Tag: Life

No, we don’t have to agree. In fact, that’s part of the problem.

One of the more obnoxious things that has come out of the last decade plus of my political awareness has been the not-so-subtle divide in political beliefs. It’s getting worse, not better. And it feels like it is also invading our personal lives as well. Brinksmanship isn’t just something you do with a tax cut, judicial appointment or debt ceiling in the halls of Congress. It’s the 4th of July family picnic. It’s online and offline conversations with friends.

The crazy part is that, somehow, this all comes back to just getting with one another.

Let’s put aside our differences you guys! We can make it work! Really!

That’s not how it works in real life.

Here’s what I do know: you don’t have to like the people you work with (or are related to), you don’t have to love your job (or going to family functions) and you can still be good at it.

I had two peer-level managers who were at each other’s neck constantly. They were both top performers in tough to fill positions so the company did everything they could to get these two to get along with one another. When company-initiated meetings didn’t work, they brought in an outsider they hoped could counsel them and get them to get along.

Let’s cut about five more iterations and hundreds of hours of painful meetings out of this story: none of it worked. As far as I know, they’re still at each other’s throats.

What everybody ignored (including myself) is that they did their jobs well. When they needed to work together, they did so. Projects that required both of their efforts came in on-time and on-budget.

We focused on the wrong things and asked the wrong questions. We focused on their disagreeable nature, not how they accomplished their work. We asked them what they needed from the other in order to get along, not how we could better get them to work together when it counted.

We’ve made a grave mistake of equating getting along with one another to doing great work together. And that’s warped our sense of entitlement about our politics, our workplaces and our lives in general. We feel we shouldn’t need to work with people we can’t get along with and we can’t do great work unless we can get along with everyone. The problem isn’t that we can’t get along or that we disagree, it’s that we can’t get past that sense of entitlement that tells us we shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, angry, suspicious or disagreeable. Ever.

So no. No, we all just can’t get along. But guess what? You still have to go to work next week, you still need to keep in touch with your siblings and you can definitely demand that your politicians should do the same.

I remember the LA riots but I shouldn’t.

I was 10 when the riots happened 20 years ago and I lived another world away in Portland. Other events from that time are a bit hazy (the first Gulf War, my parent’s divorce) but I remember the LA riots for some reason.

Why? Sports. Specifically, my Portland Trail Blazers were playing the hated Los Angeles Lakers the night the riots broke out.

Arash Markazi at ESPN has a great breakdown of its impact on the Lakers and Clippers.

But for me at least, it helped underscore the way sports can help people understand the world, current events and even some of the workplace lessons I’ve talked about here.

I was barely aware of what happened to Rodney King or the ensuing trial. I didn’t even have any real concept of what race meant or why people would be upset about the outcome until much later. But in a series where the Blazers had won two games and the Lakers (without Magic Johnson, due to him retiring that year because of HIV) were facing a must-win situation, the commentators pre-game were talking about what was going on outside of the arena.

They cut to a blimp shot. You see the lights from the Forum and you see it pan toward emergency lights, smoke, fire and people out in the street. It seemed close. And while it was still somewhat light when the game started, the night grew darker and darker and the fires seemed to grow brighter along with the amount of emergency lights every time they cut back to the shot.

I don’t know how my dad explained it to me. To be completely honest, I had no perspective to base it on so I doubt I would have understood it. I lived in a place where there weren’t many people from different races. My idea of other races came from a teacher who looked different from me, a couple of classmates and from following the NBA. Even if I had that perspective, I was still 10. Understanding wouldn’t come until later.

Still, there was something surreal about watching the game. From the announcers continuing to make references to it, to fans leaving midway through an elimination game that went down to the wire in overtime. I still remember seeing those empty, ugly orange seats dotting the landscape of the arena while the minutes ticked off the close of a back and forth battle.

Why are people leaving? Don’t they realize that if the Lakers lose, they are done for the season?

I didn’t understand. I may have guessed that whatever was going on outside of the arena was important, but I didn’t know it the same way I knew this game. I knew if I was at a game like this and my team were on the brink of elimination in the playoffs, you’d have to drag me out of there kicking and screaming.

But then I realized something: it must be important. If people are leaving because of what is going on outside, it must be really scary. Or something. And while Laker fans aren’t exactly the model game day fans, they certainly had to understand the importance of the game and chose to leave instead.

Whatever was going on had to be important. I didn’t know why but it had to be.

The Lakers opted to move game 4 to Las Vegas due to their proximity to the ongoing activities and summarily lost badly. Meanwhile, the Blazers made a long run to the finals where they lost to Jordan’s Bulls in six.

As I learned more about the riots, about Rodney King and Reginald Denny, the LAPD and the trial in Simi Valley, and about race in south LA, I was interested in all of it. I wondered what went through the minds of people who left before overtime started. Something trumped sports for those people that night. And on the most important night of that season, people vanished into the night to confront something beyond sport.

I won’t pretend to know all of the issues that erupted that night in LA but that night, sports opened up the world beyond just basketball. If you’re willing to look beyond the superficiality of the game itself, there are a lot of interesting issues that it can bring up. Whether it be HIV, race, feminism, fairness, leadership or compensation, sports can be a powerful storytelling device. When it doesn’t devolve into meaningless clichés or played out story lines, it can transcend the sport itself.

My wife and I are moving again.

