Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Widowmakers

I originally intended to start this post with a link to an online definition of the term "widowmaker"; but to my surprise, all the definitions I found were either depressingly literal, or depressingly limited in scope.

Loose branches.

Things that kill husbands.

So I'll have to start out by defining the term myself. A widowmaker is just about what you would imagine, from the word: loose branches, say, that kill husbands when they fall.

But not only.

It's an occupational - or extreme recreational - hazard that literally kills the unwary; a military mission from which you are not expected to return; a rogue beast; a 'perfect storm'; a dangerous or defective device or machine that frequently kills its operators; a lethal weapon [the term is often used with great pride, in this context, by owners of same].

But not only.

A widowmaker is also: an insurmountable obstacle, an impossible task, a career-destroying assignment; something that cannot possibly be managed or completed to the satisfaction of all interested parties - if it can be managed or completed at all - and that must be so managed, or completed, as a condition of said assignment or task.

Not infrequently, those who set such tasks, or make such assignments, do so knowingly. Not always out of malice; often, out of laziness, or a desire to escape responsibility themselves.

I have seen a fair number of widowmakers in my time, and have been handed a few of them. Consider, for instance, being responsible for quality assurance, on just about any production line. If there's a problem, and you halt the line [or reject the lot, or whatever action suits the particular product - anything from ballpoint pens to auto chassis to cancer medication] - you're Holding Up Progress and Costing Money. But, of course, if you don't Hold Up Progress And Cost Money, and then something horrible happens to someone...

Widowmaker. Pure widowmaker. You're an Enemy Within, and there's no way you can't be.

I spent years [this embarrasses me now, for reasons that will shortly be clear] trying to figure out how to de-fang my own particular occupation, which was a widowmaker par excellence. Eventually I realized that it was not possible. My very line of work was a widowmaker. It required me to do a job that was impossible from the outset. Hence the embarrassment: it took much longer for me to realize this, or, probably, to admit it to myself, than it should have. I wanted to believe that I did a job my employers genuinely wanted done; even now, with all of this years in the past, I wish it had been so.

Once you've realized, though, that [a] there are widowmakers aplenty in the World of Work, [b] many people in management know this, and [c] the only way to win is not to play, it does become possible to avoid at least some of them, at least some of the time.

I still fondly remember my one Great Escape from a widowmaker in the guise of a Great Opportunity: wouldn't I like to be put in charge of Special Department X? It would involve a promotion, etc. etc.

Fortunately, I knew enough about X to know what I wasn't being told, which was:
-X needed about three times as much staff as it was ever going to be allocated;
-X was sufficiently complicated [not the same thing as complex: complexity = details; complicated = problems] that key managers were either bored with it or afraid of it [because they didn't want to expend any energy to understand it];
-X would therefore never receive sufficient attention from anyone important - because of that boredom / terror [laziness] factor;
-X was therefore doomed from the get-go.
In this particular situation, however, I also knew that someone I liked and respected was likely to be the Next Pigeon In Line, if I turned X down. I didn't want to see this person tied to an anchor any more than I wanted to experience it myself... in fact, I didn't think anyone should be tied to this particular anchor at all.

So I stalled, asked for time to consider the offer, and tried to figure out what to do. I realized that part of what made X a widowmaker was that it was cobbled together as a dumping ground for things Departments Y and Z didn't feel like dealing with. If I could somehow glamorize these things, there was a very good chance that management would suddenly decide that they were much too important to leave in the hands of a greenhorn like me [or the Next Pigeon In Line]; and if a management favorite was given X, then X might actually be given the resources and attention it needed to succeed.

As it turned out, I didn't succeed in 'repositioning' X to management. Completely by accident, I managed something better. I had decided to take a stepwise approach, so I first wrote a memo outlining the critical, central importance of the components of X, and the importance of highly seasoned managerial oversight of these components. My intended next step would have been a modest refusal of X, as a task for which I was simply not yet worthy - hopefully, positioning X as something far too important to be offered to the Next Pigeon In Line, or any other decent innocent in the vicinity.

I never had to write that modest refusal. My analysis of X was seized upon by the managers of Y and Z as a golden opportunity to inflate their budgets by taking over pieces of X - and then, of course, clamoring for the resources necessary to manage such high-value, critically important responsibilities. X was sensibly dissected, and its parts - with all associated personnel - re-allocated back where they should have been all along. Best of all, those parts of X now had sufficient snob appeal that there was no risk of either myself or the Next Pigeon being invited to take any responsibility for them.

I have little doubt that the managers of Y and Z, in carving up X among themselves, thought they were Taking Away Something - from me or the Next Pigeon - or Keeping Me/Us In My/Our Place, or something similar; many decisions in that organization seemed to me to be driven by similar impulses. And I don't want to come across as noble and self-sacrificing, or as some kind of Machiavellian enfant terrible. None of that was true. I was just someone who had finally figured out that employers often destroy their own employees, through favoritism, inertia and disinterest. I was desperately striving to avoid a career-destroying assignment, without simply ducking or throwing it at the person in line behind me, who didn't deserve it either. The only thing that was sacrificed was an illusionary 'success' that would have been certain failure.

It didn't work as I'd hoped. But it worked. And I actually had a ringside seat as hypercompetitive middle managers... wholly unintentionally, wholly unaware... protected the very people they thought they were 'keeping down'.

And that was glorious.

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