Draw The (Fault) Line

Posted by fxckfeelings on October 29, 2012

It takes strong character to declare that you’re where the buck stops, but when the problem is a runaway 18-wheeler, taking it on looks less brave and more foolish. Good leaders should be willing to take responsibility and work hard, but if they don’t develop other skills, they’re in deep trouble, bound to be taken down (or run over) by pride in their own problem-solving strength. So if you happen to be one of those can-do, bring-it-on overachievers, don’t put all your faith in the value of hard work and responsibility before you learn to respect your limits and the greater value of working within them. If you don’t learn to pass the buck once in a while—be it at work, in your marriage, or in life in general—you’ll be the one passed over.
–Dr. Lastname

I’ve worked for the same company for 25 years and I take pride in my reputation as a capable project manager who can always find ways to get good results on deadline and under budget. The last project, however, was terribly under-resourced and we just haven’t been able to satisfy all the people who lined up for our product. I poured my heart and soul into it and now I feel terrible, because I always take complete responsibility for any project that I manage, so this failure is mine, and I’m not too cowardly to admit it. I wish my boss would get me the resources I need, but he’s useless. It’s gotten me very depressed. My goal is to get through to my boss that he has to get me those resources or I’m going to go down in flames.

Sturdy competence, total commitment, and self-reliance are wonderful day-to-day traits in a manager, but they backfire in the face of The Impossible Project, becoming dangerous to both your career and mental health (and a gift to my profession).

No matter how competent, motivated, efficient and otherwise gifted you are, sooner or later you encounter The Impossible Project, like the great white whale. It will always be underperforming, over-budget, and overtime, and it will have no solution. The only question is, how many people will it drag down into the briny depths along with it.

Of course, the impossibility of the Project is not your fault; but you make it your fault when you take too much pride in your ability to get results. When you tell yourself that there’s no project you can’t accomplish, you give yourself The Impossible Responsibility, which binds you to The Impossible Project and ensures that you go down when it defies your best efforts and proves untamable and undo-able.

In addition to blaming yourself for failure, you’ll blame your boss and the powers that be, which makes you their ideal target when they have to explain what went wrong. They won’t tell their critics that they should have provided you with better resources; they’ll say you misused them. Now you get to feel even worse about not completing a task that was unfeasible in the first place.

So dump the I-can-do-anything attitude and listen to what your experience is trying to tell you; that you’re a good, hard-working manager who did a good job with a bad project. Your job now is to stand by your work, regardless of criticism and/or your own feelings of disappointment and frustration.

Describe the good things you and your team have been able to accomplish with the resources you were given. Yes, you would have liked to do more, but you’re proud of what got done. Take it for granted that resources are often inadequate, so there’s no question of blame, at least not coming from you (it’s above your pay grade to figure out who did what wrong). On the contrary, try to find something positive to say about the leadership you were given by your boss.

Let this encounter with The Impossible Project be a lesson that your job is not an opportunity to prove to yourself that you’re an invincible super-manager, but, in fact, just a job. Do it well and up to your usual standards, but remember you have a life and other responsibilities after quitting time.

At work or at home (see below), never pour your heart and soul into anything unless you can also remember that you’re the ultimate boss; one who knows how to set limits for employees, not one named Ahab.

STATEMENT:
“Though I feel terribly unhappy with the results of this project, I and my people did a good job and it’s time for me to present our good work with pride, regardless of how I feel.”

My husband and I are both ambitious for our careers and we are proud of our two kids, but lately I’ve been incredibly angry, particularly at him. I know the reasons. One of the kids is going through a whiny period, I’ve been given a big project at work, and my husband has his own work problems. So, when we’re together, I go out of my way to ask him how he’s doing and do a little extra for him. What gets me crazy is that he doesn’t acknowledge how hard I’m trying to please him and just shuts up and sulks. Now I can’t talk to him without wanting to bite his head off. My goal is to control my anger and get back my cool.

If being nice to your husband is your main solution to the work overload that you and he are experiencing, maybe that’s your problem. Like the determination of the person above, your ambition is a good trait when it helps you to get ahead, make a living, and support your family, but getting ahead usually means getting assigned more work, which almost inevitably leads to overload unless you develop skills for cutting corners and saying “no.”

Getting ahead in an organization means never saying no and always being nice, which would be a lot easier if you didn’t have a marriage and kids. Even then, sooner or later you run up against the fact that the day has only 24 hours and that most people can’t work all the time, even in this country, without going crazy. Needless to say, this fact is another major source of my business.

So don’t think that going into “nice mode” will solve this problem, or will even make an impression (which it clearly does not). Instead, review your resources and priorities and ask yourself if there’s more help you can get for the kids or more ways to give you and your husband some quiet time together. Identify projects at work that are easiest to delay or delegate and prepare positive ways of describing the limits of your commitment when you agree to take them on.

Managing overload is not pleasant; it’s hard to give a less-necessary rating to an activity that you like, or negotiate with your husband over ratings you don’t agree on since saying “no” risks conflict and criticism, both at home and at work. On the other hand, this is a survival skill you need to learn and there are good ways to negotiate your commitments, as long as you can tolerate bad feelings without reacting to them or letting them show. This is what they should teach you in business school but don’t, probably because it doesn’t increase the bottom line. Nevertheless, you can learn it from others if you choose the right coach, friend, or therapist, preferably someone who’s learned from experience.

Don’t get stuck, though, if your husband remains unappreciative. Instead, develop a plan for normalizing the temperature in your nuclear reactor core for your own sanity, not to appease him, and see if his mood improves as much as yours as an indirect result. In all likelihood, your usual good marital chemistry will resurface and you’ll acquire skills you’ll always need and will never forget, and you’ll keep your marriage, and your mind, from going under.

STATEMENT:
“I’d much rather meet everyone’s needs by working harder and smoothing things out with a smile and a nice word, but I’m ready to make hard decisions if they’re necessary to protecting my parenting, marriage, and health.”