Ben Hughes

Posted via email from Ben’s Stream

It’s been a pretty average week at work, so I was happy to look at job ad when someone sent one my way. It sounded awesome: big picture, big results stuff. I was thinking about applying until I realised that it would be a non-technical role, which completely put me off. 

A few months ago I moved from a part management part technical role to almost purely technical, and I’ve been seriously enjoying it. But despite that, it doesn’t feel like what I want to be doing for the next 30 years. 

What do I want to be doing for the next 30 years?

I enjoy technical work so long as it’s tied to a higher purpose. Collaborative problem solving and technical leadership stuff are also up there, and I’m fairly comfortable with looking after staff. But start talking about budgets, Gannt charts,  project plans and “resources” and I’m looking for the door. Which leads to a bit of a confession: I’m not a finisher.

I mean, sure, I get things done, but by the time I’m 80% there I’ve lost interest. All the “personality tests” back this up - using HDBI terminology I’m imaginative and analytical, with a decent amount of interpersonal, and almost no sequential aptitude. That is, big on ideas and problem solving, decent with people, and not so good on the details. Knowing those traits is one thing, but mapping them to a career path is something else, particularly in my current organisation.

So why, when a job comes along that seems to be a great match for me, do I brush it aside just because there’s no technical component? What’s so important to me about being a developer anyway? Is it just the comfort of working from a safe knowledge base, or is it something deeper?

For many reasons outside of this, now is not a good time for me to be looking at changing jobs so I won’t be applying. But if I want to make any sort of progress from here on I think I need to understand what’s holding me back.

Maybe I need a life coach. Hell, maybe I just need a holiday.

There seems to have been a strange trend developing in some circles of management in the last couple of years - a relentless optimism that is almost depressing to observe. It’s nothing new that the self-help-guru cross doublespeak dialect that passes for management language absorbs and spits out phrases without taking much notice of their intended meaning, but lately it’s really getting on my nerves. Particularly the phrase “it’s OK to fail”.

Now of course it is OK to fail, in fact it’s unavoidable if you actually do anything. The idea behind having a culture that’s accepting of failure is that people won’t try and cover them up, and as a result the organisation as a whole can learn from the experience. The first step in establishing a that kind of culture is to encourage people to be open about it. Unlike the current trend where a failure is re-spun almost as if it were intended as a lesson from the outset, it’s important to actually acknowledge that something went wrong.

We learn from failure because it’s painful. It is somewhat perverse that by spinning everything as a positive, the organisation is denied the opportunity to actually learn from the failure because the pain is never felt. I’ve talked to people who insist that there are no negatives - everything is just an opportunity for improvement. They don’t seem to understand that by under-selling the downside, they are effectively undermining any real chance for improvement. Because by not acknowledging the scale of the problem the appropriate time and energy cannot be invested in solving it.
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