Musings

The whole “smooch to make the memory of the scary siren noise go away” thing just rolled downhill last night like the proverbial snowball, and it turned into an avalanche of insight and understanding that thundered through my life today.  It was such an enlightening day, and the presence of and appreciation for simplicity was at the root of it all.

Oh, I could have had a crappy day, no doubt.  All the ingredients were there…like a kitchen set from a Food Network show.  But I chose to make something other than what was on the recipe card.  I chose to make something different.

I chose to make something simple.

It would be nice of things were simpler.  Not everything, mind you.  Because…well, then life would probably be boring.  I enjoy certain challenges.  I just like to be able to choose the time and place for life’s complex moments.  I would rather not have them just sprung upon me.

I think that the Universe is simple.  When we look at the Universe and find complexity, I think it is complexity that we actually make.  On the scale of the Very Big and on the scale of the Very Small, the Universe is simple.  Complexity is a matter of perception.

Yet, here we are, living in a world that is painfully complex.  We could make it all so much simpler, but we choose not to.  How simple is too simple?  I wish I knew.  Perhaps there is no such thing as “too simple.”  And perhaps there is no such thing as “too complex.”  How can I say that?  I say that because no matter how screwed up and convoluted life gets one day, there always seems to be a way for things to get even screwier and more complex.

If you were wondering, yes…sometimes I make words up.  

There’s a child upstairs screaming my name.  He heard a siren outside.  It woke him up.  It scared him.  His great big eyes were filled with great big tears.  One ran down his cheek.  I asked him if he wanted a hug.  He said, “Mm-hmm.”  I gave him a hug.  He squeezed me back, tightly.  I kissed his cheek.  It was wet.  He said he was OK now.  He smiled at me and went back upstairs.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, we make life complicated.  At times, my children remind me how simple it can be.  I needed that.

Dead spiders fascinate me.  I’ve seen everything from a tiny dead jumping spider to a bird-sized tarantula dead on the forest floor in Mexico.  No matter the size, no matter the place, no matter the cause of death, all dead spiders look essentially the same: a spider with its legs curled up touching its abdomen.  And they tend to be on their backs.  And they look like spiders.

How is it that a creature so varied in form and so plentiful on this Earth should end up looking exactly the same in death regardless of species?  I’ve never seen a dead spider that wasn’t all curled up.  Even those goofy daddy long-legs attempt to do the curling up thing.  Of course, they are so brittle that their legs break off, but you can just tell they are trying to ball it.  It’s crazy.

It just doesn’t make sense.  Different species.  Different sizes.  Different in so many ways…yet not so different.  It is clear that there is a commonality in how these creatures are constructed that defies logic and common sense.  It defies intuition.  Yet, there you have it…all dead spiders curled up into balls large, small, and all sizes in between.

I marvel at the simplicity of the message: all spiders are one.  Really, they are.  They come from the same place.  They are interconnected.  As varied as their forms have become over the course of thousands of years, there are fundamental characteristics of all spiders that make them undeniably…spiderish.  And it is the same with people.  

We are one.  We are the same.  We come from the same place.  We are interconnected.  As varied as our forms have become over the course of thousands of years, there are fundamental characteristics of all people that make them undeniably…human.  Make no mistake; every color, size, and shape is a variation on a theme.  We may not curl up into a ball when we die, but that doesn’t mean that we retain even one iota of our perceived uniqueness once death and time have had their way with us.  

We become food for worms.  Our bones are ground to dust.  There is no you, and there is no me.  What we were transforms into something new.  Our borrowed matter returns to the source only to be used again.  Over and over and over…again.

Our uniqueness exists today and today only.  While we may be unique, we are not isolated.  Uniqueness and apartness are not the same thing.  We are unique, but we are not apart.  We are a part…a part of the whole.  We are interconnected.

So, love the next person as you would yourself.  Or maybe you should love yourself as you would love others.  I don’t know…maybe it’s both…  

Just some thoughts after contemplating dead spiders.

 And so we come to the SYSTEM.

