Pure Schmaltz

I mention this duck because I've been deeply considering what it is that I do, and as usual, this reflection leaves me feeling like an odd duck.

Like my duck, I imprinted early on a medium of expression that few would equate to my later career(s). My first love was not cars or bikes or anything motorized or mechanical, but music. Specifically, creating music. Songwriting. Tunesmithing. Yea, I hated transcribing it. Never could read it worth a damn. Didn't much care for interpreting anyone else's, either. But I did revel in creating it. Silly or serious, I have pretty much always been a songwriter.

Because of this, I have an odd-duck sense of form and style that remains mysterious, even to me. I am an unrepentantly brutal critic and a very reluctant fan. There aren't more than a handful of songwriters I respect, and these for their lyrics more than their melodies. For me, melody is Musak™, the lyric makes the tune.

A well-crafted lyric is my personal model for coherence. A well-crafted lyric tells the story, guides the listener, and brings purpose to otherwise meaningless melody. When I first started hanging around projects, I noticed something missing. To my ear, it seemed as though the project leaders and planners and sponsors over-focused on performing music and missed crafting the song. The results sounded more like garage band jams than thoughtful renderings, and the words and the music never seemed to match for me. I'd try to explain what was missing, but even to me, my descriptions sounded like so much odd-duck quacking.

What is this felt sense? How can I explain? If you've never written a song, never stitched a lyric to dress a melody, it's a craft. Whether it's an art or not, I can't say, but it is a craft. As a craft, it's guided by some rules of thumb, some principles, and more felt-sense than specific technique. The most common question people who don't write songs ask me has always been: Which comes first, the melody or the words? My usual response: depends.

Depends upon what? Usually (I said usually) upon inspiration. Whatever comes, comes. It's not so much about what comes first as it is about what whatever comes comes into. (huh?) How receptive and accepting am I in that moment. That makes all the difference. The craft of songwriting is all about making silk purses out of sows ears.

Interestingly, so is the craft of project work. So is the craft of life.

Odd ducklings that we all are, we each imprinted early upon some primary means for expressing ourselves in the world. Whatever that might be doesn't matter. What matters is that we each figure out how to use what we've got to do what we want, what we need to do. For some, this will entail teaching others to do it the way you do it. For others, it will more revolve around you remembering to remind yourself that you do best doing it different than the way other ducks might do it. No need to explain or reform, just quack like the duck you know you are.

As a songwriter, I long ago abandoned the notion that I needed to write like Frank Loesser or Dave Frishberg, both true masters. I can be informed by their rules of thumb and leverage a bit of their wisdom, without mimicking their style, form, or substance. I don't write show tunes, or haven't so far. (Dave Frishberg has an eloquent word or two to say about Songwriting.)

In business as well as in life, the desire to mimic style seems imperative under the don't re-invent the wheel doctrine. But this seems a bad metaphor in general. It's not the wheel we're "re-inventing," but the terrain. We have no choice but to reinvent the terrain. Sitting down to rewrite Loesser's Baby It's Cold Outside won't satisfy anyone. Mustering a revival might. But for many, many, many efforts, nothing can adequately sit in for original tunes, melody expressing how it is here and lyrics clearly, compellingly telling the story. Infecting everyone within ear shot to tap their feet in nearly perfect unison.

What prompts me to write about ethics now? In Thomas Friedman's Sunday, October 18 NYT column, he makes the provocative assertion that "We’re all connected and nobody is in charge." It seems to this humble chronicler that management science ignores this one great truth, assuming that we are natively disconnected and that someone's in charge. Consider a world where Friedman's assertion holds true AND where we assume otherwise. What kind of witch hunt might result? I imagine torches and pitchforks, accusations and indictments, the righteous search for those who were supposed to be in charge and failed to properly connect us, initiating yet another round of symbolic regulations (how do you spell Sarbaines-Oxley?) intended to hold those SOBs accountable. Again.

If we do, indeed, actually live in a world where we are all connected and no one's in charge, what regulating force might we depend upon? Legislation is inherently moralistic, denoting right from wrong, commanding, in properly Biblical phrasing, "Thou Shalt!" Ethics pertains only to those actions which, acknowledging the way things are, we choose to do in recognition of the costs—personal and societal—of choosing otherwise. It seeks not to command others, but to more fully inform their choices. If no one is in charge, it means not necessarily chaos, but personal responsibility. We are all, each, deeply connected. We hold, therefore, some responsibilities to ourselves and to our tightly-coupled fellows. Our choices matter more simply because we are so tightly connected and because no one is in charge.

