Proceed Until Apprehended

This might be a really simple idea, but sometimes I can forget it. My guess is that you’re prone, too.

What we chase to make us happy and what actually makes us happy are often two different things. We chase a bigger salary, a nicer car, a trip to Mexico or a bigger office. We chase acknowledgement for our volunteer efforts or for someone to compliment our new shirt. We save up to buy… wait, who am I kidding? We use our credit card to buy a new camera.

Without fail, these items soon become part of our new routine or a distant memory. Once the euphoria fades away, we’re filled with “what next?”

There’s a pattern here, and if we step back for a moment it’s easy to see it. The majority of our lives is spent in the routine, not the moment of achievement. If your happiness is derived from THE NEXT THING, you’re establishing that you will live most of your life unfulfilled. Sure, you get a sense of satisfaction when you attain something, but that’s fleeting.

I say we should focus on what’s constant. Rather than “what’s next?”, how about asking “what am I doing on a consistent basis?” Then, if you plan to continue repeating the pattern, figure out how being in that moment can make you happy.

I am getting VERY excited about going over to my new position with the Saskatchewan Public Service Commission. I believe the PSC offers some enlightened management practices, a positive working culture and an important, meaningful mandate.

For all of its positive traits, I’m sort of anticipating that there’s also a culture of “policy adherence” that has gone a bit overboard. What I mean is that HR functions are quite often the whipping boy in an organization, and staff tend to rely on policies and interpretation of policies to serve as a a form of protection (or backbone). I recognize this is also partly done out of respect for a collective bargaining agreement, though I do think there’s a difference between respecting it and instantly capitulating to it.

I’m probably not going to be very accepting of policy adherence, if in fact I come across it. I’m toying with a work-specific mission statement, sort of a supplement to my still relevant personal mission statement.

Here’s some language, though perhaps I’ll call it draft. [If my new supervisor is reading this, feedback is definitely welcome.]

This will make some colleagues uncomfortable. They’ll come around… or they won’t.

My job is to ask unflinching questions and be radically honest. I’ll operate with the best intentions and without permission.

And the shorter version: Boundaries are the enemy. As gently as possible, blow the fucking lid off.

I just said that publicly. Gulp.

I encourage you to go back to his The Liberation Manifesto post and then catch up to now, reading how his last few months have evolved. I think it’s fascinating.

I’m really comfortable right now… too comfortable. I need to build a clearer, more deliberate plan about how I’m going to let go of more and more of this false security blanket. It’s the only way to get to the real victory, I think.

• Understand you’re being evaluated.
• Have a clear picture of what you really need. Don’t do a selection process without first thoughtfully establishing what skills and functions you need the candidate to be able to fulfill. If you’re choosing to name a certain degree or a number of years of experience as a key criteria, it’s an immediate flag that you’re looking for an image, not a result.
• Respect my time. Don’t be late, unprepared or easily interrupted. I want you to be expressing how important this role is from the moment I meet you. If you don’t respect what staff do for you, I self-select myself out.
• Ask good, relevant questions that make me sweat. If you are interested in demonstrating that you’re competent, that’s how.
• Don’t hack on current employees. I’m trying to be one of those. I’m savvy enough to know I’ll get the same treatment.

The employee version of these rules has always been a requirement for applicants to follow, but for the employer, they used to be optional. You used to be able to assume the power position and indicate that you could hardly be bothered with this process… you could do everything including saying, “I’m kind of a big deal.” No longer.

Every year, when my fundraising team for the MS Bike Tour gets out on the road in our costumes, people say, “Oh cool. I wish I was that creative.” We dress up as cows, or soldiers, we make up a theme and dress as the Adam West Batman characters. People say, “how did you ever come up with that?” or “I’d never think of that in a million years.”

These statements always surprise me. You see, I’m not creative, either.

