love Lucy” was the result… the program America took to its heart immediately and whose unique use of three cameras changed an industry and launched a thousand sit-coms, many through Desilu Productions.
And remember… there was never, ever a vulgar word, a cruel put-down, a bigoted, biased, or racist comment. It was literally and gratefully good clean fun.
Madelyn Pugh Davis, as she became upon her marriage, was widely recognized, honored, lauded.
In 2007, the publication Television Week named her one of the 25 most influential people who shaped the industry, noting that she was a principal writer on all 180 “I Love Lucy” episodes and 13 specials on CBS from 1951 to 1961.
She was a lucky woman no doubt, luck being defined as setting the desired objective and working one’s tail off to achieve  it. A woman of mirth,laughter, high hilarity she was deadly serious about that. And we, in our often bitter times which cry out for some good humor, are the better for this lady.
** Just one more. Who can forget the Vitameatavegamin episode where Lucy gets drunk filming a commercial for this alcohol-laced patent medicine? One of the best… but then that’s the only thing Madelyn Pugh Davis delivered.That’s why after 6 seasons, “I Love Lucy” finished its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings, the first program to do so.
++ Mrs. Davis and  Bob Carroll, Jr. co-authors “Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America’s Leading Lady of Comedy.” (2005). Check it out.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. , providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a marketer, consultant and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a href=”http://HomeProfitCoach.com“>http://HomeProfitCoach.com</a>. Check out Extreme Niche Empires ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=kx53msba