Let Your Corridors Carry Your Stories.
During the early days of my career as a programmer; I was hired at Multiplitaxion Inc; where; besides doing my job as a programmer; I was given random chores that other 'respectable-programmers' of the organization found too insulting to take up. The chores ranged from formatting documents; cleaning up HTML; uploading build files on production servers; to ordering food for programmers who were going to work late and fixing lose network cables for people.
Chores that laid the foundation for; and helped me understand the importance of becoming a one man army.
Time moved forward; one day at a time and I found myself working on these chores besides honing my programming skills.
Then one fine morning; years later; I found myself leading a team.
This was soon followed by leading multiple teams.
It was on another fine morning; that I was told that I someone who was very 'senior' and then a quite few people at work started listening to me.
Years later; every time I discussed those early painful times; what I learnt from those times and how those times changed Multiplitaxion Inc; forever; with young and bugging engineers; I started getting funny glances from senior-programmers and managers alike.
Some mildly hinted that the young-and-budding-developers working in teams that report to me might start respecting me lesser if they came to know of my humble starting; stupid failures and the deep scars I had received early on in my career.
Others felt it might have an impact on the overall organizational image.
'Why share stories of your or your organization's humble past with someone who is reporting to you?' --- some wondered.
Rosa Say describes the idea of sharing your own and your organization's past through stories much more articulately than I will be able to describe it. She explains:
| Every company has a storied past. Are you aware what yours is? More importantly, do you know why your stories are so important? When old timers tell the newbies stories about “the good old days,” or “how it used to be here,” or “the first time we ever did this” what are they so fondly recollecting? Why in the world do they keep talking about past events, often making the retelling far more wonderful sounding than you remember actually living the experience of them? Is there any value in this memorable nostalgia? When stories are told in the spirit of retelling your company history, your storytellers are often capturing the memorable parts; what they remember is largely what they want to keep alive because it felt very good to them at one time. Stories of what had been give us a look back at those things we once believed in, and want to keep believing in. They reveal the values which had bound us together and still do, and why in the aftermath of the story’s events we kept pushing upward and onward. They often chronicle successes and achievements, and tell of what people feel was a victory, because by nature we want our stories to be good ones; no one likes to recount their failures. However whether victory, mistake, or outright failure, our stories undoubtedly recount lessons-learned too important to be forgotten. We feel we can keep learning from them, and we tell the story to re-teach the lesson. |
Stories from your organizations past and sometimes your professional past can be humbling and painful. When you lead a team and find a few people listening to you; it's easy to put yourself in an ivory tower; shit-can; hide and never talk about all those humbling experiences from the past that taught you so much or made your organization or your team what it is today.
Not sharing these stories; is safe.
Not sharing these stories ensures that everyone in your team continues to respect you and your organization.
Not sharing these stories allows you to continue depicting yourself as this super-successful-guy-who-never-gets-anything-wrong and your organization as the-place-that-was-always-perfect.
This approach; dear reader; has just one problem however --- it is your first step to becoming a genuine prick who is always busy protecting his and his organization's so-called-always-successful-image.
Accept it or not; every organization has stories --- stories of success; stories of pathetic failures; stories of things done right; stories of things done wrong; stories of victories; stories of failures; stories of shipping crap; stories of not shipping crap and sometimes even stories of colossal fu@#kups or total disasters.
How many of these stories make it to the corridors of your organization and flow through them; letting your builders; learn from your organization's past?
Accept it or not; every manager has stories from his professional life --- stories of doing a few things right; stories of doing a few things wrong; stories of heroism; stories of pathetic failures and even stories of colossal fu@#kups orchestrated by his very own self.
Look around you.
How many of these stories about your organization, your team or your managers are you aware of?
If you answered 'none' you might be working with a bunch of pricks trying to protect their 'so-called-successful-image' by shit-caning their failures.
Remember; management is all about no secrets and an environment where stories don't flow through the corridors; cannot be a fun filled environment for genuine builders.
Which stories about your organization and your managers are you aware of?
Do these stories give you a clear picture of your organization's and manager's professional past?
Do these stories tell you about organizations culture chart?
How many stories of your own professional successes and fu@#kups that happened in the past; are you comfortable telling people who work with you?
What's your story; dear reader?
Discuss.
@BuildersAtWorkBookNotice
Comments are closed.