Author Archives: Sherri

What’s Your BATNA?

We spend our entire lives negotiating, and for the most part we hate it.  I, personally, hate negotiating for a variety of reasons.  For one, it always seems combative and I dislike conflict.  Related, I always fear that I’m being taken advantage of or that I’m leaving something on the table.  And finally, if I want to avoid those first two feelings, I need to do a lot of homework.  Since we’ve already established that I’m a basically lazy person, it is understandable that I dislike negotiating.

You can’t get away from it, though.  You negotiate terms of a job.  You negotiate to buy a car.  You negotiate ALL THE TIME with your partner on everything, including “little” daily things like chores around the house, what’s for dinner, and what you watch on TV.  Back in the day when I used to travel a lot for business, I regularly paged through those inflight magazines they used to put in seatback pockets.  Those magazines were riddled with advertisements geared to the business traveler and invariably there were several on negotiating skills.  A famous one had in bold letters across the top:  You don’t get what you ask for; you get what you negotiate.  The inference, of course, is that blindly just asking for what you wanted or needed was a fool’s errand.  You must get confrontational and NEGOTIATE—take them for all they’ve got!  It’s not surprising, then, that most people treat negotiating like a war game.  Or just a war.  It is about winning.  It is about getting what you want and making the other guy give up more than he really wanted to give up.  And then I learned about BATNA.  The concept is not revelatory so much as being intentional about applying it.

BATNA is an acronym for Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.  Your BATNA is the minimum you will accept.  Your walkaway point.  It’s what you will have if you can’t come to an agreement with the other party.  By definition, you’re ok with that outcome.  Maybe not happy, but you can live with it.  Let’s say you are at a street fair and you walk up to a vendor selling windchimes.  You love windchimes.  Who doesn’t?  You select a set, look at the price tag and think, “Yeah, no.  Too expensive.”  You have a price point in your head.  If the seller agrees to it, you have yourself a new set of windchimes.  If not, you walk away.  Your BATNA, in this case, is “I don’t have a new set of windchimes.”  That’s acceptable to you.  Now imagine that your best friend, who has a big birthday coming up, tells you about this FABULOUS set of wind chimes she saw at a street fair a while back and she is kicking herself for not buying them.  She had even snapped a picture and sent it to you and you could see it was the SAME vendor and SAME set of windchimes.  Now your BATNA is different.  You REALLY want to get those windchimes.  You will probably accept a higher price because the value to you (to please your friend) is much higher.

I learned about the concept of BATNA at a mini-MBA intensive short course that was geared toward R&D managers.  It was revelatory for all of us.  Now there was a logical approach to negotiating that we could navigate and it was not a war simulation.  You “just” had to understand your BATNA and the BATNA of the person you were negotiating with!  If there was an overlap, then you could find agreement.  If not, you both accepted your respective BATNAs and moved on.  Simple, right?  Well, we’re only halfway through the essay so of course it’s not that simple!

Let’s start with understanding your own BATNA.  Sometimes it can indeed be simple.  When I bought my last car, I had to decide if I was going to trade in my old car with the dealer or sell it separately.  I didn’t want to deal with a private sale, so I went to a couple of those places that buy your car and got a quote.  Both gave me EXACTLY the same quote.  After I had negotiated the price of my new car (that’s another, longer story) we discussed a trade.  I had decided that if they matched the quotes I had gotten, I would trade in my car with them.  Why?  My BATNA was not about maximizing the value I could get from my old car.  It was about minimizing hassle.  I’m sure I could have gotten significantly more money if I pursued a private sale, but I didn’t want the bother.  If the dealer wouldn’t match the other offers, then it was minimal additional hassle for me to go to one of those car buying places.  If the dealer DID match their offer, then I would get the same monetary value with even LESS hassle.  They matched.  I drove my new car home that day. 

Other times, knowing your BATNA is not so straightforward and this is why being intentional about understanding your BATNA is so important.  In the example above, I could have tried insisting on a retail price for my trade because I might have felt that I should get the Blue Book price.  Anyone who is a car dealer has, I’m sure, dealt with the “but my car is worth so much more than that” customer.  I didn’t do that because I understood the trade-off between the price I could get for my car and the hassle associated with getting that price and I intentionally chose to value low hassle over high price.  Deciding on a new job or moving to a new home are good examples of more complex BATNA calculations.  There are a lot more factors to consider than just the salary or the housing costs.  There are many, many factors in determining your BATNA that have to do with what truly makes you happy or at least content.  Teasing out those factors requires a really authentic look at yourself and honestly accepting what you know works for you and what doesn’t.  How many of us have made unfortunately bad choices because we established our BATNA based on what we wished represented our true desires instead of accepting what we really want?  That doesn’t mean you can’t make a bold choice aimed at broadening who you are, but you need to make that choice purposefully and accept the work it will take to make that happen.  If you are not purposeful about it, you end up putting yourself in the situation and hoping that you will suddenly find yourself happy in a context you’ve never been happy in before.  How well does that usually work?  This theme of authenticity is so critical!  Yes, Brené Brown seems to work her way into all of my essays.

The other, even tougher, part of the BATNA equation is understanding the BATNA of the negotiating party.  In addition to forcing yourself to take an authentic look at the situation from your own perspective, you now need to put yourself in the shoes of the other party and tease out what is truly important to THEM.  In a business setting, this involves sleuthing around the other party’s business model and financial position.  If you are negotiating project deadlines with a co-worker from a different function, you have a much better chance of finding agreement if you take the time to understand their business function and how their needs intersect with yours.  If your idea of negotiating a timeline is, “This is when I need it.  Period,” then don’t expect a lot of cooperation. 

While business negotiating often involves personal agendas, negotiating with the people in your private life is ALL about personal agendas.  When you are negotiating a vacation with your spouse, it involves understanding what they like to do and not do, as well as knowing the range of their travel preferences and what their breaking points are.  Surely there will be negotiating room between your two BATNAs.  If not, you have a different problem.  Understanding someone’s BATNA is synonymous with expressing empathy.  And expressing empathy means being able to be non-judgmental and accepting that someone else’s preferences are just as valid as your own.  It’s pretty easy, though, to forget about diversity of preference when we’re negotiating with someone.  Our way is the way that makes the most sense for us, therefore it should be the right way for everyone, right?  Your BATNA should never be everything you could possibly want.  Compromise is not a dirty word if you can be honest about your BATNA and keep an open mind about someone else’s.  So, the next time you’re negotiating with someone or arguing righteously about some topic, take a moment to step back and ask not only “what is my own BATNA” but also “what’s your BATNA”.  You just might find some common ground.

The State of “Flow”

Everyone experiences the state of flow now and then.  What is it? The guy who literally wrote the book on the topic, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes this state of “optimal experience” this way:  “Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.  Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.  An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous.”  (Quoted from Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience)  Full disclosure: I have this book and have skimmed but not studied it.  What follows is my own take on “flow”.  If you want the full scholarly treatment, I encourage you to read the book.

