Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I have known people, including myself, who have nagging problems. They, including myself, have had those problems for years and have never done anything about them. These problems are handy excuses. Perhaps that is why they, including myself, keep them.

I am attending a special event this week. There were a few SNAFUs the first day. I am fortunate to know some hard working, conscientious people who worked extra hard to get me in the door. Some of the people responsible for the SNAFUs were a bit embarrassed and humbly apologetic. Others shrugged their shoulders.

That’s just the way it is around here. We get by anyways.

Backup ten years: I worked in a staff organization that provided equipment and tasking to field personnel. The field personnel cursed the crummy equipment we provided them. Yet, the field operations succeeded over 90% of the time. The field personnel prided themselves on succeeding no matter how fouled up the normal situation.

Backup twenty years. I worked with a group of people for a couple of years. They candidly proclaimed themselves to be managed by the worst group of managers in the entire Federal government. Yet, they succeeded over 90% of the time in their work no matter how fouled up the normal situation. They could do the job despite bad management, and that was a source of pride.

The special event this week, the field personnel of ten years ago, the poorly managed people from 20 years ago – they were all disorganized, plagued by bad equipment, and handicapped by terrible management.

And they didn’t do anything to fix those problems.

Pause for effect here as we absorb that. These groups of people were all pretty smart or they wouldn’t be able to perform well in the face of disorganization. Yet for all their smarts, they wouldn’t correct the fundamental problems that tugged at their pants with a load of needless difficulty.

The disorganization was almost a source of pride.

If these people had corrected the disorganization, they wouldn’t have anything to discuss during coffee breaks. Oooops, they wouldn’t have anything to discuss. Ooops, let’s change all this talk of “they” and “them” to “me.”

I have problems, not disorganization mind you, but other nagging problems. I have had most of those problems since…since I cannot remember when. I haven’t corrected those problems. If I corrected them, I wouldn’t have anything to talk about over coffee. Let’s restate that one:

If I corrected my long-standing, nagging problems, I wouldn’t have any excuses.

I guess most of us do this. We have nagging problems, and those become handy excuses for our mistakes. Perhaps this is a universal condition among us less-than-perfect people.

What to do? Think about it. After a long thought, perhaps we could remove maybe one of those little excuses.