Massacre in the War Room
Note to self: If you interview at a company that has a weekly meeting with a name that has anything to do with war, conflict, carnage, etc., run!
My tendency to over commit went splat yesterday in our war room meeting. The CEO, B, was his ballistic self when we went over the schedule from my project, Marlin. Marlin is having trouble getting out the door due to a history of not creating anything of quality and not having a process in place to do the right thing instead of the expedient thing. So here I am three months later the fall guy for things not working. B and M, my boss the VP, do not really want to step up and say they have been fucking up.
B is an abusive type. He likes to get angry in meetings and intimidate everyone. I am not about getting intimidated so I am just trying to hold my ground. However, under pressure I tend to be stupid, I start trying to, tell the truth. I have this naive belief in truth telling. I believe people will calm down and take a look. I guess it must work sometimes, but often it fails. Yesterday it failed. B is only interested in meeting the schedule or not. We should have been done now, and last week I said we were a week behind and that we would try to bring it in. This week I am giving worse news, we are two weeks out and given everything that needs to be done and the reality of our recent performance, I say we should slip the date a month. This is what he says he wants, early warning. Not really though because now he is very angry. I respond with a lame, “well clearly I am not on top of the schedule.” He wants to know why, and I start to hand wave about having more on my plate than I can get done. He lectures me about my job is to give a schedule everyone else in the company can rely on. I respond with if you want certainty rather than best effort then we should add another two weeks on the schedule. Now he is ready to really deride me. He drops down into asking for detail into what everyone on the team is doing. I simply attempt to comply but my weakness is detail under pressure. So I’m not doing a very good job. My boss is trying to help, but I don’t want him too so I step on his words a few times. It goes on for a while, discussing irrelevant detail but B stops it as I’m sure he realizes this is stupid and pointless. We discuss an alternative, which I assert in the meeting is no better then the path we are on; this is my bosses out so he is not happy with me. The meeting ends with B telling M he needs him in his office. I am supposing to discuss what to do with me.
I am wondering if I will have a job on Monday as B is an extremist and I don’t expect he is willing to take responsibility for the problems. It might be easier for him to blame me then to really look at what and why things are going wrong in the company. I’m not actually figuring on being fired but I would not be surprised if some other silliness happens, e.g. they put G over me to handle my schedule and decide to relegate me to a bit player. If that happens, I start looking again. I am certain that if they are not capable of self-examination that they will doom us to failure in any case.
This is the Silicon Valley disease, dysfunctional organizations trying to succeed. Most of them do not. They are always asking everyone to commit to the impossible, and they never succeed, but they believe that they get the best effort this way. My CEO seems to have a broken version of it, though. He wants both. He is not getting it but he does not see the fault with him or is not willing acknowledge the fault in himself. I am not clear about my role in this but I will listen and try to stay clam and watch where this goes.
I struggled yesterday not to go into a fear place with all of this. I am trying to do too much and I am very tried which did not help. I noticed that this fear place is just abandonment of Self. If I chose to forget my Self then fear could have its way, but if I remembered my Self then the fear had no power. Each time I felt the out of control come up I would ask what is it and is it real. I fear the consequences of this going wrong, i.e. being fired; my resources are stretched to the breaking point and that is what drives the reaction stuff. I declared a shift in my awakeness and the universe is testing the hypothesis.
The mind does not want to give up the myth that awakeness will somehow make all things go right in the world. I am discovering that awakeness won’t, it won’t, guarantee a losses life, or grief. This has been my spiritual sugar coating that has prevented me from embracing Truth. Living in Truth does not wave a magic wand and make the world all better. It changes fundamentally who I am and how I respond in the world, but it does not prevent the consequence of poor choice. It does not heal miraculously all of the pain and dysfunction around me, or even in me. It just changes my relationship to it, which creates the opportunity to affect new outcomes.
Note to self: Embrace life fully, even in the war room. Remember that if this is where you are, it must be what you want.
redslime
My tendency to over commit went splat yesterday in our war room meeting. The CEO, B, was his ballistic self when we went over the schedule from my project, Marlin. Marlin is having trouble getting out the door due to a history of not creating anything of quality and not having a process in place to do the right thing instead of the expedient thing. So here I am three months later the fall guy for things not working. B and M, my boss the VP, do not really want to step up and say they have been fucking up.
B is an abusive type. He likes to get angry in meetings and intimidate everyone. I am not about getting intimidated so I am just trying to hold my ground. However, under pressure I tend to be stupid, I start trying to, tell the truth. I have this naive belief in truth telling. I believe people will calm down and take a look. I guess it must work sometimes, but often it fails. Yesterday it failed. B is only interested in meeting the schedule or not. We should have been done now, and last week I said we were a week behind and that we would try to bring it in. This week I am giving worse news, we are two weeks out and given everything that needs to be done and the reality of our recent performance, I say we should slip the date a month. This is what he says he wants, early warning. Not really though because now he is very angry. I respond with a lame, “well clearly I am not on top of the schedule.” He wants to know why, and I start to hand wave about having more on my plate than I can get done. He lectures me about my job is to give a schedule everyone else in the company can rely on. I respond with if you want certainty rather than best effort then we should add another two weeks on the schedule. Now he is ready to really deride me. He drops down into asking for detail into what everyone on the team is doing. I simply attempt to comply but my weakness is detail under pressure. So I’m not doing a very good job. My boss is trying to help, but I don’t want him too so I step on his words a few times. It goes on for a while, discussing irrelevant detail but B stops it as I’m sure he realizes this is stupid and pointless. We discuss an alternative, which I assert in the meeting is no better then the path we are on; this is my bosses out so he is not happy with me. The meeting ends with B telling M he needs him in his office. I am supposing to discuss what to do with me.
I am wondering if I will have a job on Monday as B is an extremist and I don’t expect he is willing to take responsibility for the problems. It might be easier for him to blame me then to really look at what and why things are going wrong in the company. I’m not actually figuring on being fired but I would not be surprised if some other silliness happens, e.g. they put G over me to handle my schedule and decide to relegate me to a bit player. If that happens, I start looking again. I am certain that if they are not capable of self-examination that they will doom us to failure in any case.
This is the Silicon Valley disease, dysfunctional organizations trying to succeed. Most of them do not. They are always asking everyone to commit to the impossible, and they never succeed, but they believe that they get the best effort this way. My CEO seems to have a broken version of it, though. He wants both. He is not getting it but he does not see the fault with him or is not willing acknowledge the fault in himself. I am not clear about my role in this but I will listen and try to stay clam and watch where this goes.
I struggled yesterday not to go into a fear place with all of this. I am trying to do too much and I am very tried which did not help. I noticed that this fear place is just abandonment of Self. If I chose to forget my Self then fear could have its way, but if I remembered my Self then the fear had no power. Each time I felt the out of control come up I would ask what is it and is it real. I fear the consequences of this going wrong, i.e. being fired; my resources are stretched to the breaking point and that is what drives the reaction stuff. I declared a shift in my awakeness and the universe is testing the hypothesis.
The mind does not want to give up the myth that awakeness will somehow make all things go right in the world. I am discovering that awakeness won’t, it won’t, guarantee a losses life, or grief. This has been my spiritual sugar coating that has prevented me from embracing Truth. Living in Truth does not wave a magic wand and make the world all better. It changes fundamentally who I am and how I respond in the world, but it does not prevent the consequence of poor choice. It does not heal miraculously all of the pain and dysfunction around me, or even in me. It just changes my relationship to it, which creates the opportunity to affect new outcomes.
Note to self: Embrace life fully, even in the war room. Remember that if this is where you are, it must be what you want.
redslime