Tag Archives: perspective

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Like so many others in recent memory, this week could be a laundry list of annoyances from the great to the petty. As always, I tried to drill into the beating heart of the three that annoyed me most this week… but ask me again in five minutes and the list could have easily changed again.

1) Hiring freeze. One of the fun aspects about a hiring freeze is that although people go away and are not replaced, the things that they were doing while they were working never go away. They just get shifted around until they find someone who can do a half-assed job of getting them done. It’s the old standard philosophy of “doing more with less.” It’s a perfectly find concept when applied as a stopgap measure lasting for a relatively short duration. As a permanent part of the business model, it’s somewhat more problematic. At some point the system comes collapsing down under the weight of its own absurdity and the lords of creation have to accept one of four options: 1) Call in reinforcements; 2) Accept that sometimes they’ll just have to do fewer things with the reduced number of resources; 3) Fire everyone and hope a new crew can do it better; or 4) Continue to do everything as usual with a consequently lower level of quality. What you can’t do over the long term is keep taking on additional work while keeping up with business as usual.

2) 216 miles. Having driven or flown across most of the country at some point over the last ten years, I’ve never given much thought at to distance. It’s always just been ground to cover. Lately, though, I’ve been thoroughly, thoroughly annoyed by 216 miles. I guess perspective, and motivation, change everything.

3) The Pinterest-ing of Facebook. I like Facebook. Or I like the concept of Facebook. I’m not sure I’m a fan of how it’s evolving, but that’s another post. I like Facebook as a tool for delivering pithy updates, comic pictures of cats, and generally keeping up with friends and family. What I‘m not so much a fan of is how recently my newsfeed has been taken over by recipes, chain posts, and all manner of corporate ads. I can’t do anything about the ads and I’m not going to de-friend anyone, but you can bet your sweet ass I’m exerting extreme editorial control over the “Change What Updates You Get” function.

Perspective… It’s a bitch

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One of the best parts of working for Uncle is the people you get to meet. I almost physically bumped into President Bush while I was coming out of the john at FEMA headquarters and have met Members of Congress, department secretaries, and other official worthies at equally odd times and places. Today, I got to sit in on a talk given by Sal Giunta. It’s a name some of you might recognize. In 2010, he became the first living Congressional Medal of Honor recipient since the end of the Vietnam War. Though he disputes the appellation, he is the operative definition of what it means to be an American hero.

The trouble with meeting legitimate heroes, of course, is it tends to force you to reevaluate all of your own griping and complaining. Aww. Poor baby. You don’t like going to meetings? You hate updating all these damned PowerPoint slides? Should we get you a Medal of Honor too? Touché.

So if you’re wondering why nothing annoys Jeff this week, it’s because after listening to a Medal of Honor recipient, nothing that annoys me is even worth a second thought.

Perspective… It is a bitch.

June 4th…

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At just about this time last year I was standing in a house stacked literally to the ceiling with boxes, furniture, and the general ephemera of life. If I’m remembering correctly the first couple of days of June were some ridiculous combination of a sprint and a marathon. June 1st was a 900 mile drive. June 2nd was my first look at the rental house and signing the lease. On the 3rd I finally took possession of the house while the property manager was still (badly) trying to paint over a particularly hideous colored wall in the basement . On the 4th I checked in at the new job and watched as every shred of personal property I owned was hand carried into the house by a truck driver and his nephew from Arkansas. To say there was a lot going on might be a bit of an understatement. The things you can do when you’re fueled almost exclusively by coffee and adrenalin are simply amazing.

With that little trip down memory lane wrapped up, it begs the larger question – Where did the last year go? It feels like I just sat down for a minute and suddenly it’s June again. I vaguely remember a few cold days in there somewhere that must have been winter, or at least what passed for winter last year. I dimly recall raking leaves at a point that feels fairly recent, so I’m almost sure there was a fall in there somewhere, too. Honestly, though, most of it has been a blur.

Perspective is a funny thing. When I was a kid, the summer seems to stretch out forever into the distance. Now I’m half afraid I’ll wake up one morning and find snow on the ground and Christmas coming on fast. I’d love to slow up a little and take it all in, but I don’t dare take my hand off the throttle. I’m not sure I know who I am if I’m not going in three or four directions at once.

Doing God’s work…

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Sometimes I leave the office at the end of the day feel like I’m doing God’s own work. Other times I feel like I’ve spent the day beating myself bloody against a great stone wall. Nothing uncommon about that, I guess. The problem isn’t that there’s too much or too little to do, as much as it is there’s no moderating influence. Monday might be silent as a tomb and the next day you run with your hair on fire from the time you set foot in the building. That’s not a complaint (seriously), just a statement of fact. Still, it would be awfully nice if there was some way to smooth out the peaks and valleys on the demand side of the equation. When I figure that out, I’ll get busy writing my best selling leadership and management book and retire with a nice royalty check. Until then, I’ll just keep my head down until the winds shift.

Since I’m always the optimist, it’s worth noting that I still smile when I drive across the Susquehanna at 4:25 every afternoon. It’s worth remembering that no matter how strange the day has been, my days were always stranger in West Tennessee than this place could ever hope to be. The benefit of having been on the bottom looking up is that by comparison, everything else looks like ice cream and lollipops.

Perspective…

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There’s nothing like a retirement party to put a career in perspective. We all like to think of our working lives as being productive and valuable and perhaps that maybe after 30 years of work, we’ve left our mark. Most of us, of course, would be wrong in thinking that. Sure, there are exceptions – Hyman Rickover is the father of the nuclear submarine force; Henry Bessemer made steel economical; Watson and Crick identified the double helix structure of DNA – but for the average schmo sitting in a cubicle there aren’t going to be entries in even the most obscure history book – unless you create your own entry in Wikipedia.

I attended a retirement luncheon – a function that no one ever really wants to go to, but that guarantees a long lunch without anyone getting on your case – and had the dismaying realization that even the people working next to you don’t really have a clue what you do on a day to day basis. The highlight of the “ceremonial” portion of the event was the soon-to-be-departed employee’s supervisor saying a few kind words. One would hope to hear how they made the workplace better, or contributed to the war effort, or saved homeless kittens in their spare time.

What this particular career boiled down to was this: A supervisory musing about how he’d “always remember the great report you wrote about the problems in Peoria.”

Wow. That’s perspective.

For most of us, that’s how a career is going to end. Think on that next time you’re working late on an “important” project or skipping vacation days to make sure a project is finished on time. In 20 or 30 years when your middle of the road colleagues are sitting around a table at a middle of the road restaurant bidding you farewell it’s likely all you’ve done is written a great report about Peoria.

Live your life accordingly.

Editorial Note: This is part of a continuing series of previously unattributed posts appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Note to self…

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It’s good to be reminded from time to time that at some level, I’m basically a hermit. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing… Just one of those little personality quirks I’ve come to actually appreciate in time. Every time I start to think that maybe I’m missing something, life throws a gentle nudge to put things back in the proper perspective. Nice work life. Nice work, indeed.