There is a system in place that operates on the assumption that money is a good motivator.  I think I already established that fear of death is not a good motivator (http://odracir72.livejournal.com/14524.html).  So, if Death herself cannot motivate most people to make positive change in their lives, then why on Earth should we expect money to do any better?  Well, the truth is that it doesn’t.  I have known this intuitively for years, but I’m finally finding that there is bona fide scientific data to support the idea.  Recent evidence: this wonderful talk by author Daniel Pink (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html) about the science of motivation.  In this talk, he explores the statistical and experimental data that demonstrates that individual performance is not positively influenced by monetary reward.

I know, I know…what the heck am I talking about, right?  In this day and age, these are dangerous words to speak and to write.  It’s probably very easy for me to have these thoughts since I have a job and can feed my family and protect them from the environment.  But that’s just the point.  Improved performance isn’t guaranteed by a paycheck; a paycheck simply positively reinforces the minimum effort required to keep one’s job.  NEWSFLASH: this isn’t groundbreaking information.  This is how the system has always worked.  People tend to do what they need to do in order to keep their jobs.  That’s the minimum standard.  Superstars emerge not as a result of compensation but as a result of a mix of some inherent characteristics of the individual plus alternate forms of positive reinforcement.  Personally, I think the most important component of stellar performance comes from within the individual.  It’s an intrinsic form of motivation that transcends external reinforcement.  Motivation, though, is a topic for another today.

The paradox of the prevailing view of compensation in most corporations is that the intended result (increased performance) is not positively correlated with the intended motivator (compensation).  So, corporations spend way too much time focusing on money as the carrot to dangle in front of the employed masses.  Ratings, pats on the back, public recognition, and other forms of reinforcement are under-utilized.  The logic is that all people really want is money.  But, as I once told someone, if you spend your life chasing after money, you will never be happy.  In the end, money allows individuals to afford survival.  With a little more money, all you get is the ability to buy more stuff.  And that just increases the cost of living, the cost of “survival.”  There is no long-term satisfaction in that.

Years ago, I remember busting my ass at work.  I did everything I was asked, and then some.  I came in early.  I stayed late.  I toiled and toiled and toiled.  I managed more people than I’d ever managed before.  I made my boss look good.  I made my boss’ boss look good.  I bent over backwards and drove myself hard.  The net result?  A “satisfactory” rating.  I received a raise that was more generous than what I expected given the review I received.  I was flabbergasted.  I was confused.  I was pissed.  I was disillusioned.  As a result, I decided to cut back, to not push myself so hard.  I cut back on my hours.  I stopped trying as hard.  I started being more of myself and less of the puppet that I had allowed myself to be.  A funny thing happened: in the process of freeing myself from the albatross of financial incentives, I found myself.  I found my voice as a leader.  I refined my style.  I figured out that the best “me” at work was the “me” that I was outside of work.  In essence, I stopped caring so much about the money and focused more on other stuff.

I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a higher rating the following year.  And do you know what?  I got a slightly higher percentage that next year.  And do you know what?  I was even more annoyed than I had been the year before.  It became clear to me that the SYSTEM was out of whack.  It was disconnected from what I actually did and how I actually did it.  It proved to be lazy.  It proved to be a shortcut.  Not only was there not a positive correlation between my sense of accomplishment and the attempt at motivation on behalf of the corporation, there wasn’t even a positive correlation between my actual performance and the subsequent increase in compensation!  Do you get it?  What the company said I was worth had nothing to do with how much I felt I was worth.  THAT is a potentially dangerous disconnect.  That’s how companies lose talented employees.  

What I would offer is this: make compensation about helping employees provide for their families.  Don’t make the yearly salary increase an event that is meant to reward someone’s performance for a year.  That’s a ridiculous idea.  It implies that the system can be gamed by someone who is sufficiently manipulative.  It lends itself to psychological phenomena like the recency effect in which a human observer tends to recall that which occurred most recently.  It also lends itself to the intensity effect in which an observer tends to recall more intense events over less intense events.  Or hierarchical effects in which a director or assistant vice president can “weigh in” on an evaluation of an employee and skew the final rating in favor of their personal opinion of the individual.  These are all very real phenomena, and they impact how these evaluations and subsequent increases in compensation can wind up.  

