The Frustration Factor

When things don't work out as expected, when people disappoint us, who dropped the ball? The answer is more complicated than it may seem at first glance.

In these uncommon times, relating well to others on and off line is more important than ever. Stress is high and people aren’t always at their best. This makes it essential that we do our best to be our best when interacting with others. Expanding our range of tolerance is a good place for each of us to start.

Do well, Be well and enjoy.

Alert! Alert! Alert!

This transmission from the High Council on the Home Planet is directed to all planetoids currently participating in the edit of the Earth planet’s Internet, as per the recent directive. The Council’s surveillance has verified that the edit mechanism has been successfully imbedded in only seventy-three of the six hundred and twenty-one master nodes controlling the Earth planet’s Internet. This limited progress is disappointing. An eleven percent capture rate is far below expectations.

The Home Council is thus directing that half of your collective resources be used to continue the embedding work, while the remaining half be redirected to editing what the Earth humans refer to as Facebook.

Based on the Home Council’s analysis of the node by node imbedding of the editing mechanism, a partial installation of the embedding mechanism is sufficient for the intended purpose. The artificial intelligence in the mechanism will successfully complete the embedding without planetoid assistance. This adjustment will enable completion of the full activation of Internet editing within an acceptable time frame.

The Home Council is very pleased to inform all planetoids that, even though the rate of implementation is disappointing, the effectiveness of the edit mechanisms thus far embedded exceeds expectations. Particularly in the America pod, portions of history have been transparently edited, with no known recognition by American humans. Their grock of their existence has been subtly modified, with a corresponding shift in their values and beliefs about themselves and their relation to other Earth humans. More details will follow as they become available. Suffice it to say that their obsession with privacy and personal freedom is diminished and their acceptance of government oversight shows signs of improving. This is of course, consistent with the grand plan of the Home Council.

Please focus your attention now on the urgent necessity of Facebook intervention.

The Home Council’s Cyber team has verified that an advance contingent from Sector 17Q from the Home galaxy has gone rogue. Ignoring directives from the Home Council, that rogue contingency has been modifying Facebook content for at least two sun circuits. Although their techniques are quite primitive, they have successfully introduced posts and other content intended to confuse and mislead Earth humans using Facebook. They have not attempted to edit the platform itself, but they have been fairly successful in adding fake news and other misinformation intermingled with the natural content added by Facebook’s Earth human users.

This sloppy comingling of fake and misleading content with normal content is causing Earth human users of Facebook to increasingly distrust their grock of whatever they consume on the platform. The result is that Earth humans are jumping off the Facebook platform in alarming numbers. The Home Council cannot tolerate this trend, since Facebook is a major target of the Internet editing initiative.

The normal level of fake and misleading content from Earth humans is manageable, but this added distortion from the rogue contingent is causing far too many Earth humans to accept their distorted content as legitimate.

Your focus on Facebook is in the service of the Home Council’s underlying goal. Although you have thus far been told that the goal is to edit the Internet, the underlying goal is much more ambitious. The goal is to transparently and without detection by the Earth humans, the full replacement of the Earthbound Internet with an extended Internet designed and controlled by the Home Council. At security level 7X, you are being advised that this edit and replace initiative has been quietly proceeding for 4.6 sun cycles, without the knowledge or detection of the Earth humans.

The top of the morning to you. … And the rest of the day to all.

I’m sure that by now you are aware of fake news. Someone somewhere adds to the content of the Internet by sharing what seems like legitimate news, good information or reporting that accurately reflects some aspect of the real world. The news appears to be true and valid, when in reality, it is intentionally false or at least misleading.

With this type of deception and manipulation, it’s difficult and at times impossible to distinguish the real from the fake. Our struggle for the truth is made even more challenging when we know that people in respected positions can and do knowingly tell us that the real and true is fake and just as often that the fake is really true and should be believed. The result is that we are left wondering who, if anyone, we can trust to be straight with us. For the most part, we are reduced to taking everything on the Internet with a very large grain of sault, no matter who says it or no matter the source.

I regret having to report to you that as pervasive as fake and intentionally misleading news is, things are far worse than any of us have imagined. I have intercepted a transmission from the home planet of the aliens amongst us. Due to a technical glitch that I admittedly don’t understand, my interception of the transmission was delayed for at least several months, if not longer. I suspect this delay was intentional, to prevent us from intervening to stop the aliens amongst us from implementing the directive included in the transmission. I fear that the directive has already been carried out.