The example of flow that inspired me to write this essay is the experience I achieve during spin class.  I can achieve flow in other ways but it’s most consistent when I spin, so I’ll use that as my primary example.  I’m sure you can think of your own.  For some people it’s a hobby like playing a musical instrument or gardening or building furniture or model airplanes.  For Trish, it’s painting.  Flow is achieved with some activity that so totally absorbs you that there is nothing else but that activity.  It can last for hours for some people.  For me, I’m lucky to achieve flow for half an hour.  I just can’t still my mind long enough to stay engaged in anything for hours.  I have the attention span of a gnat.  But that is what makes even a half hour of flow so precious to me.  It’s rewarding.  It’s rejuvenating.  It is profoundly satisfying.

For me, the ideal activity to achieve a state of flow is something that requires precision and concentration yet also contains a bit of repetition.  Maybe that’s why I love Baroque music so much and fractals make me weak in the knees.  My mind enjoys patterns yet also needs variations on that theme.  Spin class is clearly in that vein.  It’s not that complicated; you are pedaling on a stationary bike.  You don’t have to steer or avoid potholes or watch out for cars.  You don’t even have to balance!  You just get on the bike, clip into the pedals (yes, I spent an insane amount of money for shoes with the clips in the soles), and move your legs up and down.  Spin class does, however, require a bit of skill and intense concentration.  The skill part comes with understanding how to properly balance your weight in the different positions so you can push hard without injuring yourself.  It does not take years of schooling and an advanced degree to attain this skill, but there is some pain involved.

When I took my first tentative steps toward spinning a few years ago, I had to work up to that threshold skill level.  I started with “Gentle Cycle for Seniors” which was anything BUT gentle.  I needed several sessions just to figure out the optimal settings for me on the bike: where to set the handle bars, seat height, seat depth.  There was figuring out what the right baseline gear was for me so I didn’t peak in the first five minutes of the class.  Then there was figuring out how to “run on the pedals” when in a standing position without killing my knees.  And I won’t even get into the “seat pain” issue.  This is the first lesson:  flow rarely happens the first time you do something.  You need to develop that threshold skill level that allows the activity to become comfortable, pleasurable, and gratifying.  I kept going because there was just something about spinning that looked like I would like it.  Eventually, I got there.

I wish I could be one of those people that can sustain a state of flow for hours.  The closest I come is when I get absorbed in a good book, but I more consider that losing myself in a good story and excellent writing than achieving a state of flow.  I have actually sort of achieved flow working on spreadsheets.  I get some weird pleasure from spreadsheets where I can set up formulae and—be still my heart!—pivot tables.  During my later work years, it was actually calming for me when I worked up my weekly business performance numbers and our scorecard measures.  I got so efficient at it that at times I would actually be disappointed when I finished.  It was a sad day when I was forced to give over that task when my job role changed and I no longer had direct responsibility for day-to-day business management.  I had trouble letting it go because I never really saw it as a burden.  I am embarrassed to admit that I complained about it because I felt I SHOULD consider it a burden!

I also can achieve short bouts of flow when prepping for cooking.  With a good sharp knife and some clever assistive devices, chopping vegetables can be a meditative experience.  It has all of my requirements for a state of flow:  repetition with variation, a need for skill and precision, and a requirement for concentration.  What limits me is that standing on my feet for long periods is tiring and, well, you only need so many chopped vegetables for any given dish.

But let’s get back to spin!  Here is the anatomy of experiencing flow during a typical 45 minute spin class.  During the first five minutes, I am warming up my body and settling into position—becoming “one with the bike,” if you will.  I have my water bottle and my sweat towel but don’t need either yet.  There’s music.  There’s the instructor running down what the upcoming challenges will be.  I’m focusing on that feeling of my legs moving up and down, up and down, getting into that rhythm.  After that first few minutes of warm up sprints and a small hill, we get down to business.  I’m feeling the music, usually timing my strokes to the beat.  I’m hearing the instructor’s directions on gear and position and just responding.  I know what my body can take and for how long and I work to get to that point where I just can’t do any more.  For the next 20-25 minutes, I am in a state of glorious flow.  My mind is totally focused on my body and the commands from the instructor.  I feel the exertion, know when I am approaching my limits, and push right up to the edge until we back off that particular challenge.  I feel the pain of the exertion and it’s almost addictive.  I want more!  Until I don’t.  THAT point usually comes with 10-15 minutes to go.  Flow is done.  Now I’m getting tired and the concentration is focused on doing the best I can and getting to the end.  The relief when that last song is over combines with the endorphins from the workout.  I’m basically worthless the rest of the day and it’s awesome.

Mihaly says you can purposefully create the conditions to achieve a state of flow.  I won’t disagree, since I haven’t studied the book nor tried to put his recommendations into practice.  I can only spin so many days a week, so I would like to find a few more sources.  Sometimes I get into flow for a time when I write and I’m trying to nurture that by finding the right conditions (usually time of day) to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).  However, I will say this:  achieving a state of flow is good for the soul. We could all use a little more of that.

Inclusion is an Active Process

Earlier, I posted my first essays directed at discussing Diversity and Inclusion.  I started by defining the touchy concept of Unearned Privilege and then got into Unintentional Bias.  I wanted to wrap up this first go-round on D&I with a discussion about the “I”—Inclusion.  If you haven’t read those first two essays in this series, I encourage you to do so.  These concepts all flow together and reinforce each other. 

First, I need to define what I mean by “inclusion”.  I’m not necessarily talking about including people of all types and backgrounds on teams or in the room.  Don’t get me wrong—I think we SHOULD do that whenever possible, because you theoretically get a broader set of ideas and inputs from a group of diverse people.  It also makes your life richer to know and embrace people different from you.  That sort of representational approach to inclusion is the part that everyone is aware of and tends to be what people focus on initially.  What I’m speaking to in this essay is the more difficult part of “inclusion”—inclusive thinking.  “Inclusion” in this respect means asking yourself, “what am I assuming about this situation that’s borne from applying a broad brush to a whole group of people and do I need to take a step back for a second and challenge those assumptions?”  In the workplace, this often takes the form of dismissing ideas different from your own without really thinking through them or not considering someone for a role because they are different from what you envision in the job.  In your personal life, it could take the form of judging someone’s behavior and intent based on some defining characteristic (like race or age or accent), projecting your own interpretation on their actions. 

Remember that a couple of themes fell out of those first two essays: first, that people are usually unaware of their own privilege and biases; and, second, that developing an awareness of both is an active and on-going process.  Similarly, inclusive thinking is itself an active and on-going process.  Before I go further, let me remind you that we often spend a lot of time pointing out privilege and bias expressed by others; I’d rather we take that righteousness and first turn in inwards.  While it is indeed important to hold others accountable for the impact of their biases on other people, we all have way too much work to do on ourselves to have so much time available to “correct” others.

Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that you are well on your way to detangling which aspects of your life reflect unearned privilege and which reflect where you have been in the subordinate position (i.e. where you are a “fish” and where you are a “scuba diver”, using the analogy we’ve discussed before).  You have also started catching yourself in unintentional bias.  All of this navel gazing is a prerequisite for being able to navigate the world around us with a mindset of inclusion.  Your work, however, is just beginning.  Remember that we are hard wired to naturally trust those who are like us.  “Like us” can mean many different things: it could be race, religion, educational background, where you grew up or where you live now, work experience, and a zillion other things.  We simply gravitate toward those with whom we feel we have something in common.  It’s comfortable.  It’s easy.  It’s a nice shortcut.  And it’s what’s gotten us to our current environment in which we default to tribalism.