This isn’t necessarily an answer, but it’s a place to start.  I think the conversations need to take place, though…the ones that finally lessens the gap between what science knows and what business does.

Too many years later, I came to the realization that John was wrong. I came to the realization that I focused on the wrong piece of our conversation. 

You see, what I heard was a limitation being imposed on me that would keep me in check for many years. It became a story I told myself over and over again, each year, anticipating disappointing results. When the results were better than expected, then I could feel better about the situation. When the results were what I had come to expect (a low, uninspiring number), then…no harm, no foul, right? But “the situation” I had come to expect was harming me, was foul. It kept me from envisioning anything better for myself than the bare minimum. Who knows what kind of ripple effect that thinking had on me? I am sure there was an element of self-fulfilling prophecy at work because I never saw anything better for myself. Well, at least not until I started believing in something better for myself.

What I should have heard was someone who had worked for the company for many years and who was just trying to set realistic expectations with a newbie. What I should have heard was someone who had obviously set limitations on their own possibilities. What I should have heard was a challenge to blow away all expectations.

It wasn’t until relatively recently that I released myself from whatever self-imposed restrictions I placed on myself because of how I chose to internalize something someone else said to me 11 years ago.  Mouthful, I know.  But, I buried that injury deep. I buried it so deep, in fact, that the impact of that moment was never quite clear to me. I didn’t understand the full impact of that interaction until just a few days ago, to be honest. As I began to truly explore that experience, I realized that it not only lead me to impose limits on myself, it also colored the way I felt about salary administration in general.  For years, I agonized over having to have those conversations about money with my direct reports. I never really understood why. I always assumed it was because I didn’t want to deal with other people’s monetary hang-ups. Boy, was I wrong!  What I didn’t want to deal with were my OWN hang-ups.

Why is this a problem?  Well, it’s a problem because I became a manager and learned about leadership so that I could have a positive impact on the lives of other people. Most of the year, I get to experience a feedback loop that keeps me in touch with the people I am entrusted to lead, that keeps me in touch with what drives me, and that keeps me in touch with how both of these help me grow as a human being. I lose touch with that feedback loop every year around salary admin time. Heck, I lose touch with myself. Just ask my wife. I can be a crabby asshole. That state of being affects her, affects my children, affects my co-workers, affects my team…it insinuates itself into so many aspects of my life. I think part of that’s just human nature; there’s an Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us.

By denying myself the opportunity to acknowledge and experience the continuum of leadership, the ups and the downs, I was not allowing myself to get satisfaction out of my job.  I spend a lot of time at work, just like most people, and not getting the most out of my job…man, that just sucks.  Some people like to fix things.  Some people like to sell things.  Some people like to help people be better members of a corporation.  But all people, all people, who work want to at least get some measure of satisfaction from their job. It helps us get through everyday and feel like what we do matters to someone, somewhere. 

I’m not blaming John for how I felt.  He said what he said because he was who he was.  He wasn’t trying to crush my spirit.  I think he was just trying to be realistic. That said, the whole interaction does remind me of something my father used to tell me: there is a right way and a wrong way to deliver a message. I allowed what he said to affect me because I was sensitive and insecure.  I buried it because that was my coping mechanism.  I’m digging this stuff up now.  Heck, I’m digging stuff up all the time these days.  My coping mechanisms are different today than they were 11 years ago.  It’s ironic that I was an anthropology major, now that I think about it.  I spend a lot of time freeing artifacts from the prisons of their past. 

In 2009, I freed myself from a limitation that I put on myself a long time ago.  I freed myself from a burden that grew from that self-inflicted injury.  I am no longer constrained by a belief that I had about my potential.  It’s not just about my potential to make money, either. It is also about my confidence as a leader to manage a system that I have to manage in order to compensate the people who report to me for the work that they do.  And it’s about making sure I am in touch, in the moment, and able to deliver my messages the right way, just like my dad said.

Now, that systemI mentioned…the one the drives how corporations compensate their employees?  THAT is a rant for another day…

I should really be saving this rant for another date and time early next year when we have to dole out the yearly salary increases, but I’m feeling inspired right now. 