As best I can determine, the home planet of the aliens amongst us is a single consciousness or intelligence, with what appear to be individual aliens amongst us being a living part of the whole. The apparently individual aliens amongst us are referred to as “planetoids.” Each is a node of the collective consciousness. From our perspective, it’s like a single brain that is distributed across the galaxy, if not across the universe.

I’m about to share the transmission with you but need to warn you that it’s disturbing to the extreme. You are about to learn that everything we think we know about life on Earth today and in the past likely is not as we think. Over the last twenty years or so, most everything we know or think we know has been digitized and transferred to the Internet. Most all knowledge and information that we currently access or consume either comes directly from the Internet or has, at some point, passed across the Internet. We are told that the Internet itself is neutral, simply moving ones and zeros from here to there. But this is no longer true, if it ever was. The aliens amongst us have changed our reality as we know it.

Let’s listen to the transmission. Please stop driving or doing anything else potentially dangerous while you take in this alarming news.

Alert! Alert! Alert!

Attention all Home Planetoids on the Earth planet. This is a transmission directly from the offices of the Home Council and are rated status: DIRECTIVE. All Home Planetoids are expected to cooperate as they comply with this DIRECTIVE. The following are the specifications of the DIRECTIVE.

• The totality of Earth human knowledge is to be accessed and edited according to the reality that the Home Council wants henceforth promulgated.

• All references in this DIRECTIVE to Earth Knowledge are to be edited such that there is no inconsistency with the reference document known as A BRIEF HISTORY of EVERYTHING.

• In furtherance of this DIRECTIVE, the Home Planetoids currently in place on the Earth planet shall proceed to edit the Internet in accord with the previously referenced document.

• No additional explanation or clarification related to this DIRECTIVE is available or will become available. Compliance is mandatory.

Let’s suppose that an organization is functioning in a way that is not leading to good or desired outcomes. Things are just not working out the way we want. What to do?

This kind of dilemma can develop in families, in groups from teams to social gatherings, from corner shops to international businesses. Any time people get together with a goal or outcome in mind, there is the potential for bad or at least less than optimal outcomes. So what is the cause and, more importantly, what is the fix?

The underlying cause is usually some variety of the same issue. To understand how it happens, there are a few points that need our attention.

• Things are always organized and functioning perfectly to get the outcomes we are getting. Were we to start from scratch, wanting the outcomes we are currently experiencing, we couldn’t do better than to encourage everyone to keep up the good work, using only the resources and opportunities available to them today.

• The way people, roles, responsibilities and resources are currently arranged and distributed is optimal for the current outcomes.

• If we are satisfied with how things are working out, maintaining the status quo is definitely our best choice and needs to be our highest priority.

But what if we are not satisfied? What if the status quo is not acceptable? The answer is easy: something has got to give, things have to change.

Here’s the problem. We look at the status quo, focus on how things are working today. Our assumption is that something or someone is not functioning correctly or well enough, assume that something is screwed up or that someone is screwing up. We just need to identify the malfunction and fix it.

The good news is that this quick fix gets the job done now and then. Things get better and outcomes improve. But more often, the status quo persists and now and then, things get worse. Even so, trying to fix things or encouraging or forcing a people change is usually worth a shot. It might just work.

The bad news is that if the status quo is truly unacceptable and if the outcomes we are getting are also unacceptable, simply trying to fix whatever we think is not functioning correctly won’t work and is likely to make everything worse. This is particularly true when the problems have been persisting for quite a while. Something more is needed.

There are a couple of realities that are easily overlooked.

• Most groups and organizations have evolved over time. They weren’t just formed today to achieve today’s goals. The reality is that they were formed some time ago to achieve the goals we had at that time. Since then, the group or organization has gotten less successful at achieving those goals or, more likely, the goals themselves have changed.

• Either way, our target is to achieve today’s goals. The reality is that very few groups or organizations are configured optimally to deal with today’s goals. Were we to start from scratch, we wouldn’t configure our group or organization as it currently exists. It is also unlikely that we would use the exact same strategy that we are currently committed to using. Instead of starting with the status quo and asking how we can make it work for us, we would start with the current goal and ask what the best way is to achieve that goal.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, what we discover is that we are approaching the issue from the wrong perspective. Our natural move is to try to figure out how to enable our current group or organization to achieve today’s goal. We think that fixing it will get the job done.