I am going to come right out and say something many might feel uncomfortable articulating: it is ok to feel more comfortable with people you share common traits or experiences with and, in fact, it is ok to seek out time with your “affinity” groups.  When I reaffiliated with a synagogue in the 2000’s after not having really engaged with the Jewish community for decades, I found a comfort in community that I hadn’t realized I’d needed so much.  I was very isolated as a Jew at work and while I never felt overt anti-Semitism, I always was aware of my difference.  Going to synagogue, building that Jewish community and feeling enveloped by it was just good for my soul.  Similarly, when I am with a group of gay friends or in a predominantly gay environment, THAT is good for my soul.  In neither situation am I with people who are just like me in all ways.  They just happen to share one trait that, in that moment, makes me feel less alone and more comfortable.

When is it not ok to seek out just your “peeps”?  It is when that group is in a power position and when they are together, they are making decisions and allocating resources in a way that highly favors people in the group and excludes people outside of the group.  A group of white men playing golf and having a good time is not a bad thing.  It would be a bad thing if, during that golf game, they made decisions on who should get the next promotion or worked out business deals with each other without realizing the narrowness of their inputs.  I’m not saying golf games should be banished.  I’m not saying friendships and relationships between members of affinity groups should be de-emphasized.  We’ve already established that we feel more comfortable around people we share key traits with.  My thesis is that big decisions and important discussion should not be happening so casually in a homogeneous group.  There needs to be more intention in those discussions about inclusion.  What I am saying is that if you are in a power position or any position of influence, you need to ACTIVELY seek out perspectives from people outside of your group, ACTIVELY embrace the exclusionary character of your own comfort zone, and ACTIVELY pursue ideas and options that include people and ideas different from your own.  Inclusion is an ACTIVE process.

This is not just a business issue.  It’s not even primarily a business issue!  The flip side to feeling more comfortable with people “like us” is that our lives become limited and narrow.  If you stay within your comfort bubble, pushing away people and ideas and experiences different from what you have known then you are missing out on a whole lot of richness in life.  As I discussed in the title essay to this blog, living for a few years in Mexico really drove that home to me.  I never realized how many aspects about how I lived my life were not universal.  Opening myself up to different living patterns, different ways of thinking and seeing the world, different ways of navigating daily life has made me a much happier person.  But you don’t need to go live in another country for a few years to get this benefit.  You just need to embrace an active curiosity about the people around you.  Purposefully resist instantly applying stereotypes and judgments.  Challenge yourself to treat an individual as a whole human, worthy of your interest.

I’m walking a fine line here.  I don’t want to sound punitive; however, all of us in some way, by accident of birth and circumstance, find ourselves to be comfortable fish in the ocean barely aware of the various scuba divers struggling around us.  Being aware of their struggle is just not enough.  Encouraging them to throw off their scuba gear and just be like fish will not eliminate their struggle or burden.  We need to actively work to understand people different from us; we need to actively embrace that “different” does not mean better or worse, just different; and, we need to actively hold ourselves and others accountable for the impacts of unintentional bias borne from unearned privilege. Inclusion is an ACTIVE process.

A Note to My Younger Self

This feels like a time of new beginnings.  We are emerging from the pandemic and facing what used to be very common activities as if they were brand new experiences—going to out to dinner with friends, family gatherings, grocery shopping without wearing a mask.  It’s like emerging from a dark cave.  At the same time, a number of “young” people in my life (they are in their 20’s and 30’s) are at really big “adulting” inflection points—getting married, buying first homes, starting new careers.  It has gotten me thinking about my own new beginnings all those decades ago and how much I just didn’t know about what was ahead of me and challenges I would face.  So, this week’s essay is a nostalgic note to my younger self.  And twenty years from now I hope I will look back on this essay with a bit of nostalgia, reflecting on how much I didn’t know when writing this very piece.

Dear 26-year-old-Sherri,

You have accomplished so much already in your young life!  Take a moment to be proud of yourself.  You navigated some tough emotional times growing up.  You got a college degree and then a PhD in Chemistry.  You landed a good job in R&D with a good company and you are about to start your “real” life.  As your retired 58-year-old self, I am proud of you.  I’m also excited and a little scared for you.  You see, I know what’s coming.  You are going to face challenges you never dreamed of and opportunities you never thought would be open to you.  You are going to face incredible highs and successes and debilitating lows and failures.  You will have time periods of extreme confidence and valleys of extreme self-doubt.  As you face this new beginning, I want to offer you a few gentle thoughts to consider.

Be humble.  You are on a real high right now and you should be!  You feel like you’ve got the world by the tail!  Outwardly, you appear supremely confident.  Inwardly, you are scared to death.  There is so much you don’t even know that you don’t know, but you sense it’s there.  Everyone around you seems to have it all together.  The truth is that they don’t.  And they think that YOU do!  There is a happy medium between arrogance and self-doubt and that’s humility.  Remember that you’ve already shown you can do great things.  Remember, also, that there is and always will be so much more for you to learn.  Start with that humility and always search for growth.  Everyone can teach you something.  Look for that within everyone you meet.

Find and be true to your authentic self.  Unfortunately, it’s going to take you until your 50’s to really embrace this truth.  I wish you would have understood the importance of this earlier, but better late than never!  You have some serious headwinds ahead, to be sure.  Accepting yourself as a gay woman will not be as easy in the 1980’s and 90’s as it will be in 2021.  Remember the first time you walked into a gay bar and you were so afraid that you almost fainted?  The first time you go to a Pride Fest will be even worse.  You will be scared of being attacked and beaten.  The first time you come out to someone at work, you will be afraid of being fired.  But you will keep moving forward because you have to.  Something deep inside you will push you toward authenticity because you know it’s critical for your mental health, happiness, and even professional effectiveness.

That part of your authenticity journey will absorb you for a good 20 years.  An equally critical part of your authenticity journey is finding your true self as a friend, partner, and leader.  I will tell you now that your instincts are right on target.  It’s going to be hard for you to be true to those instincts because the behaviors of those around you will make you feel like you are wrong.  You will second and third and fourth guess yourself all the time and for many years.  Little by little, time and experience will show when your instincts were right.  It’s a good thing one of your instincts is to find a wide array of mentors and role models.  That certainly helps.  Along with authenticity, you will need to embrace vulnerability—admitting when you don’t know something and owning your mistakes.  Both are really hard but absolutely required for growth.  Vulnerability takes courage and people will ultimately admire you for it.  What really matters, though, is finding the courage to embrace who you really are, flaws and all, and to give yourself the grace to be who you are.  That’s when you will become a truly happy person who lives in the present instead of always waiting for something good to happen.  That is also when you will meet Trish, because until then you won’t be ready for her.

It won’t all be good.  Intellectually, you already know this is true because it hasn’t been all good up to this point.  There is a part of you, though, that thinks you’ve paid enough dues.  You haven’t.  What you will ultimately realize is that the tough times are when you will grow the most.  None of us, though, eagerly seeks out pain.  You will beat yourself up for bad decisions.  You will flush with shame when you have to confront your failures.  You will doubt that you will ever achieve ultimate success and happiness.  You will want to get out of what seems like a bad situation as quickly as possible.  And, for the most part, you will not be aware that everyone around you faces the same struggles.  It will feel lonely.  And all of that is ok as long as you keep moving forward.  Some days it will be the tiniest of steps; other days it will be big leaps.  But you will, you MUST, continue to move forward.

