Perhaps we are hard-wired with a blind spot when we look at what's so obviously there. It's always mere illusion, transformed into absolute delusion when certainty stares inside.
We dare not carry the weight of endless uncertainty, nor the vacuous lightness of absolute certainty. We live somewhere in between, double-clutching and grinding gears even when we remember the transmission and the gear shift there. The problem with the certainty problem has always been that it limits our potential, our choices. It works until it doesn't, and when it doesn't work, we're more likely to spin our wheels in an ever-deepening mud hole, still certain of our goal, confident of our path, seemingly consecrated by our certainty.
Damned if we do and also conveniently damned if we don't, we can confidently choose between them then. Or bust this damnable dilemma by choosing what no certainty could support. Roll the dice. Spin the wheel. Randomize the search routine. For if there is one unsolvable problem in this world, it is certainly the Certainty Problem.
(See the other nine covenants in this series by clicking on the covenant link above.)
Focus, instead, upon honing your ability to cope with the normal, easily anticipated, eternal complications of your work. Calluses defend what no glove could protect.
It Has Always Been Thus. We yearn for liberation, expecting the good guys to ride in on foaming horses or the eleventh hour benefactor to magically appear. Fortunate synchronicity when it occurs. No evidence of bad luck when it does not.
The game of Three Card Monty is not a game of skill for anyone but the one inviting you to play. They've learned to tickle your switches. Can you recognize when someone is tickling yours?
Carry Your Own Water, Cook Your Own Food refers to more than toting and frying. It relates to a self-sufficiency, responsible for its own sustenance, not dependent upon servants, slaves, or supplicants to tend to basic needs.
Whatever the water you drink, you must collect and carry this water before you can consume it. Drink trickles before accumulating into quenching quantities. The greatest thirsts parch far from any fountain.
Whatever nourishes you needs your hand on the spatula. Nourishment never comes ready-made, but demands some personal preparation. If you can't cook for yourself, you'll have to settle for raw or leftovers or someone else's sensibilities flavoring the sauce. None of these sustain.
Those eternally inconvenienced by the hassle of simply maintaining life might benefit from understanding that these struggles are not simply optional extra charges, but the very stuff of life itself. We each carry our own water and every one of us eventually understands that we just have to cook our own food. Let the dependency extend from the clay pit to the potter, but no further; from the farmer to the frying pay, but not beyond. The cup carrying what will cut your thirst and the fork transporting what will slake your hunger are yours and yours alone to manage.
I speak metaphorically, of course. Your cup and my cup might carry nothing remotely similar, yet we each find pride in our little ritual, inherited from our fathers and mothers, deeply personal, and just as essentially social. The soul of positive self esteem lives very near the most inane activities; carrying our own water, cooking our own food.
One of my first survival jobs found me working day shift in what I called The Asparagus Factory. I suppose this was a perfectly normal industrial venue, but aside from experience watching Industry On Parade, a TV program that showed conveyor belts and assembly lines in action, I'd never actually set foot inside a factory.
The first context marker I noticed? NOISE! I was issued a pair of ear plugs along with my hair net and green hard hat, but even so, stepping into that machinery-filled warehouse blew the breath out of me. Conveyor belts whining, lift truck motors mumbling, a hundred poorly synchronized electric motors squealing, the place was simply deafening.
Of course, working in such turmoil just has to be unsettling. Imagine what it must do to productivity, with mechanical arrhythmia not so subtly influencing every action. So, the thoughtful folks at the Bird's Eye Division of General Foods had installed speakers everywhere, from which blared at decibels above the overwhelming mechanical noise, ... wait for it ... John Phillip Sousa marches! Yes, the Stars and Freaking Stripes Forever! Really ... forever!
I was the lead hand dancer on the sorting line. The basic job of the sorters involved arranging freshly blanched and trimmed asparagus into little paperboard boxes, which would then be sent on for flavoring and flash freezing. Sounds simple. The asparagus was loaded steaming from the blancher onto the conveyor a floor above the sorting line, from huge bins, by guys in blue hard hats. Big Mean Guys.
The BMGs mostly hung around smoking and joking outside the Authorized Parties Only door, returning at their seeming leisure to buzz around in their lift trucks and complicate my life.
