I Give Up: 3 Tools of the Sub-Par Employee

The title of this post is misleading. I know it sounds depressing. However, I wrote this as a statement of liberation. It marks the spot on my career timeline where i have given up on outcome. Although i have been slowly unplugging from work responsibilities over the prior several months — I can now happily declare, ” I am no longer concerned with measured output, deliverable, or KPIs. I now focus entirely on the perception of the value i bring to the organization.”  It feels great writing that down.

I speak often of my experiences in the working world, and how my struggles with depression / anxiety are an ever present factor in my life. In the past i used this anxiety to fuel me at work to rise to the occasion and deliver when others have not been able to. It is because of this self-imposed pressure that i have been able to achieve a moderate amount of career success by most organizations standards.  This method has taken its toll both physically and mentally. The countless hours spent struggling emotionally to achieve ever increasing stretch goals all-the-while keeping a calm outward appearance has left deep cracks in the foundation of what makes up me. I am now at a tipping point, a hard stop, a point of diminishing return. It is time to complete the career pivot that i have started.

Reflecting on time spent following the classic emotional wrecking-ball career model of do more-to get more- to do more i have observed two distinctly different types of successful people. In addition to the stereo-typically successful type A employee — the average accomplish your task on time, work long hours and weekends only to accept more responsibility employee — there also exists type B employees. Type B employees  thrive within organization without hitting their mark — somehow, they remain employed. At times, they are even highly revered with what little work they accomplish, praised.

In many instances the supervisors response to a type B employee with a marginal measurable output versus a type A employee with a  good performance record is relatively the same.

The delta between is the amount of stress and emotional discomfort the type A employee experiences — it is far greater than the type B employee. He is unplugged, coasting, and stress free.

Some hard research does exist showing increased work effort is “associated with reduced well-being and inferior career-related outcomes.” Using data collected from more than 50,000 people from 36 European countries, researchers found that the harder employees worked  the more likely they were to report stress, fatigue, and lowered job satisfaction. Further, they also were noted to have inferior work outcomes around job security, recognition, and career prospects. This held true even in upper-level occupations.

In simple terms — keeping up the appearance of success seems far easier emotionally than hitting any real deliverable.

How do people get away with this? More importantly, how can i get away with this?  Either consciously or subconsciously they have developed and alternative skill-set; a skill-set that affords them the luxury of making a great wage, and receiving praise, all without providing equivalent effort or outcome — Sign me up.

Most of these so-called skills are no different than concepts put forth by handfuls of self-help leaders and business gurus, simple things. Publications such as Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s, “Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career” demonstrates the importance of finding a senior-level sponsor to advocate for you and your work when seeking advancement within an organization. And, Malcolm Gladwell in his 2005 best seller, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, reinforces the belief that people formulate opinions in the first several seconds of interacting with someone.

What is put forth below are obviously gross-manipulations of these already proven sound concepts, but in each instance the outcome is the same.

It is  important to note that these concepts cannot be applied until a certain amount of baseline confidence is achieved in the overall competence of an employee. Further research would be needed on the specific application of these principles to a less demonstrated demographic group. Once this core competency has been proven a handful of basic job requirements still need to be accomplished in order to maintain the baseline perception of performance and engagement. For example; approving employees time, delegating project responsibilities, performance reviews, attending meetings, etc. If tasks like these are not completed — most likely, it will be noticed. These essential duties will vary by position and company. It is important to identify and mitigate for them prior to taking the next steps.

With elementary job functions properly addressed, maintaining the picture of achievement and engagement becomes the priority. For selective deployment, three of these bullshit concepts and their general application are highlighted below:

Find an advocate:

It is always looks better when someone other than yourself hypes your greatness. It is equally good if they can cover for your fuck-ups and shortcomings. Instead of spending years convincing several upper-level managers you are doing great things  you really only have to impress one — your chosen advocate. This person, of higher authority, can advertise worthiness on your behalf  in a way that doesn’t sound arrogant.

When selecting an advocate i evaluate three different elements; 1- influence of the advocate — what authority does this person have and how can it be used to secure my position?  2- reputation of the advocate — is this person on the “right side” politically?  (not in the broad sense, but within the organization) 3- amount of effort required to maintain the advocate relationship — Is maintaining the advocacy relationship more of a pain-in-the-ass than its total worth?

It’s important to protect and nurture this symbiotic relationship. It is fragile and finding the right balance between output and no-put can be tricky. Enough positive work must be performed to keep your advocate’s reputation in good light, but not so much work that it detracts from your own quest to fully unplug. Caution must also be exercised to divert any bad information about you, your team, or your work that may potentially find its way back to your advocate.

Do and say the right things in the presence of the right people:

Identifying who’s who within an organization is an elementary step to success for any role. Most likely, these who’s who’s are also colleagues or superiors of your chosen advocate. Once pin-pointed efforts can be made to increase your perceived value.