Choose love.  This is a message that you will learn from Dad, but actually not realize until long after he has passed.  “Life is a series of choices.  Choose love.”  I cannot tell you how important that is!  Choosing love means dealing with people and the world and especially yourself with compassion and empathy.  Will people sometimes take advantage of you or treat you poorly?  Absolutely.  You can and should advocate for yourself and seek justice.  You also can and should believe in the goodness of people and choose to act and react in a way that reflects your true self.  There will be a time when you are in the Philly airport, coming home from a long business trip.  You are heading to the parking lot to get your car when a woman comes up to you, panicked, saying she lost her wallet and needs money for the train into the city.  Give her the money.  Could she be trying to rip you off?  Yes.  Could she be telling the truth?  Yes.  Give her the money.  If you were in the airport and had lost your wallet (and this will be before cell phones), you would hope for the kindness of a stranger.  Try not to judge others, although it is sorely tempting and you will definitely do it more than you wish you did.  You rarely know someone’s whole story.  And remember—just underneath the skin of most assholes is a hurt child who just wants a hug.  That realization can help you let go a little of the resentment and frustration those people can engender.

I could go on.  I know what the next 30+ years has in store for you and am tempted to give you some hints to see if some things could be different.  I won’t, though, because I know where you end up (at least at 58) and it’s pretty good.  I’m so excited for you!  You have such an amazing adventure ahead of you!  Try to savor at least a bit of it in the moment before plowing quickly into the next moment.  Be humble.  Be kind.  Be happy.

Love,

58-year-old-Sherri

Unintentional Bias

Last time I started in on a long-promised discussion about Diversity and Inclusion by introducing the topic of Unearned Privilege.  I had wanted to talk about the subject of this essay, Unintentional Bias, but found that I needed to talk about privilege first.  I’m starting to realize that this concept of unearned privilege is more foundational than I thought, so I encourage you to read that essay if you haven’t already. 

There is also one more thought I need to share before launching into today’s topic.  I implore you to not weaponize these concepts.  Discussions about unearned privilege and unintentional bias are meant to get you looking inward—not to give you verbiage to slam others.  The good Jew, here, is actually going to quote a translation of Matthew (7:5): “First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.”  My corollary to this thought is that getting that log out of your own eye is a lifelong journey.  You should never get around to a righteous focus on the speck in your friend’s eye.  This is about you and your thoughts and your actions and your own journey toward virtue.

We touched on bias before when I made a first pass in A Less Punitive Perspective on Bias and The Danger of the Defining Characteristic.  In those essays, I focused on “tribalism” as being the source of bias. The Cliff Notes version is that our global society has evolved a lot faster than our internal hardwiring associated with building trust.  We still instinctively distrust The Other—meaning anyone who looks different than you do or acts differently than you do.  And the easiest way to navigate in our increasingly diverse world is to apply stereotypes and judgements to entire classes of people.  Unfortunately, in our hyperconnected world, that instinct is used against us through advertising and by those who play on our unintentional biases for monetary gain or for power and influence.  Hence the need to bring this discussion out into the open and get each of us to own our piece.

Building on this base thought, I’ve come to realize that unintentional bias is strongly connected to the unarticulated assumptions we make about others, which in turn are borne of our unearned privilege.  And since owning our unearned privilege is so uncomfortable, guess what?  Owning our unintentional biases is just as hard.  A good example from my working days comes to mind.  I have no idea why I know this story.  It seems like something I should not have been privy to, but I was.  Early in my career, a position opened up that would have been ideal for a good friend of mine.  She was just a few years older than me and very ambitious.  She was smart and a hard worker and passionate about the product line she was developing.  The position in question was a step up in responsibility and involved having the lead accountability on bringing this new product out to customers.  It involved strategy development and implementation and a more direct connection to the sale of the product.  Accountability for the “profit and loss”, or P&L, of a business was the holy grail of anyone looking to move up.  This role, however, required a lot of travel.  What I learned is that this friend of mine was not even offered consideration of the role.  Why?  Not because she wasn’t qualified.  She was the most qualified of the potential candidates.  It was because she had two small children.  The men around the table assumed that she would not want to travel so much because of her parental responsibilities so they didn’t even ask her if she was interested.  They actually thought that they were being sensitive to her situation!  That is unintentional bias based on an assumption drawn from unearned privilege.

Corporations have tried really hard to root out overt discrimination and their initial attempts at sensitization have had the unfortunate side effect of reinforcing unintentional bias.  In the 90s, my company started holding Leadership Education sessions.  This program was really well thought out and developed.  It brought some important insights and verbiage into the organization.  And it was intensive!  Groups of participants, who stayed together throughout their training, were taken off site for a week at a time.  There was prework to create anticipation and the subject matter pulled no punches, particularly around awareness of Diversity and Inclusion issues (at least as they were understood at that time).  The benefit and problem were that these sessions were held in a bubble.  Participants had to truly focus on the matter at hand and leave their “day job” to their teams back home.  The focus was the good thing.  The bad thing was that they went back to their day jobs after this intense week away, thinking their awareness was all raised (we didn’t have “woke” back then) and they truly believed they were no longer the problem.  They then went back to their regular behaviors without realizing that they were bringing unintentional bias into every decision.  They were sensitized to the plight of the scuba diver, to use my analogy from before, and they may have even understood their privilege as fish.  But they still didn’t understand what water was.  They were either trying to encourage the scuba divers to just throw off that scuba gear and breathe the water or shunting them to the shallow end citing sensitivity to their plight.  Neither worked well to give people of difference, any difference, an equal shot at opportunity.

Changing bias, you see, is an active and purposeful process.  It follows Newton’s Law of Motion:  a body in motion will stay in motion unless you exert a force to stop it.  Similarly, unintentional bias will continue unless you exert directed effort to stop it.  Remember that, as with unearned privilege, unintentional bias in and of itself is not a bad thing.  What matters is your awareness of it and what you do with it once you are aware.  Our unintentional biases are often born of our circumstance.  For example, I was raised in the 1960s in the deep South.  I harbor unintentional racial bias.  I know I do.  I hate it.  I’ve been working to root it out of me for decades.  I like to think that I’ve been largely successful.  My goal is not to never have a biased thought.  It is to quickly recognize when a biased thought emerges and to immediately challenge it, think about both the source and trigger of the thought, and try to get out ahead of it next time.  It’s an active and purposeful process.  And while I use the example of racial bias, in this case with respect to African Americans, I am by no means limited to that bias.  Nor is it my most vexing bias.  I am catching myself all the time in snap judgements that reflect unintentional biases that I never recognized before.  That’s when my face flushes with shame and I begin the internal flagellation to try and beat it out myself.

It is exhausting when you think about it and that exhaustion leads us to fall back into old comfortable patterns from before we realized we were carrying a bias.  That leads to resentment of the work it takes to root the bias out and often lashing out at those who have been on the receiving end of that bias.  Often, it also leads to projection—applying your own motivations to someone else’s behaviors.  That’s a different topic altogether.   While I begged you to not weaponize someone else’s bias, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hold someone else accountable for a bias they may not realize they are expressing.  It’s all in the “how” of making someone else accountable and that begins with your own humility.  Unintentional bias makes you human.  Everyone has it and always will.  Your job is to work on yourself, first and foremost.  Question those assumptions you are making about people different from you.  Learn about the realities of other’s lives.  Don’t assume.  Give them grace; share your privilege.  They will do the same for you.  We’ll be better off for it.

