Author: neil

Whip Until Morale Improves

“Trust the process.”
 
Every single day a work, I get to see a part of the elephant. I try to describe it as I see it. I hear other descriptions of it. A lot of poetry too.
 
Some processes are universal and eternal. Writing every day is the only way to get better at writing. Building strength is possible by breathing and stretching every day. Climbing the corporate ladder is possible by ….
 
That last one… I’m watching with fascination as a few people, emboldened by their titles, promoted to their now obvious level of incompetence, wreak havoc and demolish any engagement their colleagues may have had (“whip them until morale improves”). “This is the process” is the phrase I’m hearing repeatedly from them, begging to be trusted.

Write to Express

I wrote for hours yesterday, trying to unravel my emotions, explore my thoughts, and relieve my frustration at work. On a day of rest? Yes, and I was not resting, because of the weight I was carrying around.

The writing helped with all three needs, and a lot more. It showed me alternatives I hadn’t considered before. It helped me discern what I want vs what I need. It lifted my soul.

It was also exhausting. I had no energy left to do a public post. Rather than edit what I had written in my private exposition as a post, I chose to write out a page for my calligraphy.

Later, I was reading through the compendium of feedback on the wonderful A Word A Day subscription. One message grabbed me, and had me reaching for my pen immediately. I wrote out the letter as my evening meditation. The writer’s own reasons for writing reflected Joan Didion’s. They are far more eloquent in expressing those sentiments than I, so I couldn’t help but write it all out in my own hand.

I sent a picture of that meditation to the author last night, to express my gratitude. It may end up in her spam. The exercise of making the effort was what I needed last night, and for that inspiration, I am grateful.

Edit: It reached her! I’m so glad to have received a reply. I seem to have made her day. Her reply has made mine 🙂

 

Spencerian: Donella Meadows

No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.

Spencerian: Rizwati Lazarus

An AWAD subscriber wrote in:

The late Joan Didion wrote, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

I have found this to be true throughout my life. I first discovered the real alchemy of writing one day at the age of 12 when my tears were not enough to soothe my pain and so I picked up a pen and wrote a poem. Since then I have been a graphomaniac and writing for me is like breathing. There have only been a couple of days in the last 40 years when I have not at least written in my journal and on those days I felt unmoored, unbalanced, and chaotic within. Writing is the anchor that helps me sustain my sanity in a very insane world and a place of soul communion. I am in love with the act of it and I thank God every day that I am simply capable of writing anything at all.

Sprint 3: Taking stock

The streak of writing broke for two days. Physical and mental exhaustion both caught up before the sun went down and I found myself in bed, wondering why I didn’t write in the morning. Exhaustion, and waking up just in time for work isn’t conducive for writing in the morning.

This sprint has been chequered with ill-health. I’ve managed to consistently do calligraphy and reading. Everything else was secondary. The order in which I’ve thought about the importance of things – “when wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, everything is lost” doesn’t feel right. Time doesn’t even feature in that idiom that has guided my life. Health’s more important. Time runs out steadily and imperceptibly. Character? Well, at my age, that is a habit now isn’t it? I can’t imagine a different character to what I am now. The idea about wealth.. hmm, maybe it still holds.

Knowing that some feedback loops are long is easy. Being comfortable with long feedback loops is really hard. There are no signals or milestones to suggest what impact ‘today’s things’ have on my life a decade or three from now.  However, one can learn from others.

I began compiling a list of behaviours I’ve seen in many corporate ‘leaders’, and it’s been depressing to read that list. If leadership can be learnt – and it is not sainthood!, there are examples everywhere of what not to do. It’s not often that we get to see a great leader at close quarters, and even less to work for and with one.

Four years of working for one of the best leaders I have known is nearing an end. I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to observe, learn, and to a tiny degree influence their way of the world. The realisation that I too am at a crossroads, can choose whatever I want to pursue next if I choose to, or keep doing what I do because I enjoy it so much is, oddly, terrifying and exhilarating at once.

Some long, hard, journalling hours are ahead of me to make sense of, and feel comfortable with the ideas that are sloshing around in my head. That is why I write.

