Do You Work for a Hopscotch Organization?

You probably remember the playground game hopscotch. I think there are some parallels between the game and working in many organizations.

Let’s say you have a simple task to do – you need to get from one side of a room to the other. In a hopscotch organization, you don’t simply walk across the room; you have to hop in a series of boxes in the proper sequence. For example:

Here’s a link to a video which shows the game in action.

Obviously, this is more complicated than simply doing the task. If you can, it makes sense to work on process improvements to simplify hopscotch procedures whenever you encounter them. But what if you can’t?

If my job was nothing but one hopscotch task after another, I think I would probably end up feeling the company was too stupid to be associated with, and would leave.

But, it’s more likely that hopscotch tasks are occasional irritants. If that’s the case, view them like hopscotch - a game you can excel at. Kids, after all, play hopscotch for fun, and a good hopscotch player can cross the course faster than most people can walk it. By all means work to change the game, but in the meantime learn to play, and take pleasure in the challenge.

What To Do When You’re Dissatisfied: Part II - Exit

The shortest time I’ve ever held a job was six weeks.

I realize that is not a record (I’ve had new hires fail to show up for work after lunch on their first day). But for me, it was traumatic, especially since it was a great job in a great place (Newport Beach, CA), with a great company (Bankers Mutual, since acquired by Deutschebank), working with people I admired and liked. What went wrong? I was under the impression I was working on commission with a draw, and my employer believed I was being paid straight commission. I was selling commercial mortgages and the closing cycle is a minimum of four months, so I was looking at an extended period of no income, with bills to pay and no reserves (and with a bad case of post-divorce blues, too). Under the circumstances, there was only one thing to do; exit.

In a previous post (Part I of this series) I have discussed changing your attitude about your situation rather than changing the situation. But, sometimes changing your frame of reference doesn’t get you anywhere. Over my career, I think I have left jobs for all the reasons it makes sense to exit:

The job is dangerous/unhealthy. In 1977-78 I worked on a mobile flax mill. It gradually dawned on me that the chronic respiratory and arthritis problems the older members of the crew suffered from were probably related to the dust we were breathing and the work we were doing.

You hate, hate, hate the work. Busboy, 1979 for six months. Enough said.

Fundamental misunderstanding about the job (duties, compensation, etc.). The Bankers Mutual situation (1987) in the opening paragraph.

Your employer is too stupid to be associated with. In 1988 I was a workout officer for the FSLIC. During the 14 months I was there, I did not resolve a single, solitary deal. Our days were spent doing endless data scrubs and preparing elaborate committee presentations which were invariably kicked back for more analysis. It became just too embarrassing to be a participant.

Your job has run it’s course. From 1989 to 1995 I was Assistant Director of Special Assets (income property workouts, foreclosures, bankruptcies) at Home Savings in Los Angeles (then the country’s largest S&L).  I had a great team doing interesting challenging work at a great institution. But, the real estate recession was coming to an end, we were laying people off, and I could see the handwriting on the wall.

You are accomplishing no useful work. In 1996, I was Regional Chief Underwriter for Mellon Mortgage in Los Angeles. During that year, I had only one deal to underwrite (and that was one I went out and found myself). Some people might be happy catching up on their reading and web surfing, but I had a perpetual sense of impending doom –surely someone at some point would notice the lack of output.

You stop learning. 1997 – 2005 I was Chief Credit Officer at ARCS Commercial Mortgage (now PNC/ARCS). Like Home Savings, this was a great company, and I had a great team doing interesting work. But, I basically had the same job for 9 years, and in my opinion that’s about four years too long. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers talks about how it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. My guess is I spent around 27,000 hours at ARCS. The combination of a great work environment and partnership vesting kept me around, but looking back, that extra four years are the only years I wish I had spent differently.

Your organization changes direction. During 2006-7 I was Senior Vice President of Asset and Credit Management for Capmark’s Affordable/Low Income Housing Tax Credit unit. Very interesting work, but six months into it Capmark decided to wind down that line of business.

Obviously there are steps you can take in some of these situations so that it makes sense to stay. A change of direction could actually be a new opportunity. If you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything useful or aren’t learning anything new, it might make sense to try to redefine your job doing other work in the same organization. But, if you’ve truly exhausted the possibilities, exiting is the right thing to do.

What to Do When You’re Dissatisfied: Part I

Although for the most part I’ve had a happy life, I’ve been in many situations I’ve been dissatisfied with (a bad experience at a restaurant a few weeks ago, several jobs I’ve had in the past, and the last 10 years of my first marriage all come to mind). What to do?

The first thing is to pause and give thanks for the gift you’ve received. If sounds too Buddhist/New Age for you pretend you didn’t read it and skip down a paragraph.  Dissatisfaction is a gift because it gives you an opportunity to handle a situation, learn from it, and become more adept at handling such situations in the future. Framing the situation that way moves you from the irritation and anger you’re probably feeling to a calm sense that this is a situation you can master and transform. If you want to explore this idea further I recommend Naikan, by Gregg Krech.

You have two paths to handling your dissatisfaction. They’re not mutually exclusive; you can often follow them both simultaneously. The first option is to challenge the external source of your stress, and the second option is to change your internal response to the stress. For example, as I’m writing this I’m in Wheeler, Oregon and it’s starting to snow really hard. Tomorrow I was planning to get up early and drive two hours over winding roads and a mountain pass to get to two meetings I’ve scheduled in Portland. One of my options is to challenge the storm; I could leave now before it gets worse, or I could go buy chains for my rental car. Or, I can accept the storm, change my plans, and spend another day or two where I am.

Changing your internal response works best in the following situations:

• The aggravation is trivial in the grand scheme of things.
• The aggravation isn’t trivial, but it’s not likely to be repeated (a stranger sneezes on you on the bus – irritating, but you’re not likely to ever see him again).
• There is nothing you can do to change the situation (you are snowed in, there is nothing you can do, you might as well enjoy it).

Even as children we are all familiar with the idea of riding it out, grinning and bearing it, going with the flow, etc. I never thought seriously about this approach until I read Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. In Greek mythology Sisyphus committed multiple offenses against the Gods, and in punishment was given the task of rolling a huge boulder to the top of a hill. The twist on the punishment is the task is impossible; before Sisyphus reaches the top of the hill the boulder always slips away and rolls back down. Pointless, repetitive tasks are referred to as Sisyphean tasks. Camus’ essay suggests Sisyphus can attribute his own meaning to the task and take pleasure in the struggle (instead of defining success as reaching the top of the hill).

But what if you don’t want to change – what if you want the situation to change? I’ll discuss that in Part II.