11 min read · 2,011 words
The World is Exhausting
Last week got away from me. It was Thursday night and I realized not only did I not do a post that day, but I also missed Tuesday, and… a sense of relief washed over me. A thing I didn’t expect. It was just another responsibility that I realized I could just… not do. It was very freeing honestly lol.
And so I didn’t post again on Tuesday. And the relief, while still there, wasn’t as potent.
And then today rolled around and I thought “I have an hour free… I could do this or that or the other thing… or I could just bang out a post and see what happens”.
Which is why you’re reading this, because I landed on banging out a post. Honestly I don’t even have a topic I wanted to cover this week. I just wanted to get some thoughts out, so this is basically me journaling and then saying “here read it if you want”.
But that journaling aspect came with a few realizations: 1) two posts a week is too many for me to do and be a sane person 2) I already am giving myself grace to not always hit my deadline, but I need to remember that in the moment 3) this started as an engineering blog but has become much more a “what is going on in the world and how can that relate back to how we work” blog 4) my strengths are more on leadership and culture so I should lean into that more.
With that… let’s talk about the world.
I find myself saying repeatedly, “what is wrong with people” these days.
And I’ve been trying to think of what causes it and how do we fix it.
Which is weird because I spend most of my time… in my house lol. So this is all me observing people from afar. Making judgements from afar. Being snarky from afar. Whatever it is I’m doing… it’s from afar.
I have opportunities to protest the injustices being done in our world and especially the ones being done in our name… but I don’t go. Like I said in my last post, my post covid brain doesn’t like crowds or lots of people or inconveniences of any kind.
So it’s probably hypocritical of me to say “here’s what’s wrong with all the people I don’t interact with and how we could fix them” lol. But whatever, everything is hypocritical these days. We learned that on the good place. Everything we do touches evil. We can’t control it or fix it on our own, it’s a collective action problem that only can be solved through teamwork and a commitment to a greater good.
But, the problem is, we’re in a stage in our world where the greater good isn’t a shared notion. It is defined differently by different groups of people. Which is how I’m going to weave this into a story about work lol.
One of the biggest problems we encounter at work is the same problem we’re experiencing in society — we have different incentive structures we’re all working toward that make it so our end goals aren’t aligned. And a part of what you need in those situations, is someone who has enough power to be able to change things, while also having the incentive structure to be willing to change things.
Now the tricky part is, from my experience, that needs to come in the form of “my incentive structure is disambiguated from my compensation”. And let me tell you… that’s not normal. You can see it in the politics of our age — no one who is making money cares about anything other than continuing to make their money.
I can list off all the people that are like this but you know who they are.
This is where you need inspirational people who just want to make things better, and I think it’s one of the most important parts of choosing and being a leader that we never talk about. We often talk of charisma, or we talk about policies, or we talk about whether you can trust them… but that’s all a product of something bigger which is - what drives this person to want to be in this position?
There are clearly people in government and in business who are there just to make money. Hell, I wouldn’t work if I didn’t get money either, but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, they are there to benefit financially at the expense of the people they are meant to serve.
Now this is true in government when you see senators and congresspeople trading stocks in industries that they regulate. This is also true for business folks who are making decisions based on their bonus structure instead of what’s best for the business and employees.
And what it comes down to is… we pick our leaders the wrong way.
Woah woah there, I’m not saying democracy is bad lol.
What I’m saying is, we look at the wrong things to determine how successful someone will be at being a leader.
Let’s take my industry. When you’re looking at a business leader typically the first thing that people look at is qualifications. Have you done something similar, do you know the industry, blah blah blah.
And then they’ll look at temperament, do you seem like you would fit in.
But the thing that we don’t take into account, that I think is actually more important than temperament, or even industry knowledge, is what are your morals. What gets you up in the morning, what makes you make the decisions you make, etc.
The how is obviously an important part of the business world, we need to know what the execution plans are, but your decision making process is so much more important to me because you’re not the one doing the work. You’re the one leading the work. So if you make decisions based on how it affects YOU but not how it affects your team, you’re not going to be successful. If you make decisions based on how it affects the company without thinking about how it affects your team, you’re ALSO not going to be successful. If you just think about how it affects your employees, but don’t think about how it’s going to affect the business… that’s right, say it with me - you’re not going to be successful.