As lead hand dancer, I tried (and usually failed) to pre-arrange the stalks to ease the down-line sorting. I was very, very good at this, but never quite good enough because the BMGs reveled in dumping multiple bins, throwing in everything from steamed bits of wood to blanched snakes and rodents. So I would receive, down the long inexorable line, Mount Everest-sized clogs of carelessly braided veg while the BMGs smirked and shuffled off to smoke.
The supervisors, middle-aged drill sergeant females with 30+ years experience in this Hell, marched around keeping cadence, barking "Get those white butts! Get those white butts!" as reminder to sort the tough stalks into the cull line.
And so, from this month or so of experience came for me the first hint of a universal truth about work. There are always Big Mean Guys. It behooves ya to keep at least one eye on them. Keep an eye on the BIG mean guys.
Since, I have experienced nothing to persuade me that the BIG mean guys are not always lurking. Whether in the form of the ne'er do well relative of the owner or the veteran ideologue, BMGs complicate everyone elses' existence. They will not be eliminated from even the most carefully crafted process.
Most unsettling have been the times when I've caught myself in the BMG role. I admit that I've pulled rank and inflicted unnecessary complications. We probably all have. I carry the question about how much I might have contributed to the existence of the BMGs. They were of a class, the blue hard hats, that rendered me, a mere green hat, speechless. I might have stepped up to their sniggering circle and conspired with them to make my life easier, but chose to seethe as victim instead.
I'm learning to keep one eye on the BIG mean guys, and the other eye on my own response to their presence. I know I won't always find the foolhardiness to comment on the curiosities, but I sometimes remember that I could.
Oh, and GET THOSE WHITE BUTTS!!!!!!!
So far, I've noted that One Does Not Drive Results, gotten myself into some trouble claiming that The Gods Are Always In Charge (controversy surrounding my use of the divine capital Gods), reminded myself that There Are No Marginal Players, reflected that No One Is Apathetic Except When Pursuing Someone Else's Goals, and finally, that Relationships Trump Everything.
Today's installment is about Telling Compelling Stories.
One of my more exciting survival jobs back when I was a songwriter had little on the surface of it to do with writing songs. Early shift pot washer in the steaming basement of a world class restaurant, my job entailed cleaning up after sloppy chefs from the bottom of the intricate social pecking order. Probably no better place than the bottom to see what's really going on up top.
I declared myself The Pot Wizard, and wizard I most certainly was. I thanked people for dumping fresh messes beside my steaming sinks. I delighted in the appreciations I received when a chef found his favorite pot perfectly cleaned. I enthusiastically helped the freight guy when deliveries overwhelmed him, shot endless breeze with Andelino, the Filipino salad chef, and became the sweetheart of the wait staff because I was never too busy to help.
But mostly, the job involved telling compelling stories. Reframing the mess into more compelling forms. Transforming shit into Shine-ola. Fantasy endlessly forming compelling reality.
This lesson I strive to remember. Whatever the job, the real job involves telling compelling stories. We are each writing our story. Part mystery. Part cookbook. Part epic novel. Should we forget this fundamental fact, we are left with nothing to interest the grand children, our neighbors, and, curiously, ourselves.
We live in our stories. That we work within them, is not always so obvious. Tell compelling stories to create a compelling work life.
This happens not because I'm a wind sock or because you have an overwhelming personality, but because I am human. We each have a subtle ability to synch with those around us. Most of this is preconscious, but nonetheless useful. We can depend upon this feature to guide, inform, adapt, and sustain us.
Much of what we learn seems to focus upon the objective individual acting as an independent agent. In this culture (this feature is quite different in other cultures), we imprint on the John Wayne notion of self-reliance. Yet no man has ever been an island.
We live in relationship. We work in relationship, too. In relationship with our context and with the others around us. Our near obsession with self nimbly blinds us to this fundamental fact of life. In a very real (but seemingly surreal) sense, we live in relationship with others, and not as independent agents.
Once this little switch gets flipped, nothing is ever the same again. We take less personal responsibility and more functional responsibility. I live through you, acknowledging that you also live through me.
Would the world be different if we could, in those moments of apparent isolation or those demanding only individual responsibility, see that we are not, never, ever acting alone? Hang with that question for a moment, let it sublet some space near your heart. The answer might remind you who you really are.