What is water?

I have been threatening for a while to start digging into topics surrounding Diversity and Inclusion.  I “grew up” in my professional career during the time that D&I became recognized as an issue.  In the ‘90s and ‘00s, companies were casting about for ways to effectively address needs in their staffing and culture.  So, as a woman in a senior position in industrial (read: male dominated) corporations, as well as an increasingly out lesbian during a time of rocketing change in prevailing attitudes toward the gay community in the US, I was caught up in the middle of all this angst.  The topic of Diversity and Inclusion (I’ve determined that it is really one topic since you can’t have one without the other) is personal to me and I’ve been called upon by the companies I’ve worked for to participate in a range of activities surrounding it. I have a lot to say on this subject.

At this point you are probably thinking, “OK, I clicked on this essay because I was curious about the meaning of the title.  What does D&I have to do with water?”  Well, to start in on this topic of D&I, I wanted to present a bit of a primer on unintentional bias.  Bias is a tricky topic. It has gotten more so in recent years thanks to the amplification of social media as well as the divisions politically in this country that seem to cause people to jump on others in a heartbeat if they perceive bias of any sort.  My thesis is that most bias (not all, but most) is unintentional.  So, when I first started drafting this essay, that’s what I thought I was writing about.  As the paragraphs below starting coming out, though, I realized that before I could tackle unintentional bias, I had to first address its angry cousin:  unearned privilege.  Talk about a third rail topic!  We MUST go there.  But what does this have to do with water?

I was asked many times to speak to employee groups about D&I, ostensibly from the perspective of a gay person working in the company.  Here is the story I would tell to frame my experience:  Imagine that you are a fish in the ocean.  The environment is perfect for you.  You were designed for it.  You move freely and extract oxygen effortlessly to live.  The temperature is comfortable.  You don’t have to think about or worry about any of those “environment” issues.  You are free to put all your energies into finding food, ensuring your survival and growth, and perpetuating your species.  Now imagine you are a scuba diver.  You are also capable of swimming around in the ocean.  But for you to survive, you must wear a wet suit, fins, and carry around an oxygen tank and breathing system.  Yes, you can look for food and protect yourself from danger and do all the other things the fish can do, but you have to put a ton of energy into just surviving in the ocean!  And maybe there are one or two other divers with you, but in the vastness of the ocean, you feel pretty alone and VERY different and vulnerable.  The environment is not built for you.  YOU must adapt to the environment, not the other way around.  You can be successful, but it’s exhausting.  You tend not to stay there for long.  As a diver, you are acutely aware of your difference and your struggle to survive.  The fish?  They don’t even realize that the environment is suited just to them.  It’s just “the environment”.  It’s not so much that they recognize that water is the perfect environment for them.  They don’t even know what water IS.  That, in a nutshell, is unearned privilege.

This story reached a lot of people.  I could see the consternation on faces and had a lot of “I just didn’t realize” conversations.  I do believe there was a lot of sincerity on all sides and I choose to believe that most people really do want a world in which everyone has access to opportunity.  I also firmly believe that most people do not recognize their unearned privilege, at least not consciously.  The “fish” were seeing “water” through my eyes, not their own.  They were still trying to figure out what water is and they tripped all over themselves trying to articulate new rules of behavior.  There was a lot of walking on egg shells.  So, we never got very far.

I get a little twitchy trying to talk about this topic because it makes people so defensive.  Remember: those who enjoy privilege don’t see it as “privilege” because it’s all they’ve known.  The don’t see the water; they don’t even know what water is.  But when they see efforts to level the playing field, to give people who don’t have their advantages an opportunity to equally compete, what they see is unfair advantage given to others.  They see something taken away from them.  And they get angry.  Just because someone has privilege doesn’t mean their journey has been easy!  And those who see unearned privilege in others get very self-righteous and judgy about it.  I will admit to moments of looking in my rear view mirror at some middle aged white guy in his Ray Bans, top down on the BMW convertible, hair slicked back looking like he owns the world and muttering to myself, “unearned white male privilege”.  Why do I do that?  Because the years of built-up frustration that I have lived through are always just under the surface.  I still feel like that person on the outside looking in and wishing someone would give me the secret decoder ring to understand how to be successful in this environment that seemed so natural to the guys I worked with.  I react because it feels good to blame someone else for my struggles.  But I know nothing about that guy.  I look at the outer trappings and judge the whole person.  I don’t know what struggles he may have faced.  Nor do I, in those moments, embrace my own privilege.

So here is what I want to emphasize:  we are all a mixture of unearned privilege and disadvantaged outsider.  We are all both fish and scuba divers.  I would present myself in those D&I discussions as a “gay, female, lefthanded, Jewish chemist trying to survive in a straight, male, righthanded Christian engineering world.”  Oh, woe is me.  Yes, I am all of those things.  But I am also white; a native born American living in America; a native English speaker; and I grew up in a stable, middle class home.  I never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from or having a roof over my head or being subjected to physical or emotional danger or abuse.  I am dripping with privilege.  So, yes, I’ve had some tough times and some hard climbs.  I have also enjoyed a lot of advantage along the way. There’s that “holding two opposing truths” things again.

Once you understand and embrace unearned privilege within yourself, the challenge is to turn that gaze outward and work to treat others with the grace and compassion you want for yourself.  Having unearned privilege is not evil.  It’s what you do with it that matters.  As you work to build the awareness of those aspects of your life in which you didn’t even know you were a fish in water, you become more aware of the scuba divers around you.  Don’t apologize for your privilege nor discount it as unimportant.  Look to see how you can reach out to those who didn’t enjoy your advantage and help bring them along.  This is why the concept of assumptions is so important to me.  If you don’t even realize there are privileges you’ve enjoyed, then you assume that everyone has had those privileges. If someone was never taught basic life skills like you were, that doesn’t mean they are lazy or stupid if they don’t manage money well or make poor choices.  It means they need to be taught those skills.  Lack of awareness of your own unearned privilege, coupled with acute awareness of the privileges others enjoy leads to incorrect assumptions and judgements.  THAT is what leads to unintentional bias.  And that’s where we’ll go next time.

The Power of “And”

The title of this essay, “The Power of ‘And,’” has been a bit of a business cliché for years.  There was some ad campaign by, I think, AT&T in the ‘90s and the theme rears its head regularly in both consumer and business advertising.  It usually refers in some way to the benefits of bringing together opposites, like a beer having great taste AND being lower calorie or bringing contrarian thinking to solving a problem.

I’ve been noodling on this concept partly because I’ve been writing more articles on Leadership for Lab Manager Magazine and this is an important leadership concept.  I’ve also been going on long walks outside again now that spring is sort of here.  That means more Brené Brown podcasts and “holding opposing truths” is a big theme of hers.  And I’ve been entirely exasperated with the news and how we as a populace seem to have completely lost the ability to hold two competing truths in our heads.  Let’s tackle those topics one at a time.