My mother, bless her heart, has lived her life trying to get away with something, anything. I think her great grandfather was ruined in one of the late-ninteenth century financial panics, and her family's language rails a lot about the plutocrats, those who lead simply because they are wealthy. She's lived her life working hard to slip under one or another radar and periodically getting caught cutting corners. She self-medicates, and after fifteen years of Parkinson's Disease, there is no externally-enforceable regimen that can manage her meds. Her doctors have put her in charge, though she doesn't always make wise choices. We learn later, sometimes after transporting her to the emergency room, that she just decided to suspend one or another medication. We accompany her when she visits her doctor now because she paints rosier than reality pictures of her condition. Always trying to get away with something, apparently for the simple joy of feeling in charge.

Her sense that she is not in charge seems to encourage some of her more irresponsible actions. We've been amplifying the feedback channels that highlight the personal costs her choices accrue. When she sees that she's not getting away scott-free, she makes more responsible choices.

Well, we see the same stuff happening on projects. Some mandate seems to suspend the necessity of enlisting supporters, for instance,so we muster by conscription, believing that we've achieved some economy, shortened the time-line, cut through encumbering red tape. Later, we learn that some critical constituent has been carrying stones in his pocket ever since, and has positioned himself squarely between our imagined efficiency and our aspired-to goal, and we cannot get there from where we've innocently positioned ourselves and our misbegotten project. We chose unwisely.

I've grown to believe that there are a few, a very few, ethical responsibilities that anyone engaging in project work is better off understanding. Whether yours mirror mine might not matter as much as that we are each mindful of the choices we make, particularly those choices that seem to make themselves. Ethics are simply choices, well-informed or poorly informed makes all the difference in a world or a project where we're all connected and no one's ever really in charge. The blind leading the blind.

Once? You tried it once? Then concluded that it never would work?

Well, it wasn't just them saying this, I've said it myself.

What happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"

Not in the modern corporation, thank yew. Not in my backyard, either. There, the phrase is , "if at first you don't succeed, you've failed." Utterly. Supported by, "We tried that once and it didn't work."

We live in a society poised to throw some bum out on his ... bum. Not terribly generous when money, time, or public reputation gets involved. Fail for me once and you're outta here!

What sort of practices get reinforced under this regime? Nothing bold or innovative (aka, likely to fail.) Whatever can keep its head furthest down, shadow most secret, and profile thinnest.

How wise are our 'throw out da bum' choices? How much difference does it make what we choose? (I know, I know, it's supposed to matter a lot who we vote off the island, and who gets to stay. Does it, really?)

The first eXtreme programming project utterly failed. The sponsor threw out da bums! Not even I want to read my first few hundred essays. I cringe when someone requests one of my earlier songs. Looking back (and then projecting forward), I can't see a single situation, other than that time when I decided to jump out of that tree onto a steep slope and cracked a metatarsal bone where, "We tried that once and it didn't work" actually worked. What worked, or seems to have worked so far, involved a lot of "We kept trying, even though it didn't work at first." Some stubborn someone wasting time, money, and reputation on what they (and perhaps no other at first) were convinced held some potential merit, until it did. Best born from one hell of a lot worse.

But none of this might really matter. Maybe change itself catalyzes improvements, like the long ago-discovered Hawthorne Effect. Maybe (cringe) we have no influence on outcome at all.

Interesting piece about the rationality of voters in the current Wilson Quarterly. Maybe these findings are appropriate metaphors for how we choose our methods, maybe not. What if they are?

"It’s not only in the United States that the ­Depression-­era tendency to “throw the bums out” looks like something less than a rational policy judgment. In the United States, voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy im­proved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a flighty ­share-­the-­wealth scheme, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and ­longer ­lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented ­well-­considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters ­simply—­and ­simple-­mindedly—­rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got ­better."

Of course, it's silly that merely reciting the Bard would make the difference our clients sought, but not knowing the Bard might well prevent the change we all aspired to.

We've all been subjected to the next best thing, delivered by someone clueless about the present history supporting everything. We can't really ditch what we've always been. Change, whatever its intent, needs to be melded with the familiar status quo if it is to be meaningful and successful.

So, the next time I (even you) intend to make something different, remember to brush up on whatever amounts to Shakespeare there first. As Virginia Satir said a very long time ago, "Change rests upon the full, albeit temporary acknowledgment of the way things are." And always have been.

For much of my working life, I have been a strong advocate for meaningful work. I've claimed that work quality improves whenever personal purpose gets involved. I've helped people imprint on the greater good and encouraged them to find their project within their project assignment. But today, I want to sing the praises of an under-appreciated kind of work, meaningless work.

