Just the Bottomline

Ghost Writer brings you her Friday rant a day early... Just that angry.
When bosses or process customers ask a technical question requiring a detailed answer, I assume they want a good answer. Silly me! Because then the requester implicitly or explicitly says, "Skip the details and cut to the bottomline."
As a fixer-of-broken-stuff, I don't mind explaining what's broken or how to design something so it doesn't break. Really. This is good stuff. However, when it gets reduced to a bullet point, what's the point? No one other than me learned anything, and in many cases all I (re)learned was that some people are idiots and adults are little kids in big bodies.
I don't want to be the only one who knows what I know. Shocking for an "expert" to say, I know, but I want my company to be well-equipped to take up where I left off when I run away with my lottery check hot in my pocket. And this week, when I did some elegant, amazing work, I'd like someone to say, "Can you teach _____ that skill?"
HR Leaders and Managers -- watch the bottomline. It's killing and demotivating your broken-stuff-fixers.

Betrayal and expectation

Thinking about failure and betrayal, I started pondering why some feel betrayed by the failure of another. We are a nation built on rugged individualism. What does it matter, if that guy falls down? We'll all just keep goin, right? Nope, somewhere it was implied, if not stated, that this person would deliver for us. Whether we made any effort or not, they let us down. We are betrayed and it is someone else's fault. It can't be possible that we chose to feel betrayed. Maybe we should have expected that we would have to take care of it, if someone else did not. We could choose to move forward and take action instead. Failure by itself is not betrayal, malicious failure is a topic for another time.
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Failure and Betrayal

We try to teach people to embrace failure. Help them believe that failure is the greatest learning experience and we get better with our failures. However, the reaction of others to our failure can make it all but impossible to tolerate. As social creatures, the human animal seeks approval from their pack and strives to add to the pack. The social promise of positive and mutually beneficial relationships drives members to join. The worst thing we can do is fail another member. That failure is treated as betrayal. No human creature bears betrayal well and the perpetrator feels the sting of their pain. It is impossible to fail without feeling the responses of betrayal in others, whether it is our manager,a coworker, or a colleague. I am a natural care-giver. It is devastating to fail and know that someone is disappointed. The tough part is not knowing how to avoid showing feelings of betrayal to others. How many of us have the control to keep our disappointment in full check to help someone else learn from failure without the pain. Of is it the point of failure to feel badly, so we strive harder to avoid it?

Unrelenting Battle of Balance

Ghost Writer takes up where Marti left off -- a late night, a laptop, and some thoughts on work and life.

 

    Sitting in a wedding mass one weekend a number of years ago, I heard a priest delivering a most interesting homily in front of this bright and amazing couple declaring their love for each other.  In his message were words I will never forget.  "See all these people?  Your friends?  They don't want you to be married.  Even your family doesn't want you to be married, and rest assured, your job does not want you to be married.  More than anything your job does not want you to be married."  The priest went on to say how each facet of one's life competes for attention with another part, and as this young couple starts their life together, it was time to figure out how to balance all of these parts.

    While easily said, it is much harder to do it practice.  Balance is precarious.  Just ask the Flying Wendellas.  They are the best at it anyone ever has been, and yes, people still die.  And ask marriage counselors.  They are the best at teaching it anyone has ever seen, and yes, marriages still die.

    Balance is a zero sum game.  Just like time.  Just like money. You've only got so much to go around, so when I'm in hotels and on the road, I work like a freakshow.  This week a prime example -- 60+ hours going into midnight Thursday night.  However, no one was around to know it.  I was cool with it.  This weekend I have shimmied the "must do" down to 3 hours tomorrow morning.  After that, I balance back. 

    Balance by its nature requires a plan.  The Wendellas have poles and special shoes and tons of training.  Who among us has had balance training?  Real balance training -- not just Franklin-Covey plan the big rocks training?  Very few if any of us.  Probably most of us need a dedicated personal coach to figure out our roadblocks to balance.  All I know is, in Marti's post from earlier this month, it's choices, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt my job does not want me to have friends, a family, or a partner.  Period.  It is the chaos that will expand like a giant black hole and take over my life left to its own devices.  It is a seductive partner, sort of like that crazy chic from "Fatal Attraction" switching on the light on and off while she plots to boil the bunny,  It rewards us, or shows a lure of a potential reward for paying attention to her.  It punishes us, or threatens punishment at every corner, if we even vaguely think of ignoring her.