One of the first lessons you are taught in preparing for corporate brainstorming sessions is that you never critique ideas during the “storming” part of the work.  Even if you think an idea someone has proffered is totally idiotic, you don’t say so.  In fact, the second lesson you learn is to try to build on the ideas of others whether you think they are good ideas or not.  If one person suggests, say, a survey of existing customers to probe interest in a new offering, you might say, “we could also set up a kiosk at a trade show to survey people who aren’t customers yet” and someone else might say, “and we could offer a raffle drawing to encourage people to fill out surveys.”  One idea builds on another and even if the initial idea didn’t sound so great, those builds usually make it better.  Both of these lessons can be summarized in the maxim “do not say ‘yes, but’; say ‘yes, and.’”  The reason “yes, and” is so difficult, though, is that most people feel strongly about their own ideas and immediately dismiss ideas that are different or counter to their own.

As a leader, both of people and of ideas, the “power of and” is simultaneously one of the best tools in your tool box AND one of the most difficult to use.  One of the myths of leadership is that if you are at the top of the org chart then you know more than anyone else, make better decisions than anyone else, and have better ideas than anyone else.  A good leader knows that is a recipe for disaster but in practice it is difficult to resist pushing your own plan.  While there are a number of reasons why someone has attained a leadership position, hopefully one of them is that this is a person with good judgement who is constantly looking for new data to improve their knowledge, decisions, and ideas.  The best way to do that is to invite and listen to contrarian thinking.  And I mean really LISTEN.  Not listen-to-rebutt, but listen-to-learn.  Someone with a different background and set of experiences will see a problem or an opportunity in a totally different way—and that may make all the difference in actually solving the problem or capitalizing on the opportunity.  Just because an approach is different from your own does not by definition make it inferior or wrong.  Embracing different thinking is extremely powerful—AND extremely difficult.  A strong leader focuses efforts on building the judgement skills in the organization so that different ideas are not immediately dismissed.  Ideas are fragile things!  Even the best ones can be killed off with one negative comment and why “yes, AND” instead of “yes, BUT” is so important.

This brings us to the “Brené Brown” piece of this essay which takes “the power of and” into a slightly different direction.  One of her themes is around probing this concept of constructive paradox—the ability to hold competing truths in your head.  Intellectually, we all know that the world is more gray than it is black and white.  Emotionally, we would prefer simple and clean choices and that often means ignoring a “competing truth”.  For example, I do not want to get COVID-19, so I wanted to get vaccinated.  I also know that there are a range of side effects from the vaccines, some more prevalent than others and some more severe than others.  I had a pretty rough day after my second shot and I’m ok with that.  This sort of risk calculation is part of holding two competing truths:  I am protected from COVID-19 AND I suffered yesterday.  Not BUT.  AND.  The good from the shot was not diminished in my mind by the bad of the side effects.  The side effects were part of getting the protection.  I didn’t choose to get the vaccine in spite of the side effects.  I chose to embrace the side effects as part of getting the protection.

This concept is a bit more difficult when applied to people AND it’s even more powerful.  You will never like everything about your spouse or family or friends.  You will never like everything about yourself.  You will forever be evaluating that balance between the good and the bad.  Remember, we talked about “balance” in the concept of a pendulum and not a scale, so it is ever-changing.  As long as that balance point stays more to the positive, then it’s a relationship you will continue to value and nurture.  I could say, “Trish loads the dishwasher weird, but I love her.”  Instead, I choose to say, “Trish loads the dishwasher weird, AND I love her.”  See how different that sounds?  It shows I value the whole person.  I don’t ignore parts I may not like because everything about her adds up to the person I love.  Similarly, I value all the mistakes I’ve made in the past because they all have contributed to making me who I am. 

And that’s what brings us to current events.  Seeing people as whole and human is crucial to avoiding judgement based on just part of them and critical to not dehumanizing them.  None of us are without failings and flaws. It is important to look at the whole person and evaluate where that balance is between the things you judge as “good” and “bad”.  Someone can have drug issues or mental health issues or even a warrant out for their arrest AND not necessarily deserve to be shot.  They are a human being.  A politician or friend or relative can have positions you agree with AND have positions you don’t agree with.  No one deserves your unquestioning support.  You are allowed to disagree on something and still love and support that person.  Similarly, you are also allowed to agree on occasion with someone you normally disagree with and not change your fundamental positions.  You can hold those competing truths.

Here’s my challenge to you.  Avoid the word “but” as much as you can.  I’ve purposely done that in this essay and have been surprised at how often that choice comes up AND how using “and” has strengthened the thoughts.  It’s not easy.  It takes intention and effort.  AND it’s worth it.

Dose Makes the Poison

During my last couple of years working, I had the great luck to work with a Regulatory Services business that Intertek owned.  I say “great luck” for a couple of reasons: 1) this is a fascinating business that I knew very little about and I learned so much in my time working with them; and, 2) I had the pleasure of getting to know several fascinating people, including the person who inadvertently helped me write this essay and to whom it is dedicated.

This Regulatory Services business is a consultancy that assists companies in navigating a range of regulations often focused on public health.  The part of the business I worked most closely with was Chemical Services, which helps companies understand the regulations associated with chemicals in their products and how to comply with said regulations.  I had worked with this type of business in my earlier days as a bench chemist when I was developing specialty chemicals used in Industrial paints and coatings.  I, of course, felt that because I had this cursory exposure to the industry that I was “knowledgeable”.  Unsurprisingly, I found out very quickly that I was not.  Or, rather, that I knew just enough to be dangerous.  We’ve touched on this topic before.  Thanks to Karen, I know much more.  Which only seems to make me more dangerous.

The Principals in this business were very kind and patient with me.  Maybe it was because the business is located in Canada and Canadians are pathologically nice.  Maybe it was just because they were incredible people.  During one of my early trips, my host planned a half day of hookey with me.  We spent the morning in the office outside of Toronto, filling my brain.  At lunch time, we took off and headed south.  We drove through the adorable town of Niagra-on-the-Lake.  Had lunch; did a little shopping.  We drove through wine country (alas, no tastings) and down to the Canadian side of Niagra Falls (clearly more beautiful than the American side).  Karen and I talked all along the way about a zillion things, including more about the business and building my understanding.  It was during this trip that Karen fed me that immortal line that titles this essay: A chemical in and of itself is not safe or dangerous.  It’s the dose that makes the poison.  Depending on the characteristics of the chemical and how it interacts with human systems, a “safe” dose can vary.  Determining that dose, both in the acute and chronic sense, is a difficult undertaking and fraught with conflicting interpretations.  It just ain’t that simple.

That lesson clearly had a big impact on me.  It is partly about risk assessment and, in fact, this essay is a good companion to the one I wrote a few months ago on risk.  It’s a follow on that I’ve been mulling over since that writing.  This idea of “how much of something makes it a bad thing” is an idea we wrestle with daily in all aspects of our lives.  It’s further complicated by the companion question of “is the risk worth it?”  As I wrote in that essay on risk, it’s a wonder that we aren’t paralyzed daily by indecision, but we usually take these quickie risk assessments in stride. 