Apathy. Easily diagnosed. Not always so easily treated.
One very popular way to prevent resolving apathy involves for-your-own-good lectures exhorting another to "get with THE program." THE program? And which program IS that program, anyway? Usually, it's someone else's. Nothing wrong or unseemly about inviting anyone to get with someone else's program, but as an antidote to apathy, it usually sucks.
The resolution, when apathetic (or, when encountering someone else who is apathetic) is usually found a bit closer to home. Not by getting with someone else's program, but in finding your own. That mythical, selfless, single-minded, laser-like focus that's supposed to translate into pure motivation sometimes exists, but it's an unreliable companion. We are each capable of selfless pursuit, but selflessness is not high on anyone's sustainability scale.
Put on your own oxygen mask first. Find your own deeply-felt purpose within the more broadly advertised common goal. Piggy back on your own back.
What DO YOU want? If you don't know, can't choose, or don't feel like you're preference is supposed to count, you have every reason to feel apathetic. Order more absinthe.
If you don't know yet, perhaps pursuing an answer will encourage you. If you're struggling to choose, select some purpose for no more than its alluringness. If you don't believe your preference is supposed to count, you're counting yourself out.
Fortunately for you (and for me) someone's lurking nearby to remind you how much you DO count. Of course their message will land on temporarily deaf ears. They will be insistent. If you doubt this, listen.
The bitter pill I prescribe myself when I find my altitude failing is kinda hard to swallow then. I plug my nose and try to swallow it anyway. It goes like this:
I ask myself, "What do you want?" Followed by the question, "And of you had that, what would you have?", repeated five times. By the end of this ritual, I have usually found some alluring something at the bottom of my well. If not, well, I order more absinthe.
If you doubt that collective work can be accomplished when everyone is pursuing their own personal purpose as well as a common goal, here's a portrait of a rather large group where each person seems to have found one heck-uva powerful purpose for showing up, standing up, and really being there.
The nature of work demands that some carry more than their counterparts. Some necessarily hold more than others. Some necessarily assume more responsibility. But there are no marginal players. The marginalized enjoy every good reason for their dissatisfaction. They cannot be dependable.
The best way to create a community of undependable players involves marginalizing them. Assume away. Take for granted.
Still, no matter how you might demonstrate your inclusiveness, some will manage to marginalize themselves, with the same effect as if you had marginalized them. Outreach offers some possibility for resolution.
What IS your strategy for enfranchising those who quite naturally disenfranchise themselves? Can you disconfirm their firmly held beliefs? Can you even recognize them?
Tonight, my Governor took calls from her constituents on live radio. About a third of the callers were disenfranchised. They started their comments with a pronounced, "Wool," by which I mean a poorly pronounced, "Well?" What followed was testament to disenfranchisement. One asked if the court order to pay back child support to an out-of-state ex-spouse didn't somehow violate the governor's desire to keep income within the state. Stunning disconnection. The governor invited off-line conversations: "Call my office! Leave your number! I want to get to the bottom of this," though every other listener understood that the caller was just trolling for excuses to sustain their victimhood.
God bless them, everyone, as Tiny Tim proclaimed. And bless the governor, who seems to understand that some quite naturally feel disenfranchised and need a special, personal invitation inside.
Whatever your position, and especially if your position seems lofty to another, take a step down and backwards. You need no defensive barrier, no protective guard to defend your position, no matter how obviously tenuous it might feel to you. Opening your arms wider when you feel assaulted will demonstrate your true power. Include them in your sphere, disconfirm their sense of marginalization. Ennoble. Include.
There Are No Marginal Players!
Claiming that the best laid plans, oft gang aglee says nothing about plans or planners, but speaks to something else. That no battle plan survives contact with the enemy speaks to what no plan can speak to.
If we could, if we would settle for the routine and the familiar, we could be in charge. But how often have any of us seen any of us actually settle for such modest, humble aspirations.? No, we want big, hairy, audacious goals. They make us feel bigger than ourselves, even though pursuing them generally puts the Gods in charge. Where the calculated odds are long, we don't usually shrink back but lean further forward. We stretch and want to. If the calculation claims a high potential for failure, we think ourselves somehow exempt, and would prefer to see ourselves that way.
In this very human way, we conscript the Gods and put them in charge.