And the same thing goes with government. Having a great plan doesn’t mean anything if you can’t execute it or get it passed. Having a great personality doesn’t mean anything if you don’t stand for anything. Standing for something doesn’t mean anything if you can’t organize people to achieve your vision.
Sometimes, you can have it all and still have things go wrong though. When I say you aren’t going to be successful in the last section, I don’t mean “you’re not going to make money”. You might be able to do something terribly and still make money, or still end up on top at the end. That’s not what I define as success.
For me, success is doing the most good for the most people as often as possible.
But that’s where the divergence in our society comes in! Because my definition of success isn’t shared. Clearly for Donald Trump success is making money. For Zohran Mamdani it’s making New York a place that’s affordable for New Yorkers. Those are very different definitions of success and as a result you can’t measure them the same way.
Trump and his supports would say he’s successful. Because he’s made at least a billion dollars since being back in the presidency. But I wouldn’t trade his version of success for mine for any amount of money. What’s a billion dollars worth if you’re actively killing people in the streets, causing world wide panics, and tanking the economy?
For some, they would happily make that trade. And you can’t begrudge them for that — some people are in REALLY bad spots. If it was either work 3 jobs, still not make ends meet, and raise 3 kids, or be a pariah but know that your kids are going to be able to eat every day and sleep under a roof every night and get to live a better life… that’s a much more difficult what if.
But this is the dilemma of being a leader — just like we joke that you ship your org structure, you also ship your values. When you lead your product becomes a component of your leadership style, whether that product is a piece of hardware, software, or laws, regardless you ship your leaders values.
Take Obamacare vs the BBB (I refuse to write the stupid fucking name of this bill, if you don’t know it, please feel free to google it and join in my rage lol).
Obama led the efforts on Obamacare (duh) and it was very pragmatic, it was a half measure, it was meant to appease republicans, and it was sloppy in it’s roll out making it less effective than it could have been. And as much as I love Obama… that sounds a lot like him doesn’t it? He’s a big thinker, he wants to create consensus, he wants to partner with people who disagree with him to find a good middle ground, and he wants to turn down the temperature.
Whereas, BBB… it’s just a money grab. It’s moving money from places where it’s being used well (health care subsidies and things that help people less fortunate than the average American) and funnels it to rich people. Yea, once again, duh, that’s the Trump ethos right there.
This same thing happens in business. We just don’t get as much of a say.
So… how do we fix all of this is the obvious question. And my obvious question is one that I really can’t answer.
I’d love to tell you it’s universal basic income (because I truly think that it’s the solution to a hell of a lot of our problems — like take crime! You want to reduce crime? Reduce the number of people who have few options other than crime by making sure they have enough money to eat and sleep indoors. You want to reduce corruption? Make sure everyone has enough money to live comfortably in the first place!) but it’s probably not because I’m a pinko commie liberal and not representative of how the rest of the country would feel.
I’d love to tell you that it’s being more focused on morals when selecting leaders, but you doing that individually won’t solve things because like I said - this is a collective action problem.
I’d love to tell you that taking to the streets and protesting will solve it but… it didn’t during trumps first term and hasn’t yet this term.
I’d love to tell you it’s only hiring people who have the best interests of both their employees and the company. But inevitably there’s ALWAYS going to be a moment where you have to choose one or the other and there’s not a fool proof way to know how someone will act in that moment.
The real answer (I think) is simply to be more curious. Which is a very Ted Lasso’y thing to say, I know. But it really is true. Looking at what’s happening and trying to figure out why people are acting the way they are instead of looking at them and saying “what’s wrong with people”.
Because the answer to “what’s wrong with people” is that we’re all tired, feel like we’re getting the short end of the stick, and that we’re leaving the world a less safe place for our kids. And we’re all responding in ways that aren’t helpful, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change what’s going on. We can. We just need that collective action to start somewhere. Why not with us?