Stupid shit done in their presence can go a long way in validating your work ethic and overall character as an employee. Activities such as picking up trash, engaging in a motivating conversation with a subordinate, and wiping the counters clean in front of top executives can leave them with the impression that— “This guy really cares about company X more than just his position. He cares about the company and its assets, no matter how far removed from his function.”

Pay attention to conversations that may reveal interests and then study-up. Casual lunch conversations  or pre-meeting discussions with this population seems less contrived  if it is a topic that yields itself naturally to discussion. Identify  commonalities among this group — local sports teams, industry trends, and non-frictional current events can all be great starting points.

Plan for a scapegoat:

Even in a perfect environment shit can go wrong. In this new perception only environment it is a fact that shit will indeed go wrong. That’s okay as long as you have planned for a scapegoat.

A scapegoat can be a person, however consistently blaming others within your company for your misses will make you look an asshole and this political time-bomb will certainly make its way back to your advocate  eventually forcing their hand to remove you from your position. It is best to limit your “ internal individual scapegoating” to a select few — primarily those who have or will soon exit the organization.  Pre-identifying process, equipment  and time-based scapegoats will ensure that you are absolved of wrong doing without being painted as the organizational dickhead.

Already known process gaps, data configuration/integrity issues, vacancies in position, etc. are all easy to exploit. The weather, contractors, vendors, the mail / Fed-ex / UPS, planned objections to timelines, revisions to SOW’s, and multiple emails for clarification are also great techniques to stall and extend deadlines, throughout the project timeline,

These techniques will not be viable in every organization or applicable in every instance for all populations. I am also hyper-aware that my little experiment could go horribly wrong. I could end up unemployed, publicly embarrassed, and unable to regain employment through one of my already established professional contacts.

At the very least, this is an entertaining  pseudo-science case study around emotional self-preservation.

But, at its very best, the working world will find humor in my stories and i can change my Linked-In profile page to read, “a 9-5 workday dropout documenting the tribulations of smoking cannabis as a leader in an anti-cannabis corporate environment.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Right Weed the Right Time – Project Presentation to EXCO

    right weed right time graphicforecast your high by correctly choosing your cannabis strain

I am usually nervous before my presentations, regardless of the population size or demographic makeup of my audience.  It makes no difference if i am facilitating a workshop to a group of peers, or detailing DMAIC outputs to upper echelon  business leaders, i am unsettled.  From an early age i have suffered from depression and anxiety, it sucks. I have spent countless mornings in the shower throwing up as the loose circuits in my defunct brain aimlessly fire negative and foreboding thoughts at me one after another in rapid succession. As a child and young teen these thoughts would throw me into a tailspin; sometimes one that would take me days to recover from.

Although this morning’s meeting only has handful of participants the demographics of this population, under non-medicated circumstances, would be enough to send me to the nearest restroom to perhaps quietly vomit up my breakfast smoothie. They are the stereotypical old money executive committee that controls the U.S. segment of our beverage business. Wealthy, well dressed, and choc full of old school bias about mental health and cannabis use. This is an executive staff that still supports random drug tests for their office population even though we operate in several legal cannabis states. They are clueless to my lifelong internal battle with depression / anxiety, and even more clueless to the fact that i am stoned as fuck as i define for them the parameters around my collected data.

I have given a version of this presentation hundreds of times throughout my career. The numbers and industry might be different, but essentially  it is the same conversation. I am diligent with my pre-work for presentations. I know my numbers and what I’m going to say to garner support, or deflect attention. The constant wild card is how i will emotionally respond. Its a crap shoot.

Forty-five minutes prior to my presentation i took my “lunch” break, in my car and blasted hits from my vape pen during a space cruise around the block. I take the same route daily, and avoid common lunch stops of work associates.  To keep my mind straight for these types of activities i prefer the high of a strong sativa, or sativa dominant hybrid. Sour Diesel or the Skunk #1 derivative Green Crack are favorites and usually easy to find. However, the heavy smoke odor can be a bit much for a mid day ghost ride away from work. For this reason, and in these circumstances i prefer oils or extracts. A pre-loaded cartridge looks  the same as an e-cigarette pen and has an undistinguishable somewhat ambiguous smell to non-users. After a quick check of my eyes, and a piece of gum and I’m back in my office to review my upcoming presentation.

It wasn’t until around my fifteenth birthday that an actual diagnosis of depression with general and social anxiety was reached.  This revelation was no surprise to me, not only was my daily shower ritual of vomiting down the drain a physical manifestation of this mental discomfort,  it is commonly known that I am descended from a family of depressed alcoholic drug users riddled with anxiety and fear. In other words the nervous acorn doesn’t fall far from the nervous oak, thanks dad. My diagnosis was followed by years of doctor monitored medical experimentation with a variety of SSRI’s, SNRI’s and TCA’s. These are the drug classes that contain the suite of popular anti-anxiety and depression medications that are commonly thrown by Western medicine at individuals  diagnosed with my afflictions.