In corporate life, there are many things that are paradoxical, contradictory, or even counter-intuitive.  There are many mixed messages that get created in the whirlwind of corporate ideals, goals, spin doctoring, and priorities.  Historically, yearly salary administration has been the bane…THE BANE…of my existence.  For all of my years as a leader and manager, I have recited the same lament: “I hate this time of year.”  A common variation is, “I love everything about my job except salary administration.”  Not so anymore.  Something has fundamentally changed my outlook this year.  It makes the most sense if I first tell a short story.

When I was a newly minted manager, I had but a few weeks under my belt before annual salary administration came around.  Nobody blamed me for their inadequate raises…because, after all, what you get is NEVER enough.  Well, almost never.  For me, my raise that year was plenty.  Apart from having to administer raises in tandem with the gentleman who I was replacing, as an employee myself, I got to enjoy the other side of the table.  The gentleman I was replacing also happened to be my boss, so, when we sat down to talk salary, the man who had been my mentor and most ardent supporter was allowed the pleasure of telling me my percent increase for the year.  Back in those days, there was a very rigid system in place that matched salary grade to job description.  It was so rigid, in fact, that to promote anyone required that the person in question be given compensation equal to the very minimum of the salary range for that position.  In my case, my current salary and the minimum of my new position were vastly different.  I’m talking about a sizable gap.  Sizable.

I arrived at my boss’ office.  He waved me in.  I sat down.  We talked.  I told him how excited I was about my first leadership assignment.  He told me how proud he was.  We exchanged encouraging compliments.  We wished each other well on our new roles.  And, then, he told informed me of my increase.

“17%,” he said.  “Not even prorated.”

I was floored.  It was incredible.  I couldn’t believe it.  My wife was going to have a baby when she heard about this…and we weren’t even pregnant. 

I think he gushed some more about me, how he was entrusting his team to me, but I can’t remember anything else.  When we were done, I stood to leave.

“John wants to see you,” he said.  John was his boss.

I hesitated.  “OK,” I said reluctantly.  I was barely in my mid-20s, and I was still very susceptible to organizational intimidation.  I didn’t “gel” with John, and I could swear that dude thought I was a dork.  Regardless, I gathered up my courage and headed off to John’s office.

I knocked at the door.  John turned around. 

“Come in,” he said.  He gestured towards a chair.

Small talk.  Congratulations.  After about 5 minutes, he got to it.

“You will never, ever see this kind of raise again.” 

I was crushed.  There was nothing gentle about it.  There was no note of pleasantness, no glimmer of hope.  All he gave me was the assertion that I would never, ever be worth that much to this organization again.  And I listened to him.

I believed him.

My children still dream in that way that only children can dream.

They would like to go to Africa.

They would like to go to Japan.

My oldest thinks it would be cool to go to Antarctica.  He plans on doing it.  

My youngest thinks it would be cool to go to Radiator Springs.  He plans on doing it.

But…I can sense that subtle change starting in my oldest.  You know, that hesitation.  It’s the beginning of the seeds of doubt.  It is what most of us would call “maturity.”

I call it tragic and, frankly, stupid.  Why does there need to be doubt?  What keeps me from hopping on a plane right now and heading off to Africa?  OK, my wife probably wouldn’t be very happy about the whole “ditching” thing, but I would “ditto” that one if she pulled something like that on me.  No, my wife is much more likely to figure out how to pay for ALL of us to go.  But, seriously, what is the point of editing?  Editing is limiting, and limiting is just another form of death.  

Better to live a life dreaming and not fulfilling all your dreams than to live a mature life and never once dream again.

There is a difference between having your head in the clouds, always wishing for a “better tomorrow” that will never come and dreaming like a child about the infinitely cool things you can do.  When your head is in the clouds, you neglect to live in the moment, always wishing that you were living a better life.  When you dream like a child, you live for every moment and actively engage in creating the next.  

I want my head out of the clouds.  I want to dream like my children.  Most importantly, I want to help my family make their dreams come true.

Years ago, I went above and beyond for someone who reported to me.  He had only been working for the company for a few weeks when he fractured his leg rollerskating.  He could not come to work.  The fracture was so bad that his doctor put him on bed rest.  He did not have sick days or personal holidays.  His medical benefits hadn’t even kicked in yet.  In short, the guy was screwed.

