Some can be bent, others can be broken

Our educational system in this country has from the primary grades right through post-graduate education many, many deficits among them:

• teaching to the middle;
• teaching to the test;
• an improper balance of structure and openness to creative thinking;
• outdated materials;
• politicians interfering with the exploration of ideas and concepts.

All of these things combine to shortchange students in preparing them for life as an adult.

Among its many flaws, though, the one that never gets discussed is the fact that despite the web of them that surround us in a modern society students aren’t taught to recognize systems and to think in terms of systems.

Systems are everywhere, from computer networks to the ecology of the natural world. They can be extremely simple or incredibly complex depending upon the factors and components of the system.

A systems’s boundaries, the availability of resources, feedback and control mechanisms within the system, the degree of openness in a system, whether or not a system takes on new qualities via interaction with other systems and non-systemic elements, and constraints on the system are all factors taken into account when learning the rules of a given system and evaluating its health.¹

Systems also exist in places most people don’t recognize, such as in the relationships among staff members and between staff members and management. This type of system, like all systems, has rules.

Some of those rules are externally imposed: you have to show up for work and do the work in order to get paid. Some of those rules are internally and organically generated: we have staff meetings on Wednesday afternoons. Many of those rules, particularly in a dysfunctional system, are unspoken and shift at the whim of those who obviously hold the power within the system.

I’ve always been pretty good at recognizing the relationship between things and at seeing the systems. What I haven’t always been good at is understanding when a system is so hopelessly dysfunctional that my only choice is to cope within it until I can find a way out. The other flaw I’m noticing in myself recently is something I’ve known about for a while, something that trips me up in all of my relationships, systemic or not, with my fellow human beings: I want to know why.

Once you understand those rules of a given system you can figure out which of them can be bent and which can be broken without completely destroying the system or having the system take note of you². If you know a system’s rules well you can sometimes get it to do things within those rules that its designers may not have intended it to do. Why is the answer to the question “what are the rules of this system?” as often as it is the explanation for how those rules came to be. In some systems, though, why is impossible to determine.

I find myself in one of those situations in which why is inexplicable. I’ve been at the new job for about three months now. My boss, UberDirector, has finally signed my PMAP document and told me that while I have been “doing a good job so far” now is the time when I need to find something to “specialize in and excel at” the same way many of my colleagues have taken on areas of specialty like SEO or video or social media. She wanted me to do this not just for the good of the team, because it’s obviously useful to have in-house experts on which to rely, but also because “if you do the same thing over and over again every day your job just becomes plodding and work should be interesting.”

It was at this point that I told her I was 1) glad to hear that, and 2) that I’d already been thinking out this very thing. I mentioned for the second time in the context of a discussion like this that I was a little frustrated with my duties, that I felt like I was doing a lot of project management but not really using any of my other web related skills and that maybe it would be a good idea for me to try to bridge the gap between the content group where I sit and the operations group that runs the technical side of my division’s business.

It was an interesting gambit as I’ve already been told by my colleagues that as a content manager showing any hint of technical interest or prowess is the fastest route to Management’s shit list. My boss countered with a suggestion that I take a look at the list of subjects generated when the content group met last Fall and discussed the areas in which they felt they needed more instruction or depth of knowledge. As counter moves go, this was pure manipulative genius.

The content group had met the previous week with UberDirector and DeputyDirector to discuss this very list. Because this particular system, the group in which I find myself working, is process rather than outcome oriented, the notes from our discussion, as well as the list of topics, were loaded into an online collaboration tool and we were given a chance to vote on which ones we wanted to bubble up to the top of the list so we knew where it would be best to start our discussions. It wasn’t immediately obvious from the way the poll was set up if we had an opportunity to vote more than one time but it was the discussion that made the exercise interesting.

Because the entire group had been subscribed to receive messages related to this poll when someone posted that very question about voting it went out to all of us. The mechanics of how DeputyDirector’s illuminating reply of “????” went to all of us are pretty simple: he didn’t pay attention to the fact that Reply went to a distribution list not to an individual person. The mechanics of how UberDirector’s reply went to all of us are exactly the same but her response of “I don’t have a clue but was so disappointed in the list. Not big thinking at all!!!!” was extremely illuminating, and it also wasn’t for us to see.

Her formal response to the group, which came the next morning about an hour into the business day, also expressed disappointment and nudged us in the direction she wants us to go – big picture, strategic thinking rather than all that pesky detail stuff that actually makes up our jobs.

Ignoring the fact that the topics on the list – accessibility, usability, HTML and CSS, how to help our client offices plan for new sites, how to help them plan redesigns, plain language writing, information architecture, SEO and meta data, analytics, and social media marketing (among others) – make up not only the core of what we do but can also require a lot of big picture, strategic thinking, it is the list the group created when asked where its members felt they needed help or guidance. It’s also the same list that has already disappointed her with its narrow focus and small thinking from which UberDirector explicitly told me to draw my area of specialty and to find my place to excel.

At this juncture, my need to know why ran head first into the rules of the system in which I now find myself.

My boss has deliberately set me up to fail. By directing me to pick an area of specialty from a list in which she has already expressed disappointment the very best outcome I can achieve in my efforts to meet the goal is disappointment. I can not excel, and in her eyes my efforts are already not useful.

Directing me in a task at which I am bound to fail is a waste of resources and counter productive to her stated outcome orientation for the group she manages. It doesn’t get work done for our internal clients and it won’t help my fellow staff members do their jobs any better. There is no explanation for her behavior that ties to any external goal which means that the only why for how she acts is because she derives some personal pleasure from the results of her actions.

Not being a complete idiot or ignorant of either her behavior or how Government works, I told her that I’d be happy to take a look at the list and see if I found anything interesting.

I estimate I’ve got about a month, maybe 6 weeks before she remembers that she’s tasked me with this. Depending on how things play out, I may actually have to find something on that list to work on. Or she may forget the whole thing.

The thing is that one of the unspoken rules of this system is that UberDirector likes to control everything. Despite proclamations declaring support for independent thinking, every bit of evidence supports the idea that she wants to be consulted about every move.

As I’ve already demonstrated an awareness of this rule and she has responded accordingly she knows that I know how things work. Given that, and given that her response to my statement that I’d look at the list and see if I can find something interesting was a positive one, I’ll be able to truthfully when asked how my efforts to find something to “specialize in and excel at” are going.

According to the rules of this system it’s not my responsibility to create that list and if the outcome is that I find nothing interesting the absence of any further instructions, and any light in UberDirector’s oh so busy schedule to sit down with her to discuss this problem, I have completed my task.

Because a system has rules and when you know how to work them you can make the system work for you.