The aspect of this subject that I’ve been ruminating on a lot lately is this idea that some thing or person or idea is not—cannot be—all good or all bad.  It’s the dose that makes the poison.  In the realm of toxicology, Karen spoke about a few ways of looking at this.  There is the classical S-shaped response curve where something is not dangerous until you reach a critical threshold level—this is what most of us think about when we think of something as a “poison”.  There is the proverbial Goldilocks dilemma—where too little of something is bad and too much is bad, but there is a sweet spot in the middle.  Exposure to oxygen is a good example.  And there is even an instance, called hormesis, where something is beneficial in smaller doses, no more beneficial but not dangerous at some intermediate level, and then toxic above a threshold. Exercise and alcohol are good examples here.

Why am I bringing all this up (besides the fact that I love discussing this kind of thing with Karen)? Well, we’ve had a lot of mental whiplash over this past year of pandemic as the pace of new information has caused changes in the guidance we’ve gotten from experts on how to best protect ourselves and squash the spread of the virus.  (Their often-poor risk communication has not helped.)  I think as Americans (as humans?) we like to have nice, clear cut, unchangeable answers on how to address serious problems.  Mask are good or masks are worthless; the vaccines are safe or they are not; the virus lives on surfaces or it doesn’t; it’s safe to open schools or it’s not.  We just don’t like “It depends” as an answer even though we know, realistically, that’s the case most of the time.  It doesn’t help that we have the companion problem of “if a little of this is good, then a lot must be better!”  If you believe wearing masks helps reduce spread of the virus, then you want to see everyone in a mask everywhere all the time.  And if you think they don’t really help, then you never want to see one anywhere on anyone.  Absolutism helps reinforce our beliefs but it’s the dose that makes the poison.  “Never” and “always” are dangerous words.

Think about sunshine.  Nothing feels better than warm sun on winter-tired skin in springtime.  Doctors even tell us we need sunshine to manufacture Vitamin D!  But spend more than, say, 15 unprotected minutes in direct, strong sun and your skin begins to burn.  (OK, for me it’s 15 minutes; for Trish it’s about an hour.)  That doesn’t mean I should spend zero time in the sun because I will burn.  It means I need to limit the time and/or wear sunscreen.  Think about that one friend or family member who you love dearly but who drinks too much or talks too loudly or keeps bringing up that topic.  It doesn’t mean you never want to see them; it just means you can’t spend too much time together (classic risk management!).  It’s the dose that makes the poison.

I’ve struggled mightily lately with how to put this thinking to work in evaluating our societal conflicts, be they over the pandemic, racial injustice and inequality, or even (ick) politics.  My risk assessment is going to be different than yours. Remember that there are two components of this analysis:  the intrinsic danger/hazard/toxicity of what you are considering, matched against your assessment of the probability of exposure.  We often miscalculate on both!  How can I effectively respect your context and still remain true to mine?  It’s a lot of work to challenge your own assumptions and see the world through someone else’s eyes and experiences.  Even in the data-driven world of toxicology, it can be difficult to put the health risks of certain chemicals into effective safe ranges of exposure.  In our ever-fractured world, we are quick to condemn products or people or even ideas over an instance of negative impact—irrespective of the balance of good vs. bad or the probability of negative impact or even the time and context of said negativity.  We have zero tolerance (ok, now I’m getting into engineering).  But zero tolerance never works.  It’s the dose that makes the poison.

The Junk Drawer and the Cat

This is a story about a farkakt kitchen drawer and a cat with food insecurity issues.  It’s also a story about patience and frustration, with a dash of procrastination, along with figuring out the right problem to solve and then actually solving it the right way.  Then we throw in a little about temper and compassion.  In short, this is a story about life.  I hope it has a happy ending.

We have a wonky drawer in our kitchen that just happens to be our junk drawer.  I’m guessing you have one of these drawers, too.  You’re not really sure all that’s in it but there are a few things in there that you need to access on a regular basis.  If you are unlucky like us then that drawer sticks and jams consistently.  This drawer has been like this for the five years I’ve lived in this house.  Under questioning, Trish admits that the drawer has been like this since she moved in—approximately 30 years ago.  The drawer is just pathetic.  It is literally held together with wood glue and duct tape.  There have been attempts to fix it countless times.  Sometimes it has been a half-hearted effort.  Sometimes it has been a well-intention full assault—a project, if you will—that involved emptying the drawer and using an array of fasteners that THIS time will fix it for good.  Within one hour, it is always sticking again.  We have been so frustrated that we have actually discussed remodeling our kitchen—spending tens of thousands of dollars—to get rid of this drawer.

Our story begins one unremarkable day when I said, “How would you feel if I found a carpenter who would be willing to rebuild that drawer?”  Trish was immensely pleased that I was actually willing to take on a task that required picking up the phone, possibly more than once, to call a person I did not know.  (Yes, it is a wonder I ever held a job.)  One Facebook post on the Township Page, one Messenger conversation, and one phone call later, I had our man.  I was VERY pleased with myself.  Jack came the very next day, surveyed the problem child and took it with him to rebuild.  A few days later, he brought back to us a bunch of dried wood glue with some drawer in it, with a new bottom and a bunch of metal L clips at each joint.  And did I mention a ton of wood glue?  Never mind, he was able to salvage the frontispiece and return a drawer that seemed to work.  We were thrilled!  We loaded all the crap back in the drawer and went about our business.  Within a couple of days, the drawer started to stick again.

The fateful day in question dawned bright and sunny and comparatively warm.  It was The Spring of Deception in Pennsylvania.  Soon we would plunge back into the darkness and cold of Third Winter, to be followed by The Pollening.  But it was The Spring of Deception and we were feeling good!  It had been a nice day.  We were out and about, wearing only lightweight facemasks and no jackets.  Around 4:00-ish, I made the damning statement:  I think I’m going to try and fix the drawer.  Trish recoiled in horror before collecting herself and bravely saying, “OK.”  She then slinked off into another room.

“It has to be something simple,” I thought.  “The drawer has been FIXED.  Probably just need to center the drawer in the rails better.”  Thus, began the yanking.  And the more stubborn jamming.  And more yanking.  And cursing.  HOW?!  How is this happening?!  We FIXED the drawer!  I hauled off and whacked the drawer but good, trying to get it to reseat on its rails.  A little voice in my head screamed, “Oh good lord, don’t break the drawer again!”  It made a pained crunching sound but did slam shut.  It would not reopen.  I backed up a step, expelled an expletive, and stepped on the cat.

First, you have to understand a little about Bridget.  She was found as a tiny kitten on a concrete barrier in the middle of a bridge (hence her name) over South Philly in the middle of rush hour.  The daughter of a friend was stopped in rush hour traffic and saw her little eyes.  One allergic fiancée later, we had ourselves a sister for Beau the Wonder Cat.  I am convinced she retains food insecurity issues from those traumatic early days.  Every day she acts as if she has not eaten in weeks.  Come feeding time, she weaves in and out of legs, supervising the feeding process:  first the fresh water, now the cans of wet food, now the dry food.  Hurry hurry hurry!  In fact, I swear the cat can tell time.  We feed them at 5:00.  Starting around 4:00, she starts bugging us.  Then she starts doing things she knows will annoy us, hoping we’ll give in and just feed her.  It was dinner time, but all of my moving around in the kitchen was not producing dinner and she was beside herself.  She kept trying to supervise and I wasn’t getting the job done!  Then I stepped on her.

