Here I Go Again

"With great power comes great responsibility." Spiderman got it half right. Add in adulthood, and the responsiblity factor increases at least twofold. I didn't ask to grow up or become competent enough to claim self-reliance, but here I am, in my 30s, supposedly an adult, and supposedly responsible. Yahoo.

Instead of feeling proud of traversing a long and arduous path, arguably accomplishing much, I feel defeated. It's as if life has beat me down only to wallop me in the head and then in the gutt just as I crawl to my feet, and there I am again, communing with the floor. Surprisingly I am not disheartened by this rather loathesome state. Instead, I have become resigned to this being the involuntary, systematic cycle I affectionately call my own private "sin-wave". No, not sine wave. SIN wave. Okay, so it's not always sin that directs my plane into a downward tailspin. But it sure is a plausible explanation of my dizzingly predictable existence.

Not to worry; I am not angry or depressed. This is my plight, and I'm gonna eat it, thank you very much.

Can't Get There From Here

How do you punish effort? Or rather, how can you punish effort? In two rather atypical cases, I find myself with a pair of beaver-like gentlemen who must have a clinical condition barring them from saying no (if there isn't a name for that, they should come up with one). Their everyday work ethic is to be applauded and used as the standard to which their coworkers should strive. But from an external perspective, if you decouple the process from the outcome, you can see an obvious lack of results, because the extra mile walked ended up at the wrong destination. So then comes review time, when ultimately the individual is looking for acknowledgement of who they are (sadly their identity is often wrapped up in their profession). And to everyone's dismay, they are chided for poor choices leading them to practically ignore higher priority tasks. But what choice do I have?

As children, we hear parents and teachers preaching that as long as we did our best, that would be enough. But what they failed to tell us is that there's a world out there that demands results and could care less about what we did and how much work it took to get there. That's not to say we should whip our children into proverbial shape, but it does seem a bit counterproductive to build up their self-esteem only to let the real world beat them down.

Okay, I admit that's a cynical way to look at it, but when I myself am measured by my results, how can I allow my direct reports to stray the course?

More often than not, the extra money ain't worth it.