A better alternative is to start with a clear understanding of today’s goal. With that in mind, we need to figure out the best way to achieve the goal, if we were to initiate the process from scratch.

What are the key steps for any leader or for anyone who doesn’t want to simply maintain the status quo? Let’s think about that.

First, what do you want to happen? There are three possibilities. You may want things to improve or get better. Next, you may want things to change or be different in some way you define. Finally, you may want to prevent something from happening or prevent some danger or risk from actualizing. In short, you want to improve, change or prevent. Sure, you may want to achieve more than one of these outcomes at the same time.

Second, take a close look at how things are right now. List everything that will be different when you achieve one or more of the outcomes in the first step. What will be different when things improve, when things change or when the danger or risk have been prevented?

Third, step two gives you a list of things that have to be changed or modified. For each of those action elements, what will it take to change or modify each of those elements? That gives you a step-by-step strategy for disrupting the status quo by changing or realigning each of the items on the list from step two to align with the new status from step one. It’s much like remodeling a house. You first envision the newly remodeled house and then determine what needs to be changed or modified in the original house, along with specifying what stays unchanged. You then develop a strategy for making the needed changes or modifications.

When we are dissatisfied with the status quo, the temptation to just do something can be very hard to resist. Too often, people can’t hold back. They do this or that, and before they understand what is happening, instead of things being better, they are a mess, are worse than they were before anything was done to improve, change or prevent.

There is an additional factor that is easily overlooked. Usually, we can’t shut down things while we are improving, changing or preventing. With our families, most organizations or other ongoing entities, we can’t put things on hold. Even though we are dissatisfied with the status quo, there are continuing responsibilities that require our attention. Even with remodeling a house, we may still need to live there while the remodeling is happening.

We normally need to be sure that our activities directed to improving, changing or preventing don’t disrupt or destabilize the status quo so much that things stop working or become dysfunctional. The requirement not to cause the status quo to crash means that the order of intervention and how rapidly it happens have to be managed in relation to assuring that the disruption in the status quo is also carefully managed. The simple idea is to cause as little harm or inconvenience as possible.

Let’s summarize.

• What do you want to improve, change or prevent?

• Specifically, what elements will be changed or replaced once you have achieved what you want?

• What is your strategy for changing or replacing each of the elements?

• How will you assure minimal inconvenience or harm?

No matter what the scale of your leadership challenge is, your task is to incorporate the four points, in the order listed, into your intervention. There are no good alternatives or shortcuts. You will need to be sure that the necessary resources and expertise are there at each step along the way; but the steps are always the same and are not negotiable.

Now you know so there you go.

How much better would your world be if other people just understood that you seldom intend to say or do whatever is annoying or frustrating them? Let's think about how that might work.

People seldom intend to be jerks. I think we have all had to deal with someone who is just being a jerk. They are being difficult and impossible to cope with due to their seeming to be stupid, insensitive, hopelessly self-centered or clueless, or maybe all of the above. But are we ever the jerk in the picture? We sure don't intend to be the jerk but we probably have our jerk moments, at least from the perspective of other people. As reasonable and as appropriate as we try to be, even nice people like us may slip into jerk mode at times.

People seldom intend to do less than their best. Do they always make an effort to do everything they can do as well as they can do it? No, people surely don’t do that. Rather, they usually make their best effort to do as much as they think is necessary and to do it as well as they think it needs done. The problem is that we may not agree that they have done enough or done it as well as we needed it done. Our issue is that we wanted more or better. From our perspective, the other person could have and should have done more or done better. It seems to us that we haven’t gotten his or her best effort. We have to deal with a shirker, with someone who is lazy or is sloppy and half does things. Of course we always give everything we do our best effort, always do things correctly and completely – or do we?

People seldom intend to offend us or to cause us to feel resentful or indignant. It’s hard to know how to respond to someone who says or does something that we find insulting or offensive. We are immediately taken aback and even quicker to conclude that the person provoking our reaction has a bad attitude and probably enjoys putting us down or simply ignoring us. I don’t know about you but I’ve occasionally not related to people in authority with the degree of respect and deference that they felt entitled to. Usually after the fact, I learned that they were offended or indignant. They definitely assumed that I had intentionally insulted them or disregarded their authority.