Meaningless work is an act of selflessness. It is work divorced from tangible return, separated from productivity measurement, innocent of intention, innovation, and efficiency. It is work for work's sake. Unexamined action. Very human. Very Zen.

A meditation where thoughts do not float consciousness away, but remain present, just hanging around. No mugging for the virtual camera, no showing off for whatever passes for company.

When I am my work and my work is me, we transcend meaning. Meaning is beside our point, reward unthinkable. We, my work and I, become one, a dance of joy between hand and surface, between time and soul, between mine and mindlessness.

I labor to exhaustion, not to become exhausted. I work because the work needs doing---or not. I am not investing my time or consciously expressing myself, just being here---not there, now---not then, the purpose perfectly tautological, explaining nothing at all. Meaningless work is the soul of being in the body of nothingness. No one will long remember, not even I will notice that time and action performed in perfect silent harmony and that time, for an unmeasured moment, stopped moving in any discernible direction and simply was. Is. Always will be.

The unexamined life doesn't need to be lived or desire to no longer be, it just is. Perfectly comfortable naked, unselfconscious, unconscious, alive. Our analysis of the situation never was the situation. Meaningless work thrives without commentary, judgment, or critique. It is, without fussing about isn't. It ain't ain't, either. Neither. Or both sometimes.

I pose today, understanding that those who throw their rational mind between themselves and their sight might only see me working slowly, when I'm merely dancing with meaningless work, slow work. No time clock. No lunch break. No promise of a cold one at the end. No meaning higher than my weathered boots boost me. No calluses worth complaining about. Not stalking supper, but nourished nonetheless.

I am scraping an endless wall, indifferent to progress. Distinctly different duress than the working-class workingman blues. I will wear my Frankenstein pants, hand-sewn knee where the Henry Fonda rose nearly tore through me once, when meaning detached my mind. I will not create poetry, but be it. Those who watch (yawn) or later appreciate what someone must have done can find meaning for themselves, if meaning seems important then. Me, I will simply be: between, within, beside, atop, and as without as I can be. Not even becoming for a spell, meaningless and being.

Sing the praises of truly meaningless work.

Years ago, I wrote the story of an interview with a Chief Financial Officer of a major American corporation. He had underwritten a project that had grown by insignificant increment to threaten his company’s financial standing. He spent most of the session pointing fingers. That damned VP of IT was really to blame. She was an upstart lesbian trying to play with the big boys in the big leagues. That damned Big N consulting firm was to blame. They were booking hundreds of thousands per month and not making any progress. He even blamed his own staff for not performing as he expected.

He finally proclaimed, exasperated, that “this isn’t rocket science!”

I disagreed. It was more like rocket science than not. The larger problem, as I later told him, was that he was not a rocket scientist.

I suggested in my recent post, You Suck@Projects, that the lousy level of understanding in the executive suite about projects contributes a great deal --- quite probably more than any other single factor --- to the continuing poor performance of projects. One common executive-sponsored strategy has been to operationalize projects, enforce method, techinque, standards, and metrics. This can make projects more predictable while transforming adaptable efforts into lethargic bureaucracies. Kinda like making a mustang manageable by turning it into a cow.

Another common executive strategy is to command results. Hardball negotiate outcomes, insisting upon what everyone not hydrocephalic or suffering from altitude sickness can see could never work. Tighten down the screws until no degree of freedom remains, then complain about how unresponsive the effort is.

Ignorance fueled by authority equals true stupidity.

This week, we’ve been watching while a Congress, clearly ignorant about even the first principles of economics, wrestles with a shit-simple decision. Distracting each other with finger pointing from atop lofty principles, insisting upon a label that misrepresents the outcome, insisting infant-like that irrelevant issues also be addressed as a part of the “solution,” then complaining that the resulting response doesn’t actually solve anything.

Where has the metaphor machine gone that managed to label a bill destined to disenfranchise a third of students No Child Left Behind? Wall Street Bail-out? Reframe first! That’s what any responsible rocket scientist would do. No, it’s not just a matter of simply hitting the chosen target, rocket science is all about maintaining scrupulous attention to just how far off course you are at any point in time.

Where did we get these boobs, anyway? We elected them! We, who know little about the responsible operation of government, chose people for their opinion on fleeting issues. Where do they stand on some social issue that government has no business fiddling with? How Christian are they?

The rest of the world stands gape-mouthed as we chop the legs out from under ourselves --- and them, too.

We are no more rocket scientists than we are project managers. We are ignorant executives complaining about our cruel fate, steadfastly refusing the necessary because it conflicts with our notions of how it should be.