The Wall Approaches At Full Speed

Corporate politics. It is its own breed of stupidity. I slammed against it pretty hard this week at work. I ranted about it in an earlier entry so let me just cannot catch you up on the way of the world. Earlier in the week I had the conflict with the project engineer over who controlled the project, how it was supposed to be run, and who needed awareness/approval. We had what amounts to being a sincere difference of opinion. 

The organization within the company that he works for is very bureaucratic. Typical of bureaucratic organizations they think their way is the only way. We skirted around it multiple times in the project life so far. He gave, I gave, and we kept going forward. Then I realized that unless we settled that it would be a never ending struggle that would rise up every time, every project. 

So I suggested we have a meeting with the key project people, my manager and his manager. 
I suggested the meeting so we could talk it out, resolve our differences, and keep going forward. Instead, for unknown reasons, he decided to escalate by forwarding the email that was asking for clarity to multiple people on his side of the fence. I talked with him briefly today trying to get a little information out of him and he intimated that he had inadvertently touched off a firestorm on his side of the fence and that he had a meeting scheduled with his manager and the impression he gave me was that his manager was not happy. High above us, at another level, at the level of vice presidents and directors there is an ongoing internal struggle about which model works better. 

On our side of the fence we have a very fluid model where the project manager is able to determine the approach that is proper to the project and has a tremendous amount of leeway to determine the process steps, the various milestones, and the reviews. The Corporation has recently stood up in independent organization under a new vice president and directors in order to increase efficiencies in the delivery of key software and technology services where speed and innovation triumph over the rigid bureaucracy. This represents a loss of power on the part of the rigid bureaucracy and the rigid bureaucracy, typical of creatures of their nature, is responding by trying to tighten their grip. 

This project engineer is caught in that cycle. Bureaucracies do not like people to rock the boat. They tend, if at all possible, to crush them. That crushing mechanism has swung into action. The only question is who's going to get crushed when it finally stops. Because the project engineer was basically brought up inside the bureaucracy moving outside of his box is a frightening experience I think. Because I could give a flying rat's ass about the bureaucracy banging into it, bouncing off of it, going around it, even getting battered by are things that I'm used. I'm always amused at how the bureaucracy wins until such time as it gets in the way and then everybody looks the other way while something gets cowboy through the cracks. 

I'm curious as to how all this is going to work out. I suspect that the end of the day there be a compromise at the levels above us. I just hope that my project engineer friend survives. I do feel sorry because I caused him stress, because I caused my own management stress, I'd rather move much smoothly through the waters. However there is a particular type of bureaucrat that this organization within our Corporation seems to grow. 

These are the people who have the mindless obedience to the machine. It takes place in a sort of passive aggressive way. Even when pushed outside of the box they just try to climb back in and pull the cover down. It's crazy to me. I think that any project in order to be successful must be organic. By organic I mean that the methodology, the style, the scope, the tools and the process must be tailored to the project. Whereas the bureaucracy believes the project must be tailored to the process. 

I think were my friend the project engineer makes his logical mistake is in thinking that the procedural direction, the templates, the processes of his bureaucracy must be adhered to as if they bore the weight of law. When in fact if you read the actual processes they give a tremendous latitude to the project management. It is down that opening that I've driven many a project to success. Of course every now and then I crashed into the wall at full speed.

The End of the Week

The week moved pretty quickly. Because of the nuances of the holiday and my 9/80 schedule it was a three day work week, which was very nice. It also helped that, at work, the load was light since so many people were out on vacation. In the aftermath of the project, I can feel myself relaxing.  My subconscious has been spinning, throwing up strange dream images each and every night, most of which are directly related back to work.  There will be plenty of headaches in the months to come - but it does appear as if there will be plenty of work.  My boss is going to be hiring another analyst and today, in our one on one, she assigned me two more projects.

In some ways, this is one of the challenges I face at work.  I am particularly good at taking projects that are tangled up and troubles and getting them straightened out and back on track - mostly through the process of simply lining things up and then executing with discipline.  So, naturally, two of the projects that are being assigned to me are projects that have been running - in both cases for several years, and have never been effective.  One has had their go-live delayed for over a year and the other went live, but with a pale shadow of the promise of the program.  So, my immediate future will be working to get my brain around them and then get them moving forward again.

