We are a little late this week for a plethora of reasons. A plethora. What a great word. Stand up and say it out loud: “Plethora.” Hopefully, you are somewhere where that is quite strange, and you should nod to everyone around you and tell them, “Think about it.”
One of my writing goals is to discuss the mistakes I have made in my career, even if I do not want to admit to myself that they were mistakes. 2001 to 2006 contained a lot of deep, deep learning, which is a fancy way to say, “mistakes so big, you can see them from space.” For example, many dark things occurred at Digital Chocolate, and my actions required many people to proclaim “shenanigans!” The directionality of my actions, if not the actual actions themselves, was still reasonably correct. This is a series of confession booth conversations that still need to happen. For the record, I have apologized to the CEO for the worst parts of my conduct, even if there were people between him and me that I still think deserve prison time.
I will not serve up the rest of the red meat slash hot goss from 2004 here.
Today, I want to talk about a more recent mistake and probably a less fatal one.
In recent memory, I was talking to my boss and CEO about a series of random tasks that showed up from a customer. The task seemed like a foul-smelling concoction of menial work and time-consuming meetings. The CEO said they would own this task and see it to completion.
“This is what I signed up for.” Was the magical declaration that followed a description of the banality of the task.
This is a very important statement. In leadership, you have to understand what you have signed up for. In most leadership positions, an important thing to realize is that when you have some work that is not suitable for anyone else, it is your responsibility to ensure that it gets done.
At a certain level, “this is what I signed up for” becomes “this is important, and not what anyone else signed up for, and therefore it is what I signed up for.”
For most of your career, you must ask yourself, “Is this what I signed up for?” I think that modern-day work-life balance and the need to be your authentic self at work can sometimes lead people to a hard “No.” For an entire generation of managers, this can be confusing. Most Generation X leaders, for example, grew up in a work environment best described as a “toxic meritocracy.” The importance of working hard to get things done was important regardless of the craziness of the task. Everything your boss asks is what you signed up for.
This is less true today. People value their personal time and draw hard limits on forty hours a week. People look at the companies they do business with, their values, and whether or not they align with the company. “Is this what I signed up for?” is a harder question for most people today than twenty years ago and contains much more nuance.
Everyone has a different mindset here, reflected in their answers to “Is this what I signed up for?”
My failure here is incorrectly answering this question. I was preparing for an interesting, internally focused executive task and needed to pinch-hit on another more urgent customer-facing task. I asked myself, “Is this what I signed up for?” The surface answer is that I had signed up for the internally focused executive task because that aligns with my current responsibilities. This other customer-facing task is not personally more interesting or important to me. I accepted the task and worked through it, although not without its cost. On reflection, I tended to complain about it to my peers.
When you reach the executive level, you must treat the question, “Is this what I signed up for?” differently. Very differently. The business has a different meaning to you than it did as a worker-bee or even middle manager. You have duties and obligations as leadership to fulfill in pursuit of the company mission, and it is best to follow through those with some level of grace and decorum.
In the future, when you face executive tasks that do not feel like they are in your wheelhouse, you should consider whether or not you have the luxury of saying, “I did not sign up for this.”
At a certain point in your career, “Is this what I signed up for?” becomes a non-question. Everything that needs to get done is what you signed up for.
I am adding this to my list of conversations with people on the verge of executive promotion. They need to understand that what they think they signed up for is sometimes different than what they really signed up for.
See you all next week!