I just so happened to care about fundraising for MS. I participated in the bike tour and determined that it was too elitist, too competitive and too fashion-conscious for my liking. I determined that new fundraisers were getting turned off by a culture that they didn’t fit in. I want new fundraisers. I want the tour to grow. I want more money for MS research. As the title suggests, these are “selfish matters.” I decided that I cared enough to try and change it, and I’d do it by example.

So, deconstructing how we make our team costumes, here’s how I get creative:
1) I get quite specific about what I want to change and how I might change it
2) I created space to reflect on what would work as a solution
3) I enlisted others to react and contribute to a kernel of an idea
4) We try it. We don’t know if it will make sense to others, but we implement.

I guess what I’m saying is that creativity, for me, isn’t some other-worldly headspace where stuff just pops in and “becomes.” It’s deliberate, it’s methodical and it takes work. Typically, I think the “I wish” crowd just doesn’t get deliberate enough to make it happen.

This is from the SAMBA blog:
After a concert, a woman gushed to Beethoven about how enthralled she was by his music. “Oh, sir, I wish I could play like you! It’s genius the music you create!”
Beethoven: “Well maam. If you want to practice 8 hours a day for 30 years, you could most certainly play that way also.”
She didn’t expect that. To Beethoven, his performance was not a one-off coincidence where talent met opportunity. To him, it was the culmination of effort and sweat put into his practice daily. The woman, only aware of the performance, didn’t give the process the respect it deserved. Honoring the process matters. It’s the thing that matters.

By the way, this year’s theme is SuperHeros. It’s going to rock.

You have two choices in how you react to life. You can be conditioned or deliberate.

Our default is set to conditioned. We have ingrained, emotionally-driven responses for every scenario – guilt, fear, happiness, joy, you name it, it’s there and ready, should the need arise. If you choose conditioned, you accept the program that’s already installed. Perhaps you’re accepting or competitive, optimistic or pessimistic, whatever has been established as your modus operandi is pretty much there to stay. You can thank your childhood, your life experiences and your worldview for the program you’ve got.

The big selling feature of this choice is that you don’t really have to choose, you simply have to keep on course. The downside is that you don’t usually get to choose which reaction you’re having at any given time. It’s hardwired, so it depends on what’s happening to you.

As a bonus, nothing is ever your fault. Someone else is always the architect of your misery.

The other choice is to be deliberate in your reactions. You can catch yourself before you react and plot out how you want your actions to play out, you can rewire the hardwired reactions. Declare that you are calm, cool and collected… or thoughtful… or passionate… or honest, and start to be that way in your reactions and interactions.

The positives of this choice are that you get to have the kinds of experiences you want and no-one is doing things unto you. While it sounds great, the downside is that you have to do work between your ears, right now and forever after. It gets easier, but you’ll find you can never be complacent.

It was Bike 2 Work Week. Despite this salient and relatively unknown fact, I was honked at twice for biking in a traffic lane during my commute this week.

There’s a school of management thought that says that if you push hard enough, if you just get over this particular hurdle, things will get better or will get back to normal. Right now, though, there’s some particular, special, urgent needs that require that we burn the midnight oil.

In my experience, it rarely gets back to the way it was, in fact, the “special” needs will likely just keep coming. The pace of work incrementally accelerates, it never goes back. The way the organization is functioning establishes a new normal, and the culture of the organization is incapable of reversing course without a lot of hard work.

I was contacted by a headhunter today. As this was the first time I’ve ever been targeted (because of my title, I think), my interest was piqued. Turns out, one of our Saskatchewan crown corporations needs a director that they can insert in an office that is under siege and under-staffed. In fairness, they are being very transparent in what challenges they face, and I appreciate that. However, the description also enthusiastically presents the promised land that is sure to come, if only they could get this one critical position to put in some hard work…

Yeah. Just around the corner, I’m confident the culture will change. Never mind that working like mad was encouraged and reinforced yesterday. Today we’re done the project.

Hey, I’m all for changing culture. I think it’s the right fight, but we can’t just say we want it. We have to live it. I’m yet to be convinced that the best path to get there is to talk about how we’re going to get strategic while we burn the midnight oil.