In the Corporate Game of Thrones, the investigation into my complaint continues - on average, they say it takes about thirty-five days to complete the investigation portion - so that means that portion of it should wrap up in late June.  I am perfectly fine with that - as far as karma goes, my responsibility is to report the behavior. What happens from that point is up to them.

Things are going a well as can be expected with my aging parents and my sick nephew.  Life continues at it's own pace along with all those other things we cannot control and can barely influence. But, smooth is good, so I am going with that.  The process of aging is an ordinary thing and is part of life that we are all going to experience, sooner or later. The best we can do is make that trip as gracefully as we can.

Other than that, I am slowly healing from my separation, which is also part of the process of life.  Now that I think about it, life is always a process of adjustment or readjustment and learning to not be attached to outcomes is so crucial. Be in the moment and when the moment goes away, be in the moment.  So, in that sense, I am going to settle into the moment and watch some Archer, then curl back up with Leviathan Wakes.

What A Week

What a week.

I worked 51 hours in 4 days. On the plus side, I checked two items off the work list.  But, in terms of what else I have done this week, work was pretty much it.  Life continues to move at its own pace and I am hoping that I will get a window this weekend to write a bit and record a few of the things that unfolded, but for tonight, I am going to watch a pair of sitcoms and then settle in to read myself to sleep.  I am entering my three day weekend and though I will be doing some work, I am going to try and not do a lot.  Tomorrow I've got breakfast and lunch plans but nothing after that.

Suddenly, the Absurdity of It

I've written a couple of times in the recent past about work (though, as usual, I write vaguely, so as to protect both the innocent and the guilty). Let me summarize real quick - lately, one of the people I report up into has been causing me some degree of anxiety, for a variety of reasons.

It is the usual corporate inanity that influences tens of thousands of workers in tens of thousands of jobs, so there really isn't anything spectacular about it. I am a firm believer that all people are distributed on a bell curve and some folks are below average and some folks are above average and that's just kind of the way it goes.

The same holds true for management - there are bad managers, there are good managers, and there are all the other managers in between. I've had some great managers over the years - my current manager is one of the best in a dozen different ways. The person I am currently challenged by - well, not so much.

Today when I woke up and went through my morning routines, before driving into the office, my monkey mind has seized on this upper manager - not in a particularly stressful way, but in a way where I was moving the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle around, sorting out a variety of incidents and observations and trying to find how they all fit together. As I went through this process during the drive to work I was suddenly struck by...

The absurdity of it. This is an individual who is fairly well qualified (on paper) and middling high up the corporate food chain. But, what it really comes down to is - they're floundering. Their actions are not the actions of a confident leader. They're the actions of someone who is lost and flailing around trying to find something to grab hold of. Now, in corporate terms, that doesn't make them any less dangerous - anytime upper management starts flailing, pieces can get broken.

The trick to the game of corporate survival is to try not to be one of the pieces that gets broken in the flailing. Most of the time, once you're aware of it, you can dodge it, stay nimble, and move through the subsequent chaos. Sometimes a random bit of flailing will take a piece of you and sometimes that random bit of flailing will knock you entirely out of the corporation. That is just the way it goes - fate, at its finest.

I firmly believe there is a force that moves through the universe (I call it God, or the Mystery, being Catholic). I think there is a plan and sometimes we get glimpses of that plan and other times part of it are sprung on us. I've been working for thirty plus years - I've been successful, by my own terms and to a degree by societal terms, everywhere I've worked. If I were to lose my job tomorrow, konked by a random flail, I would do what I have pretty much always done - thrive.

That is the absurdity of worrying about it. First, most of it is beyond my choice - I can only make the choices I make, according to things I value. How other people choose to react is beyond me. The choices they make I can, maybe, marginally influence. Wherever this path goes, whatever twists and turns it makes in the course of that journey - I have faith in The Plan. It is absurd to be overly concerned about the flailing of one upper manager. What happens to them will be according to their own little version of The Plan. (Isn't pre-destination a wonderful tool for us to find a modicum of peace in a turbulent world?)

So, today, struck by the absurdity of what I am observing, I spent most of the day working on the tasks in front of me, being present in the moment, and laughing as I viewed things through the tinted glasses of absurdist theater that are the best corporate goggles, I found a spot of peace.