The Poison of “On a Roll”

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“While we are on a roll” is a phrase often used when a manager has just received notification of success in a number of things or for a particularly tricky deliverable, they use it to signify that while we have this momentum of success we should keep pushing at the same level and see if we can get even more done.

The use of this phrase is one of the most innocently toxic things a manager of any level can say to someone who has just delivered something.

Let me explain.

Somebody has worked their guts off for the company or project, come up with a delivery often going above and beyond and presented it to you, You have then dismissed it most likely with no more than a “Great”, and then said, “Can I have more? and have it faster than last time”

There is a line in “Cider with Rosie” by Laurie Lee that fits this situation

“And the more I got, the more I called for more. It was like feeding a fat young cuckoo”

Every time someone does something for you above and beyond 1. Acknowledge it. Respect the effort, feedback that you respect it and give them a moment to take a breath before you reload them with other things. If you do not respect, give them positive feedback and reward them, then what reason do they have to put the effort in? 2

If you are still wondering why I’m making a fuss over this, imagine you are doing housework and have just spent a hard Saturday gardening and getting some of the really nasty chores done, you complete them and invite your partner out to see your handy work. But they just reply, “Good, As you are in a tidying mood, can you do the bathroom” … do you still feel like going above an beyond with your share of the housework?

  1. and I do mean every time not just the first[↩]
  2. Now there are times when the intention behind this phrase is valid but that is nearly always to do with a third party or a set of access or resources that are not normally available, in which case be specific on what you think would be a good idea to minimise work, i.e. “while we have the XXX team on the call, is there anything else you needed them to answer for you, so we don’t have to organise another call”[↩]

Corporate term: “Peeling the onion”

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Definition:

When rolling out or building a new project, every iteration or every action you take exposes either a new unforeseen problem or an additional action you need complete before being able to move forward.

Explanation:

This is a term actually coined by a recent client. I think I’ve heard it before, but not in general use.
This situation happens often when you’re adopting or moving around on cloud services or in company mergers, it happens where you’re dealing with new infrastructure, or after a large security update in which new rules have been applied, and not all teams are aware of the rule changes, particularly project teams who have been beavering away at their own stuff, so when they try and move out of their silo, or integrate with the corporatization in a wider sense, they end up battling every step of the way, every action they take only exposes another action or another sign off to be achieved from somewhere else before they can complete their work and moreover they are unaware of how many more are still to come.


You might hear it used in the following context :
Q: “So how long is the new system going to take to roll out”
A: “We do not know. We are still peeling the onion!”

 

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Acid Bath and Acid Sam

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The “Acid bath” is a standard fitness set which consists of the following: For standards these all have to be done on the concept2 range of equipment, and they are done at the end of a session. My current pre session consists of 5 rounds ( not done for time) of: 3 chin ups 5 dips 15 Kettlebell Swings (@ 24kg for me) 250m Ski erg (steady pace) Adult males are supposed to do it in 6 mins or less, ladies in 7 mins. I can just do it under 6 minutes (5:52) and it’s significantly harder on the concept 2 stuff, than it is on the run of the mill gym equipment, as the week before this video, I managed a 5:25 with no worries and even a sip of water. I will post regular attempts at trying to get this time down, just as a personal record. Also I’m a little bit obsessed with something I’m going to call “Acid Sam”. So Sam Bradley my awesome PT. Does kettlebells as his major thing with me, and it’s taught me to love them far more than normal weights. One of his challenges is to do 100 kettlebell swings (using a session weight of 24kg) in five minutes, currently I can comfortably do it in 10 mins and at a push can do it in 9. However, this begs the terrible question if you can do the 100 kettlebell snatches in five minutes, and a reasonably good time to do the Acid bath is also 5 minutes, then theoretically you could do them both back to back in 10 minutes. Extremely stupid, but awesome to have a good goal.

Corporate phrase: “Silo Guardian”

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Explanation:

Someone who works in a massively provincial or localised way, resisting any form of globalisation or integration with other systems, such people have often been burnt by previously failed global projects or are just protecting a job, not necessarily evil and often quite talented, just resistant to any change. Sometimes called a “Smaug” Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Why do a Role?

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Why do you do a job role?

This is something that I had a pat answer for many years ago, it was a tripod of reasons I was once told by a contractor.

  1. You do it for money.
  2. You do it for the CV.
  3. You do it because you enjoy it.

You aim for all three of these. You settle for two and you leave at one.

While this logic worked when life was black and white, time and experience seemed to make it seem overly simple, but when you get right down to it, is it? You might have to amend the tripod legs a little bit to make them a bit more comprehensive, but it might still apply. So let’s go through them one by one 

“You do it for money”: Well what do we mean by “Money”, do we mean the market rate?, do we mean enough to retire early?.

Thankfully in the job market there is actually a good general definition for this kind of thing, it comes from a number of the big tech companies, and that is when you pay a resource, you must pay enough money so that they don’t have to think about money day to day, it might not be heaps and heaps, but it’s enough so that people are not distracted from their job by external money problems, doesn’t worry about holidays, does not become worried in the week before pay/invoice day, this will be a balancing act as such an amount is normally above the base market rate that HR and finance use, so as a manager if you are trying to achieve this with your staff members you will have a never ending battle.

“You do it for the CV”: This one is the one that needs firming up the most, because “good for your CV” defines a lot of things, are you at the beginning of your career and just want to bulk up your CV to make it useful, or are you thinking of moving into a specific region or market, I have found through 25 years of being in the corporations and particularly in corporate IT, that about five years is about as far ahead as you can think. Technology changes so much that it’s best not to get bogged down in one year, as you learn a lot of stuff that will die (even if that might show you are cutting edge), But thinking of more than five years and the whole world can change. So, go for that. Think of what this will do for you in the range of two to five years. Finally also think If you have to delete this role from your skill set will that be doable, Some skills actually prove to be toxic to your end CV, or removed for another reason e.g. you did some work for a Government agency. So if you’re going to take one of these on purely for the money, then can you afford to take it off afterwards? 

“You do it because you enjoy it.”, This one is the most subjective. It might seem like you enjoy something, but it might actually just mean the work itself. You might find it technically challenging or socially challenging, but do you genuinely enjoy it as a whole? are work politics toxic?, are there some days you enjoy far more than others, when some people are on holiday is the job much much more fun, on this I think you are going to have to go with an average, and if that is tricky, think of what you feel like when you come back to it from a weeks holiday, are you keen to get stuck in, or are your dreading one part such that it overshadows your whole work.

 

So to me, it DOES seem the tripod, the old contractor way of working things out, still holds true in a more complex time and setting, But you need to think a little bit more about each leg before you make your decision.

For example, enjoyment might not be pure job enjoyment. It might be a case of you are there because a particular person is also there, who working for makes the whole thing fun, if you remove that person is it still fun, look at the company. Is this an enjoyable company to work for. work through each of your legs and try and find a job you genuinely find worth your time and energy.