    This is the unrelenting battle of balance we have before us.  No one is going to protect a person from his/her desires to achieve, but that person.  No one is going to make the choices required to create balance but that person.  It stinks, though.  It's like being overweight, which I am, and knowing I need to eat better and eat less and yet I don't.  I know I need balance, and yet at times I'm lousy at it.

    Some would say any failure at any thing in life stems from fear.  So what can I say?  I wake up every day the protagonist in the unrelenting battle of balance with my primary nemises -- The Fatal Attraction with my job.

When Did You Surrender?

That is, if you have surrendered. I'm laying here in a hotel, wondering when I gave in to the tide of work. Have you ever sent conference call notices from a bubble bath? Guess what I did today? I'm anticipating finding my laptop next to me in bed where my husband should be tomorrow morning. Last week, work was like being dragged behind a horse in a spaghetti western. Today, I reached gestahlt. I couldn't function any more. I gave up, got fast food and went for the bubble bath. Have you been there? What did you do to get out without causing any collateral damage?
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Choices

"When you have to choose, any way you look at it, you lose." Simon and Garfunkel have and interesting point. How we feel about things is a matter of choice. We have to decide to lose our anger or our pride, to feel good about changes that are inconvenient and time consuming. We all want some control over our world as I've discussed in the past. We often choose bucking change as that control, as opposed to choosing control of our perpective and positive response. The importance of managing perspective with ourselves and others comes into focus in the concepts of Fisher and Ury. In "Getting to Yes", the 3rd answer is a method of perspective management eliciting a feeling of achievement from both sides in any type of negotiation. What is driving me crazy is how difficult it seems to let go of the resistance form of control and embrace the response management form. Every choice means abandoning something for something else. Argue the fine points, but that is the bottom line. The trick for me is being okay with the trade off.
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The Village Has Too Mahy Idiots, and I'm One of Them

Ghost Writer contemplates her role as an idiot in her village while I'm sure Marti is busy being much smarter and self-aware.

    So if the village has too many idiots, I'm beginning to think I'm one of them. Today, while ostensibly on vacation, I did my monthly report.  Why?  Well, I'm the only one of my peers with no staff, no secretary and no back-up plan.  Clearly, I'm an idiot for not standing up for myself -- either to have a plan or beg my boss for some resourcing.  [And I type that thinking, "Ya, right.  That ain't gonna happen."]
    This isn't the first free-time I've donated back to the company, and I'm sure it's not the last of my donations.  As Marti mentioned in "Carrots Aren't Tasty Unless They're Gold", it's all about reward systems, but really, and I have to continually remind myself of this quote from a former manager, "The difference between good and great is 3%.  Make your choices." 
    Yes, I'm on the management incentive program that is worth far more than 3%, but that's awarded based on company performance far, far away from my daily controls, so I look at it more as a random act of kindness from the company rather than a reward for hard work.  Like so many high performers, I am intrinsically motivated by this internal desire to do the best, be the best, achieve the most, that the paycheck is really secondary, and MIP is at best tertiary. 
    In my world, this results in me selling out my personal life in the name of my job.  Which when the chips are down in the world of work, it leaves me feeling like the Queen of the Village Idiots, because yes, I am still a woman and still give them more than they pay for every day.  My world is one round of backlash after another -- the life of a crash dieter in the world of work.  Give too much to work.  Vow to be different.  Cut back at work.  Start feeling like I'm getting behind.  Dive back in to the jello mold.  Or worse yet, see a tasty project and get sucked back in like a Weight Watcher's participant to a pint of Ben and Jerry's after weigh-in day.
    So really, if you have any advice for the Village Idiot, I'm open to it, because clearly I'm an idiot addict without the resources to help herself.