Anyone who has ever stepped on a cat or a small dog knows the pain/fear/heartbreak/guilt of that high pitched scream.  I, however, was in no mood for this and I yelled at her.  Then I decided that I needed to fold the laundry and stomped upstairs.  Poor little girl!  She didn’t understand the drawer thing!  I was in the kitchen.  It was near feeding time.  Her job was to follow or lead me around and make sure I fed her.  It wasn’t HER fault that the damn drawer still jammed, nor that I stepped back suddenly.  You always hurt the ones you love.

By the time I finished folding, Trish had fed the cats.  I fiddled more with the drawer and got it open and emptied.  Then I finally discovered the real problem:  the cabinet was not square.  It was ever so slightly wider at the top than at the bottom.  The top drawer was always going to fall off the rails.  They were just too far apart.  The drawer falling apart was a symptom, not the cause.  It was yanked on so much over the years it just fell to pieces.  Upon interrogation, the long-time homeowner admitted she KNEW that was the problem, hence the paper shims behind the rails that worked for a few days but kept falling off.  Yours truly just never put those facts together.  (And Trish never got the drawer fixed properly.)

How many times have I done that?  Gotten so frustrated over a “problem” that I never took the time to ask myself, “Is this really the problem?  Or just a symptom?”  And in my anger and frustration, I ended up taking it out on this innocent little being who just wanted dinner.  What a mess!

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.  Bridget did, indeed, get fed that night and every night since.  She still doubts that it will always happen.  Jack called to see if the drawer was fixed to our satisfaction and agreed to come back and fix the REAL problem.  Is it perfect?  No, but there is only so much you can do with 1980’s era original construction cabinetry.  It’s still a tad wonky, but it doesn’t jam anymore.  So, as you can see, I am continuing to learn and relearn all the lessons I write about.  I’m here to “get it right, not BE right”.  We are all works in progress!

EDITORS NOTE: As said “long-time homeowner,” I wish to explain that the drawer was never THAT much of a problem until the author moved in. My Southern Peach is a delicate flower until she isn’t.  Her longshoreman swearing scared not only Bridget, but also Beau and me.  And the laundry she went to fold?  It looked like I had folded it—small balls of fabric and mismatched socks.  *Sigh* Thank goodness Jack came back.

Good Enough

Last time, we explored the Myth of Competence—this feeling we have that most everyone around us is capable and competent and, often, that we are not.  This Imposter Syndrome (yes, I’m spelling it with the more common “e” this time; both are correct) can be paralyzing.  If you feel that you are really just faking it and that you’ll be found out as a fraud at any moment, then every decision you make becomes critical and every action you take must be perfect.  That kind of thinking is an absolute recipe for disaster.

I’ve talked before about decision making.  Particularly when you are young, it seems like every decision you make will determine your long-term success or failure, and your happiness or misery in life.  Many parents don’t help this by obsessing over their child’s decisions even more than the kid!  They may want to shield their child from the pain of making what looks to be a mistake or they may be trying to assuage their own regrets, but the kid picks up on the emotions of the parent and gets even more stressed!  I’m glad I was raised during the more hand’s off 1960’s and ‘70s. It’s not that my parents didn’t worry or stress about my decisions; they just kept that worry to themselves.

Let’s talk about a Really Big Decision—choosing your college or university.  And it’s not just THIS decision. There are parents that fret about getting their toddlers into the “right” preschool because that starts a cascade of choices and opportunities that they believe will define their kid’s life.  Good lord!  In his book, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the concept of “threshold” or “good enough” with respect to choosing a college.  There is so much pressure on getting into the best schools!  True, there are certain advantages to Ivy League educations.  The biggest one, and the one most unique to those environments, is the network of people you develop, first met as fellow students and professors.  “Who you know” is important throughout your career and life and the tight networks at the Ivy’s can make a big difference.  But it’s a differentiator, not a requirement for success.  You just need to go to a school that is Good Enough—over a threshold in educational quality that will get you the grounding you need to be successful.  The rest is up to you and your hard work.  In fact, an Ivy League school may be all wrong from a culture perspective for you and you might shrivel!  A different school might provide the right environment for you to thrive.  It just needs to be Good Enough.

That phrase, “Good Enough,” has a bad connotation associated with it, though, and one that needs to be minimalized.  Good Enough is often interpreted as “barely acceptable”.  That’s why I like the concept of “Threshold” better.  If there are 10 schools that meet your qualifications, then they all pass your threshold and are all acceptable.  Each may have its own advantages and disadvantages compared to each other, but they all meet your requirements.  Remember:  the decision you make on which college to attend (above that threshold) is way less important that what you do once you’ve made the decision.  As long as you work hard and apply yourself, you stand a good chance of success after attending any of those schools.  It makes more sense to spend the time really defining your requirements, not on picking The One.  This thought process holds for jobs, for what city you live in, for volunteer activities—almost any “multiple choice” decision.  At the risk of wading into a hornet’s nest, this same philosophy holds with relationships.  There are many, many people out there that any one of us could spend our lives with, happily.  There is no single ONE.  You just need to find one of those people who share your threshold requirements and who is ready to commit and work on the relationship at the same time as you are.  Took me 50 years to figure THAT one out.

So, let’s talk a bit about success and happiness and decisions and regrets.  I believe that I have previously established that I’m a “no regrets” kind of girl.  It’s not that I think I’ve never made a bad decision.  I’ve got a long list of decisions I’ve made that have led to pain and suffering.  It’s just that I have no real regrets—nothing I would necessarily do differently, given the chance.  Why?  Because I needed all those experiences to become the person that I am today, and I kind of like that person.  But also, because I know that if I’d made a different decision, there is no guarantee that the outcome would have been preferable to what actually happened.  We are reading a book right now in our Family Book Club called Midnight Library that explores this premise.  While it takes a more negative approach of “other choices could have been just as bad”, I prefer the more positive approach of “you can still make the outcome of your choices into a good thing.”  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  There is no one pathway to success and happiness.  There are decisions you make and actions that you choose to take based on those decisions.  You can take actions to improve your situation or not.  Those actions are not always easy for you to stomach (meaning you need courage) or easy for you to accomplish (you will need help and time), but there are always actions you can take.  Similarly, you CHOOSE whether to be happy or miserable.  Again, not always easy to choose to be happy, but it’s a choice.  Or, you can choose to be miserable and to play the victim and blame the world or others for your situation—and we all know how I feel about THAT.  There are certainly true victims out there and they deserve our outreach and support.  I’m talking above about those people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives.

Phew!  That was a bit of a rant!  Let me pull this back a bit.  Imposter Syndrome is real and it’s very common.  Like I said last time, it can be humbling and motivating or it can be paralyzing.  I know it is a safe bet to say that most of you reading this who might feel a bit of Imposter Syndrome are not imposters at all.  You are also not perfect.  You will miss deadlines.  You will produce an output that is not your best work.  You will let people and yourself down.  Your goal is, first, to own your mistakes even if no one else sees them and, most importantly, to learn from them and try to do better next time.  This is a never-ending journey.  We’ll all be trying to get better every day of our lives (except for those hopefully short periods of time when we go on vacation from self-betterment and wallow in laziness and crankiness for a bit).  Give yourself a break.  Give others a break.  It’s ok to have high expectations but not to expect perfection.  We are all “above threshold”.  We are all Good Enough.