simplerich

I was reading "Say Alaka’i" over at the Honolulu Advertiser site today where Rosa Say ( author of my favorite management book, Managing with Aloha ) writes a weekly column.

The title of the article was "What If Your Business Got Sick?" and she told two mini stories within the article. The first, (brutally summarized, go read her article) was about her being challenged to think of her business as a person and not an inanimate thing. That mental switch being flipped changes the way we relate to our business. Now. I don’t own my own business, but I’ve worked for the same company (Can it be the same company if it’s changed names and owners several times and my position has changed many times? I think that’s akin to Theseus’ Paradox.)

If my job, my career of the past 15 years were a person what would our relationship be? What would the dynamic between me and my job be? Would it be an equitable one? In a healthy relationship both partners give and take and share with each other. When one person cares more in a relationship… when one person doesn’t treat the other with respect… those aren’t healthy relationships. They’re not lasting relationships.

The funny thing is we wouldn’t put up with it in a relationship with a person we call friend. We’d say they weren’t our friend if someone treated us badly, lied to us, disrespected us. We would say something. We wouldn’t just take it or just put up with it. We’d either address it and see if it’s going to change or we’d break it off. We’d break up. Why is it that with work the rules are different? Because they pay us? Because there’s pay involved? So. Just because there’s money involved doesn’t mean we should put up with a bad relationship with our jobs. Unless we’re masochists obviously.

I’m not a masochist.

My work has changed hands a lot, different owners, different CoO’s, different cultures. And in all that time it’s been fairly equitable. I’ve had great relationships with my bosses and subsequently with my job. It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Obviously. It’s been a fifteen year relationship and there are going to be rocky times. I’ve been very lucky when things got weird or tense or I felt like it wasn’t an equitable relationship I was able to bring it up. I was able to talk about it with my boss and addresses it.

Lately the job itself, the work culture has been a lot different. I’ve wanted to go back to the way things were… We’ve heard the saying that you can never go back… you can’t cross the same river twice. And I don’t know if I’d like it for real if I got to go back… but I’ve been able to talk about it with my boss and he understands it. He understands my differences with the job as it has become. The job has changed over time just like people do. Are we growing apart? Is there a divorce in the future?

It’s a fifteen year relationship. Just like a relationship requires work and patience and communication so does this relationship. Nobody throws away fifteen years worth of relationship over a month or two of tense times or bad times. But if there’s no communication and no real attempt to fix things, no real attempt to work things out, ON BOTH SIDES then the divorce will be inevitable. If I were to sit and brood about how I don’t like things now but don’t talk about it to someone who can actually do something about it then it’ll be my fault if things don’t work out and we break up. If I talk to people able to change things and they don’t change then I will have done what I could. If I expect that just because I tell them to change they must change then I’m being selfish too. It’s not all about me. It’s a relationship and the relationship should be about us. If it gets too one-sided then it would quit being satisfying and dynamic and meaningful. It would lose value. The value in the relationship is in the give and take. It’s in both parties in the relationship caring about the relationship and treating each other in a way that both of them believe is equitable.

Any conclusions from all this? Not as such. This is still new in my head. I only read her column today and it’s still new in my head but it’s still rolling around in there and it has really made a difference in how I’m thinking about things.