So, I made a few calls.  I asked for people to help me help this guy.  This was at a time when people just didn’t work from home.  The technology was barely there, and it was expensive to use it.  I made a few more calls, and I got this guy set up to work from home.  I bent some of the rules to help this person out because I knew that, as a single dad, he couldn’t afford to lose his brand new job.  When everything was ironed out, I felt good about what I had done.

Less than a year later, I found myself sitting in an office in HR because the same employee wanted to file some sort of complaint about me.  It turns out that he didn’t like his performance evaluation.  He also didn’t like his merit increase.  He felt that I wasn’t qualified to evaluate his performance and that I was unfair in my assessment.  

I was so far beyond pissed off and shocked that I couldn’t even articulate what I was feeling.  It turned out to be a HUGE lesson for me: don’t give an inch because they will take a mile and stab you in the back as they take it.  This guy obviously didn’t care about the lengths to which I went to ensure he could keep working.  His memory was apparently very short.  I swore then that I wouldn’t go out of my way to help anyone again.  Screw them all.  Let them fend for themselves.  Whatever the circumstances of their lives…I didn’t care.  Just manage by the book.  Don’t expect anything in return.

I held on to that hurt for a little bit…maybe a year…maybe less.  Once I had some time to lick my wounds and feel sorry for myself, I came to realize that my only real mistake was expecting something in return.  My error was in assuming that I SHOULD expect something in return.  The truth is, the act of doing something good or “nice” for someone else should never be done with the expectation of repayment.  Repayment will come in other forms, in other ways, and, most likely, at a time not of our choosing.  

So, why today?  Why dredge this up this Sunday evening?  Well, it’s just that time of year.  The third quarter of this year is coming to a close.  Before we know it, the end of the year will be here, and with that will come all those fun “year end” work events like final reviews and last-minute projects.  I will find myself in a position to help others, to go the extra mile for them, many times during the course of the next few months.  And with each act of coolness I bestow upon some else, I will expect nothing in return.  I will look for nothing.  I will be motivated by nothing.  Why?  Because I know that I must do what I consider to be right and true.  I will opt for compassion and love, and I will do so without expecting to receive a single thing in return.

I am too tired to give much of a hoot about proofing today, so proceed at your own risk…

I am tired of commuting.  I am not one who is really prone to bitching, but…for Pete’s sake…I am getting frickin’ sick and tired of my drive.  I mean, I pretty much move along at a decent clip for most of my trip, but it feels like it takes so honkin’ long to get from here to there and back again.  And if I leave a few minutes outside of my narrow window, then I’m guaranteed an extra fifteen minutes or so.  That doesn’t sound like a lot, but tack that on to my normal hour and fifteen or twenty minutes, and you might see why it begins to get to a fellow.  

So, forgive me if I have nothing brilliant to say.  Not that I’m brilliant any other day, but I just got nothing today.

Well, not true.  I did share my latest relationship theory with someone at work today.  Want to hear it?  OK.  So, I think that every single relationship we have, whether personal or professional, profound or casual, goes to Hell in the proverbial hand basket as a result of unfulfilled and/or unmet expectations.  Think about the number of times you and your significant other or you and your sister or you and your BFFF have had a falling out because of an expectation that was unmet.  

To make matters worse, so often, our expectations are unspoken.  There are the few that we actually voice to others; then there’s the much larger percentage of expectations that we keep bottled up.  Still worse yet, there are the ones we keep bottled up because they are SO REASONABLE and SO LOGICAL and SO COMMON SENSE that ANYBODY WITH HALF A BRAIN would have known what you meant.  Right?  Sound familiar?  If you think this only happens between men and women in their private and intimate relationships, you are SO wrong.  This happens all the time between all kinds of people.  Seriously, when was the last time you succinctly and completely stated an expectation to someone with whom you usually have misunderstandings?  How about stated the expectation and ASKED for confirmation of understanding?  It would seem to me that a few simple tweaks in our everyday communication could lead to a far more harmonious and fulfilling life.  

Well, try it at work.  Try it with the boss.  See what happens.  

Yeah, good luck with that!