Spencerian: Barrett Brooks

..it is healthy and necessary to associate *a piece* of our identity with our work.

For the entire history of our species, we have attached meaning to our role within our group. Hunter. Gatherer. Cook. Child protector. Warrior.

These roles have meaning because they signify our contributions. They represent how we spend our time and how we create value for one another. We would not survive as a species without playing a role in creating progress and opportunity for one another. Our roles represent the reciprocity principle.

Saying that we should not attach identity to our work is merely a way of protecting ourselves from the psychological impact of being stripped of that aspect of our identity. It is painful to quit a job precisely because our identity is tied to our role in the group. It is even more painful to be fired for the exact same reason. I have done both and I cannot honestly say that one is easier than the other.

Source

Journey

Day 3 of testing positive. No severe symptoms, besides feeling tired and drowsy.
***

Ideas are the currency that I am most comfortable dealing with but my career didn’t start that way.

I trained to speak the language of money, finance and accounting. I enjoyed the challenge in the early days. I learnt to use the tools of the trade – spreadsheets and accounting software. I’d never taken an interest in computers during my childhood, so it meant I had a steep learning curve. Enjoyable, yet sometimes frustrating.

I soon discovered many other dimensions to the profession of accounting and taxation. Innovation in accounting appeared to be the dance of interpretation of legalese. The intertwining of the professions of accounting and law were mesmerizing. Enobled by statue, the ‘professionals’ had magic dust to make questionable transactions legal. Closer observation revealed tacit formal nods, made easy with the regular greasing of the palms of the executors of the law . These practices, I learnt, were how this business functioned. I began to dislike taxes and accounting and turned to commercial finance. It seemed less grey: helping ‘business’ make commercially sensible decisions.

It was another great learning challenge to see other than through the lens of taxes and accounting. How does a business extract value from a transaction? How do you negotiate terms and prices? What were the implications of the litany of terms that I despised in the legalese I had learnt? How do you build processes and enable systems to keep pace with businesses as they scale up? It was a period of absorption and learning, almost a different language.

*** to be continued.

Hemingway Readability Index: Grade 8

Spencerian: Thinh Nhat Hanh

The individual has to wake up to the fact that violence cannot end violence; that only understanding and compassion can neutralize violence, because with the practice of loving speech and compassionate listening we can begin to understand people and help people to remove the wrong perceptions in them, because these wrong perceptions are at the foundation of their anger, their fear, their violence, their hate.

We have to remain human in order to be able to understand and to be compassionate. You have the right to be angry, but you don’t have the right not to practice in order to transform your anger… When you notice that anger is coming up in you, you have to practice mindful breathing in order to generate the energy of mindfulness, in order to recognize your anger and embrace it tenderly so that you can bring relief into you and not to act and to say things… that can be destructive. And doing so, you can look deeply into the nature of your anger and know where it has come from.

Marginalian

Breathe Deep

The body under attack by a virus. Lack of sleep. A fluid environment. There’s so many things going on simultaneously and all in sharp immediate focus.

I’ve remained optimistic through all these changes, despite the physical and mental discomfort. Changing to locus of attention outward has remained my favoured approach. It’s imperfect, of course, and yet works better for both my mental health, and outcomes.

By no means is it easy, though. This journal is an endless litany of the same cascade of emotions, ebbing and flowing like the tides. The details may differ. The only constant is the change in tide every so often.

Today feels like the tide has gone out.

At work, structural, even foundational frailities are evident. Feelings and emotions, tied to people, narratives, and desires are in full flow. At home, the isolation and proximity is wearying, and wearing down patience.

Breathe. That’s the best I can do in the moment. Breathe deep.

Hemingway Readability Index: Grade 5

Spencerian: Robert Caro

But when I began researching Robert Moses’ expressway-building, and kept reading, in textbook after textbook, some version of the phrase “the human cost of highways” with never a detailed examination of what the “human cost” truly consisted of or of how it stacked up against the benefits of highways, I found myself simply unable to go forward to the next chapter. I felt I just had to try to show—to make readers not only see but understand and feel—what “human cost” meant.