Republican Senators innocently complain that the stimulus plan lacks specificity, they are right. When they say that it won't work, they are also right. It DOES lack specificity and it most certainly won't resolve the financial dilemma. It might do no more than trade the inertia of rest for the inertia of motion, which could produce a whole 'nuther set of uncomfortable choices, many unforeseeable from here. The stimulus puts the Gods squarely in charge. It's a dilemma worthy of them, and otherwise unresolvable by mere humans.
Our notions that we can foresee the future is not universally right, nor is it universally wrong. That we cannot see which it is with any reliability, more to the point. Plan? Sure. Execute according to plan? Perhaps. Succeed? Maybe. Fail? Well, depending upon how you measure success, probably.
Any effort can be judged successful. And any a failure, depending upon the perspective involved. Make your perspective explicit, and encourage others to make theirs' explicit, too. Together, you might triangulate with the Gods and succeed.
My ancestors, writing from the Oregon Trail, ended their letters with the simple phrase, "If I live," in certain acknowledgment that this decision was out of their hands. They went on to settle the West, or their part of it, certain only that The Gods Were Always In Charge.
It's no different now, though the apparent sophistication of our age enables endless projection of and planning for a future no more certain than it ever was. Sophistry, the ancients called it, muddling the mind. Retirement planning, we insist, ensuring a secure future. Even though the Gods Are Always In Charge.
And what does it say on the back of the buck? In God we trust. I wonder why. ... ...
Our current economic crisis demonstrates that the covenant between people and work has been broken. Investors abandoned their ethical responsibilities to become mere speculators. The pursuit of short-term profits subsumed long-term sustainability. Tactical advantage undermined strategic focus. Metrics clouded meaning. Growth overshadowed purpose. Personal position justified undermining collective well-being.
Each of these behaviors illustrate an ignorance of how work works. The fundamental principles of working well together have been known throughout the ages. Each of us have encountered teachers who have attempted to impart these timeless understandings. These teachers have not always held the formal title of teacher. Few of them have. But each tried to plant their fertile seeds in fertile soil. For me, I can say that my soil has not always been ready to receive these seeds.
As with any planting, some of the seeds inevitably fall on barren ground. In fact, few of these seeds need to sprout. Perhaps only as few one, for we are not growing an exclusive crop or feeding merely on the rich harvest of wisdom. Some of what we, as humans do is inevitably stupid. Sustenance does not require driving all darkness out of the cave, and at best, we navigate through shadow much of the time. One candle makes a difference. One well-formed vision adequately illuminates a worthy goal.
We live in a time, as have every generation before us, illuminated by false Gods. That's what my many mentors have tried to impart. More, they have tried to show me how I might distinguish between false and benevolent Gods, between false and sustaining beliefs, and between false and nourishing choices.
I was moved to start this series when I was reading job descriptions. I found in many, indeed most of them, evidence of deep misunderstandings of what people can and should do in a job. The phrase that popped most excruciatingly for me was this one:
"Incumbent drives results"
I stopped in that moment and questioned this now common metaphor. In the currently common vernacular, leaders, managers, directors, and executives produce results by driving organizations, operations, systems, and most emphatically, people. And I remembered then, in that moment, something one of my mentors tried to teach me long, long ago when I attended business school.
This mentor seemed ancient to me at the time. His sheer antiquity lead me to question his wisdom. His obvious joy when railing at his innocent students scared me a bit. "I consider it to be my sacred responsibility to see that this University release only capable people out into the world, and if you can't demonstrate your capability to me, you will not receive a degree from here," he used to say. When he winked at me as I finished a case study presentation, saying, "Mr. Schmaltz' got it," I knew I'd touched something remarkable. I wonder still what that remarkable thing was.
Now I find words for it. Here's the first of my covenant collection. It has served me well. May it fall on fertile soil for you.
1- One Does Not Drive Results
Leadership demands not driving but guiding. Our organizations are comprised of sentient, intelligent beings, capable of choosing wisely for themselves and for the communities surrounding them. Remind them of their capability. Invite them to act with compassion, to engage with purpose, and make informed choices. Lead with a light hand.
There are some things no team should be asked to do. If you, as leader, do not know what these are, your team can help you understand. Ask them how if you do not know, and you'll know.