This time, it’s not very far. About 5 miles from where we live, to a better neighborhood that’s closer to my wife’s work. We’re excited to move out of our small, outdated apartment into a newer townhouse with a garage, lawn and patio. Not to mention a gas stove because a year of trying to cook on standard electric burners has left me exasperated and feeling like I had the ultimate first world problem.

I’ve moved six times in eight years. I was pretty sure that was a huge number until my buddy George LaRocque told me he moved five times in eight years (and he has kids, we don’t). Okay, fine. You beat me, George.

Still, moving that much doesn’t leave much accumulation of stuff. We have about six totes worth of personal keepsakes that we don’t use on a daily basis (including things like holiday decorations, nice dinnerware, family heirlooms and the like). Everything else is pretty much what we use. And I get rather irritable if we have too much stuff and end up making a couple of trips to charities each year or passing down to families and friends.

A certain part of me likes moving. I’m restless. I like new spaces. The other part of me likes things to stay the same, in a predictable routine. I know I feel healthier and better balanced in a routine.

Whatever. Break that routine.

I worked with a guy who advocated taking a different route home from work every once in a while. Just that sort of subtle routine shift can help make you think outside of that normal routine. I think of the many times I sat on Highway 217 in traffic every single day instead of thinking about different ways I could come back home. Sure, it could have cost an extra few minutes. And it would have meant I couldn’t zonk out to more sports radio since I had pretty much memorized the pace and flow of rush hour traffic.

And now with so much of my day scheduled and sort of regimented, breaking that routine has become more essential. Taking a walk, or following up with someone I was putting off, or even washing dishes can help shift to something I wouldn’t normally do during that time.

You don’t have to move every year or two but you have to be willing to break your routines. Whatever excuses you have for not doing it aren’t good enough.

Anyone can give a balanced opinion on any matter. Research the different sides of an issue and then present all of those different sides in an intelligent manner. It’s not always easy to do but executing on it isn’t a problem if you know how to properly research and write. If you are unsure, you can have multiple people look at it to make sure you have balanced the issues correctly.

Of course, the idea of fair and balanced is rightly mocked when it clearly isn’t so but even truly balancing the issues leaves something to be desired.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked into a meeting with a person who presents me with all of the facts of the situation (something I already knew) as well as the possible solutions (something I could have deducted) and considers that a meaningful contribution. When pressed for an opinion, they state the fact that there are some great options available and that their are strengths and weaknesses to each one.

I’ve also worked with people who expected that role of balancer to be filled by the HR person. Some thought I was supposed to facilitate discussion, make sure every viewpoint was heard and help balance out the conversation.

That’s bullshit.

I will not make sure every dumb viewpoint is heard for the sake of being heard. I will not give equal weight to the wrong decision as I would the right one. HR isn’t Switzerland. It isn’t Geneva. This isn’t a court of law. And try as you might, HR will never ever truly be that anyway.

So what do you do? You try to be fair. You try to not bend over backwards for assholes who try to take advantage of your fairness. You try to follow a smart process. You try not be handcuffed by that process. You try to follow the advice of your boss. You try to keep your job. You try to be considerate of people’s privacy. You try to carry out thorough investigations. You try to detect lies. You try to remember you aren’t a mind reader.

Here’s what you don’t try to do: You don’t try to be right. You make the right decision. Every time. And when you make the wrong decision, you correct it. And when it isn’t your decision to make, you let the decision maker know exactly where you stand on it.

Maybe a fair process isn’t mutually exclusive of a right decision all of the time. But when the choice is between either handcuffing yourself to a process or making the right decision, you have to remember what is important.

You aren’t a neutral party. Be opinionated, be imbalanced and be right.

Last week, I wrote a blog post that was almost 2,000 words long. That’s not that exceptional. What’s surprising is that I sat down and wrote the entire piece in about 90 minutes.

The fact of the matter is, I spent a ton of time on that post. Reading (and re-reading) material about the subject, thinking about it, thinking about my approach and then thinking about the key points I wanted to cover.

I’m not the quickest thinker in the world. It means I’m not the greatest conversationalist in the world, nor am I prone to amaze you in a casual conversation. And please, I’m not fishing for compliments or having a fit of false modesty. I’m not above being egotistical here but even I know my personal limits.

Luckily this piece isn’t going to be 2,000 words, though. The advice I have today is pretty simple:

[green_box]Finding your writing voice isn’t some existential journey. For me, it was about writing. A lot. All of the time. For years. Until I was tired enough where the only way I could write was the way I write.[/green_box]

It’s easily panned advice, akin to “act naturally.”

But the process of making that leap was actually fairly important for me because it meant I spent a lot less time trying to translate what I was thinking to what I was writing. If you give me a topic that I know well, or can research well enough, and ask me to write something about it, I can do it in fairly quick time. It’s not automatic but the process is smoother. If I know what I want to write, I sit down and do it in a sitting. Usually less than an hour or two.

That’s not to say that if your natural style is littered with typos and grammar errors, you should be content with that. I’ve tried hard to eliminate spelling and grammar issues, though I have my own personal challenges. That’s also not to say that your writing style can’t improve (albeit, slowly, especially in the beginning). The important part was stripping my writing down to its foundations, finding what’s working for me and what wasn’t and starting to make incremental improvements on my style and mechanics from there.

The problem, at least for me, was that it took me basically taking everything I learned in formal writing for business and killing it word by word. And for people who have spent their entire career writing in a specific way to a specific audience, that becomes the barrier to you finding your own voice.

If there is a shortcut, I wish you would have told me that five years ago. I don’t think there is though. You wrote your way into those habits, you’re going to have to write yourself out of them.