Picked Clean

Another long, but final day of work. And now, well, just twiddling my thumbs...

Well, that is not quite true, because due to my home PC acting up, I chose to purchase my work laptop from the company, because it is relatively cheap and still very good, with an i7 chip and 32 RAM. It was less than half the price than I could pick up something similar, and it has been decent. Pity though, as I was due a new laptop at the end of this month, though it is the time that reduces the price. What this means though, is that they had to wipe it (the programs, not the case) and add a clean install.

While it didn't actually take me that long to get what I needed on there for my own entertainment, as that is just Brave and Hive Keychain, I will also have to set up my business again and I have decided to use M365 for my business tools, because I am now quite familiar with them after the last six years. This is a shift away from Google. But, I am just not very smart anymore (and likely never was), because it has been a struggle to get anywhere with it. I am not a great at admin at the best of times, and as a systems admin, even worse.

I realize it is going to take me time to get back into the groove of being a solo entrepreneur, because I have effectively been spoilt in a company and got stupider as an individual. When I was just working by myself, I had to do nearly everything alone, so in any one day I was mearing multiple task hats. But, in a company with an IT, a P&C, a marketing, product, sales, services, support.... and every other kind of department needed in a tech company, I narrowed my task list down to role-specific actions.

What I have reminded of over the last few days is that I actually did a hell of a lot more than the tasks on my desk, but I wasn't accredited for it. My supervisor was someone who is on the spectrum and very organized, detail orientated and a stickler. She is very good at her job, but unless there is a paper trail, a report, a document created, it doesn't exist.

And, I bought it up in my exit interview today with someone from the People and Culture Team (HR), because a lot of the value I bring to the table isn't going to create a document directly, or tick off a box on someone's milestone list. For instance, a lot of the conversations I have are directly related to value-adding activities, but aren't going to be attributed to me once they are in development.

But more importantly perhaps than this, there are also value-adding "tasks" that I have been instructed or expected to do, that doesn't go into adding any kind of value to me. For instance, I was going to be heading over to a new team in 2025 that was thrown together a year and a half ago and has struggled to gel as a team, so while they are all very good at their role, they are disjointed, underperforming, and rather non-collaborative as a team. My core job was to perform in my role, but the secondary tasks was to bring them together as a team, even though I would not be their lead.

The value of this is enormous in companies, but as I mentioned above, it doesn't make much of an impact on the paper trail that my supervisor would use to rate me - and she is the one that directed me to do it. That is an issue, because it is not an easy task, nor is it one that happens in a short time frame. It is a lot of work, it takes a lot of interpersonal connection and support for others, but, there is very little chance of actually quantifying the value of it, and therefore, it doesn't exist.

And this creates an organizational problem. Because if they only incentivize what can be quantified, all of the little interactions that add up to large scale changes, don't happen. This means that only the engineered activities get energy, and they tend not to align very well without all of the other interaction grease that gets them moving in the same direction.

I brought this up with the person from P&C too. Where is the incentive for others to do that work, when they have seen that it is not only not rewarded, it might be punished, because it didn't make a paper trail. Over the last year and a half, there has been a concerted push to tick boxes, rather than small behavioural changes, which is likely because of the new investors coming in to buy. For them, it is all about those quantifiable numbers.

Long term, focus on the numbers and lose sight of what actually pushes those numbers up, both in the organization and externally. Over time, all of the interaction mortar falls from between the seams, and the brickwork collapses. The cost of realignment can be immense, if not impossible, and many companies struggle for years once they get into that kind of cultural mindset.

At the end of the day, business is driven by humans on the demand side, and they require support as they work on the supply side also. The quest for maximization of profits through the reduction of staff and salaries that grow slower than inflation, will soon lead to a reduction in consumer spending, meaning that they will find it increasingly difficult to make their budgets. But, that is more at the macro level. At the micro level, companies that focus on maximizing profits, will often lose their best, and the cost of training and retention exacts a heavy toll.

Next week, I will dive more into the future of work for myself, but I think that this weekend I am going to spend most of it just hanging out with family and winding down after what has been a frustrating, disappointing and saddening month or two. At least for now though, I am not too bitter or fearful of the future, though I am not exactly sure why, because I probably should be.

What did make it a bit better this morning was Smallsteps.

Before going to school she gave me a kiss and said, "have a good work day". After walking a few steps she stopped and turned and said, "I love you daddy, even if you don't have a job".

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]