Moving Forward
Alinsky said that a strategist is born the moment a child first learns to play his mother against his father. It takes awhile to realize that some people never learn this. In fact, most people never learn this.
Another way to put it: in a house where parents have unpredictable rages, children learn that there is a third variable in the right and wrong equation. They learn that handling their parents reaction is just as important as the other two. They learn that appearances matter.
An asset to a company or an organization is someone who can look at a set of circumstances the way that a manipulative child would look at a situation. To see it in terms of what they can get away with – what has the best chance of getting through without being caught. Because ultimately, bureaucracy behaves a lot like bad parents. It is unpredictable yet predictable, it gives you room to maneuver and negotiate despite being, essentially, a constraining set of barriers to action.
It happens so often. You leave something up to someone’s judgment only to be surprised by the result: their decision was made without any mind to the world it was to exist in. An email that doesn’t consider the reaction of the person reading it. An advertisement that makes sense by the numbers but not what those numbers ultimately mean. And so on.
Those kind of people are common. They advance to a certain level and like a version of the Peter Principle, stop when they can no longer figure out how to advance. Lacking the ability to see outside themselves, they are crippled and blinded, unaware of the reality of the environment around them.
The key is to understand how truly critical that third variable is. That appearances do matter. That the context of a situation is almost overwhelming the part you need to grasp and control. And if you’re a young person, your ticket to skipping ahead lives in mastering that before you’re supposed to. Because without it you’re like everyone else and you’ll have to do things by their schedule and that means waiting your turn.
In my experience people generally advance in a bureaucracy by kissing the right asses and playing political games. Doesn’t have anything to do with their ability to contribute anything to the organization’s actual mission.
Bureaucracies don’t behave like bad parents, they behave like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Which was one of the big points of that book. They’re about people carving out fiefdom’s and then making irrational decisions that have nothing at all to do with anything other than their own neuroses.
It’s like giving people exactly what they ask for. They won’t be thankful, they’ll be [sad/angry/puzzled]. Why didn’t you know what they wanted?
Because what people ask for isn’t what they want. Words are a surprisingly imprecise tool when most people use them – they don’t have the perspective to ask “how would someone else interpret this?”
Be the person who translates from what’s asked to what’s actually wanted, and provide that. People will notice that when stuff goes through you, it goes right. That’s a person who’s in demand, and adding value, not just another mindless drone doing what’s asked of them.
This is a brilliant post, and like dealing with your parents there are negative learned behaviors in the workplace that need to be understood in order to overcome them.
The most dangerous people to any kind of production are those that petered out and yet felt that they should have had that seat at the next level. They don’t learn that they are the problem, they cause chaos and mayhem and nothing gets done.
Ryan, will your site be shut down along with the rest of Rudius on November 1?
Great post. At some point I think all of us decide in the back of our heads that we are content with where we are at. Thus, we stop doing certain things that have made us successful in the past.