As anyone who has been through a similar challenges in their lifetime knows each of these drugs carries with it a multitude of undesirable side effects; almost all of which i experienced to some extent. I could document chapter upon chapter about the varying degree of  failure i have had with each of these medications and the mostly negative impact that they have had on my health and my social well being. In short, no single drug or any combination of these drugs provided me enough relief to warrant the horrible side effects.

During my sixteenth year something remarkably impactful happened in my life and would change the course of my mental health forever.  I was introduced to cannabis. It was a typical “After School Special” type situation; me and a group of friends after football practice smoking weed from a crushed Bush Light beer can. After taking that first hit i immediately felt a sense of calm. The constant nagging voice of doubt and fear that had been on replay inside my head from childhood was silenced. For the first time in my life i felt confident, calm, and collected. For the first time i felt unafraid and as if i belonged. This began my journey of self-medication through cannabis.

Hindsight now tells me that the first strain of cannabis i consumed that night was most likely a weak indica dominant hybrid. It would explain the euphoric calm and sense of belonging i experienced. Today with legalized cannabis in several states there exists a plethora of complex cannabis strains with a wide variety of diverse cannabinoid makeups. With the mounds of information surrounding the effects of those strains it is easy to forecast the type of high you could expect after consumption. This was not the case in the early 90’s. As a teenager i was happy to receive whatever crap-shoot buds (ranging from chronic to swag) i could procure from my local dirty dealer.

It is difficult for me not to imagine what would have happened to me if this first experience with cannabis  would have been with a potent sativa dominant strain. Maybe i would have went on a whitey, had a bad panic attack, and been frightened away from cannabis altogether.

Over two decades have passed since that first post football practice toke up with my teammates. Throughout that twenty  plus years  I have successfully continued to utilize cannabis to remedy my combination of mental health issues. Also, throughout that time i have continually achieved great professional success while avoiding the common pitfalls of what is considered typical of a drug user.

Aside from the normal efforts it takes to excel within a company, I owe these professional  successes to a couple of things; a) not getting caught using an elicit federally illegal drug, b) understanding  the physical and mental effects of various cannabis strains, c) utilizing this knowledge to not only keep me mentally together, but to aid and advance my daily work, and d) not allowing the cannabis  i consume to dominate my life. I have documented several processes and tools to insure that items a and d never become an issue. Most of them  require only simple discipline, forethought and patience to effectively deploy. However,  in regards to items b and c,  and in absence of the luxury of trial and error, further steps should be taken to maintain the anonymity of a dual existence.

The energetic high from the Green Crack CO2 oil i vaped during lunch changes my steady state from of afraid /anxious to the desired state of confident/charming. I energetically move from slide to slide detailing the work that has been done, the challenges we have and will face, and of course what the next project deliverables will be. I am cautious to not speak to much, or ramble aimlessly as this can happen easily with a strong cannabis sativa. The hour passes quickly and as anticipated, uneventful.

Although the intended outcomes are different I use strong indicas and indica crossbreeds in similar ways. Rather than tasks that require me to be energetic and outgoing i medicate to be more cerebral and introspective. Brainstorming, budget planning, value stream mapping, Fish Bone diagraming, root cause analysis, and annual performance assessment input are all great examples of standard tasks that can benefit from the use of indicas and indica hybrids.

Through a combination of personal smoking experience as well as readily available data from cultivators, and cannabis distributors via the online community I have culminated the desired effects of a small selection of  cannabis strains. I have further cross referenced this list with a handful of tasks/responsibilities typically encountered. The result is the Right Weed at the Right Time Matrix. Several optimized applications can also be used that cross reference specific  cannabis strains to effect and further by dispensary location. Leafly and Allbud are great examples. In addition to the typical information such as flavor and aroma they provide an overall chemical composition of the strain (THC, CBD, CBN etc. breakdown), the genetic makeup, general effects, and symptoms relieved by that particular type of cannabis.

The specific cannabinoid makeup of the cannabis strain you choose to consume will greatly impact your behavior and outcome of work. If quality of output and  privacy around your medicated status is of concern It is important to pair your activity or task appropriately to your cannabis strain. Nothing will expose your drug use quicker than looking and acting like a “stoner” at your place of employment.

 

The High Continuum – The Waxing Scale: Understanding your capabilities on the way up

Because I do not have any sun metaphors to commemorate today’s 1/375 year solar event  I am informally presenting my notes from my Pairing Your High seminars.  The Marijuana High Continuum is a metaphor of the moon phases scale that can be used in parallel with your task list, calendar, project plan, etc. to achieve desired results. In conjunction with The Right Weed the Right Time Matrix you can finely tune your high to complete projects and tasks effectively without the risk of compromising  your stoner identity. Like moon phases there are two sides of the Marijuana High Continuum; the waxing and the waning scales. Waxing scale measuring the “up” time frame of your high and the waning scale that incrementally  marks the “down”, or “burn out”, if you will.