Aspire to the be Least

It may sound absurd, but expecting to find a job where the emphasis is on productive work, is generally unrealistic and will even, possibly, be perceived as hostile and anti-social. The only generally safe exception is early stage startups. They are often in a do-or-die place where accelerating time-to-market is the difference between survival and extinction. Formalities and legalities be damned.

If not productive work, then what is the typical focus? Camaraderie, relationships, team building, corporate value reinforcement, metrics and KPIs, productivity analogs, and so on. These are the luxuries of companies that no longer must focus on survival.

This is in no way a joke. I've received negative feedback from a direct manager because, "you don't talk enough in meetings." It was an eye-opening moment for me. I had wondered why others would either ask obvious questions or contribute reams of pointless dialog. They understood the metrics on which they were being graded, and they played to those metrics. My life would be easier if I had that mentality.

Fake Friends

Any group – a SEAL team, Boy Scout troop, siblings or whatever – with strong relationships will be superior in its group performance to one with bad or no relationships (particularly when adversity strikes). The mistake in Corporate America is the belief that such relationships can be fostered artificially or otherwise accelerated through games, parties, corporate events, off-sites, ice-breakers, get-to-know-you quizzes, etc. All of this is actually a net negative. It works against their goal. It creates a facade that looks like progress but is thin and brittle and costly. It is the robotic and alien understanding of what draws people together: "We see you Earthlings with good relationships spend fun time together, so we will force fun times together to build good relationships." It is as entirely absurd as it sounds.

True Friends

So, what does build strength in a group? Simply put: shared adversity. When you look back on decades of marriage, or an enduring childhood friendship, or a trustworthy business partner – what were the moments that defined your relationship and made it stand out from the casual relationships that fade with time? Was it the corporate off-site and the holiday trivia games? No. It is the moments when you endured and survived together. It is the seasons of adversity that the Lord uses to draw us closer to Him, and the same principle is true of our peer relationships.

I spent a month with a friend in a tiny tent while climbing a mountain. He and I have precious little in common, but I would be overjoyed to see him at any moment. You learn a lot about someone when struggling together to fulfill a challenging shared goal where most others fail.

How Then?

If we can't send our engineering team off to BUD/S, what then? This will be impossible for any outgoing personality to accept: just don't do anything. Work is adversity. Relationships will form. Organically. Stop being the corporate equivalent of a match-maker. It might be socially acceptable, but it is objectively creepy and weird – if you take even a moment to think about it.

Be Unimportant or be Expensive

If you're not at an early stage startup, is all hope lost? Maybe.

Many important people spend a lot of time in meetings. It is absolutely a key indicator of value for many in corporate America – the crowdedness of one's calendar. So, you can be as unimportant as possible. The janitor likely doesn't have many show-and-tell or business strategy meeting invites.

The other way to go is to be expensive. Insofar as most meetings likely don't need all of those participants and likely could have just been an email, if you are spending time in meetings instead of working, you aren't charging enough.

Shopify was in the news a couple years back regarding the cost of meetings.

“This meeting could have been an email,” is an expression that I’d argue has crossed everyone’s mind at least once. But Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce company, has implemented a meeting cost calculator to curb pointless group meetings. They’re all about clearing the calendar.

“Time is money, and it should be spent on helping our merchants succeed and not on unnecessary meetings,” according to Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister.

Looking at this revelation more broadly, consider all of the "paperwork" (sometimes literal, sometime metaphorical), processes and procedures for a job. If you work at a nuclear power plant, the opportunity cost for optimizing process is too high to warrant a small cost savings. For all other industries though....

I had a job where there was a huge push for each employee to demonstrate how AI can be used to drive efficiency at the company. Sounds good on the surface, sort of. But instead of looking at eliminating or simplifying unnecessary processes, they wanted to add automation to all of it. I’m willing to bet that they added more process as a result of any increased efficiency.

Anyway, I'm way off topic now.