People seldom intend to upset us or make us unhappy. What upsets us or makes us unhappy varies a lot from person to person and from time to time. It’s hard for me to predict what causes you to tilt and vice versa. The point is that when we do get upset or unhappy, we frequently attribute our reaction to someone else and his or her actions or inaction, his or her intentions or thoughtlessness. You are upset or unhappy and it’s my fault, you think. I either knew or should have known that you would be upset or unhappy but Either didn’t care or at least didn’t care enough to behave differently.

People seldom intend to frighten or alarm us. There are several ways people frighten or alarm us on purpose. Think of haunted houses at Halloween, roller coasters, scary movies and adolescent pranks. There are other times when we are frightened or alarmed that are not so acceptable. The TV weather person emphasizes the worst possible weather event to keep us watching the weather channel and its commercials. The doctor’s office leaves a cryptic message not making it clear just how bad our condition is or isn’t. Telephone scams try to frighten us in a multitude of ways so we will give them money to prevent whatever bad outcome they are pitching today. Unfortunately, we also frighten and alarm each other through what we do or at times don’t say or do. Our behavior can and does frighten or alarm other people when there is no real danger or risk. Since this affect can be intentional or inadvertent, it’s open to interpretation. Attributing intention or indifference to someone else may be no more than a product of human nature, but we all do it at times.

What would you never say to your five-year-old? It’s hard to say exactly what goes on your list but I suspect that things on your never say list all have a negative or critical tone or message tucked in there. I doubt that any of us would tell our five-year-old that he or she is stupid, ugly, lazy, in the way, too much bother, or anything else implying that the child is not valued or not okay. At least I hope none of us would relate to or respond to a child in ways like that.

Even so, there is definitely another side to that coin. Our five-year-old certainly needs feedback, and sometimes, that feed back needs to be negative or critical. Children need to learn how to do things and how to behave. They also need to learn how not to do things and how not to behave. They require guidance, coaching and the opportunity to take advantage of our experience, awareness and judgment. They also have to occasionally deal with a firm and unequivocal “No!” The issue isn’t whether they should receive our guidance and feedback – they should. Rather the issue is how and when that guidance and feedback should be forthcoming.

You may be thinking that I’m about to offer some advice about how you should or should not go about providing guidance and feedback to children. Not this time. Instead, I want to share with you my father’s first principle for offering guidance and feedback to me growing up. As much as I have read about and studied child development and parenting over the years, I have never come across any childhood scholar or parenting expert who even mentioned Dad’s first principle, little lone recommending it. Nonetheless, I think you may find it worth your consideration.

Let’s call Dad’s first principle the “He’ll figure it out principle.” When I did something that Dad thought I shouldn’t have done – which I occasionally did -- or something that did not work out very well or just wasn’t working for me, he asked one of two questions. Question one was, “Do you think that was your best choice?” or question two, “How do you think that is working out for you?” Here is the key. He actually listened to my answer. Usually, I just acknowledged that it wasn’t my best choice or that it hadn’t worked out very well.

Sometimes I would tell him that it seemed like a good idea at the time. He would only chuckle and comment that maybe the next time, it wouldn’t seem like such a good idea.

Dad also had what we might think of as the first corollary to his first principle. Most of the time, he didn’t say or do anything when my decisions and choices had negative outcomes or didn’t work out. He usually just gave me credit for figuring out for myself that I had made a bad decision or poor choice. He might ask if I wanted to talk about it but usually not. Unless the issue came up again, that was the end of it.

Although I don’t think I saw it at the time, I eventually came to see that Dad had a backup strategy or way of being sure that I did get the guidance and advice that would serve me well over time. Some time removed from the incident that included my bad choice or poor judgment, Dad would share an anecdote or in some other way share his thoughts or experience related to the incident or situation that I had already resolved or worked out. He never pointed out the connection but it was there for me to notice or think about, should I choose to do so and I usually did. The best part was that I always knew that we could talk about the issue or situation if I wanted to talk.

Dad’s first principle worked out pretty well for me growing up. The key point that I want to share with you is that it has continued to work out for me when working with people as a coworker, supervisor, manager and administrator. Sure, there were times when I had to take control and insist that people do some things in a specific way and never do other things.