Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A  practice in government was labeling people. It was a lazy but oft-used practice. Happenstance was the main source of labels.

I worked in government 28 years. Managers were often overwhelmed with things to do. Much of the “work” was self-created, but that is another story for another time. Anyways, one result of being overwhelmed was that the managers often labeled people quickly and those labels stuck.

One way of dividing people, especially engineers, was as either (1) a manager of established projects or (2) a creator of new projects. I was labeled a manager of established projects. It was easy to acquire the label. The basic process was:

1. I was managing an established project.
2. A manager walked in.
3. The manager noticed me doing a good job at managing an established project.
4. I was given the label.

Yes, that is a sophisticated as it got. When you walked in, I was doing X and doing it well. Hence, you labeled me as an X.

Part of the fallacy of this process (there are many fallacies in it) is that a person can only be good at one thing. There is no overlap among groups – that simply is not possible.

Side Note: Beware of anything regarding people that is simply not possible. People tend to break everything that is simply not possible.

If you walk in a room and see someone do a job and doing it well, do not assume that they are a specialist in that job. It just happened to be what they were doing when you happened to walk in the room. There is no more and no less there.